We were fishing for salmon off the west coast of Vancouver Island a few days ago, trailed by a lone sea lion who was looking for an easy snack-on-a-hook, when I spotted a plume of mist on the water about a mile south: killer whales, spouting. About 20 orcas were moving north at speed. For me, this was cream in the coffee at the start of a great day on Pacific water. But you could practically see a shudder ripple down the 15 or so fishing boats strung out above the underwater ledge where sockeye, coho and spring salmon linger. For big, fat, juicy fish, the arrival of orcas triggers the equivalent of the “Dive! Dive!” response in old submarine movies: they vamoosed, pronto. As the whales approached we saw a wavy dorsal fin, likely that of the famous J-pod orca named Ruffles, who is thought be almost 60 years old. An adult and juvenile whale swam right under our boat.
 
And yes, the salmon strikes dried up for a while, until the whales cleared a distant lighthouse and the fish resumed their biting.
 
It was a pure lesson in the sacred importance of sustainability, and a thrill to realize that, on the ocean, even with depthfinders and an experienced boat captain, you’re not at the top of the food chain.
 

Back at the marina, later, salmon heads were lopped off and tossed to a hungry harbor seal while seagulls cried and dove.

Next night: roast spring salmon with a ginger-soy glaze and melted leeks.
 
To see orcas in video action, check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUyra7SJdWo
 
To see the members of J, K and L pods, which range up and down the west
coast, see: http://www.whale-museum.org/programs/orcadoption/whalelist.html

For recipe inspiration, try our Top-Rated Salmon Dishes.

Labor Day is upon us. Without sounding too sentimental, where has the summer gone? When I think back over summers gone by, I can’t help but think about my favorite topic: food. With food memoirs (and movies) all the rage, it’s fun to stop and think about our own food memories. (Work with me, they don’t have to include feasting across the globe to be special.)

Summertime elicits thoughts of crashing waves, firecrackers, and hot, hot days. But for me, none of this means quite as much without pairing it with some sort of food experience. Crashing waves plus piles of boiled gulf shrimp and Silver Queen corn tipped over newspaper; firecrackers plus my daughter with watermelon juice streaming down her chin; hot, hot days plus a pitcher of ice cold margaritas. Now, those are memories I can hold on to.

In honor of the last days of summer, we’re doing a BIG mid-week giveaway. Thanks to our friends at amazon.com, we’re giving away an O-Grill 3000 Portable Gas Barbecue Grill. It weighs just 24 pounds, has a large cooking surface, and looks cool to boot. We think this is perfect way to pay homage to the summer and usher in the fall. After all, once Labor Day is done, it’s time to create new food memories around tailgates, camp fires, and backyard fire pits.

To be eligible to win the O-Grill:

Step 1: “Like” us on Facebook (use the Facebook box to the right and click “Like” if you don’t already like us) OR follow us on Twitter @Cooking_Light.

Step 2: Describe for us here in 50 words or less your most prized summertime food memory. Entries should be typed into the comments field of this blog post. Entries are due by Monday, Sept 6 at 11:59 p.m. EST.

Editors will select their favorite based on originality, creativity, and how well you address our question. Winner will be notified via email by Sept 10, 2010. For full contest rules, click here.

For a complete guide to all things grilling, visit www.amazon.com/grilling. And for grilling recipes to inspire, check out our Essential Grilling Guide.

The September issue is out, and I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s packed full of tips, recipes, and tricks for the busy home cook…and doesn’t that describe each and every one of us? This week we’re giving away two tools that aim to make quick work of chopping, grating and prepping from a great kitchen gadget company, OXO.

But first, a recap from last week’s giveaway. Congrats to Gayle with her mouth-watering description on Spicy Corn on the Cob Soup that made us rush to find the last juicy ears of summer corn.

“Spicy Corn on the Cob Soup is an end-of-summer treat that I wish I could have all year. The ‘naked’ cobs are simmered with sautéed onion, jalapeno, celery, cumin and turmeric, and the corn is added (and cobs removed) for the last half of simmering. Garnish with chopped green onions.”

And in response to @LaureeAshcom who smartly commented that these giveaways shouldn’t be limited to Facebook fans only…we hear you. This week, we encourage you to like us on Facebook or follow on Twitter for a chance to win. In the coming weeks, we’ll change it up again. We don’t want to leave anyone out.

I like to think of pasta as a blank canvas for whatever I have left in my fridge, a binder for all the random ingredients I’ve collected but don’t quite know what to do with yet. The best part is that the sauce rarely has to come from a jar. A little olive oil, lemon juice, pasta water, or even Parmesan cheese stirred right into the noodles can provide the creamy, cohesive texture we look for without masking the flavor of the other leftovers (er, I mean ingredients). 

The “kitchen-sink” pasta method is hardly a new invention. Pasta alla Puttanesca, a northern Italian dish consisting of olives, capers, anchovies, tomatoes, and peppers, supposedly originated in Italian brothels where women had to make do with store room leftovers as it was unseemly for them to go to market.

I didn’t quite share their dilemma, but I did have a few farmer’s market remainders in danger of becoming overripe. Feel free to substitute anything and everything in this recipe—the canvas is yours.

1/2 pound spaghetti

1/4 red onion, sliced

2 summer squash (I used 1 zucchini and 1 yellow) sliced into thin ribbons

 1 tablespoon pine nuts

 Dash of salt

1/2 pint cherry tomatoes, halved

1/4 teaspoon crushed red chile flakes

Juice from half a lemon

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 oz Pecorino Romano cheese, shaved

Cook pasta according to package instructions. In a medium saucepan, saute red onion in a little olive oil until softened, about 2 minutes. Add sliced squash, pine nuts, and salt, cook 4 to 5 minutes until soft. In a small bowl, whisk together lemon juice and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add halved cherry tomatoes and chile flakes to squash, heat through 1 to 2 minutes. Drain pasta, reserving 1/4 cup pasta water to add to pasta as needed. Toss pasta with zucchini mixture, lemon-olive oil mixture, and top with shaved Pecorino cheese.

