This dish may be called bruschetta, but to me it is really all about the pesto.  Maybe it’s because in my mind, bruschetta has always been a tomato based topping while growing up, and so it seems a bit weird to me to call this bruschetta, when there are no tomatoes.  So instead, to me, this is an open-faced sandwich with pesto, mozz, and prosciutto (which only my husband could enjoy since cured meats are off limits for me for a while at least until the baby arrives).  But hey, no matter what the nomenclature should be (and thanks to a friend I now know that bruschetta is be a very generic term for things served on bread in Italian, so calling this bruschetta is totally correct), it is a very tasty snack.

The slice of GF bread was fried in our grill pan with some butter, and then pesto was spread on, and topped with a few slices of buffalo mozzarella and some slices of prosciutto.  This particular recipe called for arugula and basil as the base to the pesto, which was a nice combination.  Personally, I think pesto can be made out of whatever greens you have around.  No need to go for pricey basil when you could have spinach, or kale, or arugula, or a whole host of different greens. Parsley also works well for a nice bright and fresh flavor.  As for the pine nuts, I don’t think pesto needs to be so particular about those either.  I’ve easily substituted in walnuts, cashews, even sesame seeds.  Can’t have cheese? No worries, just leave out the grated parm.  I think pesto can be extremely flexible in that sense – the only thing I won’t compromise on is garlic, because well, garlic is the main reason I make pesto in the first place

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It’s Fall. And like a little kid on the first day of school, I have this renewed energy to seek and find myself, create new things, and explore the world.  Maybe it’s the way the yellow Autumnal light shines through the trees or sparkles inside dew drops not yet faded away.  Maybe it’s the newfound comfort in being able to brew a cup of tea and hold it warm against your hands while the cool brisk winds remind us that the Summer has faded.  Or maybe it’s the sudden urge to curl up with a good book in the ever darkening evenings, wrapped up in one’s favorite blanket.  It’s the time of fuzzy woolen sweaters, seeing one’s breath in the air, and stomping through rain puddles.  And then just when the clouds clear, that most amazing light comes through and reminds us of the beauty of this season.

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Fruit deserves to have a place outside of dessert.    Dessert is often shunned for fear of ingesting too many sugar-filled calories and myriad other reasons, and sadly fruit often also becomes under appreciated, associated only with a guilty, and even naughty indulgence – how often do we think of certain fruits only with pies, tartes, scones, cakes and the like?  Such a view not only limits our appreciation for fruit, but I think also forces upon us a paradigm that fruit should be “improved upon” by making it even sweeter than it already is.  Maybe for some acidic fruits like certain berries or citrus this is true, but many are already pleasurably sweet and unfortunately get overlooked as a valid component in other parts of a meal.

What if fruit were the star of other dishes too? Maybe a first course, served with meat, etc?  Some of my favorite dishes involve fruits, and it’s not just for the sweetness – many fruits pair really well with savory items and I think provide a balance to other strong elements.  One of my most frequented pairings this Summer has been to add herbs and the tang of locally made goat cheeses to baked or roasted seasonal fruits – the markets are just brimming with succulent produce, and every two weeks it seems becomes a new mad rush to enjoy in as many ways as possible first the strawberries, then cherries, then apricots & peaches, and soon the plums and other berries will arrive en masse

And you know what? Sometimes I think the taste of fresh fruit is even more enjoyable when it is not a part of le dessert

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I grew up in a small town.  When I was in high school, I think most of my social activities out with friends included some conversation along the lines of “There’s nothing to do in this town, I’m so freaking tired of the same old same old!”  Wow how short sighted we were back then, because now whenever I return to my old stomping grounds, all I see is beauty.  Afterall, this was literally my backyard!

And just down the street a ways are the most gorgeous parks, and orchards…

So much beautiful nature, how did I not recognize it while I had so much opportunity to enjoy it??

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We celebrated Christmas a week early.  Now that we have gotten in the holiday spirit thanks to our fun trip strolling through the Marché de Noël, it seems my husband and I are all about Christmas this year.  I love the idea of embracing new traditions for ourselves, and so this weekend to accommodate our schedules a bit better, we had our full on Christmas feast. A veritable 3 course dinner just for the two of us – because what better Christmas present could I give my husband than a great meal made with love, and the two of us just enjoying each other’s company on these unseasonably cold and blustery Winter days?

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I can’t believe that I was actually wishing for snow to fall today.  It seems silly, right? I mean Summer just ended and Fall is upon us, and yet the thought of Thanksgiving and the upcoming holidays finds me yearning for a few crystals to float in the air, sparkling in the low sunlight.  To get our Winter-time “fix” we took a little train ride to Swiss-German-speaking land in the Alps to get up and close with our favorite mountain range.

Fate led us to the end of the SBB line in the little resort town of Grindelwald, just south of Interlaken in the canton of Bern, a post-card perfect village nestled right up next to some of the most famous giants of the Alps – the Wetterhorn, Schrekhorn, and the Eiger.  Much to our surprise, it’s not Winter in the Alps yet either!  The sun was shining throughout the valley, cresting ever so slightly over the wall of the Eiger, releasing a soft yellow glow over the entire landscape for most of the day.

Maybe this was the last great weekend of the year before the long gray months set in.  Maybe the world just wanted us to enjoy another lovely walk through the Swiss countryside.  Whatever the reason for our serendipitous weather fortunes, I’ll take it and enjoy it.  And we did.

I just don’t have the proper words to fully articulate the beauty that I saw.  You know those people that cry when they drive down the street and see a wedding happening (like my mother)? Well I’m kind of like that when I go hiking.  It’s just an overwhelming sensation to believe that I am really here amidst nature’s glory.  I feel I am duty bound to take a photo of a place that is so magical, to attempt to capture the essence of it and the moments we were lucky enough to experience. It sounds so corny, I know, but sometimes there are places in the world that are just too beautiful to keep in only a memory.  So I did my best to bring our hike to you.  Do you want to go on a little journey into the Alps with me?

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P.F. Changs may not have been the most authentic Asian restaurant we ever frequented in the States, but on our then extremely limited graduate student budgets we could go out to eat, be sure there was gluten free goodness, and get like 6 portions of food for $40 – a near steal for eating out.  We would always order an appetizer, then my husband would get a fried rice and I’d get a rice noodle dish.  Considering we were ordering as much for the leftovers as we were for the experience there, it was easier later if I also got a gluten free dish.  One thing I can really commend them on, besides having a gluten free  menu and system in place before most other restaurants knew what gluten free was, was their chicken lettuce wraps.  I think they were our favorite dish out of the menu, and they certainly became a tradition of sorts whenever we went there.

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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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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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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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