Remember, we’ve been remodeling our bathrooms. It’s now been about 9 weeks, I think, maybe longer. The powder room and full bath downstairs are nearly done. The upstairs guest bathroom is nearly done also, and next week they start on the demolition of the master bathroom. Don’t know how many weeks it will take to do that one. Hopefully not as long as the others.

That’s the guest bath upstairs. We’re in the process of moving into it while the master bath is being done. We don’t yet have mirrors on the wall in front of the two sinks, or any hardware except the toilet paper holder. And we will have some kind of window treatment. Don’t know what yet, but nothing really to block the light. Haven’t yet used the shower, but will in just a few days. The granite is a greeny-black-brown color and blends nicely with the mosaic tile in the shower. My big ceramic urn (I think it’s an olive oil pot, but decorative only) I bought in Italy years ago blends well with the color scheme. My DH, bless his crazy, silly heart, has computed that the new cabinet above the toilet will hold 52 rolls of toilet paper. Only problem is, I don’t know how you can reach it while you’re, uhm, sitting.

There’s a picture of the nearly finished powder room downstairs. Only thing missing is the toilet paper holder at this point. I just love the copper vessel sink. Dave hates it. Thinks that in 3 years it will “date” the bathroom.

I need some nice, new green finger towels for this room. The mirror is the same. So are the sconces and the wallpaper. It’s just the cabinet and toilet that are new. Do note the cute little feet on the cabinet. It’s supposed to make it look like the cabinet is a piece of furniture.

Darci tells me I simply must have a new rug in this room. She’s going to pick it out for me.

And there is the downstairs bathroom, fondly called “Dave’s bathroom.” A little hard to wash your hands at the moment with no plumbing hardware. There’s a leak in the shower mechanisms, so we don’t have water to this room yet. To be finished tomorrow, we’re told. The granite is the same as the one upstairs (green-black-brown). This is an ADA type of shower – you can’t see it, but there’s a slight slanted ramp to get into the shower (you can barely discern the glass shower barrier – see the right edge just to the right of the vertical green mosaic tile. Anyway, if either of us were in a wheelchair, we could wheel in, as they say. The wall color is a kind of moss green.

I love how everything looks so far. Our decorator, Darci, has done such a good job of coordinating colors and design.

There’s a photo of our master bath and dressing room area. It’s a chaotic mess right now as we’re both moving things to our bedroom, to the other bathroom, to the guest room and to the studio up another half level.

Along the right side are two closets that house my dressy clothes and my way-too-many jackets. On the left is another odd-shaped impractical closet that will stay the same (doors ajar) where I have extra shoes, dress heels I never wear at all, extra sweaters etc.

I think this would be the right opportunity to get rid of some of those things. Shoes that don’t fit, sweaters that are very out of date, or whatever. On the left side there’s a mirror, showing a reflection of my DH’s separate sink (and his 2nd set of artificial legs propped up against the cabinet). There’s also a large walk-in closet (his) that’s off to the left. The toilet is on the immediate left.

And down at the far end you can see a big white tub – that’s the jacuzzi tub that’s departing. I never – ever – use it. At the far end and to the left is a big shower. It will be bigger, and also adaptable for wheelchair access. We’ll have a small, free standing tub at the end on the right, kind of angled. We’re going to have a new window (behind the hanging light) down there at the end – one that will open to provide a ventilation path in the warm summer months. My sink is on the left just past those doors, and behind it is a very small walk-in closet (mine). But then, I have clothes completely filling the large closet in the guest room, so I have no room to complain!

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If I could just reach into that picture, I suppose I’d reach for the toast first. Oh, was it ever delish. Well, the salmon was too, but the toast was memorable! With oodles of butter, garlic and herbs. Could I just have that for lunch, please?

What you do with leftover salmon, I don’t know, but I’m always at a loss for how to use up a serving or two of salmon, other than just reheating it in the microwave. One of my favorite company meals is a Grilled Salmon with Watercress Salad. Invariably I have just a little bit left over and the salad part isn’t edible the next day. So I end up with a chunk of salmon with nothing else to go with it. Now I have a solution with this recipe. Phillis Carey always has such great ideas for making use of leftovers, this being a perfect one. It will become part of my regular repertoire.

The recipe below assumes you need to cook the salmon from scratch, but if you have leftovers, you’ll know where to pick up in this recipe. The big flakes are marinated in a dressing for a couple of hours, then it’s mounded on the baby Romaine (Trader Joe’s carries that) or use some other kind of tender lettuces, like butter lettuce. As you toss the salmon (gently, gently) you’ll find that the bigger chunks will break apart some – that’s fine – but that’s why you start with bigger flakes to begin with.

