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What are your favorite fair foods? I have so many they fit into a bulleted list:

• Candy apples (caramel is ok in a pinch – no nuts, thanks)
• Elephant Ears
• Funnel Cakes
• Fresh Cut Fries
• Corn dogs (foot long and slathered with mustard, preferably)
• Cotton Candy
• Grilled sausage and pepper sandwiches
• Lemon shakeups

We are headed to the Hartford Fair on Thursday, where I will be trying to consume as many items on the above list as possible. It was with this fair food fixation that I viewed the inspiration recipe for this month’s recipe swap.

All I could think about were those lemon shake ups, and how I always wanted to make them at home, and what a great mixer I always thought they’d be. And now I have found out that I was right.

I think it would mix well with vodka too, but gin is my summer thing. And of course, don’t mix it with anything if you want Lemon shake-ups for kids.

Lemon Shake-ups

• Juice of three lemons
• 1/2 C sugar
• 1 C water
• Gin (for the adult version)

Mix all, and shake in a cocktail shaker. Try 2 or 3 parts lemonade to 1 part gin, depending on how long of a day you’ve had.

If you want, you can make fun straws that say the thing you wish you could say to your kids after a day of making them 6000 meals and snacks of which they eat only 2 bites and then declare they are not hungry.

About the Recipe Swap: The recipe swap is organized by Christianna at the Burwell General Store. Each month, a collection of bloggers reinterprets a classic recipe selected by Christianna. Click below to see what other recipe swappers did with this one.

Okra is delicious sliced, sauteed in olive oil, and topped with Tobasco. It’s also good (like a lot of things) battered and fried. As a bonus, frying it seems to make it more palatable for those who are on the fence about it.

Instead of battering and frying them whole, I slice them, mix them right into the batter, and fry in patties.

They really don’t look like much. But they sure make a good TV watching snack.

The only sad thing about these patties was the lack of Tobasco, as ours was a casualty of the recent power outage.

Okra patties (makes one serving of four small patties)

• 1 C sliced okra
• 1/4 C chickpea flour
• 1 egg
• 2-4 T olive oil, for frying

Mix okra, flour, and egg. Heat olive oil in a saute pan. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the oil, spreading it out to make an even patty (all okra slices should be in one layer). Brown on the first side, flip and repeat. Drain on paper towels. Top with salt and pepper.

But he has to be clean for his new shirt, doesn’t he?

I roasted two weeks worth of CSA beets today, much to the hate camp’s dismay. They find the smell of cooking beets distasteful.

For those of you who are beet fans, have you ever tried roasting them? It’s super simple. Trim off the greens, give them a scrub, spread them on a baking sheet, and pop them in a 400 degree oven until tender. Depending on the size of your beets, it will take an hour or more.

After they cool down, the peels come off really easily.

I peel them all and stick them in the fridge for snacks and salads. One of my favorite ways to eat them is with goat cheese and a drizzle of Orange Olive Oil.

I think that real Green Goddess Dressing has anchovies in them, but I don’t care for them. And I subbed lime for lemon juice. But other than those changes (that account for 50% – 66% of the ingredients, depending on whether you’re counting the anchovies) it’s totally legitimate Green Goddess Dressing.

Hubs ate most of it as a dip for potato chips, but I did have a little as a sauce for this funny taco, made from a lettuce leaf and strip of bacon.

Green Goddess Dressing

• 1/2 cup herbs (use whatever you have)
• 3 T mayonnaise
• Juice of one lime

Throw everything in the food processor and pulse until herbs are chopped and all is well blended. If it’s too thick, splash a little olive oil in. Too thin, add more mayo. No exact science here.

You can imagine how that goes. No bathing, no washing, no cooking, no flushing toilets. No water means your house is basically just a giant tent. A deluxe one, but still.

So when our electric went out during the nutso midwest windstorms, we found ourselves camping.

It wasn’t all bad, though. For one thing, my in-laws were gracious enough to let us move in with them when we tired of our wilderness experience. They were happy to have us (or at least acted that way quite convincingly). They watched our kids and our dog, and fed us. My mother-in-law even gave us clean towels every day,  just like a luxury hotel.

Seeing our community come together was a pretty amazing thing also. A giant tree fell across our street just past our house, blocking  the residents at the end from coming or going. The storm had barely even stopped before everyone in the neighborhood (hubs included) was out with his chainsaw, cutting the trunk into manageable chunks.

Our neighbor has a generator, and so kept our freezer items in his freezer, keeping them from spoiling. In turn, hubs cleared that same neighbor’s lawn of fallen branches and leaves. People and businesses all over town put up signs thanking AEP for restoring power.

We had a fairly tall tree fall down in our back yard, but out of that, we got some firewood (for when our electric goes out this winter of course) and some cute new stepping stones.

All in all, when you have a nice family and a nice community, losing power for 8 days isn’t so bad. (9 might have pushed me over the edge.)

Little stuff (clockwise from left): Snap peas, okra, tomatoes, Thai basil, blackberries

Bigger stuff: Chard, cucumbers, beets, lettuce, potatoes

I’m not feeling particularly creative in the kitchen this week, so most of this will probably be sauteed, roasted, or eaten raw. But if you need real ideas about what to do with your produce, check out the link party over at In Her Chucks.

Surprisingly delicious.