No Food At All

It's the week before finals, so we're all living off of tea, coffee, and M&Ms around here.  I needed a spot for this info, so here it is!

St. Katherine College 2014 Summer Euroterm: London, Paris, Rome

When, and with whom:

June 14th – July 5th, 2014, with St. Katherine College Professors Gaelan and Megan Gilbert

What: an adventurous experience of learning

In the 3-week “European Culture” (3 units) course, students will learn art history by viewing real works of art and visiting some of Europe’s finest museums. Students will walk on the same streets as authors whose stories they’ll be reading, and visit authors’ homes and even favorite pubs. We’ll have plein air classes – talking together about architecture and poetry in parks and courtyards. We’ll also pray in some of the world’s most beautiful sites of Christian worship: Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame Cathedral, and St. Peter’s Basilica, among others. Students will gain a hands-on, lifelong appreciation for the Christian European heritage of Western civilization.

How: basic structure of each week

Saturday: travel and transition from one city to another

Sunday: church in morning, personal exploration in afternoon

Monday – Thursday: class and planned outings
Thursday evening: group dinner

Friday: free (regional travel, if desired)

Who: Number of spots is 5-8 (with a waiting list)

How much: Total cost $2,500 (before airfare)

This includes:

- 3-unit European Art, Literature, & Culture course

- accommodations

- travel between London, Paris, and Rome

- metro passes for travel within each city

- museum & historical site entrance fees

- daily food stipend of approx. 15 euros per day (breakfast provided at accommodations)

- 3 group dinners (one in each city)

- a temporary cell phone

This doesn’t include:

- airfare - students are responsible for their own airfare (approx. $1600 round trip).

- spending money – so plan to bring extra $ for souvenirs, personal activities, etc.

- extra travel before or after the program, or to and from airports

By when: February deposit

In February a deposit of $500 will be necessary in order to secure your place on this program. The remainder ($2000) will be due in April.

MUFFIN

I don't usually refer to myself as awesome.

I don't plan to now.

But, though I may not be able to describe myself as awesome,

I can unreservedly say that these muffins I made are just that:

AWESOME.

These are so my new favorite muffins.  I made some others a few weeks ago, which I will post on here (because they were delicious), but there is no muffin to compare with these muffins.  Maybe they're just my personal taste...but whoa.

Sorry if I get you too excited, so that you make these and don't think they're that great.  I personally LOVE THEM.

The other morning I had a peachy-crumb muffin for breakfast at Bru Coffeehouse.  My favorite treat at Bello Mundo Cafe is their rosemary-lemon-olive oil shortbread cookie.  Their other shortbread cookie is also amazing, and my mother's favorite: orange-cinnamon-olive oil.

I tried to mesh some of the key flavors of these two treats: peach, olive oil, and cinnamon.  I wasn't sure how it would work; when I tasted the batter all I got was olive oil.  But the final product is scrumptious.

Matty and I woke up early this morning to bus-trek to SLO, as it was a barista's last day (Her name is Brenda and she rocks.  She is incomparably more amazing than my amazing muffins, and the one who mentioned baking to me this morning and, therefore, made me feel like baking!  Brenda, should you be so bored as to be reading my blog, I officially dedicate these amazing muffins to you.)  I fell asleep under clear skies and woke up shrouded in fog.  My day was made right there.  We were cold walking from the transit center, and as we walked into Bello Mundo we were hit both with the warmth of the shop, the cozy light enhanced by the red of the coffee cups and rainbow of the bar stools, and the most genuine "Hey guys!" you ever heard.  I really hope to save that image for a long, long time.  I was glad of the cold weather not only because I am always glad of cold weather, but also because, for some reason, that morning I had decided that I didn't care that it was August and I was going to wear tights and Ugg boots.  Why?  No idea.  I've been thinking a lot about school (move's in three weeks), and am probably mentally rushing September along.  Later today I had a sudden urge to make or work on a doll (which I usually get only in cold weather), and then to bake.  Thus, these muffins combine summer (fresh peach and olive oil) with fall (cinnamon and vanilla).

I hope you enjoy them!      

Peach-Olive Oil-Cinnamon-Vanilla Muffins

Makes six standard muffins.

