Tasty Tapenade

Driving back from Main Range on Easter weekend, Jon and I stopped at a farmer's market in some small town in the back of beyond. After strolling around a bit, we found a olive vendor that made everything under the sun from olives. Jon loves his olives and now our cupboards are stocked full of olive pastes, tapenade, stuffed olives and olive oil.



So, what's a girl to do with gallons of tapenade? I was flicking through an old copy of the The Notebook (very similar to Real Simple in the US) and found a great recipe for a tomato and tapenade galette. It's a take on a French dish with a puffed pastry base topped with layers of tapenade, feta cheese, tomatoes and oregano.

It was a hit with Jon; it was one of the few things that he gushed over and inhaled. I'm still not sold on olives, but I think with the stockhold we have in the house I am going to have to learn to love them.

Pulp Fiction

Jon has been on my back to start trying new foods. I am terrible at trying new foods and have a really limited pallette, so I really can't argue with him. So today while I was at the local fruit and veggie market I decided to find the most exotic fruit and give it a go.



The colors at the market are amazing and there is such an amazing selection of yummy, healthy produce. One fruit jumped off the shelves at me - the dragonfruit. It is grown in Southeast Asia and Central / South America harvested from a cactus plant. The outside is prickly and bright pink with a pulpy seed filled center. Supposedly very yummy with ice cream.

The verdict: It doesn't taste like much and kind of feels like eating paste.

As I told Jon, Rome wasn't built in a day. There is hope for me yet.

Beautiful Sunset

We had the most amazing sunset last night. The white exterior of our building was glowing pink - absolutely stunning.

Bread & Butter

In college, someone once joked that I could be "Betty Crocker by day, Betty Ford by night." Now, although that's not entirely accurate, I do every now and again get struck by the urge to bake something completely random from scratch.

I was hit by one of the moments of domestic goddess inspiration today that you get every so often. As I was making dinner, I decided that we needed (not wanted, really and truly needed) homemade focaccia bread to go along with dinner. Walking 200 meters to the bakery across the street to get bread made by someone else's hands simply wouldn't do.



Now, this is all quite funny because I have never baked bread in my life and I had no idea what I was doing. I dusted off the old Betty Crocker cookbook and gave it a go!

End result, it turned out pretty good for a first effort. Now to clean up the bloody mess in the kitchen.