I had a couple of extra busy weekends with Harmony Board orders. So far this first summer of Harmony Boards has been exactly as expected, slow! But for some reason, the first and second weekends of August exploded.

With that in mind, I may have been a tad overzealous about stone fruit season. First I went to Costco and bought huge clamshells of peaches, red & Rainer cherries, and red plums.

A day or two later I was at Sprouts shopping for purple (a purple soup recipe coming for you soon) and orange cauliflower for Crudités Harmony Boards.

It was then when I saw the extensive variety of stone fruit in season and on sale.  There were pink, red, and black flesh plums, yellow plumcots, Jupiter peaches, nectarines, white peaches, etc.

As my vacation to Canada with Kim drew near, I knew I had more stone fruit on hand than I had orders… oops. I was eating overripe plums for breakfast and snacks. Then it was cherries and peaches for lunch and after-dinner dessert.

While I was finishing up my final orders on the weekend before my flight, I knew I had to do more than snack on the quickly ripening fruit. I invited Connor and my dad over for dinner and made this salad.

* In my next post I’ll show you what I did with the remaining bits and pieces of fruit, cheese, and veggies before I escaped the heat.

This layered fruit-cheese salad was the first course for our Spring Reunion Dinner. I decided to make individual servings, but it could be made even easier in a large clear bowl or better yet, in a trifle dish.

If you’re making one large salad, you’ll use all the fruit. For these six small individual portions, you’ll end up with about half of the fruit left or enough to make at least 12 individual servings. So either cut the fruit portions in half or freeze the remaining fruit and use it for smoothies, that’s what I did.

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On Friday, I was buzzing around and feeling very accomplished and happy with myself, getting all sorts of errands and housecleaning done.  And suddenly it hit me – I’m so stinking hot! Even though I had my A/C on (ugh!) and it was set to 75 degrees, which is ridiculous, I know! It was 96 degrees outside and that’s what it felt like inside the house to me.  What to do? I’d been drinking water all day, in fact, I was counting and I’d already drank five 16-ounces glasses.  I needed something more.  I don’t drink soda or coffee (iced or otherwise) and I was already up to my eyeballs in iced tea, which I drank like a horse the day before, as the temps were rising. Finally, it dawned on me, that I’d make myself an agua fresca.  Agua frescas are popular fruit beverages in Central America and the Caribbean. Depending on the natural sweetness of the fruit, sugar or simple syrup may be added as a sweetener.  I wasn’t looking for anything sweet, just something more refreshing and satisfying than water. Trust me, this hit the spot, I plan on making agua frescas with ripe summer fruits all summer long.

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