Okay, I'm going to admit something rather shocking. Up until today, I wasn't all that excited for my trip. I know, crazy, right? But I've known it was coming for two years, known which trip I was going to be on for about 8 months, and I've been planning, preparing, shopping, making lists and piling things for my suitcase for more than a month now. It really hasn't been real. I've known all along that it's going to be awesome and I'm going to have tons of fun and I've been greatly anticipating the whole thing, but that adrenaline just hadn't kicked in yet.
But now, it has. Oh yes. And if I had needed any help getting that going, waking up to snow this morning (seriously? April 26th?) would definitely have done the trick. But wow am I ready now. Tonight I picked up one last thing at the store that I wanted to take with me and I've started packing. The rest has to wait until I do laundry and can finish up the toiletries, but it's so close I can taste it. It's a good thing I've been prepping things at work for the last two weeks or I'd be in trouble because I'm about 85% checked out right now. lol. But as it is, everything is looking perfectly on track (and I knock on wood as I say that so that some huge catastrophe doesn't come up tomorrow.)
In the meantime, I've been trying to use up stuff in my fridge since I'll be gone long enough that I need to worry about that. So what could I make with spinach, tomatoes and chicken besides a rather boring salad? I browsed on Tastespotting and found this post and I had to make something similar. I actually made it on Sunday and I've been eating leftovers, but it's really delicious.
I present to you, the tomato crostata.
Aside from the fact that this picture reveals exactly where my egg wash ended, it looks pretty yummy, yes? I kept the recipe for the crust almost identical (I was out of corn meal so I used instant polenta instead. It's almost the same, right? Worked like a charm, in any case.) For the filling, I had about 1/4C of sundried tomato pesto and I used that with a whole bunch of fresh spinach, about 4 cloves of garlic (this baby was strong. awesome.) and as little olive oil as I could manage and whipped up a puree in my food processor. Then I threw in a small handful of blanched almonds and gave it another whiz. After that, I added in the chicken and the tomatoes and mixed it up (with a spoon, not a food processor. lol).I poured it into the center of the crust, put the grated Dubliner cheese on top, and then folded it over to make the crostata.
I will make this again. Oh yes. The filling might vary, but it was really yummy.
And, because I keep forgetting to do this, I wanted to post the birthday card I made for Melody (who's birthday was last month. doh. Happy belated birthday!) I wanted to wait until I knew she'd gotten her package and then forgot. Normally I don't post cards because I kind of suck at making them, but I really liked this one (probably because I totally nabbed the idea from Erin Lincon's blog from when this stamp set came out on Papertrey.)
K. That's it for now... back to finishing up stuff on my to-do list and counting the hours until I'm off on my exotic adventure.
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