We have a newborn baby in the house now, and that means our meals have changed a little. A few weeks ago, our sweet new baby girl, Camille, arrived peacefully in our home by candlelight…a successful VBAC at home! Our children were all there to witness her birth, though we couldn’t quite wake our 3-year-old twin boys to be fully present.

Homemade jam is usually so full of sugar, but it doesn't have to be! Using Pomona's Pectin, you can make low-sugar, honey-sweetened, or fruit juice-sweetened homemade jam. This particular pectin comes from citrus peel. The jelling is activated by calcium water (monocalcium phosphate), which comes with the pectin. It’s so easy to make jam from all of your freshly picked fruit of the season. Making and canning jam is one of the best ways to preserve the harvest! Last year, I experimented quite a bit with some of the hundreds of pounds of fruit we harvested.

You are about to bear witness to our first ever cooking video. We decided to bring our digital camcorder with us to Hawaii in hopes of producing a few cooking videos with all of the "free time" we would have.

While we were in Hawaii we lived off of papayas. Papayas with lime for breakfast, papayas in green smoothies, and fresh papaya salsa. We packed rice, quinoa, and pink beans with us. I found it very easy to make a large pot of pink beans, cooked with cumin and onions, to have on hand for quick lunches and dinners. The sublime flavor of ripe papayas was delicious. I took full advantage of their juiciness and made several large batches of salsa to put over our beans and rice or fish and rice. The salsa even doubled as a "salad dressing" when tossed with fresh greens.

As promised, here it is, finally, the White Nectarine Ice Cream. Naturally sweetened and of course gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free. The photo doesn't do this recipe justice. The consistency and flavors are simply amazing. Even after 24 hours of freezing, it is still soft and easy to scoop just like traditional ice cream made with cream and sugar. When I make this, my kids practically eat the whole container in one sitting. I have to cut them off and hide the container in the back of the freezer! So let's celebrate the end of summer with one last hoorah and eat ice cream!

Summer BBQ's, potato salad, layered jell-o salads, fireflies, and sparklers flashing through the humid July night sky....these are my 4th of July memories growing up in the Midwest.

Since layered jell-o salads just aren't in my cooking repertoire anymore I have devised something even more delicious...and good for you!