The irony of summer is that you have the most beautiful fruits and veggies available at your farmers market and it’s just too hot to think about cooking. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against salads or raw food, but sometimes you need to eat something warm even if it’s 100 degrees.

One way to beat the heat is to pull out your slow cooker. It’s not just for the winter. In fact, it has even more benefits now. It doesn’t heat up the house like the stove or oven does giving your a/c a fair shot at cooling your home. If you have a grill with a burner you can even sauté veggies ahead of time outside the night before – hopefully it’s cooled down a bit by then.

I wanted to remind you of a few summer-friendly recipes.  The Beyond Easy Herbed Beets are great chilled on a salad or even as the main ingredient in a chilled borscht. They are in season and you can cook the greens in the slow cooker too. Cauliflower is also a great side dish as a mashed potato substitute.

The slow cooker is the perfect summer oven substitute. Bake up a batch of Pumpkin Gingerbread Loaf or Black Bean Brownies.  Experiment with flavors in the loaf using the general dry to wet proportions.  I’m planning on posting a few new ones as summer progresses. I have bananas begging to become banana bread of some sort, so that will probably be the first one I post.

I also posted a Beyond Easy Vegan BBQ Tofu Pizza Topping over at Busy Vegan. All you need is a premade crust (or an English muffin in a pinch) to get dinner on the table. It’s the laziest meal of all and you can cook it on your grill!