Monday, October 24, 2011

Lunch today

Didn't know what to make for lunch today.  Scanned the contents of the household and found:

  • Wildflower Bread Bakery Sourdough Bread (mmmm, the very best bread, but if you don't live here in AZ, any hearty sourdough bread will do)
  • pesto
  • grape tomatoes
  • goat cheese 
  • shredded mozzarella


Know what I did with it?  Made a caprese (sort of) sandwich.  One of my fave restaurants, The Living Room, makes an amazing pressed caprese sandwich.  I figured I could try to mimic it even though I don't have a sandwich press and I didn't have fresh mozzarella.

I buttered one side of each slice of bread.  On the other side I spread a heaping teaspoon of jarred pesto sauce (I happened to have Classico in the house because my basil plants all croaked over the summer.)

Took a couple of slices of soft goat cheese and crumbled them over the pesto on one slice of the bread.  Then I filled in the empty spots with some shredded mozzarella.  

I sliced about a handful of grape tomatoes in half and carefully placed these on the cheese.

Then I put the second slice of bread on top and placed the sandwich in a really hot grill pan (heated mine on 8 on my cooktop.)  Because I needed it to look like a pressed sandwich, I flipped a dinner plate over the top of the sandwich and sat my tea kettle, half full of water, on top.  Took about 4 minutes to toast the one side, I flipped the sandwich, and toasted the other side for about 2 minutes.  But your timing may vary.

Voila!  Yummy yummy yummy.  I ate it with sea salt & cracked black pepper potato chips, because that's what the Living Room serves.  Now where is that glass of Infamous Goose Sauvignon Blanc I usually have with it?

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Time Flies....

When you're busy with school.  Sorry folks.  Lots of good food being made here inbetween the Photoshop projects, HTML coding and now reading about business & society.  Eeesh.  Not to mention Ron and I took a short jaunt to Reno/Lake Tahoe/Truckee this past week.  I have lots to post about that. 

Will definitely get some recipes uploaded this week too.

And some knitting projects.  It's been busy busy around here and I've been neglecting you.  No longer.  This week!

Enjoy your Sunday night

Friday, September 30, 2011

YUM!

Decided to make Joy the Baker's Avocado & Edamame Salad for lunch today.  Can I just say YUM again?  Joy may be an incredible baker, but when she ventures out into "real" food, she comes up with awesome recipes there as well.

Super easy salad to make.  Some slicing and chopping and grating, but nothing a novice can't handle.

Very healthy ingredients.

One note - I did increase the avocado from one to two.  I love avocado and it seemed with the number of edamame in this salad, more avocado was needed.  But you can do it your own way.  One less avocado probably would have been healthier!

It's such a pretty salad too.

I could eat the entire darn thing, but that wouldn't be such a good idea.  One quarter of the whole thing was plenty to fill me up.  Still, the rest is hiding out in the fridge waiting.....

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

zzzzzzz

I am sitting on my couch watching my dogs sleep and listening to my husband snore. 

It's making me tired.  At this rate I'll be sleeping before 10. 

And that's not really such a bad thing, is it?

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Faux Fall

Welcome to AZ, home of the "faux fall." While the rest of the country is donning sweatshirts and making hot, comfort food dishes, we're still sweltering in 100+ degrees of heat. It's totally unfair to someone like me who lives for sweaters and soups and stews.

Today I decided I would crank down the a/c and make a pot roast and apple pie. HA! Take that Sonoran Desert hell!!!

The pot roast is in the crock pot and the apple pie is cooling on the counter. Yeah, I had all these great intentions of taking pics of the whole process and sharing them with you, but I got engrossed in a text "conversation" while making the apple pie and completely forgot to take pictures. I got one picture as I was peeling the apples,

(please excuse the chaos on the countertop, I am a horribly messy cook)

and another when I took the pie out of the oven.


There ya have it.

Hope the rest of you out there are getting the real fall deal. Trees starting to turn, temps requiring sweats and jackets, down comforters, and hearty warm meals. Down here in desert-land, we're still sunning, swimming and wearing shorts. Happy Fall!!!