Pick-up-sticks Breadsticks

Few things are more fun to snack on than crunchy breadsticks, and is quite simple to make. I ran across a recipe to make these and had so much fun making (and eating) these fun snacks. For an outdoor performance by the San Francisco Opera in my neighborhood park, I packed these breadsticks and served it with white bean dip (one of my favorite things to make, I'll do a posting about this some day) and it was the perfect easy-to-take-along snack in the park. You do have to do some advance planning for this recipe, as the dough sits in the refrigerator overnight. Dough is prepared and chilled overnight. When you are ready to bake, the dough is rolled and stretched on 'n lightly floured surface to form a large rectangle. It is brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with freshly chopped rosemary, and freshly ground sea salt & black pepper. Using a pastry wheel (or pizza wheel in my case) little strips of dough is cut and placed on a baking sheet. The dough strips are stretched to the full length of the pan. Then the dough is given some time to rest and rise in a warm place. It will not rise very much, but the strips will appear fuller and rounder. Then into the hot oven and do keep a close eye on these guys as they will brown up pretty quickly when they are baked and will burn if not taken out of the oven in time! Let it cool on a wire rack and.... breadsticks ready to be served with a dip or hummus or even just plain. With the chopped rosemary, they are flavorful snacks by themselves too. My package of breadsticks-to-go for the park picnic was a brown paper bag and it worked really well for these extra-long, almost 2 feet in length, sticks.

Crustless Swiss Chard & Potato Quiche

So I recently discovered Swiss Chard and find that I really like cooking with it. That is great, because Chard (also known as Silverbeet) contains an impressive list of health promoting nutrients. It is similar to spinach and has a slight bitter taste that disappears when cooked.

The variety I seem to use most, is red Chard. It certainly adds some nice color to the plate.

Today's recipe is from Vegetarian Times Magazine and I think it turned out really good. It would make a great lunch, brunch or side dish.

Thick potato slices are cooked and lined in the bottom of the baking dish.

Chard is chopped and cooked with some garlic until leaves are wilted.

The chard mixture is spread over the potatoes, goat cheese crumbled on top and egg & milk mixture poured over. Bake and serve!

Roasting Red Peppers

One of my favorite ingredients is roasted red peppers. While I have certainly used the marinated jarred store-bought kind before I knew better and perhaps when in absolute dire hurry to get an appetizer thrown together in minutes, there is nothing like the real thing. And it is very easy to do.

Roasting over open flame is one option. My preference is to roast in the oven under the broiler.

INSTRUCTIONS

Line a pan with foil (to make clean up a snap).

TIP: To save time & energy, roast any other vegetables that you need for another purpose at the same time.

Lightly brush pan & peppers with olive oil.

Place under broiler with oven rack pretty high in oven.

Watch closely. Keep turning the peppers when tops start blackening.

Remove from oven and let cool for a minute to make it easier to handle. The charred skins will peel right off and seeds & stems can be removed very easily.

Now you can chop or slice to use in spreads, dips, salads, soups.

TIP: To liven up a simple pasta sauce, make your tomato sauce a little more interesting by adding a chopped roasted red pepper to it!

Zucchini Bread

After having an abundance of Zucchini leftover, I made a zucchini bread last week. Was not sure quite what to expect, but came out rather nicely. I think it is similar to carrot cake, and really should be called cake in stead of bread.

This version I found on allrecipes.com and it also contains canned pineapple. I added some walnuts that I had in the freezer and it added a really nice flavor and crunch.