If you have never tasted a buckle you are in for a treat. Who can really resist nice, plump, sweet blueberries nestled between a yummy white cake and crunchy streusel? My guess is no one. It is a treat your mother or grandmother probably has made a time or two in her life.

I made a trail mix cookie a while back and got positive reviews, so I thought I would give it a little twist, and maybe make it something that would appeal to the kiddos. This would be a great treat to pack in the lunch box, or to offer the neighborhood kids when they’re over for milk and cookies.

We are lucky here in Colorado — we have some of the best peaches around. Boulder Farmers’ Market has a great selection and is always a fun time to boot. This upside-down cake is quite delicious and just gives you another excuse to buy more peaches. The almonds pair well and add a great crunch, and the upsidedown aspect, well that’s just for fun.

Shake! There’s another great idea for the ice cream. I might never need to bake again. Five hundred ways to use Bliss Organic Ice Cream. That might just be my next book. I feel a whole lot of ice cream testing coming on. It’s good to be me.

I would never say I wouldn’t snag up a Hershey bar every now and then, just because a chocolate snob might be mortified, but I must admit, I do like good, quality chocolate. I’m talking about the kind you purchase (and not cheaply, mind you) and just savor every little piece, like you were on death row and this was your last meal.

A courgette is another name for zucchini, used primarily in Britain, New Zealand and France. I thought that since it is almost the end of July, I should make something delicious with a vegetable that really shines in the summer. Hence its other name, “summer squash.

This will please your palate like no other. Just imagine lying by a pool, being served this luscious dessert by a cabana boy. And I’m sure he would bring champagne — all good cabana boys do. You might forget about the heat wave, if only for a moment, or however long it takes to drink a bottle — I mean glass — of bubbly.

That’s a mouthful of a title, but one bite and you just might be rendered speechless. Yeah, that’s some big props to this recipe — it’s just that good. Of course I like apples with cinnamon. I mean who really doesn’t? But this dessert kind of features the cinnamon instead of giving it a supporting role.

You can also throw out a bit of trivia as you hand out the bread to your fellow mountain climbers. GORP is another name used for trail mix. Apparently some folks think trail mix is just too long, so they came up with an alternative. It stands for Good Old Raisins.

But nothing really compares to a good ol’ apple pie. With the Fourth right around the corner, and really just July in general, we are well into summer, making memories, making pies and drinking stone-cold cocktails that make the hot kitchen much more bearable when baking the pies.