Brie and Peach Panini: So Good I Forgot to Take Pictures

Inspired by this recipe I saw on the Food Network, the other night we assembled paninis* without using a special press. Although the process was a little messy, the results were delicious. Alas, as the title says, I forgot to take pictures, so here is a very tiny one stolen from the internet to wet your appetites. You shall have to decipher the rest of my instructions picture-less, although since we are basically making a fancy sandwich here, I think you will all get by.


What you'll need for 4 sandwiches (dinner for 2, or brunch for 4):

• 1 loaf ciabatta bread
  
• 8 oz brie cheese
  
• 2 peaches
  
• 2-3 handfuls of arugula/baby spinach
  
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2-3 tablespoons honey
• salt and pepper

Steps:
1) Slice the ciabatta loaf into fourths, and then divide each fourth in half lengthwise. You know, sandwich-like. Working with two of the sandwiches at a time, brush olive oil on the non-crusty sides, and place in a frying pan over medium-high heat.

2) While the sandwich insides are getting all crispy, slice the brie and the peaches. I just sliced off the sides of each peach around the pit, and then cut the resulting wedges in half lengthwise, so that they weren't too thick.

3) Once you're done slicing the cheese/peaches, and the bread is relatively warm and crispy, take the bottom part of each sandwich off the frying pan and assemble the paninis. Start with a layer of cheese, then drizzle with a little honey and grind out some salt and pepper. Then add a layer of peaches, and repeat the honey drizzling and salt/pepper process. Top the sandwiches with some of the arugula and baby spinach mixture, then add the top pieces of bread from the frying pan. Now brush the outside, crusty parts of the bread with olive oil, and put back in the pan.

4) This next part is the tricky step. The sandwiches need to be pressed for a real panini experience, and also because at the moment they are a little too big to comfortably fit your mouth around. For our ghetto version of a panini press, I got out a second frying pan, put it on top of the sandwiches, and then made The Pit stand there and push down on the second frying pan with his hands.** After a couple minutes, we flipped the sandwiches upside down so that the tops could also get crispy and warm. If you don't have a handy boyfriend to do the pressing, I've also seen Rachel Ray use a foil-covered brick over her second frying pan. However, I don't know many people with piles of convenient bricks outside their front doors.***

Some notes about substitutions: If you clicked on the link to the original recipe, you saw that the it called for taleggio cheese. Not only had I never heard of it before, but neither had the girl stocking cheeses at Trader Joe's. However, brie worked fine as a substitute.

I was also tempted to sub in some french bread for the ciabatta when I saw that the latter was $4 a loaf at our local grocery store, but after tasting the results with ciabatta, I'm glad I didn't. That was $4 well spent, although next time I'll pick up the bread at Trader Joe's while I'm getting the brie, as I think it might be cheaper there.

The original recipe also called for arugula as the lettuce-like topping, but although I tried, I couldn't find arugula by itself at the grocery store. The mix with the baby spinach was fine, and I'm pretty sure you could sub in one of those fancy spring lettuce mixes as well.

As for other toppings, I'm temped to try this again with thin slices of Granny Smith apples instead of the peaches. You could also go for pears like the original recipe says. Other suggestions from the internets, unverified by yours truly but which could potentially be good: fontina cheese, goat cheese, and prosciutto with the cheeses for those who like their paninis more meaty.****

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* Is it just me or does the multiple of panini look awfully dirty somehow? I shall use the singular as much as possible from here on out.
** The top frying pan doesn't heat up, so this wasn't torture or anything. Also, I could have done this myself, but I needed a step stool to get to the proper height for pressing. This was embarrassing.
*** Except for Rob. Hi Rob!
**** Heh. I lied about the singular.

Problems With Penny-Pinching: The Hair Edition

So, I meant to get a little trim from my favorite stylist before leaving the OC, but between the packing and the whatnot, I sort of forgot all about my hair. Which meant that it was much longer than usual by the time I arrived in DC, and only grew more unwieldy the longer I postponed getting a haircut here.