Ingredients

1 cup flour
1 (slightly over-filled) tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 peach: thickly diced
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp. honey
1/2 egg (Yeah.  I know.  I have Bantam chickens, and usually use 1 Bantam egg.  You can also separate a normal egg, use half the white, and squeeze half the yolk out of its little yolk-case.  Sounds weird, but I do it all the time.  I don't always want a whole dozen muffins.)
2 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit; lightly grease bottoms and lower half of sides of standard muffin tin with olive oil.  Whisk together dry ingredients.  Stir in peach, coating with flour mixture.  In small sauce pan, warm the milk over low heat.  When milk is warm, but not hot or simmering, remove from heat and whisk in honey.  This will dissolve the honey, so that it does not become a sticky, clumpy mess.  Also, heating the milk causes the milk sugars to caramelize slightly, making the milk sweeter.  Learned that at Bello Mundo.  Set the milk/honey mixture aside to cool a bit.  Remember that simple mixture for the next time you want a warm, yummy beverage.  While the honey milk cools, whisk together egg, olive oil, and vanilla extract.  Slowly whisk in honey milk.  Add to dry ingredients and stir until just moistened.  There's a lot of peach pieces, huh?  You'll be be glad of them: I promise.  Fill prepared muffin tin (up to the top because of all the peach pieces) and bake for fifteen minutes.  Let cool in tin five minutes before transferring to cooling rack.  These are good warm or at room temperature.

Because We were Out of Cream Cheese...

I made a super-yummy sandwich.

Yesterday I bought a lunch sandwich from the Avila Valley Barn deli.  It was awesome, but also huge.  I felt lethargic after lunch rather than energized, even though it was full of veggies and I only ate just over half the bread.  Granted, I could've left half of everything, but it was a hot sandwich and wouldn't have kept well, and, well, you know...

Trader Joe's sells these little half-baked breads ("A Half-Baked Idea") that are the perfect size for lunch sandwiches.  We started buying them more often because Matthew loves to eat them stuffed with his favorite fancy cheese: Port Salud.  Now we buy them even more often because I discovered what amazing little sandwiches they make.

My go-to packable sandwich is cream cheese with either cucumber or black olives.  Last night I noticed that we had one perfect cube of cream cheese left, and I decided to use it this morning.  I also thought I'd go fancy and mush a bit of basil into the cream cheese.  I woke up, baked my bread, chopped my basil, sliced my cucumber...and discovered that the cream cheese was gone.  Apparently Nana got hungry fairly late last night and ate it.  Which, of course, is fine, but left me wondering what to make for lunch.

So I quickly stirred together a bit of mayo and a bit of olive oil, adding the chopped basil.  When I pulled out my lunch this afternoon (Actually, it wasn't afternoon.  It was noon.  My shift started at 8:00 this morning, so lunch was at noon.), I was thinking that my sandwich couldn't really be bad.  Turns out, it was delicious.

Plus, it was even better because it was in an awesome bag.  Sandwiches keep better when wrapped in parchment or wax paper rather than plastic.  So, mine was in wax paper.  A few days ago I bought Matthew a Boo Boo Records T-shirt.

                             



                    

That's not Matthew's shirt, but is the same as Matthew's shirt.  I wanted to get him a little something while I was walking around SLO, but all the "little somethings" cost nearly as much as the "big something" that he actually wanted and I actually wanted to get him.  So, I got it.  He wore it today and it looks great!

It came in a paper bag with the logo on it.

                                  

The bag was too cool to just throw away, so it's been carrying my lunches.  I feel cool with my cool sandwich and my cool bag, buying a piece of cool fruit to eat with my cool sandwich from a cool farm like some cool French girl.  Oh yeah.

After work today Mom, Nana, and I went to Bello Mundo because Nana had never been.  I decided to stay an extra forty-five minutes after they drove home in order to go to Phoenix Books.




Phoenix Books used to scare me.  The people who work there are not always the nicest, it's super cluttered, the art is weird (naked--not artistically, just naked--women embracing VERY closely, dumpster-salvaged Barbie dolls glued to poster board, etc.), there's never any music playing, and it just feels generally creepy.  At least it used to.  When I started spending more time wandering SLO, I quickly came to love it in spite of and even for its weirdness.  For "coming across" something, Phoenix is great.  For actually finding something specific, it's not that great.  Although, I did want a copy of Stevenson's The Black Arrow, and after checking every couple weeks for a few months I found a great copy of it!  I buy way too much at Phoenix.  Today it was Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky.

Want to know something fantastic?

                             

That cross street in the back is where the transit center is.  Those blue awnings belong to Phoenix Books.  HumanKind is a fair trade, volunteer-run clothing and gift shop.  That big window with the table in front of it peers into Bello Mundo.  The picture is taken from in front of Boo Boo Records.  Monterey might be the best street ever.

That picture really, really makes me long for a rainy day.

Here's the recipe (though I, of course, gave it unofficially above) for the sandwich.  With a piece of fruit it's the perfect lunch!

