Today is the first day of summer. On the last day of summer, the day before the autumn equinox, I'm getting married. Just one season to go. A lot needs to happen - food, flowers, pretty clothes, cake, ice cream, sweet notes to friends and family. But all of that is sheer fun - I can hardly wait. Here's the cake I am totally inspired by, also homemade. Photo by Lisa Lefkowitz - see the full post here.

Sometimes I remember recipes that I've loved and forgotten - long buried in the archives and recipe files. Tonight I was thinking about this one, Smoky Scallops with Fennel and Tomato. It's a robust dish of strong flavors, and while this might seem a counterintuitive way to deal with the delicate and fragile scallop, I like the way its sweetness soaks up the smoked paprika and juices of fennel and ripe tomato.

Mmm - summer, come quick.

When I started to write about my cooking I made a little promise to myself to always be honest. It would be really easy to gloss over the fallen cakes and oversalted meals, the small domestic disasters that arise from too much faith in gut instinct and too little experience. And while I certainly don't choose to tell you about every misstep, there are some weeks that just filled with these misjudgments, and missteps and mistakes. Here's one of those weeks.

I don't do much with poor mekuno anymore, since I blog 8-10 times daily over at Apartment Therapy's The Kitchn. But I'm planning to give it new life by posting photos here that I can't slot in there, or recipes that don't quite fit.

I'm not making any promises, but mekuno will have a little more life from here on out (I think).

Whoa. I mean, whoa. It's been a long time, hasn't it? People, I have been meaning to post this recipe since Christmas.

Well, I've been off in colder climes, doing various things. So here's a cheaterly sort of post - I'm going to just put up a list of some of the recipes I've posted lately over at The Kitchen, just to prove my industry.

When I began this blog I swore that I wouldn't ever start a post by saying something like, wow! It's been a LONG TIME since I blogged here! Have you MISSED me? I bet you have. GEE. Here's a new post then. Chomp away.

No, I don't like that approach - it presumes that thousands of people have been waiting with bated breath for my next meandering post, and we all know that there are actually only about 8 of you. Well, maybe less, if you include the multiple times my mother checks for something new.

One of my favorite things to do this time of year is to dream up new ways to use the obligatory foods of the holiday season. There's something gratifying and even transgressive in departing from the traditional recipes and finding new ways to prepare pumpkin, squash, sweet potatoes, bread stuffing and cranberries.

I neglect to mention turkey, as I am one of those people who think turkey's only redeeming service is to offer up giblets and a warm gaping cavity to the creation of excellent stuffing.

The components of these petits fours are as follows: banana cake, spiced caramel custard, dark chocolate glaze, flaked almonds, and burnt caramel drizzle. What's not to like?

Living in Florida messes with my sense of the seasons. When I lived in Ohio, if I saw strawberries in January I knew without a doubt that they were from somewhere far away, trucked in with great expenditure of fossil fuels. Our fields were bound with ice and snow for at least 300 miles in every direction. But in Florida, strawberries are actually in season in January, and a trip to the Plant City U-Pick fields is the thing to do.

A couple people asked me for the recipe for the Earl Grey tea cookies I included in my IMBB parcel for Dianna. I posted the recipe yesterday to the Kitchen at Apartment Therapy, so check it out there!

No, it's not Friday. But here's a light, sweet dessert anyway for Sugar High Friday, a lovely way to end a meal, easy and quick for just one or two. Looks simple, doesn't it? A sweet piece of fruit with a drizzle of creamy, caramel dulce de leche.

Look again. There's a surprise inside!

This month's Sugar High Friday is hosted by Alanna at A Veggie Venture, and I love the theme she came up with - Surprise Inside! The assignment was to tuck a surprise into something sweet, and here's my rather tardy entry!

Nearly as easy as slicing up some fruit, this juicy and creamy dessert hides a coconut panna cotta inside nectarines lightly steamed with rum and lemon juice. There's a hint of nutmeg in the light pudding and the dulce de leche lends a luxurious finish. It's a snap to put it together ahead of time to be pulled out as a cool, delicious surprise at the end of a meal.

Click below for the recipe! The dulce de leche recipe is at Apartment Therapy: Kitchen - my first post this week as coeditor over there.

This week I began blogging at Apartment Therapy: Kitchen, where three other people and I were hired as new site editors. I'll be editor-at-large, complementing the city-specific articles with coverage of online stores and other perspectives on cooking, food, and the art of hospitality. If you've never been to AT:Kitchen before, check it out! It's a great site with a very, very nice community. I'm thrilled to get to write for them, and I look forward to learning a lot from my fabulous co-editors Grant, Vanessa, and Chris, as well as, of course, founder and senior editor Sara Kate.

In other news, I received my BBM package yesterday and it gave a new meaning to the acronym, making me think BBM should now stand for Bottomless Box of Morsels. OK, maybe that's stretching it a bit, but still... Erika at Tummy Treasure sent me a wonderfully deep and generous box of delicious things. I kept pulling one thing out after another and seeing yet another layer of bubble wrap and colorful paper below! It went on and on and on....

I really enjoyed the variety of all the things that Erika included. It's impossible to choose a favorite, but I have to say that her homemade goodies, cinnamon-scented rice krispie treats and mocha truffle bites, are superb. I need to proactively wrap up and freeze the rest of the truffles or all my workouts will have been for naught.

I am a fiend for lip balm so the pomegranate lip gloss is already well-used. The lemon honey has been opened and enjoyed and I am looking forward to the homemade strawberry jam with black pepper. She even included a local Wisconsin product: cranberry mustard! I'm looking forward to cooking with that.

And so much more - bottomless, I say! There's rooibois tea, and a book all about tea. There's tiny mango-scented candles in glass thimbles. There's darling little ice cube trays and pink salt from the Himalayas, too. All in all, a wonderful package.

I enjoyed this event so much. Like Erika said in an email, I expected receiving the package to be the best part, but I had almost as much fun putting together the box I sent out. And it was such as lovely lift to my day to get this big bottomless box from Erika. Thanks again to Stephanie for hosting the event!

One very cool thing about food blogging with so many very pleasant people - really, are there nicer people out there in the otherwise often misanthropic and self-absorbed internet world? Humanity at its finest. - is the chance to be a part of an event where we actually get to send each other things. Real things - parcels and packages filled with food and other goodies from our own corner of the world.

Blogging By Mail is such an event, and a very popular one too. I was so girlishly excited to see this round announced that I was actually the first person to sign up. What can I say? I like mail. I like surprise parcels even more.

As I flipped through my secret recipient's weblog I mused over what he/she might like to receive and balanced that against what was feasible to send through the mail.

One of the things I put in, then, was a big batch of monster cookies. Monster cookies are a spectacularly lowbrow treat - filled with huge crackly M&Ms and big flakes of oatmeal, made chewy and greasy by heaps of completely non-natural peanut butter. They're heavenly.

The recipe has been floating around for a long time, mostly in a PTA-bake-sale form that calls for three pounds of peanut butter and gives you somewhere around 12 dozen cookies. I was introduced to them, though, by my lovely friend Lauren who brought a plate of them to the office. I demanded the recipe and here we are.

These cookies freeze well, store well, and the dough itself can be frozen and baked up in smaller batches. They are nearly the perfect cookie, in my opinion, because they're chewy and crispy and peanut butter and chocolate and oatmeal all in one. Nearly irresistible, these are. Give them a try.

I put quite a lot of other things in the package as well; here's a couple peeks. The rest will be a surprise! I can hardly wait to see what my own contains...