I don't object to shorter hair in general, but I do have a three-fold problem with getting haircuts:
A) I'm extremely cheap,
B) I don't like products, blow dryers, or any cut that requires effort on my part, and
C) My hair is curly when cut short, which seems to confound a lot of stylists.

So really B and C are only window dressing, and could be dealt with if my major issue wasn't A. In the last couple of weeks I had asked some locals for recommendations, but apparently they aren't quite as Jewish frugal as I am, and thus pay something like $50 or $60 per haircut. As I am both Jewish thrifty and unemployed, I rather unwisely decided that this was out of the question.

So I dithered and avoided any action, until The Pit pointedly asked me if I was planning on getting a haircut this week. This from a man who really doesn't seem to care what I do with my hair, as long as I keep it unclipped* at all costs. If even he had noticed the deplorable state of my coiffure, it really was time for a haircut.

I thus bit the bullet and located a $20/haircut salon near our grocery store, and decided that with pictorial assistance, the stylists there could potentially be trusted.

So I brought in this picture OF MYSELF,** and asked to be made to look like this again..shorter, curly, reasonably away from the face:

Apparently the stylist interpreted this to mean that what I really wanted was hair shorter in the back than the front, lopsided, and somehow cut so as not to curl in front. Observe my displeasure:


After a couple of days of various types of fiddling, including both hair product and clips (thus incurring annoyed and pointed glances from The Pit), I have gotten it to look a little more manageable, although I would not go so far as to say 'good.'


Hopefully it grows out soon, and then I can go squander more money on a real stylist. Local suggestions would be appreciated in the comments. I promise this time I'll listen.

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* The Pit has an unnatural aversion to hair clips anywhere near me, which makes this whole bad haircut styling thing even more difficult.
** So we know this haircut is possible...it's not like I told her "I want Jennifer Aniston hair."

Soft Ginger Cookies

I know these cookies don't look super exciting, but I've made them twice in the last couple of weeks, and they have disappeared exceedingly quickly each time. The Pit took one batch to work, and received a promotion shortly thereafter. Coincidence? I'll let you be the judge.

What you'll need:

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
  
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
  
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
  
• 3/4 cup margarine or butter, softened
  
• 1 cup white sugar, plus extra for topping
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon water

Steps:
1) If, like me, you have no margarine and always forget to soften the butter early, take it out of the fridge, cut into small cubes, and leave in a large mixing bowl while you mix up the dry ingredients.

2) Preheat oven to 350°F, and leave the butter bowl someplace close for more efficient softening.

3) In a small mixing bowl, sift together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda, and salt. Set aside, and check your butter.*

*It won't be soft yet. Some of you will get impatient and start trying to cream it at this point. Some of you genetically related to me, anyway. You will then get annoyed as little butter chunks fly everywhere and make a mess. By the time you've cleaned the butter chunks off the counters and stove, and also fished a stray bit out of your cleavage, the rest of the butter may or may not be softened. If it isn't, this exercise will get repeated.

4) At long last, the butter is soft! Use an electric mixer to cream together the butter and sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the egg, then the water and molasses.

5) Gradually stir the dry ingredients into the molasses mixture.**

** If you pour in dry ingredients, then go to town with the electric mixer, be prepared for clouds of flour to cover both you and all of your immediate surroundings. This is especially annoying if you tried to prematurely cream the butter and sugar, got butter chunks everywhere, and already cleaned them up. Ahem. The second time I made these, I used a spoon to stir the dry ingredients in part way, then used the electric mixer for the rest. Much cleaner all around.


6) The dough will probably be a bit gooey at this point and hard to shape into balls, so stick the whole mixing bowl in the fridge for 10 minutes while you clean up any remaining flour/butter/sugar/molasses left on your kitchen walls.

7) Pour a couple of tablespoons of sugar into a small bowl. Shape the dough into walnut-sized balls, and roll them in the sugar bowl. Place the balls 2 inches apart on a foil-covered, ungreased cookie sheet, and flatten them slightly with your fingers.


8) Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing. Store in an airtight container.

A couple of notes: As you can see, I placed the cookie balls too close together, so they ran into each other a little. Unless you are super anal about your cookies being exactly round, this is not really an issue.

