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As far as recipes go, it’s been too hot to cook today, so we’ve been snacking on cream cheese and Pineapple Habanero Pepper Jelly pretty much all day. The kids are here, and the four of us have, over the course of an entire day, gone through two boxes of Ritz crackers, an entire stalk of celery, and all the carrots that were in the vegetable bin. And we’re all smiling.

It might be Friday the 13th, but this is actually your lucky day! Today, you’re learning how to make Spicy Strawberry Pie – and it’s absolutely delicious. Period.

It’s also simple to make – and I’ve said many times here that often, the best and tastiest dishes are also the easiest to throw together.

Spicy Strawberry Pie is so easy, you don’t even need a conventional list of ingredients and directions. All you have to do is mix together about four cups of sliced strawberries with a cup of Texas Strawberry Jalapeno Pepper Jelly and spoon it into a fully baked pie shell. Dollop your slice with some whipped cream, if you like whipped cream, and dive in.

It’s even better if you refrigerate it overnight.

Mmmmm, awesomely good.

This is Texas Pepper Jelly’s newest product, Texas Rib Candy, and it’s so good it’s almost impossible to describe.

It goes with almost everything. Anything and everything. Brush it on chicken or ribs, right before you take them up on a platter and serve them, or at any time during the grilling process. Use it with stir-fry. Use it as a dip. Use it in your crockpot.

It’s excellent as a salad dressing, too.

Texas Rib Candy comes in three flavors: Apple Habanero, Apple Cherry Habanero and Mango Habanero. The possibilities are endless!

The only problem I’ve ever had with Texas Rib Candy is that my husband doesn’t want to share it with anyone. I always have to search for it behind something else in the refrigerator.

Seriously, Texas Rib Candy is like an addictive drug. Once you try it, you can’t ever get enough of it.

P.S. As I write this post, my husband is sitting at the table dipping raw vegetables in Texas Rib Candy. He says it’s awesome.

I can’t take his word for it, though. I MUST try it for myself.

Mmmmmmm. . . . . he’s right.

There are many variations of this Cool & Spicy Summer Salad, and each one is as delicious and easy as the one before.

This is one of those salads that’s even better the next day.

Ingredients:

1 package bow-tie pasta, cooked and cooled

1/2 cup crumbled Feta cheese

1 cup fresh raspberries

1 cup Raspberry Habanero pepper jelly

What to do:

Mix all the ingredients into the pasta.  Sprinkle a few raspberries on top, cover securely and put in the refrigerator.  It’s delicious now and will be even better in a few hours!

We consider this to be a main dish on those stiflingly hot summer nights.  It’s also a great snack, a super side dish, and a really, really excellent supper for guests.

More variations to come.

Also to come?  Texas Rib Candy news.  There’s a reason it’s called Rib CANDY.

My grown daughter came down to visit me tonight, which was lovely!  Her visit was unannounced, though; usually, we know when she’s stopping by.

She walked casually into my kitchen and casually opened the pantry door.  Still being casual, she moved the various cans and bottles around until I finally asked her what in the world she was looking for!

“I was hoping you’d have some pepper jelly I could borrow,” was her sheepish answer.

Apparently, she’s having people over on Thursday night and wanted to serve our family’s favorite pepper jelly/cream cheese dip. along with some awesome dippin’ shrimp.

I didn’t have any Texas Rib Candy to give her, but in a few days I will!  That stuff is truly well-named.  Mmmm, so good.

Fortunately for Sara, I did have some.  I hid the last Pineapple Habanero jar behind the peanut butter, and let her take the others.  Not that we don’t love all the flavors; it’s just that if my husband opened that pantry and found his Pineapple Habanero gone, he’d have had something to say about it.

I offered to give her the brick of cream cheese I found in the back of the bottom drawer of the refrigerator, but seeing as how it expired in June of 2009, she politely declined.

“I’ll stop at the store on my way home,” she said.

Bon appetite, lucky guests of my beautiful daughter.

Now I need to order more pepper jelly.  I’d planned some serious stir-fry for the coming weeks and I can’t make stir-fry without pepper jelly now that we’ve discovered it.

“Plucking Bread” is sometimes called “Monkey Bread,” and they are much the same thing. Both are easy, nutritious, attractive to look at, and very, very versatile.  You can turn your “plucking bread” into dessert, snack, or full meal, all depending on what you add to it.

Here is the recipe for Spicy Plucking Bread.

Ingredients:

3 cans refrigerated dinner rolls

1 stick butter

1 cup sugar (do not substitute Splenda for this recipe)

1 heaping tablespoon cinnamon

3/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

3/4 cup pepper jelly (any flavor) (I like to add the matching fresh fruit, but you don’t have to.)

What to do:

Get out your largest angel food cake pan or bundt pan and grease thoroughly.  Be sure to include the middle.  Melt the butter in a small saucepan or in the microwave, and add the sugar, cinnamon, nuts, and pepper jelly.

Cut each of the rolls in two and cover the bottom of the pan with them.  Spread the pepper jelly mixture over the top.  Add another layer of rolls, and another layer of pepper jelly mixture, and repeat until all ingredients are gone.

Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes.  (Keep checking to make sure the middle isn’t still goopy.)

When you remove the pan from the oven, immediately invert the pan onto a plate.

My kids like to spread more pepper jelly on the piping hot bread before they tear into it.

And when I say “tear into it,” that’s exactly what I mean.  Because plucking bread is made up of separate pieces of dough, it bakes into balls of bread that can be “plucked” off and eaten.

Of course, if you’re wanting to appear a bit more refined, you can always slice it with a sharp serrated knife.  If you do eat it this way, you’ll notice that the inside of the loaf is absolutely beautiful – criss-crossed and patterned with dark and light and nuts.

