Couscous Salad

I know, I’ve been a bad blogger recently. Regular blogging is tough. Maybe its because I’m easily distracted. Look at the pretty butterfly over there….What was I saying? Oh yes, distractions, they happen and often. It is easy and surprisingly fun to write this blog once I get into it but sometimes I forget I even have a blog. Every once in a while it is nice to have a pizza-booze-tely night with my lovely boyfriend and leave the cooking to the professionals over at pizza hut. How I love their cheese stuffed crust, such a guilty pleasure. And after one of those nights it’s easy to become lazy about cooking. I’ll end up making quick meals or things we’ve had a million times–nothing blog worthy.

Then there are other times, like tonight, when I cook up a storm. I’ve got five different dishes on the menu tonight, four of which still need to be assembled–maybe I should be writing this later. The masses can wait. After all the chef should be able to decided when it’s dinner time. But as for the dishes, I’ll be blogging most of them in the near-ish future once I get my computer fixed.

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Summertime Limeade and ramblings

It’s like lemonade but tangier.

I grew up drinking freshly made juices on a daily basis. I didn’t realize that it was unusual behavior to do so. In the United States you get your juice from a carton at the store. I don’t think Nicaragua even had premade juices. There were so many fruits, many of which stayed in season for most of the year. We never went without fresh juice. Before I learned how to cook or bake anything I learned how to pick ‘limon mandarinas‘ from our tree and make a pitcher of juice. Now I realize that limon mandarinas don’t even exist in the states, at least not anywhere that I’ve seen, and I’ve also realized that fresh juice is a pricey commodity.  When you decide to pay the price for fresh juice it pales in comparison to what we used to have in Nicaragua.

Nicaragua, my beautiful tropical land. We had over a dozen fruit trees in our backyard. Something was always blooming and bursting with life. I miss being able to climb those trees and pick my own fruit. Sometimes I’d just hide out in the avocado tree if I didn’t feel like seeing people. Or if I was feeling sociable I’d climb the mango tree and wave to the passersby on the street. I have many memories of just being perched on a branch somewhere. This is starting to sound like the memoirs of a monkey but it was peaceful and beautiful; I miss it sorely.

Pesto Bread

Oh sweet, sweet pesto bread (not actually sweet by the way, just a swirly, savory deliciousness), you are my new favorite type of bread. That’s saying a lot because I really like bread. I have always loved bread. Its softness, warmth and lightly crunchy exterior–how can anyone resist? And by the way, when I say I like bread I’m not referring to store bought bread, I mean fresh out of the oven bread from home. You really haven’t had bread until you’ve had homemade bread. I still haven’t mastered the art of bread making, nowhere close to that yet, but I hope that someday I will.