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In case you didn’t know, my boyfriend is French. To the disappointment of one of my co-workers, he doesn’t wear v-neck t-shirts, and he sounds more British than French when speaking English. Without knowing him, it’s very difficult to figure out where he’s from, especially since his accent is slowly diminishing from residing in the US and since he doesn’t do anything that particularly screams “France” in daily life.
One thing he does do, though, is make crepes.
In case you weren’t aware–and I know that no one was aware– this week was supposed to be a tomato extravaganza. Extravaganza is a bit of an overstatement since I only post twice a week, but I wanted to share a couple of great recipes that show off one of my two favorite parts of the summer bounty. (Tomatoes v. berries is a tough decision, and one I surely cannot make.)
Shakshuka is a lesser known way to take advantage of tomatoes, plus it’s new and different, so it was nice to kick off the festivities with it. To close, though, I’m going to share my absolute favorite way to eat tomatoes: tomato panzanella. It’s cool, quick and easy, and the flavors go together so well in such a fantastic way that you’ll want to fix it at least once a week.
My grandma has a story that she loves to tell whenever she makes zucchini bread. Once, she made zucchini bread and gave some to my granddaddy. He refused to eat it. She made zucchini bread another day, but this time when she served him a slice, she said that it was spice cake. He said it was great. She called it spice cake from that day on.
I don’t know anyone other than my granddaddy who has ever been so turned off by the thought of zucchini being in bread to refuse it, but I have found a few who can’t believe that there is zucchini in the bread. The secret is that zucchini makes a super moist snack cake.
I eat a lot of salads, I’d say at least one for a meal every two days and often once a day. They’re easy, quick and healthy. My salads are usually pretty boring, though– spinach, tomato, avocado, boiled egg if some are on hand and salad dressing. Although I do like this salad, I get really tired of it. There are weeks when I just can’t eat one more piece of raw spinach. Those weeks require much more meal planning than normal. They’re pretty rough.
Although I eat lots of salads, they often don’t seem to be enough, even if I’m full after eating it. I just want something else, too. I have a huge sweet tooth, so a dessert can fit the bill, but sometimes you want something a bit more wholesome than that. Bread can get boring, though, and an apple definitely doesn’t count when your meal is a salad– that’s all healthy and no fun.
Sunday was a pretty normal weekend day after an extremely early (3:45!!) morning on Saturday for Race for the Cure. I slept in a little, I read, I cooked, I watched some TV, I even thought about going to the pool, but I didn’t feel like lathering up in sunscreen so decided against it.
I’ve been thinking about making bread for a few weeks, never getting around to it. I mainly didn’t get around to it because the recipe I was planning to try required lots of planning in advance– the sponge required two weeks to develop along with feeding it a little every day. That’s a lot of effort for bread, and I just haven’t been up to the experiment.
Asparagus season is almost over, but I’ll continue to take advantage of it until the very, very end. I buy asparagus all the time in the spring, almost every time I go to the grocery store. I usually steam it or roast it, but it’s always refreshing to serve it a new way.
Alas, I found a new way to serve asparagus– pizza. I began making my own pizza a few years ago, after I discovered the blog Smitten Kitchen, and although it takes a bit of planning, it really couldn’t be easier to make from scratch at home.