Meanwhile, do make the toasted bread. It is just so good. Undoubtedly loaded with too many fat grams, but hey, you’re eating omega-3 fatty acids in the salmon, so it balances out, right?

printer-friendly PDF for the complete recipe
printer-friendly PDF for just the ciabatta herb toasts

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For those of you who printed out the PDF or copied the recipe in the post, there was a little mistake. I forgot to add the cocoa in my recipe write-up. Apparently in David Lebovitz’ blog version (which I went online to copy and paste when I wrote up the post) he didn’t include it, but in his book, he did. The book version is the recipe I followed – and it’s a big, whopping 1/2 teaspoon, I think. But it did make a subtle difference – I do believe. Click HERE to go back to that post. Thanks to my reader, Donna, who noticed the error! Thanks, Donna.

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This recipe had been languishing in my to-try file for about 5 years, just waiting for the right opportunity when I had some good tasting, ripe and very red tomatoes. This is a Mario Batali recipe, from his cookbook that he did with some help by Gweneth Paltrow, Spain…A Culinary Road Trip. But actually, I’d clipped the recipe from an article in Food and Wine Magazine.

In the headnote to the recipe, Mario explained that the tomato concoction resembles a gazpacho – the very traditional type they make in Spain – that contains a goodly amount of fresh, toasted country bread in it. Since I love gazpacho, I thought this was a shoe-in for me.

You start with some freshly chopped garlic, then add the chunked-up tomatoes (no need to peel or seed them) into a food processor. Add some olive oil, sherry vinegar (an essential ingredient – do not substitute regular vinegar) and some salt and pepper. That’s IT. I stopped the processor once to scrape down the sides and blended it until it was smooth. Poured it into a serving bowl and refrigerated it for a few hours before serving.

Now, the garnishes are a little unusual. The recipe calls for Serrano ham, a unique ham from Spain. A quite salty ham in case you’ve never had it. In Spain the ubiquitous noontime snack is a ham sandwich. Almost always made with Serrano ham. I could hardly eat such sandwiches because the meat is SO salty. I’m not even sure you can buy Serrano ham in the U.S., so I substituted some andouille sausage I had on hand. Then I added the diced-up hard boiled egg. From the photo at top, you can see the little bowls of both. But I’d suggest that if you garnish the baguette slices (with the dip on top) it’ll be a lot easier than asking your guests to do it. If you had shaved pieces of ham, that might be fine. If you had slices of egg, that might work too, but to get diced egg and diced ham to stick on the dip was difficult. Just so you know.

What I liked: The flavor was wonderful. Everybody liked it – we had a bunch of family at our home that day and even the grandkids liked it. You don’t have to add on the ham or egg. But in any case, the flavor combo was really delicious. I’d make it again. The recipe also said that if you have leftovers of this, just add some water (a little bit) and serve it as gazpacho (soup). The dip was also very easy to make!

What I didn’t like: As I explained 2 paragraphs ago, diced garnishes were a bit difficult to stick to the dip, so either compose the bread slices in the kitchen or make the ham and egg pieces much larger.

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Three years ago: Sweet and Sour Eggplant
Four years ago: Joan’s Pasta Salad (one of my favorites)

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During a recent cooking class with Phillis Carey, she began the introduction to this dish by saying that this is one of her very favorite dishes. And that she makes it very frequently for herself and has never tired of the combination of flavors. I scribbled notes on my recipe in a hurry there – I always listen closely when Phillis tells us it’s a favorite of hers because I’ve never not liked any of her favorites. And she mentioned that yes, making risotto is a bit of a nuisance, what with all that constant stirring for 30-35 minutes. But she assured us that we’d be glad when we tasted it. And indeed we were. We heard “mmmmm” all around the classroom. My mmmm included! I nearly licked the plate. For risotto. It was so gosh-darned delicious.

It’s a traditional risotto in how it’s made – nothing different about the preparation or the stirring, or keeping the chicken stock hot. It was the combination of the sausage, the leeks, the corn. And the prettiness of the added spinach. And the red of the tomatoes. Well, just all of it.

I made the dish a few nights later, as I said, with the identical ingredients (except I used pork Italian sausage) and my DH and I nearly licked the plate. Don’t skimp on the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Or the butter – that’s an important addition at the end. Do use fresh, baby spinach too. If you have some fresh basil, sprinkle a bit of that on top as you serve it.

