Have you traveled to a place that they said had good marinara sauce only to be disappointed?? Well come to San Luis Obispo and be transported! CLICK on the picture to be transported to paradice!
I first experienced Cafe Roma in San Luis Obispo well over 20 years ago… and it keeps getting better and better! Laura and I enjoyed our lunch today and the experience was extraordinary! Everything was wonderful… but the dessert was simple yet elegant. Cafe Roma’s bread pudding topped with a wonderful scoop of ice cream and what seemed like a caramel rum sauce. yummmmmmmm
If you have the opportunity to come to San Luis Obispo, stop and smell the roses at Cafe Roma… you will be very happy you did.
Quando le mie figlie a venire casa questo Natale, ceneremo tutti al ristorante “Cafe Roma”!
One of my new favorite squashes: Butternut! CLICK on this picture to read more about Butternut Squash!
In the United States we have two basic shapes of Butternut Squash, I prefer this larger economy version best! I love most types of squash, but I have to confess that Butternut ( or called Butternut Pumpkin in some parts) escaped me. Like most things, if the culinary experience is poor, we tend to avoid it. My interest wasn’t peaked until my daughter Kristin said she wanted to make a Butternut Squash Pie. She ‘claimed’ it was like Pumpkin, but better! Naturally, I wanted to try it out.
pealed, chopped and placed into a pressure cooker for 40 minutes! CLICK on this picture to be amazed at Butternut Squash's nutritional data!
The pressure cooker works great for this purpose … after a pie, I think a nice creamy soup will be next on the itinerary! Next, I cooked the pie on the stove with salt, butter and my spice blend in order to stay a little closer to how Kristin made her pie.
Cooking in butter with a nice spice blend of mine
The last step is to place the entire mixture into a freezer until the holidays… and bake the final pie when my daughters come home and we can enjoy it together. I tasted the puree and it was delicious… even with just salt, butter and spice ! It is a very nice departure from Pumpkin.
ready for the freezer
The texture turned out wonderfully smooth and with enough heavy cream and eggs it should be a wonderful pie. I’ll post the final recipe as we get closer to the holidays. Thanks, Chef Kristin.
the iPad as a recipe book is perfect! CLICK to see what I am making for my daughters this winter!
All the ladies in my family love those great deli style sandwiches and Pastrami is one of Laura’s favorite and I try to make it for her often. This Pastrami ( which starts by making ‘corned beef’ and smoking the final product transforms it to pastrami.. voila!!!) Karen loved them so much in high school she called the sandwich ‘cheese juice’. Often I would make plenty for her track meets to share and they were always a hit… but then it wasn’t hard to please hungry 16 year olds!
The real important lesson in all of this was the joy they all felt enjoying something homemade and everything made from scratch. Today, it is more important than ever to understand our nutritional needs and develop the basic culinary skills. I am always saddened when I hear young men and women who don’t have a foggiest about the very basics of cooking. Young ones, the microwave is for warming up coffee, cooking vegetables but it is not a replacement for the stove and a good recipe book. One story that touched me recently was of a French chef who took t his skills and expertise to the people and began teaching the fine art of French cooking…a truly heart warming story!
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Click on the picture to read how Chef Ducasse is bringing the beautiful art of French cooking to others
gingerbread cookies are great with coffee CLICK on picture for recipe
Do you see the ‘rose’ stamped into my cookies?? Well, it is there for fun and gingerbread cookies are wonderful on a slightly chilled day with coffee or tea. I think fondly of what William Shakespere once said about this humble fare:
“And I had but one penny in the world. Thou should’st have it to buy gingerbread.” – William Shakespeare
So, if you have time, bake up some gingerbread cookies… and if you don’t eat them right away, they last seemingly forever in my cookie jar!
When Laura and I were ‘chubby’, one of her favorite items was a natcho platter I would make that included my own home made tortilla strips, guacamole, refired beans, sour cream and various garnish. Well, obviously, we don’t do that anymore!
However, I was able to incorparate some of what I would add in her favorite dish with a fairlybasic standard Spanish Tortilla recipe. I call this new recipe a ‘fusion’ as it incorpaorates some of the Tex-Mex style of my mother-in-law with that of the Spanish. For example, I use 6-8 ounces of 3 Mexican cheeses in the tortilla itself (which acts as an excellent binding agent), some smoked green peppers, a little of my own 15 spice curry blend to accent the Spanish Paprika… and the customary sour cream and olives that you find on most South-Western dishes.
serving on an authentic spanish plate does make a difference! 😉
Obviously, served with my Margarita the experience is complete!… if followed by a little nap! 😉
