Life in Granville: An Italian-American Experience

Good evening, dear Reader. I've been under the weather lately and so much of my free time has been spent sleeping. (And for those of you who know me well know that I need to catch up on quite a bit of that..) In any case, I'm feeling much better now and am of course finding quite a bit of comfort through food. And while I have the energy (more so the memory), I wanted to catch you up on a dining experience from last Saturday. I received a call around 11am or so from fellow Gleek and Les Mis singing partner Amanda, who informed me that Elio, Damian and Alex were aiming to replicate for the first time her mother-in-law's recipe for Italian wedding soup, in celebration of Alex's birthday. With an invitation to join them, I went through my mental index of dishes to potential bring over and add to the occasion. For some reason, Italian wedding soup equated to lemons which yielded my first attempt at a limoncello cake with toasted meringue topping.

A Brezel in the States: World Food Day, Part I

World Food Day (which will officially be recognised tomorrow), and according to World Food Day USA, "is a worldwide event designed to increase awareness, understanding and informed, year-around action to alleviate hunger." There are certainly many who are quite far away from wherever you may be reading this blog post who lack food, let alone clean water and shelter; on the other hand, there are perhaps even those near you who may also be in a similar situation. Indeed, while food is a means of exploring identity and bringing people together, it can also give rise to exploitation, inequity, and division. If it's in your power to affect change on a grander scale, such as this video may suggest (and there are examples within that which could be adaptable), I've found this video to relate to the work I already do around food on this blog. And so, let the conversation continue; following is my first day of World Food Day weekend 2011.

Catching up on Easter Weekend

Good evening, dear Reader. We have now crossed into May and I have yet to still catch up on my April foodie experiences. With this said, I begin this relatively brisk post with another "from scratch" pancake recipe, or rather, my "cakes in a pan."

A Little Trip to Italy and Spain: Homemade Gnocchi with Romesco-esque Sauce, Fresh Dill, and Grated Parmesan

When I first bought my bag of mini red skin potatoes a few weeks ago, I had intended on cooking them up with some dill and calling it a day. Yesterday, I had purchased some hazelnuts I intended to use in my Nutella chip cookies but never got around to doing so, and alongside some leftover jarred pasta sauce and mini Italian bread, it was about time I used up some of these ingredients. To get this accomplished, and as alluded to in the title for this post, I revisited one of my favourite (but nevertheless challenging) recipes: gnocchi. Thankfully, I can report it was one of the best rounds of gnocchi I've made to date, and my Romesco-esque sauce brought in a ton of flavour that's much needed for essentially boiled potatoes.