Oh, it’s Friday again, thank-the-good-lord. Now, what to make for dinner? Here’s my advice:

Put a pot of water on to boil, toss in some nice sea salt, and cook up some penne pasta. Now while you’re waiting for that to be en dente grab a handful of cherry toms and give ‘em a little rinse. Now cut them into thirds or so and put them on that tiny cooking sheet that came with your toaster oven. Add a handful or two of pine nuts, drizzle on some olive oil, more sea salt (of course) and slip it into said toaster oven. Now, don’t walk away from it or I guarantee you’ll burn the pine nuts. When things look nice and toasty in there, take them out and set them aside until your pasta is done.

Got the pasta drained? Great. Scrape every last little bit of that yummy pesto out of the jar and toss it in with the noodles. Add all the toms and pine nuts and toss the whole thing together. Now grate some Romano on top. Ummmmm…..you remembered the crusty bread and the red wine, right? Good then. Time to eat!

Advice Girl’s Friday Shopping List:

cherry toms
penne pasta
pesto sauce
pine nuts
romano cheese
vino
crusty bread

Welcome to my new category, Advice Girl. It will pop up here and there until I get a regular posting schedule (if I ever do!). After you see a few of these pop up, you can also check the tag cloud over in archives and see if there are others floating around. Enjoy!

Lazy Gourmet: Friday Asparagus and Eggs & Saturday Crepes

So here’s what you might could maybe do tonight. Stop by the grocery store on the way home and buy some asparagus. It’s in season right now—although according to Barbara Kingsolver the French don’t celebrate it’s arrival until Father’s Day, when all the bistros make wonderful dishes out of the lovely green spears. Regardless, if the French make a holiday out of it, don’t you think you should eat it? Yes, me too, loves.

Okay, so get the asparagus, and maybe a little carton of chevre (goat cheese), and carton of eggs (two if you’re cooking for more than one), and if they have ‘em, a mostly ripe avocado. Get twice as much asaparagus as you think you need, kay?

Now go home, snap off the ends of the asparagus, roll them in olive oil and salt. If you are really ambitious you can peel the bottom inch or two to make them less stringy, but I never sweat it. Now throw them on a baking sheet and roast them in the oven at about 450⁰. Check ‘em in ten minutes and then every so often after that because they can get away from you pretty fast.

Now scramble some eggs and voila! Dinner! I promise you will feel very French – especially if you sip some nice white wine. (Or cheap white wine – honestly, darling, it really doesn’t matter to moi, being the good, cocktail drinking maman that I am!)

Right about now, you’re asking, “What’s with the other stuff, and all the leftover asparagus?” Well, here’s the genius bit. See, tomorrow is Saturday, so you can make crepes! Then you can stuff said crepes full of leftover asparagus, chevre, and avacado. I know. It’s brilliant, and don’t you feel oh-so-smug about your healthy, healthy breakfast? (Or possibly brunch? Lunch? Oh, you must not have children if you’re not cooking anything until lunch. We will try not to hate you, really we will.)

After you eat that nice veggie-full crepe, you can sprinkle one with powdered sugar and stuff it with that slightly too soft banana you have over there in your fruit bowl. Yummmm…‘dessert’ without regrets.

Go on; get delicious on your weekend!

If this inspired you about asparagus: you can get fancy about it with some of these great recipes from BlogHer food editor Kayln Denny.

Read more about the wonders of asparagus and other locally-grown goodness: try Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

While we are in our temporary housing in Copenhagen, we don’t have any of our spices, cookbooks, or kitchen gadgets. Coming up with dinner each night is a bit of a challenge. (I can’t even use my faithful standby, epicurious.com because our internet access is so shoddy!)

Last night, I created this dish, and it turned out so yummy I thought I’d share it. Using the prosciutto eliminates the need for multiple spices.(Ours was leftover from making pizza.) It only took twenty minutes to get the thing simmering and it’s kind about how much of this or that you might have on hand. A satisfying winter meal.

Sloppy Split Pea Soup

4-6 thin slices of prosciutto

olive oil

4 med shallots, diced

2 stalks celery, chopped

4 med carrots, diced

1 thin skinned potato, sliced thin

4 cloves garlic, crushed

4 cups dried yellow split peas, sorted

8 cups stock plus enough water to bring the soup to desired consistency

balsamic vinegar

romano or parmesan cheese

Pour a pass of olive oil into a medium-ish sauce pan over med-high heat. Tear up the prosciutto and lightly sauté so that it wilts slightly and releases some flavor into the olive oil. Add about 50 ml of water (be careful – it will splatter) and stir occasionally to steam out more flavor from the meat. Add shallots, celery, carrots, potato and garlic. Cook for about 5 minutes. Add split peas and water. Bring to a boil, reduce and simmer for 30-40 minutes. (Longer if you like your split peas cooked down more.) About 10 minutes before serving, add several nice sloppy pours of balsamic vinegar or other red wine vinegar to the pot and adjust salt/pepper. Nice with some shaved romano or similar. Yum!

a page from the “one day this summer” notebook of 2005…

…and another ode to sticky blackberry fingers in this year’s small-is-beautiful memory book

In August, I’m pretty sure this counts as a breakfast food.

Blackberry Crisp

Mix in a bowl a pour in a 9X13 pan:
As many foraged blackberries as it takes to fill the pan
some flour to toss the blackberries
maybe a little fresh ginger, finely grated or minced

Mix up this and spread it on top of the berries:
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup flour
2-3 Tbrown sugar
1/2 t cinnamon
a dash of nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
6 T softened butter
1 egg whisked up a bit

Bake at 350 until the berries are bubbling. Serve with vanilla ice cream, a drizzle of heavy cream or even just some nice cold milk.