Posts tagged awesome

(Via, by way of @mbsnyder.)

I discovered a lovely meal-ender yesterday, based on the concepts of pie, cherries jubilee, and grilled pineapple: Simply sautéed fruit.

I keep seeing all these recipes involving fruit cooked with sugar. But think about it: Fruit carries its own sugar. It’s already sweet. It’s why grilled pineapple is so amazing without any added sugar (slice it into rings or chunks and throw it on the grill for a few minutes — you can thank me later).

So, I cut up/pitted/hulled some cherries, strawberries, a pluot (a cool hybrid of plum and apricot that I bought because it was on sale), and blueberries (which I left whole).

I sprayed a frying pan with olive oil (healthier than veg and doesn’t affect the flavor like I used to suspect it would), heated it up to a medium-low setting, and dumped the fruit in. After 3-4 minutes, I turned everything over and cooked for another 3-4 minutes, and dropped it into a bowl.

It was SO fantastic. The strawberries were the least interesting, but I’m not the world’s hugest strawberry fan, so that may be why. The blueberries and cherries were phenomenal.

I’m going to make it again tonight for friends and drop some granola over the mix at the end. Highly recommended. (And healthy!) I’ll grab a picture of it later to share.

Fact: I have a mega sweet tooth.

I’m fiercely craving calissons, which I’m assuming I can’t get around here. They’re a specialty of Aix-en-Provence, where I studied abroad. I haven’t had them in years, but they suddenly popped into my head for some reason and now I can’t get them out. I’m going to have to make some.

I found a recipe on about.com; we’ll see how it goes. Unfortunately, I’m not a very good baker. Following directions and precisely measuring things are for some reason quite difficult for me. I’m too careless or too ADD-stricken, maybe both. I’m much better at improvisational cooking. Anyway, this will be an adventure.

(Photo grabbed from seriouseats.com)

While Googling to find a recipe, I found this super-interesting explanation for the origin of calissons, on seriouseats.com:

And now for the racy French story behind them. Legend has it that at the second marriage of Good King Réné in 1473, he had these suggestively petal-shaped confections served to his young, fresh second wife. With these, named for “caress,” over time, he won her over—mind, soul, and, after awhile, body.

This song is so good. Like bounce-around, bob-your-head (you might even shake your ass a little) good. It’ll get stuck in your ears and you’ll want to hear it again and again.

Or maybe not. Maybe you’ll hate it. Whatever.

The Very Best featuring Ezra Koenig (Vampire Weekend): Warm Heart of Africa (link to Hype Machine, because it’s occurred to me it’s probably not so legal for me to host songs here)

A moment I enjoyed:

Today I was in Trader Joe’s and they were playing all this theme music over the loudspeakers (like the theme from Rocky, for example). A dad was pushing his two-year-old boy in a shopping cart. Cutest little kid, blond and fair but not in a weird pale gross way (no offense if you’re blond and fair in a weird way).

The kid asked, “Dad, what’s that sound?”

Dad: “That’s the Superman theme song. Do you know who loves Superman?”

Kid: “Barack Obama?”

Dad: “Well, Barack Obama might like Superman, I’m not sure about that. But I was talking about your friend Casey.”

It was pretty awesome to hear this little kid with Barack on the brain.