FRENCH TOAST. Gawd, I love french toast. I would eat it all day. I read about savory french toast, and I almost did it, but my maple-love… I just couldn’t. But… it was for lunch. So I turned it into a french toast PB&J (dipped in syrup, clearly.) Hot mama! Good! Almost as good as cold-leftover-pancake-PB&J. THAT is some good stuff. Those two pancakes no one could stuff down, but don’t really deserve a fridge spot? About 1 o’clock… blam. PB&J pancakes. (French toast memories: 1. French Toast Wednesdays. Pop used to make french toast every wednesday morning. And there was some secret ingredient that was finally revealed to me, and now I’ve forgotten it. Fool! 2. My dear, lovely, pixie-hair-cutted, tiny, Australian friend Genia, aka “G,” and I were at her house long ago as tiny chaps, and we were both jonesing hard fore some f. toast, but were bread-less. So we cut off the tops and bottoms of hamburger buns and sallied forth. G will be surprised that I remember this–I forget everything–while she has a memory bank the size of Antarctica. It’s seriously impressive, she will remember your cute shoes from the first day of seventh grade and compliment you seven years later. And thus concludes Nostalgia Hour.)

CHICKPEAS. Are good. Are they beans? I don’t want to google it and ruin the intrigue. The rockin’ blogger Bitchin’ Camero (fo’ reals, that’s her blog. How rad!?) makes tons and tons of tasty tasty things. She is from whence roasted squash and chorizo pasta came. Anyway. Chickpea and bread soup! (I just realized why I love chickpeas so much. Just say the name a couple times. It’s so cute.) Pan roasted chickpeas (LOUD, popping about the pan like rowdy little guys.) and beef stock and bread. With cheese on top, under the broiler a la French onion soup. Mm so cozy and warm and soupy and salty and just good. And today I made a chickpea salad for lunch: chickpeas, tuna, celery, onions, and the summery little Mexican; cilantro. Ate it on a dock, lackadaisically gazing out at lake and mountains, chatting with SD.

LA BREA. La Brea, who are you? You producer of good bread for the masses? Are you Jesus? La Brea bread; it’s in the grocery store, its probably on your plate at restaurants, it’s certainly in your heart and stomach. The La Brea baguette is just. PERFECT. You can get them at the grocery store, warm it up in the oven, and fill your world with joy. Currently the bread drawer holds a loaf (…half a loaf) of rosemary olive oil crusty bread. It was toast with cream cheese (um… and butter…) late last night as I tried to mash together a paper on a Buddhist parable. (Summer school. Reading “The Inferno” and “What The Buddha Taught” at the same time can really squash one’s brain about.) This morning it was a companion to my daily yogurt. Tonight it was garlic bread. (Alongside grilled chicken and pea-radish-mozzarella salad.)

MAMA VINAIGRETTE. (that’s spelled weird…) My mom is Salad Queen. (Green, pasta, potato, and otherwise.) For lunches she somehow cobbles together the crisper drawer into the best salads on the whole earth. And for dinners she whips out these far-beyond run-of-the-mill salads full of tasty little morsels. You know when salads have too much lettuce and not enough “junk”? Mom’s got the perfect ratio. The Golden Mean of salads. And she always makes her own vinaigrette (Wow ok, spell checker says thats how it’s spelled, I don’t like it. Should be “vinagrette.”) I’ve pilfered her recipe and I don’t like anything on salads but Mama Vinagrette. Many dressings out there in the world are either: too creamy (makes your salad wilty and squishy and makes us lactose babies queasy), too sweet (think “Our house huckleberry vin! It’s tasty!”), or too oily (blech.) Mama’s dressing is none of these things. It’s just pure goodness. And no, I’m not giving you the recipe. (You gotta love the tupperware.)

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