Also, you can sorta see my finger marks on the cookies below. This is because I didn't have measuring spoons when I made these, and had to estimate the amount of baking soda. Turns out I added a bit much, and thus had to squish this batch more enthusiastically than usual. Nonetheless, they were delightful, and all the cookies on that plate were practically gone by the time our guests left.

Eastern Market

The Pit and I took a little trip to Eastern Market this weekend to try and find some stuff to decorate our blank white walls. For the 90% of you reading from California, Eastern Market is part farmers market, part flea market, and part craft fair. It’s a neat place to just wander around, although the downside to it being in the middle of DC is that prices are quite a bit higher than they would be in more out-of-the-way places.

Anyway, we had unwisely failed to eat breakfast before leaving the house, and somehow the lack of food turned me into a nagging, whining baby as soon as we stepped outside our front door. If The Pit had been smart, he would have stopped somewhere, anywhere, to cram some food in my mouth and shut me up, but instead we drove straight to the Metro, and then proceeded to spend a somewhat…tense…hour staring at each other as I grumbled and he alternatively ignored and aggravated me. It didn’t help that the train had some sort of issue two stops shy of our destination, forcing us to get off and walk in the heat.

This development did not really improve my mood any, and by the time we got to Eastern Market I was sweaty, starving, and completely insufferable. It’s quite a testament to The Pit’s love that I didn’t wind up abandoned at a fancy fruit stand. See, as it turns out, The Pit had…alternatives...to going home with me.

We had some lunch and then purchased a few old maps suitable for framing and hanging in the living room. On our way out, we also bought a largish pot full of herbs, which The Pit was delegated to carry on the Metro. Unbeknownst to us, apparently a medley of herbs is like an irresistible siren call to the urban homosexual, because shortly after getting on a packed subway car, The Pit had not one but two well cut boys in pink polo shirts crowding close, sniffing at his pot, and asking him leading questions about his rosemary and thyme.

It’s a good thing for me that The Pit is immune to such manly wiles, because had he decided to abandon the nagging girlfriend and tried playing for the other team, he could have scored quite the pair of home runs.*

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* Heh, heh. Oh man, sometimes I crack myself up.

Ow Ow Ow

So I'm typing this post from the bed, in order to better contort myself into less painful positions. See, yesterday The Pit and I spent about an hour hauling an extremely heavy file cabinet from my car to our building, and then up several flights of stairs to our apartment. Because I am an old, old lady, now my back is killing me. And really, I have nobody to blame but myself, since I was the one that purchased it.

It was a Craigslist buy, and as it turns out, I should have just left it in the heavily chotchkied house where I found it. All those little angels and babies were clearly a warning to flee! Flee for my life! And yet I stupidly handed over my money, and here we are.

And the worst part is, that damned cabinet is both too big for the desk it sits next to, and entirely the wrong color. So now I have to put it up on Craigslist myself, and try to find something else. Oh, the wasted effort.

On a somewhat related tangent, the previous owner of the devil cabinet was named Jack, and in our email exchange he had asked me to call about a half hour before showing up at his house. So I dutifully call, and get some lady on the phone. I ask for Jack, and in very bemused tones, she hands the phone over. Here's a script of the next couple of minutes:

"Hi, this is Peachy, I'm calling about that filing cabinet from Craigslist."
Heavy southern accent: "Errrrr...whaaaat file cabinet?"
Me, thinking to myself that Craigslist people are the flakiest and strangest on the planet, but forging on anyway. "The filing cabinet from Craigslist. We exchanged emails and you asked me to call you before coming."
"Craaaagslist?"
Me, now thinking "Oh God Oh God Oh God" to myself: "Are you selling a filing cabinet online?"
"Not to mah knowledge ma'am."

So it turns out that I had called the wrong number, but mysteriously also gotten a Jack on the phone, leading to much confusion, as the Southern Jack had never even really heard of Craigslist, and definitely wasn't selling a filing cabinet there. This was clearly another sign to flee that I completely missed.

