Weekend Cooking- Our Week On The Lake

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Every year we go back home to the Finger Lakes region and rent a house on Owasco Lake. My family spends the day with us, and we grill hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch, a treat that we sorely miss living in Manhattan.

Our view of Owasco Lake

At night, I make a big dinner, where salt potatoes are on the menu. How I miss salt potatoes in the summer! You can't find them here in the big city.  And leftover salt potatoes make fantastic breakfast potatoes the next day with peppers and onions.

Leftover salt potatoes make great breakfast potatoes

I made some of our favorite recipes that I found on Pinterest: Red Wine Marinated Flank Steak, Italian Mac and Cheese, Broccoli Salad, Strawberry Pretzel Jello, Mary Alice's Hoagie Dip,  SoCal Fajita Dip, Cream Cheese Cookies (2 batches) and Peanut Butter Crack Brownies. Two recipes paid homage to the area; I made Chicken Spiedie Sandwiches and Utica Chicken Riggies, both family favorites.

I tried a few new recipes too- New York Deli Nachos and Cobb Dip that I made for our friends' party and a tasty party beverage, White Zinfandel Peach Sangria. Everybody wanted the recipe for the sangria. It was light and crisp and perfect for a summer evening. The New York Deli Nachos were delicious, but a bit too messy for a party, and I personally liked the Cobb Dip the best.

Cobb Dip

Our friends always bring treats to share and this year we had a lovely fruit cobbler made with seasonal fruits, pumpkin cookies (my family loves these) and the popular Barbara's Famous Birthday Cake. Someone was pouting that he didn't get any cake the next day, so I had to make a cake when we got home.

Since it's blueberry season, I made a Buttermilk Blueberry Breakfast Cake that disappeared pretty darn quickly. (I made it when we returned home too, that's how great it was.)

Buttermilk Blueberry Breakfast Cake

I also made S'mores Bites, which tasted terrific, but alas, I left them under the broiler a tad too long so they didn't look very appetizing. (The perils of using an oven I was not used to.)

Every year people ask for the recipes, so I create a Pinterest board with all of them and shared them with everyone who wanted them. The board is here:
https://www.pinterest.com/bookchickdi/owasco-lake-2015/

We love our time back home, it's so relaxing and it's a nice treat for me to cook in a spacious beautiful kitchen. And of course, I made my pilgrimages to my beloved Wegmans. I can't wait until they come to Brooklyn.