cherryblossomfive

a day late ...

so it's no secret, i love making dinner for friends.

and last night i made homemade pizza with carmelized onions, roasted garlic, basil and goat cheese. pretty much, the best pizza ever.

with it, i served a salad that my mom made the night before. (and which i ate the night before when i was hiding from the heat of my apartment) the recipe is here  . the nice part of this salad is it is so fresh, so summery ... i used my favorite sheeps milk feta, because it's a nice creamy feta with just enough bite. topping it off with a bit of pinot grigio vinegar, good olive oil ... I mean come on - what is an Italian girl not to love?

anyway here's a peek of my kitchen as i prepared the dinner... 

and then it was off to the sea and cake, which was just a great time.

this week, it's conserve the budget week. i'm going to make sure that i keep spending to a minimum in an effort to economize.

gormet superiority

sometimes simple things please me in the most unexpected (and often embarassing ways)

i'll share one of them with you now-

heritage-wise i'm split between italian and german - but i feel more italian than german. and one of those ways has to do with food.

there's a fantastic italian deli just down the street from my house and i love it. the part i love best about it is the smug satisfaction i get in ordering a sub, on a hard sub roll and then saying "with everything".

all other food establishments "with everything" includes things i find gross- like mayo and mustard. not here buster. the italians got it right - there's a special dressing but it's not goopy. the taste of the salty, smoked meats isn't spoiled by and overpowering sub-par sandwich dressing. the result: a tasty marriage of salty, sweet, a slight kick from the hots AND peppered ham AND the sweet fresh crunch of just enough lettuce.

getting the taste just right is only part of what explains my satisfaction. the other part of being able to recite my order like an old pro is different. i feel comfortable, like i have a place where i get things just as i like them. it's a neighborhood shop, my neighborhood ... and my sandwich.