Try this recipe for pasta with zucchini and roasted almonds (above) for another delicious variation or these Superfast Pasta Recipes for even more not-from-a-jar ideas.  

Despite the fact that college football starts in about a week (my harbinger of fall), it is definitely still summer. Here, temperatures swelter in the upper 90s most days. Add to that 98% humidity, and the air feels so thick and muggy you almost have to swim through it. (Seriously, I’ve made breaststroke gestures when walking outside, and bystanders simply nod in agreement.)

Now normally, I’m a 100% bourbon girl (and I’ve found some ways to summerize my beloved drink), but I’ve recently switched to the perfect sipper for these hot days: vinho verde wine. Translated as “green wine,” vinho verde wines come from Portugal, and they’re made to be enjoyed young (hence the “green” moniker). Bonus: That means they’re quite inexpensive.

I’ve never been a white wine person (see above, bourbon love), but I absolutely adore this wine. It’s spritzy, crisp, tangy, juicy, and fresh, with a hint of effervescence. You can even find vinho verde rosé, which has all of these characteristics plus the most delicate whiff of strawberry—yum! While you can certainly drink it with food, you don’t have to. It’s a lovely casual, social wine—meaning it’s ideal for long, lingering conversations with friends. This has become my go-to beverage this summer, and I’ve introduced lots of my friends and family to it, toting along a bottle to every get-together I attend. And everyone who tries it is a convert. It’s the perfect antidote to a steamy summer day or one of those too-hot evenings that defies logic.

Last week, we challenged those seeking free loot to tell us about their favorite quick and easy recipes. So many people came back with great tips and recipe ideas. Perfect weeknight recipes have these things in common: quick is a must, versatility is a great added bonus, and adding some sort of convenience product gets you there even faster.

Our winner, Megan Schlegel, had this to say (and made me want to partake):

“My quick and easy recipe is grilled margarita pizza. I use wonderful store-bought herb pizza dough, tomatoes and basil from my garden and mozzarella cheese. The crust is nice and crisp and the tomatoes and basil are lightly covered in melty, gooey, cheesy goodness. Tastes like summer!”

What could be more convenient than grabbing half your ingredients from the backyard? Kudos to all who manage to combine convenience food (store-bought pizza dough, rotisserie chicken) with fresh produce to make easy meals that are healthy, too.

The other night I diced some fresh Kennebec potatoes from the farmer’s market, tossed into hot olive oil with a bit of smoky bacon and garlic, and sautéed, adding salt, fresh oregano, and white wine along the way. The result was probably the best dish I’ve cooked in six months--soft/crisp/luscious potato perfection.

But here’s the unspoken truth about simple cooking: it isn’t always all that easy. Sometimes it's luck. I actually find potatoes tricky--much more so than, say, complicated curries or homemade pizza. I am spud-challenged. The small number of ingredients had little to do with the dish’s success; everything rested on cooking time and temperature, until the potatoes reached that state in which the pieces came together into a whole mass but also came apart in soft, starchy bites as you ate; there was a crust, but it was delicate. The problem was that I wasn’t really paying much attention while I was doing this, and now, having hit a surprise hole in one, I’m trying to picture the exact cooking sequence in my mind, like a golf swing, so I can repeat it. I’m going to try it again next weekend.

Meanwhile, I tasted a delightfully simple salad at a restaurant (precise location forgotten) that featured pickled beets and raw radishes, and here is the sort of dish that’s very easy to create at home. Very thinly sliced radishes offer nice pepper-and-crunch texture against sweet-acid pickled beets, and I simply tossed them together and let sit for half an hour in the fridge, then added a drizzle of hazelnut oil and some chopped toasted hazelnuts. Goat cheese would go nicely here, but it’s not necessary: Just sprinkle with a bit of sea salt and dig in.

Check out our collection of simple sides and summer salads for more inspiration.

My dad has no tolerance for sugar. We know he’s not diabetic, but even a sip of Gingerale has been known to make him sleepy. Sweets hardly tempt him anymore, but one particularly unbearable summer in Alabama, he reached for a box of sugar-free popsicles. I joked that the only real ingredient in those treats was water, but they were cold, and as far as we knew, harmless. For a while he snacked on those “cherry,” “orange,” and “grape” pops frequently, sometimes finishing a box of eight in a weekend.

Then the weird dreams started. He didn’t get into specifics with me over the phone, but used “hallucinatory” more than once. We didn’t make the connection for weeks. Was it stress? Indigestion? Hypnosis? My dad, being the practical scientist that he is, looked at the ingredient label for his only indulgence and came up with a theory. Two weeks without the flavored chemicals in his system, and the dreams stopped entirely.

The first book in the series, Fresh Food Fast, is one I cook from at home quite a bit. My favorite recipe from that collection is Deep South Shrimp and Sausage. Since I’m a deep-South Georgia girl, it’s hard to tear me from traditional shrimp and grits that fulfills the 4 wonders of southern cooking—cheesy, creamy, spicy, salty. Our lightened version is really good with sweet Gulf shrimp, smoky turkey sausage, and that delectable base of cheese grits--and better yet it doesn’t require me to run the block or drink a gallon of water after I partake. This recipe seriously takes less than 15 minutes to make. No test kitchen tricks (and that time includes me wrangling 2 young kids).