Smoking, smoothies, and honeysuckle cream

I had bread left over from market last week, enough to barter for my week's groceries and still take home a sack. I've been struggling since I stopped sprouting grain (too hot!) to find a new way to get smoke into the smoky vollkornbrot. I've tried all sorts of alternatives to smoking the sprouted grain—dry flour (ineffective), flour slurries (messy), coarsely sifted flour slurries (still messy)—but this week all I had to do was slice up the old rye bread and throw it in the smoker. No sticky, wet rye flour, no dry, unreceptive grain. It was so easy I'm tempted to make extra bread just to recycle into the smokey bread, but that would, I think, be an unnecessarily complicated solution to the problem. Still, if you happen to have experience smoking food, and any better ideas for the weeks when I don't have such an overabundance of bread, please share!

I've been on a smoothie rampage. What else can one eat in this heat? Or drink, as it were. As a general rule, I don't believe in green smoothies—I rarely put fruit in my green salads, why put a salad in my fruit smoothie?—but herbs are an exception to the rule. This week I've been on a mint and basil kick. It might not beat out last week's watermelon and mint mash up for the ultimate refreshing summer drink award, but believe you me, a nectarine and sour cherry smoothie with a little mint and basil is damn good. So good, in fact, that I drank it three days in a row (until I finally used up the end of last summers frozen nectarines). Do you have a favorite summer smoothie? Care to share?

I've saved dessert for last: I have a new treat for the market this week! Raspberry tarts with orange-honeysuckle cream. I had thought, briefly, about trying to make a patriotically colored tart, but then was distracted by the scent of honeysuckle on my bike ride into the kitchen and gave up on kitsch in favor of flavor. Anyways, I couldn't think of any white fruit currently in season.