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Tomanade

Think tapenade, but with sun-dried tomatoes added in. I’m a huge fan of tapenade, the salty/sour/slightly bitter spread is just begging for some fresh baguette. When I saw a new-to-me spread called tomanade in the grocery store, I had to check it out. Much to my disappointment, it was literally puréed sun-dried tomatoes with absolutely no other ingredients. Talk about overly tart, and not part of my vision of tomato and olive blended goodness. Uggh. Well no matter, why don’t I just throw something together that is more of what I had in mind when I first found out about the existence of tomanade?

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Bruschetta

Do you remember when you first tried to cook? I’m not talking about executing a recipe, but really delving into the steps and determine exactly what benefits a dish? Ok, so you all probably aren’t as nerdy as I am. I really do try to use cooking as a form of relaxation, but sometimes the scientist in me just gets in the way!

A while back Shauna asked her readers about the first meal they ever cooked. And frankly, I can’t think of that earliest time. I was probably 12ish, because I’m guessing it was after we moved in with my step dad. He was definitely the one that instilled in me a joy of food and the process of making it. I honestly have not a single memory of cooking before then, except for that awful dried out meatloaf my sister’s father used to make where the only way anyone could stomach it was by drowning it in ketchup. And poor me because I hated ketchup too. Given that my strongest memory in the kitchen from my younger years is a terrible meatloaf isn’t so encouraging. But I can look back at other times, because there were good memories of the kitchen. I remember just loving to help my mom make sun tea – we took a large pitcher and filled it with water and tea bags, and let it set out on the porch in the bright hot summer sun for a few hours. I was enthralled with watching the color develop over the afternoon, it seemed like magic.

In college I really began thinking about how to make food on my own, but believe it or not, one of my first major forays into cooking involved no cooking at all!

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Daring Cooks go Nuts! Grilled Kabobs with Cashew Butter Sauce

I should title this post, “the cursed food processors,” but then you wouldn’t get to know what I was making! This month’s Daring Cook’s challenge was to make a nut butter and use it in a dish. Well, nut butters mean one needs a food processor. I thought this would be a great challenge to do at home in the US visiting my parents (if I’m visiting can I still call it home?), because I knew that they would enjoy the flavors I was thinking of for this month’s dish.

Well, I get there and find that my parents’ puppy had decided that the cord of the food processor looked appetizing, and bit the cord right off of the machine! It’s quite hard to run a food processor if you have no way of plugging it into anything. Ok, so no homemade nut butters this time. Instead, I went to my nearest health store corporate giant and picked up some cashew butter. Why cashews? Well, everyone in my family loves them, and peanut butter is boring

This week I had thought about making my own cashew butter now that I am back en Suisse, but again with the cursed food processors! There was a mighty wind event the other day, and silly us left our windows open in our apt. all day. We’d gotten into the habit of this because it’s been so freaking hot lately – and trust me, you learn a totally different definition of hot when there is no A/C to be found, especially when your office faces the afternoon sun. I melt into a sweaty sticky puddle on a regular basis. It wasn’t until we left work that I thought things could be a problem. After all, tree branches don’t normally float. We got home to find so much stuff all over the floor of our apt., including the food processor!! The lid is cracked and in pieces. gahhhhh! Well, there goes making any nut butters this month. At least the wind kept our stuff inside the apt., I half expected to find our life’s belongings strewn out all over the street below.

So jarred cashew butter it is for this month. I’m ok with this, it was organic and quite tasty. As long as your’e also ok with my store-bought nut butter, onto the challenge!

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

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