“Perfect song on the radio
Sing along ’cause it’s one we know
It’s a smile, it’s a kiss
It’s a sip of wine, it’s summertime
Sweet summertime.

Temperature says 93
Down at the Deposit and Guarantee
But that swimmin’ hole
It’s nice and cold…”

~ lyrics from Summertime by Craig Wiseman and Steve McEwan

With almost everything packed up and out the door already, cooking is getting to be difficult. As a matter of fact, we’ve gone camping with a better equipped kitchen. Since we’re experiencing a huge heat wave this week, it doesn’t really matter much, though. The focus is all about keeping cool, including the food.

This is a perfect time to clean out the refrigerator – a great opportunity to toss together some unexpected ingredients for salads and dressings.

We had a jar of mustard with just a couple of tablespoons left, and a bottle of maple syrup with just about the same. It brought to mind the popularity a few years ago of honey-mustard dressing. Substituting with the maple syrup made it a little less sweet, with just a hint of the maple’s natural smokiness hiding in the background.

Use the kind of mustard you like best. My favorite is Kroger’s horseradish mustard – it contains no egg (most other brands do) and has just a little bit of a kick. With this being the bottom of the bottle, I just added the other ingredients to it, which not only gave me one less jar to wash, but  also saved us the trouble of trying to get the last drop of mustard off the sides.

Maple-Mustard Dressing

Makes ½ cup
Time: 3 minutes

2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons mustard
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
¼ cup vegetable or canola oil

Measure ingredients into a jar, cover tightly, and shake like crazy!!

For the salad in the photo, we poured a kettle full of boiling water over some sugar snap peas and broccoli florets to brighten their color, refreshed in cold water, then tossed together with some leftover whole wheat pasta, chopped red pepper, golden cherry tomatoes, a sprinkle of toasted sunflower seeds, and (of course) this lovely Maple-Mustard Dressing.