Enough bread for a sandwich.  I use a little "panini rustic roll," which is rather like ciabatta.
Piece of cucumer 2 1/2 to 3 inches long, peeled (unless English) and sliced lengthwise
1 tsp. mayonnaise
1 tsp. olive oil
Four to five fresh basil leaves

Toast bread if desired, split if applicable.  Mix together mayo and olive oil.  Chop basil and mix into mayo/olive oil.  Spread on 1/2 of bread.  Layer with cucumber and close sandwich.  If packing, wrap in parchment or wax paper and keep chilled, if possible.

ABBA and Some Pasta!

Yesterday was just awesome.

I woke Matthew up at six to head out for coffee, something he does far more often to me than I do to him.  We got ready and caught the 7:08 bus into SLO.  For a while we were the only customers at Bello Mundo, so we sat at the bar and talked with the baristas the entire time.  Matthew was at his witty best, and the two baristas had, apparently, already agreed that today was going to be amazing.  By the time Matthew and I left we had sipped on amazing coffee, breakfasted on a delectable croissant, enjoyed excellent conversation, and received a lesson in coffee-foam-art.  Best start to a day ever.



CAPPUCCINO



Glorious, isn't it?

We came home after coffee because I had a doctor appointment.  That, I'll admit, was lame.  But it only lasted a half hour.

My mother and I then lunched on Mexican food with our history professor friend.  Yummy food with the addition of a stressed out and curt waitress to make faces at...for what more could we ask?

Side note:  I happen to know two people named Jonathan, and I saw both today.  I knew professor-Jonathan first, referring to him as 'Mr. Wilson' about a year before he told me that I had to call him by his first name.  Changing names has not proven easy, especially since, to anyone besides him, I still refer to him as Mr. Wilson.  This should, in theory, make the distinction to my family members that when I refer to 'Jonathan' I am most likely referring to Awesome--Bello--Mundo--Owner--and--Barista Jonathan.  But it doesn't usually.  "I was talking to Jonathan in SLO today" always earns a puzzled look along with, "You saw Mr. Wilson in SLO today?"

Back to the day.  After lunch Mom and I went on a drive to Cambria.  A couple months ago we visited our friends who recently moved up to Auburn.  While there, the mother of the family discovered that my mother had adored ABBA as a teen.  A Swedish exchange student first turned her on.  Our friends, after learning this, decided to put on the film Mamma Mia.

Bad Points:
The young couple was stupid and annoying
The plot pieces involving aforementioned couple were stupid and annoying
Aforementioned couple/plot pieces resulted in a bit of brain rot



EWWWWWWWWWWW.

The actual performance of the song "Mamma Mia" was really, really awkward to watch during certain bits

Good points:
Songs, for the most part, were fun
Meryl Streep was great



Her two friends were pretty good too

Is Colin Firth ever not cute?



My mom used to have an enormous crush on Pierce Brosnan (specifically as Remington Steele), so we enjoyed watching him...what's funny is that, as he's aged, Brosnan has begun to look rather like my dad



Same type, anyway.

After watching the movie, Mom and I decided that we needed to go on an ABBA trip.  Thus our decision to drive to Cambria with ABBA blasting at us.

"Dancing Queen" is lame.  We (meaning, of course, Mom and I) believe that the reason it became so popular is that the youth and young adults of that era thought the song was about them.  They were the dancing queens.

My two favorites are "Take a Chance on Me" and, of course, "The Winner Takes it All."  There's no denying that second one's a good song.  Actually, you could totally deny that.  I happen to think it's excellent--the same song as, even if not on level with, "My Man" and "Hallelujah."  There's a hilarious version down below.

"Take a Chance on Me" is just cute.  "SOS" and "Mamma Mia" are also fun.  You have to be in the mood and either walking or driving, but, sometimes, ABBA can be totally fun.

Ready for the recipe, at last?  Some Like it Hot was going on while I made it.

Ingredients

1 pound fusilli (or whatever pasta you want)
2 tbsp. butter
2 tbsp. olive oil
5 cloves garlic, rather roughly chopped
1/2 red onion, sliced
2 smallish zucchini, chopped
2 sprigs rosemary, leaves pulled from sprigs and chopped
Very small handful oregano, chopped
1 handful grated parmesan cheese
1 tomato, diced
Kosher salt

Directions

Cook pasta according to instructions, reserving 1/2 cup pasta water.  While pasta is cooking, combine butter, 1 tbsp. oil, 4 cloves garlic, and onion.  Cook until onion softens.  Add zucchini, herbs, and salt to taste.  Drain pasta.  Transfer veggie mixture to empty pasta pot and return to heat.  Add pasta, remaining tbsp. oil and clove garlic, and reserved pasta water.  Cook until water is evaporated, mixing in parmesan at last moment.  Serve topped with tomato.

