Adapted from Tyler Florence's Lemon Curd Trifle with Fresh Berries

1 pint each, raspberries, blueberries & blackberries, gently combined

1 pound cake, sliced

1 cup whipping cream

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Several spoonfuls of jarred lemon curd (I totally cheated, folks!)

Limoncello, if desired (ha)

Whip the cream with a mixer until it forms stiff peaks, and then add the sugar and the vanilla. Gently fold in the lemon curd until well blended.

Cover the bottom of a trifle bowl (call your neighbor if you don't have one) with slices of pound cake, arranging them to fit. Drizzle with Limoncello. Don't be stingy here. Repeat: don't be stingy here. The pound cake can get dry, and the Limoncello can help keep it moist. Cover the pound cake layer with a layer of the whipped cream. Top the whipped cream layer with a layer of the berries. Repeat the layers (drizzling the pound cake with the Limoncello) until you're out of ingredients (we got three layers out of our stuff), ending with a layer of berries. Garnish with fresh mint. Our trifle sat in the fridge for about 5 hours, and by the time we ate it, it wasn't terribly lemony. I don't like a ton of lemon flavor, and even I was a bit disappointed. It's a balance, I guess. More Limoncello, and we might have had soggy trifle (soggy trifle = no good). Sitting longer might have also meant soggy trifle. By the next morning (And yes, we had trifle for breakfast, there wasn't that much Limoncello!), it was just about perfect. So I might advocate making this the day before. And sharing. So much better shared.

The light was so lovely when I took these pictures. That pre-rain lovely light. I'm almost tempted to turn this post into a PDF and make a recipe card out of it!

Perhaps I've mentioned this, but Neel and Callum love their hoagies. For those of you who aren't as Neel would say, "from around here," a hoagie is a sandwich. Neel would say it's the sandwich. The only sandwich, really. I reluctantly send you to Wikipedia for the definition. Reluctant because they call hoagies "submarines," and, as Erin knows: that's just wrong.

So each weekend, when I'm doing the grocery shopping, I get Callum and Neel a hoagie from the deli to spilt for lunch. If Neel manages to see my list, he'll add "hoagie" to it, in pretty ink and draw stars and hearts and balloons around it. Like I need reminding. "A whole ham and cheese on white with provolone, mayo, lettuce, tomato, black olives, banana peppers, pickles, salt and pepper, sliced in half." Every. Single. Weekend.

I've been into the idea of chopped salads lately. I love the scoopableness of them. They feel so substantial. I'm hoping to add more and more chopped salads to our rotation as we move deeper into summer, at least one a week. Anyhoo, at the wine tasting a few weeks ago, we had a salad with chopped ham and cheese, and Neel said immediately that it reminded him of a hoagie.

Lightbulb.

It's easy enough. Chop some romaine. Chop some tomatoes. I used some sweet peppers and some banana peppers (also chopped). Slice some olives, and chop some ham and provolone. Layer delightfully. Because we're in the South, ya'll, we use Duke's mayonnaise. I combined some mayo with a little vinegar and some Italian seasoning, and tossed it with the salad.

It was a paper plate kind of meal, and I couldn't not put little mini hoagie rolls on the side. They were sweet Hawaiian rolls, though. We fancied the stuff up. Rave reviews from all involved, and let me say, these hoagie eaters are hard to please.

trifle {life}

(inspired) salad {life}