white bean dip with chimichurri

I apologize for the unexplained hiatus.  School and the job hunt have been a bit overwhelming these last two weeks, not to mention the 2 baking recipes that I bombed last Monday.  I was so excited to have a long weekend to "celebrate" President's Day and bake something tasty.  Or, not so tasty, as it turned out.  Thinkin' 'bout Lincoln... and burnt coconut macaroons.  Sigh... oh well.

I'm working on letting things go.

Since then I've been back in the kitchen, working to redeem myself from the President's Day Disaster (it'll live on in infamy, I'm sure).  The other night I made a flat-leaf parsley pesto sauce to smear on top of the chicken we were having for dinner.  I put garlic and olive oil and a little Parmesan in the blender with half a bunch of leaves and pureed.  It was quite tasty, and added some flair to the meal.  Then the following day, we were watching Anthony Bourdain galavant around Uruguay, gorging himself on BBQ'd animal parts, and the condiment of choice on every single table was a sauce by the name of chimichurri.

Homemade Nut & Seed Crackers and A Brand New Year

Happy 2011, all.  It's that time of year again.  That time when people are attempting to conjure up whatever momentum they lost around mid-March last year and focus it on starting anew.  The ball drops, the booze and the cookies run out, and people tell themselves that they're going to lose those pounds, quit that habit, take up that hobby or make themselves over in this way or that.

While I'm all for self-transformation, I think that it's more lasting and successful when approached as a consistent effort, completely separate from the calendar.  I think that the word "resolution" has become a synonym for the word "failure".  So in order to avoid the epic fail, I want to suggest a new word.  One without the excess baggage of cliche or the burden of defeat.  That word is intention.  Say it with me now.... inteentioonnn...

Fresh Rolls

Vacation is over.  The Grind has been revisited and will continue to be the mode of living through mid-December.  If I'm lucky, I'll be able to share recipes and ideas here once a week or so, and if I'm even luckier, my transcript will be overloaded with 4.0's.  Wouldn't that be grand.

The first week back to classes and work was a doozy.  It borders on madness in the hallways between classes as students attempt to navigate their way to the next session of powerpoint and lecture.  My two classes on campus are geographically as far from one another as they can be on our little campus, and I have just ten minutes to rush down four flights of stairs, power-walk to the building next door, and book-it up another four flights to get to my second class.  A bathroom pit stop is out of the question.  The door to class #2 is locked promptly at 11 am.  Be there, or be square.

With the onslaught of my school schedule comes the necessity for quick, easy meals.  Lunches must be packed and dinners must be relatively hurried affairs.  No more 3 hour sagas of meal prep in the evenings for awhile, so I've been busting out my repertoire of simple, healthy (gotta keep that immune system up, what with flu-season rapidly approaching) recipes. Fresh rolls (sometimes called 'summer rolls') have become my new favorite thing.  I guess I'm reluctant to give up on summertime.  I want to savor the last of the lettuce, cucumber, and warm-weather herbs while I can. 

Heirloom Tomato Bruschetta

The other night my boyfriend, Dan, and I watched the movie Julie and Julia.  It's a really charming film based on the book with the same title.  The story is a true one about a woman turning 30 and searching for something meaningful to do with her life.  She started a blog where she documented the year she spent cooking her way through Julia Childs' cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The blogger's story is mirrored throughout the movie by that of Julia Childs. It focuses on her time in Paris where she learned to cook and started writing the book that changed the world.  If you haven't seen it, I suggest that you drop whatever it is that you're doing and find a copy this instant.  Even Dan loved it.

There's a scene in the film where Julie Powell (the main character) is talking with her husband about the idea of blogging, which Julie is sure she can do but is struggling to think of a worthy focus.  At the start of this conversation, she's in the kitchen spreading melted butter on thick slices of crusty bread, frying them, and then loading them up with diced tomatoes.  As she's working her way closer and closer to the idea of food blogging, Julie's husband begins to eat.  He's stuffing the buttery, tomatoey bread into his mouth and groaning in pleasure.  He keeps repeating, "Oh, this is good", over and over, like a flavor-induced mantra.