Ginger Berry Crepes

I meant to make these for breakfast on July 4th, but woke up rather late, and to discover that my mother had already made eggs Florentine.  Yum.

I planned to make them yesterday morning, but wound up breakfasting with my brother at a favorite coffeehouse: Bru.



This morning I simply woke too late.  I recently began working in the sweet shoppe of the Avila Valley Barn.  Super fun job, but I'm a bit more sleepy than usual!

Anyway, one of my brother's and my best friends is staying the night, so the breakfast crepes became, quite suddenly, dessert crepes.  I must say they go well with King Kong.

Ingredients

Filling:
     1/3 cup plain yogurt (whole milk)
     1/4 cup sour cream
     1/3 cup raspberry jam (I use Trader Joe's 'fruit spread'--mostly mashed raspberries)
     1/4 tsp. ground ginger
     Handful of strawberries, sliced

Crepes:
     1 egg
     1/2 cup water
     1/3 cup flour
     Small pinch salt

Garnish:
     1 strawberry
     2 tbsp. powdered sugar

Directions

In small bowl, mini-whisk together yogurt, sour cream, jam, and ginger.  Cover and chill.  Mine wound up chilled for three days, but a couple hours should do the trick.  It's delicious un-chilled also, but is better after resting a while.

Once filling is ready, whisk egg in measuring cup.  Whisk in water.  Whisk in flour and salt until smooth.  Let rest 5-10 minutes.

Heat small frying pan over medium heat; lightly oil with oiled towel.  Pour three-tbsp-ish batter into pan and swirl to coat bottom.  Cook 20-30 seconds, or until firm enough to wiggle free with rubber spatula and flip with fingers.  Cook about 5 seconds after flipping.  Pick up at edges and lay slightly off-center on plate, pretty (usually what faced up prior to flipping) side down.  Spread with heaping tbsp. of filling and dot lower half with strawberries.  Fold over crepe; it should now be centered in the plate.  Garnish with a bit more filling, a couple strawberries, and powdered sugar.  Serve and enjoy!

Makes 5 crepes.      


   

Welcome and Recipe

I love accents.  Not in the way of, "whoa, that French guy's accent is sexy," but as in "I attend a Greek Orthodox Church where 80% of the members are from Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, etc, so therefore I know a whole lot of a amazing people who have accents and therefore I LOVE ACCENTS.  Now add the fact that my immediate family and I love to imitate anyone we know.  Lots of friends with accents + frequent imitations = tons and tons and tons of family jokes based on various accents.

Our priest is from Romania, and, being the priest, he does a good bit of talking at church...so we have lots of Father Silviu quotations frequently repeated in my household.

Usually, when pastors try to be "cool," it's terribly annoying.  But, when Father Silviu used "American" colloquialisms, it is most excellent, hilarious, adorable...you know, all that.

"Jesus didn't miss a beat."

"I mean, come on, get real."

"Oh, that was my bad."

Sadly, I can't type in a Romanian accent.

Thus the title of this blog.  "We will go out into the church and uhhhhhhh eat some uhhhhhhhh delicious foods." 

This blog is about some delicious foods.  One of my favorite things to do is make meals from whatever I can find, especially farmer's markety type ingredients.  I love making usually store-bought staples from scratch.  Though, of course, I often don't.

Here's a sample of what should happen on this blog.  It has no picture as of yet, but was super yummy so I'm sure to make it again and take a picture.

My long-time buddy Mo (Maurice, properly) came to visit a few hours with my brother (Matthew) and I.  As I made dinner Mo asked me what I was making.  My answer: "Some kind of pasta."  Then, a few minutes later, "You like salmon, right?"

Ingredients

1 lb. angel hair pasta
olive oil
1/2 head garlic: cloves crushed, peeled, and diced
1/2 bunch basil leaves
1 bunch asparagus: cut into 1 inch pieces
1 can salmon: drained and rinsed
1/4 cup sour cream
Kosher salt
fresh ground pepper

Put on water for pasta.  In large skillet, saute garlic in good amount of oil.  Add asparagus and basil when garlic becomes fragrant.  Cook until asparagus is bright green.  The water should be boiling by now: add tsp-ish of salt and pasta.  Add salmon to oil, garlic, basil, and asparagus mixture.  Add bit of salt.  Add sour cream; turn off heat after mixing but leave pan on burner.  Reserving 1/2 cup water, drain pasta.  Add pasta and water to pan; mix to coat until water is evaporated.  Scoop pasta out into bowls and garnish with fresh pepper.

We all really, really enjoyed this.

So, I hope you stay!  Enjoy the recipe and chit-chat!