Ottolenghi's Sweet Potato Galettes

Kate called the house the other afternoon, as she was walking home from the market. She was all about these little sweet potato galettes that she was going to make for a small dinner party she was having at her apartment. The recipe was coming straight from the first Ottolenghi cook book. As she was talking about them, I began to think that that recipe seemed all too familiar and when I went to my copy of the cook book, I found the recipe marked with a post-it note. Yup, mother and daughter think alike sometimes ...especially when it comes to food!

Curried Chicken Salad ... and a Hike

This is a healthy and lightened up version of chicken salad with a hot curry kick. It is a recipe found in a magazine called Delight- Gluten Free. I've had my eye on it for a while and was waiting for a day when I knew I'd be hungry for a substantial lunch-time sandwich. Today was the day! I started my day early, as it's really hot out. SB and I wanted to hike a piece of land over near Richmond, New Hampshire where the mountain laurel is in full bloom. We spent the morning exploring the forest trail along a small brook that feeds into Tully Brook and driving the back roads in the vicinity. By the time we got home, we were hot and hungry.

Middle Eastern Lentils and Peppers with a Side of Rice

My sweetheart has been gone for two weeks ... he's a long-distance bike riding maniac. My brother, Rich is his cronie and partner in insanity. They took a big loop of a trip from New Hampshire to Boston to Cape Cod to the Rhode Island and Connecticut coasts to Long Island to New York City to the Hudson Valley to western Massachusetts and back to New Hampshire. The weather has been less than stellar for the past couple weeks, so I wanted their welcome home meal to be hot, comforting and simple. I thought they would be wet, hungry, and tired ... and I was correct. Last evening, the guys dragged themselves and all their gear into the house at around 6 PM. They'd been riding since 7 AM. Boy, did they look haggard, but lo and behold ... dinner was just being placed on the platter! It was piping hot and so comforting! When I grinned and chortled, " Just in time for dinner !", they  asked, "Are you clairvoyant? How did you do this?" There was no clairvoyance. It was luck, folks. Pure luck.

Molly Wizenberg's Meatballs ... Another Game-Changer!

Molly Wizenberg is cut from the same bolt as Clotilde Dusoulier - both foodies started out as young professionals right out of the academic environment and both tossed it all to write about, make, enjoy, and influence cyberfoodie culture. Molly and her husband have taken the path of restauranteurs and Molly has published a wonderful memoir on her father and family, her move to create a food blog called Orangette, and her courtship and marriage. Like many young women these days, she has chosen to balance a 'team dream' with her own aspirations as a writer. She is a modern day game changer in that she is living the 'follow your passion and make it work for you' mantra of so many folk - AND she is making it work in a wildly successful way.  Good for her and how nice of her to take her blog followers along for the ride ...

She has been a subtle influence on me since the time that I started reading food blogs and concentrating on creating my own little spot in cyberspace. Her writing style is casual and engaging. The blog, Orangette has been an interesting, fun, poignant, and addictive spot to visit. Her ability to chatter about the most inane and sometimes intimate of life's moments and bring them around to make a point or share a dish has been her hook - the way she draws her followers along through the blog and brings them back time after time. She is an anthropologist by training and while she makes light of her university studies, she has definitely kept some of that training running through her commentary on food and family, food and friendships, and food and culture ... mix that with a healthy sense of humor and its a good combination. To boot, she chooses some excellent foods to share on her blog and in her book (soon to be books). When A Homemade Life came out, I ordered it up and spent a few days making the recipes with which I was most intrigued ... one, the scones that I've posted is an adaptation of her recipe. I also posted a review of the book  and made the first set of those scones right from a recipe on her blog. Sooo good!