P.S.  Don’t forget that soon, VERY soon now, Texas Pepper Jelly will be announcing its newest and most awesome product!

I’ve already recommended pepper jelly ice cubes to you all, and I still recommend them heartily.  The weather here in southern Indiana is so hot and humid that you can’t have enough cold things within your grasp.

Today I’m going to recommend pepper jelly popsicles.  You can use almost any kind of enclosed container for a frozen pop; I have used small juice glasses, Tupperware frozen pop molds, cheap dollar store molds, and a spoon or stick in each square of an ice cube tray, even.  These all work fine.

My favorite popsicle mold, however, is something rather strange.  Well, strange to be used for this, that is.  I teach hands-on science when I’m not experimenting with pepper jellies in my kitchen, and I own dozens of “baby soda bottles.”  I buy them from Steve Spangler’s website.

These are perfect for so many things in my science job, but they are also absolutely the most perfect popsicle molds I’ve ever used.  Seriously, they’re the perfect shape and size!  They’re tough and almost unbreakable, and dishwasher-safe.  I have several sets, each with its own little rack.  They take up very little space in the freezer, so you have room for several rows of pepper jelly popsicles.  Pepper jelly frozen in these baby soda bottles is also the perfect size and shape to make ices to drop into thermos bottles and those awesome stainless steel drinking glasses with lids.

But mostly, when I’m not using them in my labs, I just fill those baby soda bottles with pepper jelly – or sometimes with fruit juice – or sometimes both – stick a stick in there and let the freezer do its job.

Oh, and by the way?  Do you know why these little beauties are called baby soda bottles?  It’s because they really are baby soda bottles!  Yup, these are what your two-liter pop bottles look like before they’re blown up into two-liter soda pop bottles!  Cool, huh.  Don’t try to make popsicles in a full-grown soda bottle, though.  Use these, or something that’s the approximate size of these.  It’s not that I begrudge you the large popsicle; it’s just that if it’s too big, there’s no way you can eat it all before it melts all over you!

Stay cool, y’all.

It bears repeating!  Our Texas Pepper Jellies make the best cream cheese appetizers and dips EVER!

Easiest of all?  Just unwrap a package of cream cheese – I use Neufchatel so I can pretend it’s “diet,” – put it on a plate or in a small bowl, cover with the Texas Pepper Jelly flavor of your choice, surround it with assorted crackers, and stand back.

I usually have several small bowls of this, each with a different pepper jelly over it.  Be sure you have PLENTY of crackers; there won’t be any left over.

Yes, there’s nothing to making this at all.  Yes, it’s so easy it’s almost unbelievable.

Once you taste it, and watch your family and guests tear into it, though, and you’ll believe it.

It’s soooo good.  It’s just simply the best and simplest appetizer/dip in the world.

Oh, and by the way?  The combination of cream cheese and pepper jelly will turn your ordinary breakfast bagel into something FANTASTIC!

Bread pudding is an old-fashioned dessert, and when you make it in your crockpot, it’s even better than when you bake it in your oven!

Besides, on these hot summer days, your slow cooker will not compete with your air conditioner and raise your heating/cooling bill! There’s no more practical way to cook in the summertime than with your crockpot!

Ingredients:

8 slices of bread (raisin bread is especially good) cubed
4 eggs
2 cups milk (again, cream is even better!)
1/4 cup sugar (I use Splenda)
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup Texas Apple Cinnamon Grilling and Finishing Sauce
2 apples, peeled and cubed
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Ingredients for the sauce:
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup water
3/4 cup sugar or Splenda
1 teaspoon vanilla

What to do:

Place the bread cubes in the greased crockpot.

Beat together the eggs and milk. Stir in the sugar, butter, raisins, apples, finishing sauce, and cinnamon. Pour over the bread and stir.

Cover and cook on high for one hour. Reduce heat to low and cook for four hours.

Just before the four hours are over, make the sauce. Begin by melting the butter in a saucepan, and stirring in the flour until smooth. (white sauce) Gradually add the water, sugar, and vanilla. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, for two minutes or until thickened.

Serve the sauce over the warm bread pudding.

It’s absolutely delicious.

It won’t be long now until our gardens are overflowing with zucchini squash!  Those vines are one of the most prolific producers EVER!

We all make zucchini bread in the summer and freeze it for the winter.  But this recipe for Zesty Pineapple Zucchini Bread is the best EVER!

I never make just plain zucchini bread any more.  My family wants the zesty kind.

Ingredients:

3 eggs

2 cups sugar (I use Splenda)

1 cup vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups grated or shredded zucchini

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt (don’t leave it out)

3/4 cup crushed pineapple, drained

1/4 cup Texas Pineapple Habanero Pepper Jelly

1/2 cup walnuts (if you like walnuts in your zucchini bread.  We do.)

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 325.

Put all of the ingredients in a large bowl and mix thoroughly.  Pour mixture into two lightly greased loaf pans.  (Sometimes I pour it all into a large bundt pan)

Bake for about 60 minutes or until lightly browned and center is solid.  Use a toothpick to check.  If you overbake it, the edges get hard.  My daughter likes that but the rest of us prefer a non-overbaked loaf.

Serve warm, with butter or whatever you like to put on it.  More pepper jelly is what my family generally uses.

When the zucchini crop is at its best, bake a batch every night and freeze them.  These loaves freeze really well.  Be sure you wrap each loaf, individually, in foil and then place the foil-wrapped loaf in a freezer bag.  This way, it won’t dry out.

I do my summer baking late at night so the oven doesn’t have to compete with the air conditioner quite so fiercely.