So, how’d we like it? Well, I’d had it at the cooking class, so I knew I’d enjoy it. My DH was so busy eating it he couldn’t even look up to say anything. Meaning that he loved it. We both did. It did take about 45 minutes to make, but I didn’t have to stir it every second. I was close by to stir it around every 30 seconds or so and add more broth as I chopped up the tomatoes, cut the fresh corn off the cob. I made it last week for our friends in Colorado too, and they both thought it was delicious.

What I liked: I loved it all. The texture of the arborio rice – it came out perfectly. The sausage added some great taste, but wasn’t overwhelming. The color with the spinach and tomatoes. The cheese. Oh goodness yes, it was all good. And this is now going onto my “favorites” list if that’s any indication of how delicious it is!
What I didn’t like: well, I suppose the stirring gets a little tedious, but that’s it.

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MasterCook 5+ file and MasterCook 14 file

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We’re back home from our 8-day trip to Colorado. And I need to write up some posts just about the journey and the sights we saw, places we stayed, etc. Plus, I have several posts to write about some of the delicious food Sue fixed for us while we were there. Meanwhile, here’s a recipe I made before we left – and I took some of it along to give to Sue & Lynn, our gracious hosts in Denver.

It must have been a year ago that I purchased David Lebovitz’ book – a memoir of his life in Paris – called The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious – and Perplexing – City. I started reading it, got about half way through and somehow the book got put down somewhere – under something or filed in a book shelf somewhere – and I couldn’t find it. Then just recently it popped up in that unlikely place and I picked up where I’d left off. At the end of each chapter he inserts a recipe. Some of them I’d already read on his blog, and perhaps I’d read this one there too, but it didn’t galvanize me into action like it did this time.

A nut mix that’s baked with an elusive glaze. If I didn’t know what was in it because I made it, I’d never have suspected there was smoked paprika in it. Or unsweetened cocoa, either. Or cinnamon, for that matter! And because there’s not a lot of any of those spices, none of them overwhelms. But put together, the mixture is ever so delicious. There is some sugar (dark brown) and some maple syrup. And a touch of butter. And pretzels. In my mixture above, the pretzels I used were little short bite-sized logs rather than the twisted pretzels he called for in his recipe. And I used hazelnuts, cashews and macadamia nuts in my mixture (you can vary what you put into it). You combine half pretzels and half nuts.

The mixture gets tossed with all of the glaze ingredients and it’s roasted for about 15 minutes, cooled, then you do have to break the stuff apart (the sugar acts as a kind of glue/glaze – although it’s nowhere near that kind of sweet). In one recipe he said it will keep a week; in another he suggests 5 days. Anyway, use it up in a few days.

This would make a really nice hostess gift too – just attach a little note that suggests eating it soon. Likely this mixture would not freeze well with the sugar glaze on it. I haven’t tried it, but my instinct is no, don’t try. Just know this is one of those recipes you need to make and eat.

What I liked about it: it was easy to make. I liked that I could vary the nuts and make it something a bit unusual. (He didn’t recommend walnuts in this mixture, fyi.) We ate them for about a week, with no noticeable change in flavor. We loved the flavor – the crispy sweet glaze that doesn’t overwhelm.

What I didn’t like: I do keep a supply of different nuts on hand in our garage refrigerator; but if I didn’t, I’d have had to make a trip to the market for nuts. I don’t stock pretzels in my house at all, so a trip to the store was needed for those. Therefore, it’s not exactly something you could whip together at the last minute. And hopefully you’ll have it all eaten up before it gets stale since its shelf life is short.

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A year ago: Grilled Pound Cake with Balsamic Peaches
Three years ago: Cauliflower Tabbouleh (a real unusual salad – maybe not to everyone’s taste)
Four years ago: Grilled Sweet Potato Salad (a favorite)

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When we get home from our trip I’ll write a full post about this special place. It’s in Colorado Springs. Photo was taken with my iPad camera function. Somehow I left home without the camera to USB cord so I can’t transfer any photos from my camera to my iPad. My iPhone 3G doesn’t take the best pictures. And I can’t do much photo editing either. The iPad is the greatest for travel though. It fits in my just slightly larger purse. More soon.

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Photo taken with my iPad. From the B and B where we stayed in Cripple Creek, an old town deep in the Rockies. This was the view from our room.

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Road trip the last two days. This picture was taken of Twin Lakes. Beautiful sunny day, about 80 degrees.