Neighborly

For you to truly appreciate the humor of my recent encounter with a neighbor, I have to go back and relate a rather...unfortunate...incident from high school.

It was either my sophomore or junior year, but regardless, I was young and fresh-faced and it was the first day of school. My first class was Psychology, and as Psych is inherently a rather wishy-washy science, we were not expected to learn anything that day. Instead, our teacher assigned us some sort of getting-to-know-you exercise with the person sitting beside us.

I was thrilled, because the person sitting next me was a guy. A very cute guy named Matt, who happened to be both a year older, and one of the cool kids. Matt and I spent the next hour in what I thought was a mutually enjoyable conversation, from which one salient fact stands out after all these years: Matt was Jewish. Once this point of similarity was established, I was sure I could win his heart, or at least some organ in near proximity.

So first period ended, and I floated off to my second class of the day convinced that I had charmed Matt with my wit and good looks, and that he was bound to ask me out soon. I was finally going to break out of the nerd ghetto! So I sat down in my seat, only to have my friend Tracy saunter down the aisle and slap a shiny hand mirror on my desk. Taking this not-so-subtle hint, I opened it up, and saw to my horror that there was a gigantic blob of cream cheese on my nose.

Yes, that’s right: I had spent all of first period flirting with a boy, entirely unaware of this regrettable development. One would think that the shock of that moment would would be seared into my brain, and prevent me from ever leaving the house again without first checking my face in the mirror.* And yet (foreshadowing), let me bring you back to the present day.

Now, those of you familiar with my morning rituals know that unlike my love for Matt, my adoration for cream cheese has not abated. I still have some on a bagel or English muffin every morning. So a few days ago I had my usual breakfast, then went to run some errands. You know, the grocery store, Target, the bank...places with plenty of people. And as I'm walking up the stairs with all my groceries, I bump into an elderly gentleman coming out of the apartment next door. We chat, we introduce ourselves, we shake hands, etc. Being of the elderly persuasion, this nice man has nothing exciting going on on, so our neighborly conversation takes up a goodly number of minutes. Eventually though, I make it into by own apartment, and head to the bathroom to put away some recently purchased soap.

It is at this point that I look into the mirror and see a nice smear of cream cheese on my face. Clearly, I have learned nothing in the 10 or so years since high school. But more importantly, neither has anyone else. I mean, good lord America, why does nobody point these things out to me sooner??

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* Or I could eat more neatly, but really, who are we kidding?

Oh frozen custard, how we'll miss you

Last June I came for my first visit to DC after The Pit moved here. All in all, between the heat wave, my instance on walking through Arlington National Cemetery, and my penchant for wearing uncomfortable shoes, the trip could have gone better. However, one of the bright spots was The Pit taking me for frozen custard at Dairy Godmother, a tiny local place with very tasty desserts.

We've gone back numerous times, and in fact chose our current residence partially based on it's proximity to Dairy Godmother and the delicious delicious frozen custard served there. So we were sitting around yesterday, actually contemplating a visit to Dairy Godmother in the evening, when I opened Lappy and saw this story on MSNBC. Apparently, some local informed Obama about the goodness that is Dairy Godmother, and he took his daughters there yesterday afternoon.

So this sucks on two completely different levels: A) If we had decided to go out for lunch instead of having sandwiches at home, we could totally have been there when the freaking President of the United States walked in and got in line. And B) DC is apparently horribly trendy, and now that Obama has visited, it's going to be impossible to even get in the door.

We've been through this before. Shortly after I moved here, The Pit and I wanted burgers, and decided to go to a well-reviewed local hole-in-the-wall called Ray's Hell Burger after a long day of furniture shopping. Except Obama and Biden had lunch there the previous week, and when we swung by around 3 PM on a Sunday, the line had snaked out the door and throughout the parking lot. It was completely insane, and doubly unfortunate because we were already both starving and grumpy by the time we got there.

I mean, I guess I understand that the Obamas deserve burgers and frozen custard just like the rest of us...I just wish their visits didn't leave the places completely mobbed for weeks.

