Snacks |

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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Summer Salad App

I haven’t lived in the same place for more than 2 years ever since I went off to college. I’m starting to think that I’m secretly addicted to moving. After all, it’s a great way to purge extra stuff that you’ve accumulated over time, like a forced motivator to do all that Spring cleaning that was supposed to happen oh, 4 months ago. I always had a really good reason (not an excuse, a reason! reasons are forgivable and rationalizable) to put it off another week…

We, as fortune would have it, are moving to a new apt. How could we turn it down? The opportunity presented itself, we applied, and we actually got it! New place is bigger, newer, nicer, cheaper, and closer to everything we do. It has four burners on the stove, counterspace, a real oven and get this – a dishwasher! I am beyond excited. Sometimes my husband and I think about all the food we have made in our current apartment, and we are both amazed how we pulled it off with so little space. Well, I know how we did it. It’s called our food processor and toaster oven. Lifesavers, they are. Moving now means crazy things like, we can now cook and store enough food to take lunches to work. I can now go buy muffin tins and bake things. Gluten free brioche? That’s something I’ve been longing to try. Or doughnuts? mmmmm. My list of things to make just got a long longer really quickly!

But we’re not quite moved yet, even though all our pots and pans are packed up. Food processor is packed, and so is the toaster oven. Cooking this week is a pretty minimal word. And in the case of this post, non-existent. Lately, we’ve done lots of salads because prep work and lack of cooking work makes them really easy. This is one that we just kinda threw together in our heads the other day coming home from work. Beyond simple, quick, satisfying, and no cooking required. Took a max of 10 minutes to make (when you count chopping all the veggies), 5 minutes to photograph (don’t you just love the tablecloth? ha), and then a few more minutes to devour!

I call this an app, because that’s how most people would eat it I think. We had it for dinner. To each their own, these rules about food aren’t so fastly set in stone. In fact, I encourage breaking some food rules every now and then. It’s good for that adventurous spirit, even if it’s something small like eating an appetizer for dinner

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