Shrimp and avocado tortilla salad

Boiled shrimp, fresh veggies, baked chips and a yogurt dressing help make this cold shrimp and avocado tortilla salad a healthy meal that's quick to prepare.

Remember how I told you there might be a preponderance of quick-and-easy recipes on the blog following my move from Vermont to Kentucky?

Oh, looky looky: Here's one of those recipes now.

While other bloggers are already posting about pumpkin lattes and apple cronuts, I remain loyal to seasonality. Last time I checked, it was still August and still summer, so no pumpkin yet here, thank you very much.

In fact, it's still hot -- very hot -- unseasonably hot, lucky me -- here in Kentucky, so the last thing I want to think about is slow-roasting pumpkin flesh.

What I want is salad. Cool, crisp, not-a-lotta-cooking-involved salad. Salad that I can enjoy with a crisp white wine in a sweaty glass while dining al fresco on the porch, listening to the lazy buzz of the cicadas and tree frogs. Moving made me feel that I'd missed out on some of the lazy days of summer, so I'm keeping it going as long as I can.

11 delicious ways with broccoli (CSA Share Ninja Rescue 2014)

Enjoy these 11 delicious and unique recipes for broccoli, one of the healthiest crown jewels of the late summer / early fall harvest.

ERMERGAHD, peeps: Where the heck has the summer gone? Labor Day is next week, which means that summer is unofficially over, kids are headed back to school and all the bloggers except The Ninj are going to start inundating you with freakin' pumpkin recipes.

Pumpkin, apples and Halloween ... oh my.

Why can't we all just respect produce seasonality??!!!

One more week until Labor Day means means one last huzzah for the 2014 CSA Share Ninja Rescue, my annual summertime feature in which you tell me each week what produce from your CSA share, garden or farmers market has you at a loss for ideas and I rescue you the following Tuesday with fun, creative recipe ideas, from me and my favorite fellow food bloggers.

As we come up on fall, it's time to enjoy crisp, crunchy broccoli -- a fave of The Ninj, a nemesis of Mr. Ninj, which is why you'll see that so many of my recipes involve disguising it in a pasta dish.

Salted cardamom oatmeal cookies

Salted cardamom oatmeal cookies: the taste is sweet, savory and salty while the texture is crispy-crunchy on the edges and soft in the middle.

So, I promise that we're going to talk about salted cardamom oatmeal cookies in this post and there will be a recipe, but I wanted to give you a little moving update first. 

Things are finally settling down a bit in our new home here in Kentucky. I have gotten a new driver's license (this is my ninth license and ninth good DMV photo!), paid multiple visits to a twice-a-week farmer's market in my 'hood and located a nearby organic market that sells sustainably produced meat, honey and dairy products directly from local farmers.

Booyah. I'm all set. Thank goodness it appears that the Louisville area is embracing the local food movement.

I sometimes forget that it has only been two and a half weeks since we moved. But I'm pretty Type A, in case you haven't noticed (insert sarcasm flag here). I cannot stand not having my house all set up exactly the way I want it. And it makes me positively cray cray to hunt through boxes for my belongings. When I move, I just want to get on with the moving on, full steam ahead.

One thing about moving is that it is very, very hard work. Undoubtedly, it's hard work for the movers but, once the burly movers are gone, someone has to unpack each and every one of those boxes that they hauled into the house.

Who wants to take a wild-ass guess as to who the someone is who does all the unpacking?

Anyone? Bueller?

Fresh summer tomato recipes (CSA Share Ninja Rescue 2014)

Eleven easy recipes -- some traditional, some unusual, all healthy and delicious -- for making the most of prolific, fresh, sun-ripened tomatoes.

I almost can't believe it -- time flies! -- but we're nearing the end of the 2014 edition of the CSA Share Ninja Rescue, in which you can get weekly seasonal produce recipes by request all summer long (Memorial Day to Labor Day). Hopefully you've been playing along, telling me each week what produce from your CSA share, garden or farmers' market has left you stumped for ideas, and I help un-stump you with a list of delicious, healthy recipes on Tuesdays.

I think this is my absolute favorite time of year, veg- and CSA-wise, because the most prolific veggie right now almost everywhere around the country is the tomato. From the most petite cherry to the giant slicers, fresh tomatoes taste to me like nothing else on earth. And while I'm happiest eating them plain, topped with a little crunchy sea salt, I've pulled together 11 delicious recipes that call for fresh summer tomatoes from my favorite food bloggers.

Asian-inspired chicken and broccoli salad

Asian-inspired sweet-and-tangy chicken and broccoli salad, topped with apricots and cashews. A quick and easy recipe, perfect for weeknight dinners.

Hey, hiya! The Ninj's move to Kentucky is complete.

Well, let me clarify. Things completed are the the physical moving of goods from Vermont to Kentucky in a big-ass tractor trailer and my arriving in Kentucky by pulling off a spectacular pre-murder OJ Simpson run in high-heeled flip-flops through three concourses of the Charlotte airport to avoid (just barely) missing my flight, which had been dramatically re-routed out of my way by the good folks (kidding, really, they're asshats) at American Airlines who bumped me from my original flight to Louisville from Chicago in order to give my seat to a standby "medallion" passenger (oh no, I'm not bitter -- I love being treated like baggage by people who refuse to look you in the eye or answer your questions directly), thus arriving in Kentucky -- sweaty, stressed and sans luggage -- about 20 minutes ahead of my movers.

But I made it. And then so did our stuff (oy, the stuff -- so much stuff, even after giving so much of it away before we left Vermont). So, I am currently knee-deep in cardboard moving boxes and endless reams of packing paper on this end.

More than knee-deep, actually.  Let me show you my new kitchen.

The bourbony adventures of The Ninj continue

After four years in Vermont, The Ninj is on the move -- this time, back to the South.

I know it's not a very seasonal photo, but that's the custom post-and-beam barn we built on our farmette in Vermont. The farmette I've been writing about here for four years, ever since The Ninj became The Ninj. The same farmette that gave me such fodder as ugly fruit, too many zucchini and way, way, WAY too many deer  -- although the deer inspired a great venison jerky recipe, so I can't complain too much.

Well, it was our farmette, until yesterday.

If you only know The Ninj through this blog, you probably don't know that Mr. Ninj and I tend to move. A lot. About every five years or so (no joke). Work relocation, so it's always good, but still a lot of moving.

(If you need helpful tips like how to rip packing tape the way the professionals do and the benefits of box-hoarding, I'm your gal.)

So, after living in Vermont for four years, we're on the move again. The farmette is in the hands of some lucky, lucky new stewards, and we're returning to the South from whence we came but to a fun, new-to-us location: Louisville, Kentucky (a place where I can continue to say "y'all" and not be looked at judgingly and strangely).

Even if you only know The Ninj through this blog, you're probably clapping or hooting your ass off, because you just realized that the why-not-throw-a-little-bourbon-in-it Ninj is moving to bourbon country.