The Recipe: A refreshing summer salad, just cantaloupe balls with lime juice, fish sauce (yeah, I know, but you have to try it to believe it) , fresh basil and a touch of jalapeño heat. The Conversation: What's the word for August's food bounty? The last page of the Atlantic is my first read. It's a funny little column called "Word Fugitives" that conjures clever terms for conditions failed by the current lexicon. Example: If a husband is a packrat, what might we call his opposite? Readers suggested "wouldchuck" and "hurl squirrel" and the winning entry, "heave-homemaker". Ha! Me, my missing word would describe the food bounty that August's gardens and farmers markets deliver. It would suggest the satisfied moan that follows the first bite of fresh and simple food that just tastes so – not delicious, someplace past delicious. It conveys that there's simply no bad food right now, that everything that's fresh

Authentic recipe for Chinese kung pao chicken. Fast, hot, delicious. Olympians may dream of fast finish lines and stirring national anthems. But me, after making this authentic kung pao chicken for last week's opening of the summer Olympics, I was dreaming of more kung pao chicken. Seriously, I couldn't wait to make it again and so I did, just three days later. The recipe comes from the food blog Appetite for China by Diana Kuan, a food writer who is 'eating, traveling and writing her way across China'. I was taken by the simplifications Diana made to her own recipe, how she made an authentic Chinese dish accessible in my Western kitchen. The sauce is a many-layered mahogany, sleek and pungent. The chunks of chicken are moist and tender. The peanuts add crunch and the fresh green onion adds contrast. Here I go again, dreamin' of kung pao chicken ... All except two of the ingredients are found in or easily substituted by most Western pantries. I found the

Easy homemade crispy cracker bread recipe with fresh herbs and sweet salt. TESTIMONIALS "Yum yum! This is basically all I had for dinner tonight. :)" ~ Gretchen Here's a fact: When it comes to bread, there are two camps. Camp One: No meal is complete without bread, even a small slice. "Is there bread, dear?" my mother would ask, KNOWING there was no bread but making the point, anyway. At supper one night, our family friend Olga asked for bread, "just a small cracker," then sat silent in disbelief when there was none. For those in this camp, a meal, it's gotta have bread. Camp Two: Bread is a special occasion. When bread is hot out of the oven, it might just be the meal, all by itself, perhaps with a small bowl of soup on the side. We love baking and eating bread! But every meal? No way. (Okay, there's a third camp, those that don't eat bread at all. But they're not reading anyway. So let's take a moment to p