©Jessica Harlan

At dinner at a fancy French recipe last week, I ordered a bowl of amazing gazpacho. It was velvety smooth, redolent of roasted yellow pepper, and had a tiny scoop of slushy tomato granita floating on top. I knew that my limited culinary abilities would never be a match for that elegant dish, but tonight for dinner I made a simpler (and undoubtedly more authentic) version of gazpacho with fresh tomatoes, cucumber and peppers, thickened with stale bread soaked in water, and pureed until it was liquidy but still a little chunky. No tomato granita, unfortunately, but I did make some delicious little Parmesan toasts with the leftover bread, and they proved to be especially delicious when dipped into the soup. Best of all, the soup took maybe 20 minutes to make, start to finish.

Do you need a quick and cool summer mealtime recipe? Make my Tomato Gazpacho with Parmesan Toasts tonight.

©2008 Jessica Harlan licensed to About.com, Inc.

I used to never use cooking sprays, preferring instead to use regular oil. But when I was dieting, I kept reading about how using cooking spray could really cut out unnecessary fat. So I started using it, and I've never looked back. I use it on cake pans and muffin tins, and to spray nonstick pans to increase their ability to release food..

I've just discovered that Pam makes a spray especially for grilling, which is specially formulated to use over very high heat. It's obviously geared towards outdoor grillers, but it also works very well on grill pans and countertop grilling appliances. I used it while grilling fish in a grill pan the other day and I felt like my fish browned better, and didn't stick at all to the pan. You can find Pam Grilling Spray in most supermarkets. Happy (indoor) grilling!