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Well. Where to start here  . . . the other day I asked my DH if, when he visited Costco, would he please look for any summer fruit. I’m weary of apples and pears. I’m eager for plums to come in since I want to make that New York Times’ #1 requested recipe – a Purple Plum Torte. But plums certainly aren’t in season yet. When he returned he had a big tray of peaches. As hard as rocks, but about 13 or 14 of them. Anxious as he was, he ate one the next day. It was not sweet at all and he could hardly get it down. He thought we’d end up with the entire tray of unripe fruit. But I just let that box sit out on the kitchen counter, the base cradling each individual peach, for about 4 days or so. And sure enough, all the peaches ripened beautifully.  And, as you know with such things, every single one of them ripened the same day. So, I needed to do something with them. We ate a couple, a gave two of them to a friend, but I still had about 9 of them. I used 8 (just a little over 3 pounds) for this dessert.

Over the years I’ve been somewhat unsuccessful with peach cobblers or crisps. I’m finicky when it comes to what I like. One day a few weeks ago we visited a new restaurant in our town and after a nice dinner, we ordered their fruit crisp. My usual question to the waiter is: “Is is really sweet?” Usually they say yes, or fairly so, or something similar, but I try it anyway. And am usually disappointed because most restaurants load them up with too much sugar for my palette. Last summer I recall that I made a peach cobbler – I think it was The Pioneer Woman’s version with a delicious maple syrup enhanced whipped cream. It was good, but still didn’t meet with my dream of a perfect peach crisp.

You see, I like a really crispy crust. What I really want is my mother’s Crisp Apple Pudding but made with peaches. I’ve tried using that recipe, but because peaches have so much fluid in them, it always ends up soggy and never crispy enough. The flour-based topping in that recipe just ends up like gum on top of the peaches. Sigh.

Therefore, this time around, I was on a detective mission. First I went to my resource – Eat Your Books, that website where I have all my cookbooks listed and I just put in my search request and it tells me which cookbooks I own contain a recipe. Well, the list was long – I think there were about 35 versions of Peach Crisp including a few in my barbecue cookbooks, books I’d probably not have looked in for peach recipes! Pulling cookbooks off the shelves, I looked at them. Eliminated all of them made with oatmeal. Not my thing. Didn’t want to mix peaches and blueberries or rhubarb, although there were plenty of those too. America’s Test Kitchen had more than one recipe, but I went to my bookshelf and pulled off the TV Show cookbook I have and read the blurb. The test kitchen chefs had determined a variety of different things about peach crisp – that using all brown sugar was overpowering. Using all white sugar lacked character. So they used half and half. That keeping the topping chilled until just before sprinkling it on top helped make the topping crunchy. That sounded good to me. And although they noted that most peach crisps gave off a lot of watery juice, they preferred the juice without adding cornstarch or flour to the peaches.

Their combination involved pulsing flour, sugar, spices and butter in the food processor (briefly), then adding in some nuts (they used pecans, I wanted walnuts). They felt that combination made the best chemistry for a crisp top. And they added a small amount of sugar to the peaches, but also some lemon zest and lemon juice (that was different). All sounded good on paper. So I put it to the test. It was very easy to make. Just be sure to peel the fruit – I didn’t, a mistake – when baked the peel is kind of stringy, unappetizing  and hard to cut, even though the peaches were almost fuzz-less.

I did have to make this in a larger baking dish – they suggested a 9-inch pie plate. Well, there was no way it would fit! Three pounds of fruit nearly overflowed the pie plate without the topping. And since I doubled the topping, I really did need a bigger dish. But, it was fantastic. I think I may start a new thing here on my blog – at the bottom of each posting, before the pdfs and the recipe, I’m going to tell you in straight talk what I liked and didn’t like about it. So here goes:

What I liked: it had the perfect balance of sweet and tart for me! The contrast of the tart fruit (because it had lemon juice on it, and very little sugar) and the topping (which was sweet with the brown and white sugar combo) was delicious. The chewy nuts added a great texture boost to me. I pulsed them a bit too long (a caution) so they were smaller than expected. Loved the crunchy topping – I actually doubled the topping and I should have baked it a little longer at the higher temp because of that since the center didn’t quite get crunchy enough, which was my fault. Next time I’ll make sure about that.

What I didn’t like: the next day, after being refrigerated, the topping was soggy. All the juice was absorbed into the topping. Alas, there’s not much to be done about that. But it tasted great for breakfast with a bit of milk and fat-free half and half poured over the top). When I served it for dessert the first night, there was a lot of juice in the baking dish – it seemed like too much, but it tasted wonderful – syrupy and tart with the lemon juice. If you really don’t like the juiciness, add about a tablespoon or so of flour or cornstarch to the raw peaches. Maybe the best advice is to make this and eat it all up the first day!

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A year ago: GF Chocolate Shortbread Cookies
Two years ago: Celery, Date, Walnut and Pecorino Salad
Four years ago: Apricot Ice Cream

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