Last weekend I had the pleasure of performing a cooking demo at the Fresh Farms Famers Market in Silver Spring Maryland. Like most farmers markets throughout the world, this one was filled with fantastic local products (Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania) sold by the farmers and artisans themselves. This week's market had local farmers, bakers, meat producers, florists, cheese mongers, and a guy selling some killer kettle corn.

When I first arrive at the market I like to walk through to see what's hot. This week stone fruits were overflowing from all of the farmer's stalls. Stone fruits like peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries, apricots, pluot (plum and apricot hybrid) are soft-fleshed fruits with a seed on the inside that is covered with an hard outer shell. They main harvest comes during mid summer and from the sites at the market, this is going to be a good year.

Stone fruits can be grilled, cooked into jellies and jams, made into wines and brandy, frozen and canned, and also blended in smoothies, ice cream and sorbets. During the blazing hot summer I like to make a cool fruit salad and serve it over ice cream. Check out the recipe below for my summer stoned fruit salad and Get Crackin' today!

Chef Egg's Summer Stoned Fruit Salad

Wisk the dressing ingredients together and toss with the stone fruits, blueberries and sunflower seeds.