In the spring there is nothing I like to do more than pack up my car and head to Vermont for a few days. I am very lucky because I have been able to do that for the past four years. I love the trip, and we focus on wonderful, local food while we are there. Farm to table all the way! The only thing we miss is the ability to cook our own food while we are away. Luckily, the town that we stay in has some amazing places to eat at – as do the surrounding areas.

After a few days of being in Vermont, we were driving home yesterday and the only thing we could think of was cooking a great homemade dinner for ourselves. We passed a great Whole Foods, stopped in and picked up some vegetables, chicken and soba noodles. Soba noodle bowls were something we were both craving. As we drove home I was already formulating the recipe in my head.

Once we got our bags (both our luggage and grocery bags!) in from the car I washed our vegetables and started cutting. The sous chef worked with the chicken breasts.

We had these soba noodle bowls together in record time. The chicken was in the oven, baking away. I cut the vegetables up into matchsticks. I sautéed the red pepper and some garlic first (in a little bit of coconut oil spray and a teaspoon of olive oil) after six minutes or so, I added the zucchini – also cut up into match sticks (with a little more garlic). While the vegetables cooked, I got out the Vitamix to make our famous peanut sauce – we love this stuff, and I would eat it straight if it would be acceptable.

For the sauce you only need a few ingredients:

peanut butter

reduced sodium soy sauce

rice wine vinegar

warm water

cilantro

red pepper flakes

ginger (we used ginger powder because we didn’t have any fresh root ginger – it worked out just fine!)

juice of one lime

I start off by adding 1/3 C peanut butter. 4 tablespoons of both soy sauce and rice wine vinegar, a couple of tablespoons of warm water and then the seasoning. Put all of this in the Vitamix and see what you come up with. You can mess around with adding more or less of whatever ingredients you feel like. Ours came out really well last night. I would take this over the jarred stuff ANY NIGHT. It literally takes five minutes to make, and just a few more minutes to clean up the Vitamix once you have finished making the sauce.

The chicken came out beautifully. The soba cooked perfectly, and we got it out of the water at the perfect time. Everything came together so well – and our kitchen was not too messy after we were all done cooking. (That’s all relative of course – our kitchen gets pretty messy from time to time.)

The soba noodle bowls came together so well! I layered soba, a little peanut sauce, vegetables, chicken, scallions and more sauce. It was a delicious and fresh meal – perfect for the warm and muggy evening we were ‘enjoying’. I love my soba noodle bowls cold during the summer – this hit the spot!

After dinner and an episode (or two) of Anthony Bordain’s No Reservations, we could ourselves back in the kitchen. I was craving strawberries – SC was craving

chocolate ice cream:

It turned out to be the perfect combination for a summer dessert! One for the books, I tell you. I had a scoop of the chocolate ice cream and about five strawberries cut up into my mug. The strawberries are like heaven right now – they smell so ripe and they are so sweet. If only the strawberry season would last all year – wishful thinking! I will be eating strawberries every day until the end of the berry season.

That about wraps up our delicious evening! More on the cookbook project soon, I promise. Until then, happy cooking and eat some amazing berries for yourself!