We’ve been spending a lot of time at the beach lately and since this is Oyster season, we’ve splurged and got a whole bushel of local oysters. They are absolutely fabulous raw and steamed, but even so there’s only so often I can eat them and we have barely made a dent in this huge bag of oysters.

My favorite way to eat them is to just steam them, dip them in a little melted butter and eat them, but I’m sure there’s a lot more you can do with them. Do you have a good recipe for oyster stew? How do you fry them and what else do you make with fresh oysters? I’d love to hear your ideas and recipes, so please leave them as a comment below.

We love Lemonade at our house and I almost always have a pitcher of it sitting in the fridge. We drink plenty of lemonade and ice tea all summer long. I’m much more comfortable with everyone drinking it than soda all day long.

Since it’s still pretty cool around here, and we were all nursing a cold, I thought about something my mother used to make for us as kids, which was basically a hot lemonade, sweetened with honey. So I grabbed a mug of lemonade and heated it in the microwave and it turned out great. Not only does it taste yummy, it feels wonderful on my throat and the steam helps loosen up congestion.

That got me thinking…are there any other uses and recipes for lemonade. I’m sure you can use it to flavor all kinds of different stuff.

We’ve always loved popcorn and usually have a few bags of microwavable ones sitting in the pantry. There’s just nothing better than watching a movie together as a family while sharing a bowl of popcorn. But as much as I love it, I’d like a little more variety than plain popcorn and the buttered version.

Do you have any ideas on what to make with popcorn, or how to give it different flavors like some of the gourmet popcorn available? I also love caramel corn. I get a big tin of it for Christmas every year, but would love to make it in small batches throughout the year.

If you have any popcorn recipes or ideas, please share them as a comment below.

My daughter, who is five, decided last week that she will no longer eat animals and that she’s a vegetarian now. So I’ve been cooking more beans veggies and the likes and we also picked up a pack of garden burgers and some veggie dogs at the store this week. I’ve fixed the veggie dogs for her like regular hot dogs twice now and am running out of ideas. Since they are full of protein, I’d like her to eat them frequently, but I also don’t want her to get tired of them. Any ideas on what I can make with veggie dogs? Do you have any recipes that call for them, or maybe something that you would usually use regular hot dogs in? Thanks for your help.

My five year old has been very interested in plants and how they grow lately so we started a little planting experiment. We planted some watercress since it’s easy and fast to grow. In fact, its’ too easy and I have a huge amount of these yummy little plants sitting in a pot on my kitchen counter.

I like to sprinkle some fresh watercress on my salad, but other than that I honestly don’t know what to do with these. Any ideas or recipes that call for watercress? Please post them as a comment below.