Best Sandwich EVER.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: this is the best sandwich ever. And it's easy. And the ingredients are flexible. I'm not kidding; it's heavenly. I found a recipe somewhat similar to this years ago, and adapted it to my liking. Every so often we have these with some chips on the side and it's one of our favourite lunches. Try it, you'll love it!

Here's what you need:

1 pear. I have not tried this with a different fruit; pears have the exact amount of sweetness and softness.
Meat of your choice. I've used porcetta, proscuitto, and genoa salami. I prefer the first and last; proscuitto is too chewy for my liking.
Cheese of your choice. I've used asiago and mozzarella; I prefer asiago because of its saltiness (so any other hard Italian cheese would work fine, too) but some people prefer more mild cheeses. Experiment!
Artisan bread. I usually get some kind of ciabatta bread or something similar. Something crusty and dense.
Garlic butter. Mix a little garlic powder in with your butter. It's all you need for a condiment.

First step: slice the pear thinly, put them in a small bowl, and microwave for 30 seconds. This softens them and makes them juicy. They will look a little rough (see above) but it really adds to it. Slice your bread to desired thickness, spread some garlic butter on it, and layer your pear, meat (I used mild genoa salami today) and cheese (asiago). Easy to assemble!

This is all you have left to do:

Put 'em in a frying pan and lay a heavy cast iron pan on top. Heat them until they get crispy on the outside and the cheese gets melty and everything is warm. MMMMMM. Look at this! LOOK!




You can make it thicker if you want; I prefer a crispy, thin sandwich.


I didn't think my kid (almost four) would eat it, so I made him a raspberry jam sandwich. He had a bite of my husband's sandwich and confiscated the rest of it, jam sandwich forgotten. If you know my kid, it's got to be darn good food for him to set aside his beloved jam sandwiches.



Easy. Versatile. Kid-approved. Uses up that stale bread and leftover cheese and meat. Takes ten minutes. And tastes fantastic. How can you go wrong?

Enjoy!

As of late...

Mmm, food. It's that time of year when everything in the garden is ready all at once, so we've been having a lot of good eats in our house. Above is some fresh, delicious salsa. You really can't beat it.
Aaaaand microwave bread-and-butter pickles. They taste great and took almost no time to make. The recipe is on the allrecipes website.



I also concocted my own recipe for baked tomatoes by looking at a few other ones. Seriously, folks, these things are divine. DIVINE. Well, the 3-year-old wasn't crazy about them, but the husband and I loved them.


Catching up with a couple of Project 52 photos; above is for the theme 'Slow down and look back' for week 33. We spent a lazy evening slowly driving around on the wheeler and picking blackberries. Came across these berries; no idea what they are, but they were pretty!

Week 34 was 'connections', so I snapped a photo of my kidlet and his great-grandfather doing what they love: playing in Grampie's shed on the lawn mower.



Now we're recovering (haha) from Hurricane Irene (which was actually a tropical storm when it hit yesterday). Not much damage; mostly to our garden and apple trees, with scattered debris across the yard. Blessedly, after the storm blew through things cooled off; the storm itself was extremely balmy and made sleeping difficult.

I also did a wedding on August 20th. The couple is still on their honeymoon so I won't share any photos yet, but I'm very pleased with how they're turning out as I sloooooowly make my way through all 1800 photos. Congratulations, Christina and Aaron!

Pomodoro Sauce!

Have you got an abundance of garden tomatoes? I do. Last year I posted a recipe for canned salsa. Unfortunately, we are salsa-ed out, so I had to come up with another way to use up some tomatoes.

A few years ago, I came across a recipe for pasta pomodoro, a sauce made with fresh tomatoes and a few other ingredients, and loved it. So I thought I'd give it another go tonight. It's easy, fresh, and delicious.

So, along with those beautiful red tomatoes (seriously, some of them were still warm from the garden - is there anything better? Wait, don't answer that) you need an onion. Actually, the recipe calls for 1/2 an onion but since I used more tomatoes than called for, I used an entire onion. And, well, I like onion. In case you don't know what an onion looks like, here it is:

Chop it up. I usually chop it finely. Throw it in a deep frying pan with....



...extra-virgin olive oil. I have a love-hate relationship with this stuff. I mean, it's useful. Everyone loves it. It is heavily featured in every other recipe these days. But I think it tastes vile, so I use it sparingly. This recipe calls for 1/4 cup. I used about 2 tablespoons. You also need...


...four cloves of garlic, minced. Toss it in the pan with the oil and onions and cook, stirring often, until soft and lightly browned.


Next in the pan? About a cup of broth. If you don't have homemade on hand (I didn't tonight), canned/boxed is fine. I find vegetable broth highly superior to chicken/beef broth unless it's homemade, so I used veg.


Also, 2-3 T of balsamic vinegar. It's just enough to taste. Love this stuff.


And, of course, your tomatoes. Two cups, chopped. I put in about three cups.

Let that simma for a while. In the meantime, cook some pasta (I used 7-cheese tortellini, which was one of the few good things about my first trip to Costco yesterday) and round up some fresh basil. Straight from my garden this afternoon, behold:



Chop it up and add a pinch of crushed red pepper (or more, if you like it spicy).


Put that in the sauce with some salt and pepper.


Simmer a bit longer. And now, what better use of your time than to freshly grate some cheese? I used asiago:


Use a slotted spoon to serve out the sauce over your pasta, top with cheese, and voila:


Healthy, delicious, quick, and fresh. I, uh, may or may not be making it again tomorrow. Even my husband, who could probably go through life without encountering pasta again (save my lasagna) and be perfectly happy, gobbled this up and ate Charlie's leftovers. Deeeelish.

(Not my best quality photography, but I was in a rush!)

I'm hoping to get into more recipes again this fall, so stay tuned!

Playing catch-up.

Time to play catch-up...here are my last four Project 52 contributions. Above was week 29, and the theme was 'Get In Close', so out came my macro extension tubes and I took this of my begonia plant.

Week 30 was 'A Letter of the Alphabet'. I chose the letter S for sandals, splashing, and summer.

Week 31: Sky. I snapped this on one of those days when the weather just can't make up its mind. I thought the deer looked so peaceful next to the tumultuous sky.



Finally, week 32 was 'My favourite time of day'. I took this one evening after a summer rain with my extension macro tubes. It was chosen as one of the top ten of the week. :)



Hopefully I can keep on top of this now. :)

Final set of wedding photos.

Wedding photos are done, so I thought I'd post a few of my favourites from our portrait session. Chantal and Colby were fantastic at giving me the time I needed and happily going along with the poses I had in mind. Doesn't hurt that they're so photogenic as well. :) Congrats, you two, and thanks again for the opportunity - I learned a LOT from this experience!