Labor Day Recipe Roundup

Goodbye, Summer.  We're sad to see you winding down.  Hopefully, the weather will cooperate for Labor Day weekend and most of us will get to have one last summer hurrah at the beach, or the lake or just in the backyard. If you're part of a potluck or just grilling out by yourselves, here is a recipe roundup of summer favorites that I hope you find handy. 

There's so much basil in the garden right now - whip up a batch of Basil Lime Cocktails

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Salad in Jars

I'm tired of putting out a great big salad bowl for dinners, having everyone get their salads and then seeing that all the goodies in the salad have fallen to the bottom of the bowl and very little actually made it into people's salads.  A lot of those goodies sometimes are expensive, too - pine nuts or pancetta.  Sometimes the diced veggies like bell pepper will fall to the bottom.  Drives me crazy. Solution?  Salad in jars!

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Fried Lemon Gnocchi with Basil

I used to always make gnocchi with ridges - the way my mom taught me.  We would make the ridges by pressing the gnocchi on a fork and rolling it down the tines.  It works well.  I have also used a gnocchi board, which makes the ridges very easy.  But when I first had gnocchi in Italy, there were no ridges at all.  I thought maybe that was unusual, but I have had gnocchi several times after that in Italy made with no ridges.  So now I just don't bother with the ridges. If you want to press ridges into the gnocchi, though, by all means go for it. 

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