Step away from the flour and the oven and fill your shopping basket with summer fruit. While it is warm outside, change to cool and lighter foods and enjoy the delicious summer fruits.

Serving colorful fruit is a great excuse to make a trip to the shops to buy new dishes to complement  the fruit. My kitchen cabinets are bulging with dishes of every shape and color so not much room for new ones.  I found these cute watermelon cups at Cotta.co.jp (Japanese only) several years ago and I  noticed that the design has been slightly updated now. I have bought many cute seasonal dishes from this site and I always need to use restraint whenever I shop there.

The fruit paired with a scoop or two of ice cream makes a great summer dessert. Enjoy it while the weather is hot.

I have been craving a homemade muffin for awhile. After looking at all of the sad day old muffins in the coffee shops, I just needed to bake my own. Luckily, blueberries are starting to be readily available and less expensive. I saw this recipe in a recent Southern Living magazine and knew it was was time to bake. I love the combination of cornmeal in muffins since it gives a richer taste.

This recipe can be made as either muffins or a cake. An 8-inch cake pan should be fine for the quantity of this recipe. I used two medium size muffin pans and was able to make 12 muffins.

Here is the recipe:

100 grams butter (room temperature)
120 grams sugar
2 eggs
200 grams flour
85 grams cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
90 grams buttermilk
1 1/2 cup blueberries


1. Prepare the baking pans by lightly buttering and dusting with flour. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

2. Mix the sugar and butter with a hand mixer (or standing mixer) until light and fluffy about 2 minutes. Gradually mix in the eggs and mix well after adding each portion.

3. Sift together in a bowl the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and then add the cornmeal.

4. In portions, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture while alternatively adding the butter milk. Mix at a low speed just until everything is well mixed. Lastly, add about one fourth of the fresh blueberries and mix.

4. Pour the mixture into either the muffin tins or the cake pan and sprinkle with the remaining blueberries. Bake about 20 - 30 (the cake will take longer to bake) until lightly browned.

5. Cool for a few minutes before gently removing from the pan.

Since it is so close to July 4th, I thought I would add a few blue & white decorations.

Dinner is ready! We can't always eat dessert so for a quick dinner I have replaced the traditional meat sauce for these tacos with fish.