Patio dinners

This is the first Spring we have actually had a patio large enough to accommodate dinner outdoors. Today was such a perfect day for dining 'al fresco' that we decided to keep supper simple - we grilled some chicken, burgers and dogs and served with various finger foods on the side: roasted asparagus, sweet potato fries and various fresh veggies. (With hummus, of course. My youngest son wouldn't dream of touching any crudite without slathering it in hummus first.)

I wish I could say I took the time to make the sweet potato fries but I cheated and used frozen. I spied McCain Sweet Potato fries when I was grocery shopping this morning and decided to try them out. They were actually quite good. Of course, I drenched them in malt vinegar and salt so that could have something to do with their popularity!

Given that most of our meal was thrown together last minute after a day filled with yard work the best I can do for a recipe this week is to share our dessert, which was actually also very simple. I combined some sliced banana with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and poured some homemade butterscotch sauce over top.


The butterscotch sauce is from The Joy of Cooking (page 1047) and reminded me a lot of the sauce I make at Christmas for Sticky Toffee Pudding. The sauce consists of butter, corn syrup and sugar with a splash of vanilla. It wasn't difficult to make although my final product did have lumps. No matter - I strained the works through a fine mesh sieve and it tasted great drizzled over the bananas and ice cream. Only one other taker. My husband doesn't like ice cream (I know - who doesn't like ice cream?) and my youngest son dismissed my sauce as soon as he heard it wasn't chocolate. I knew my older son would appreciate my efforts. He is a brown sugar fanatic so this totally satisfied his sweet tooth. And mine!