Cha-cha-changes

So, in a move that I must admit was not entirely unexpected, the lovable paranoid I live with has decided that it is no longer tolerable for random googlers looking for Chayote Salad recipes to know our first names. He has requested, nay, demanded, that I choose a nom de plume, and thoroughly anonymize this blog.

I think it would please me to come up with an appropriate blog name for him. However, so far the best I can do is "The Man Peach" or "The Most Paranoid Peach". I am clearly neither funny nor creative enough for this endeavor,* and Dina is out of town on a business trip. Thus I must turn to you. Any thoughts?

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* The whole Peachy thing comes from my Warcraft name, and the less said about that the better.

ETA: Although Nikole Sasha Fierce had an excellent suggestion with 'Fuzzy Little Man Peach,' and Eric came up with a whole Peaches and Cream theme, I think we will be going with 'The Pit' from here on out.

Adam and Eve

I know I haven't been posting much this week, but after The Pit came back from his business trip, we were all cuddly and coupley, and nobody wants to read about that.

However, there was an amusing incident the other night. We had been discussing an acquaintance of The Pit's just prior to bedtime, and he mentioned that this girl allegedly had an extra rib. The conversation then moved on,* and we turned off the lights and started drifting off to sleep, when The Pit, clearly still ruminating, busted out with "An extra rib? No one has extra bones!"

At this point, I mumbled something about people being born with vestigial tails, and how that was clearly much weirder than extra ribs. Not being one to let an argument drop, even half asleep, The Pit insisted that an extra rib was much weirder than a HUMAN TAIL, because it was a bone, whereas human tails are merely little bits of extra skin and tissue.

As I too am incapable of letting things go, I then made my fatal mistake and opined that some vestigial tails probably had bones in them. The Pit vehemently but sleepily disagreed**. At this point, there was nothing to it but to turn the lights back on, pull out lappy, and thoroughly investigate the topic. As it turned out, human tails in fact do not have bones in them, so The Pit was right...again. Sigh. One of these days, I will be the correct one, and then there will be much gloating.

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* How, I don't know. This is exactly the type of topic we can fixate on for hours.
** There was considerable mumbling involved.

Chayote Salad

A while back, The Pit and I saw a cooking show that incorporated a vegetable called the chayote. Never one to willingly sample the weird and the new, I was not particularly enthused, but The Pit wanted to try it, so I dutifully bought a couple of the pear-shaped globes when I saw them at the supermarket. They were $0.79 each, by the way, and located over by the potatoes. Here's one in my hand for a size comparison:


I stuffed them into the refrigerator, and proceeded to ignore them for two weeks, until The Pit chopped one up, and forced me to try it. The vegetable is in the squash/cucumber family, so I suppose it's no surprise that it was fairly bland, a bit reminiscent of a cucumber or very mild squash, but with a more pleasing texture...nice and crispy, more like an apple. I thought I also detected hints of cauliflower, and the seed tasted a little mushroomy to me. Definitely different from anything I'd tried before, but quite pleasant once we removed the seed.

Although the show we watched had boiled the chayote and used it like a potato in a recipe, we decided to audition it in a salad. We used the following ingredients, which resulted in two large portions for dinner, plus a smaller one for The Pit's lunch the next day.

• 1 chayote, peeled and diced
  
• 1 large vine-ripened tomato, diced
  
• 1 yellow bell pepper, diced
  
• 2 tablespoons green and red onion, diced
  
• 2 tablespoons fresh dill
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsley
• 1 tablespoon mayonnaise*
• salt and pepper

* I know some of you won't love the mayo as salad dressing, but it was delicious. You can substitute your favorite dressing instead.

Steps:
1: Dice tomato, bell pepper, and onion. Add to a medium sized mixing bowl.

2: Although wikipedia says it isn't necessary, peel the chayote, chop it in half, and scoop out the slightly lighter seed in the middle. Dice and add to the bowl.


3: Chop up the fresh dill and parsley, mix with other ingredients.

4: Season the salad with salt and pepper to taste, and mix in the mayonnaise or your favorite dressing.


The results? Delicious: The Pit and I both had seconds, leaving barely anything for him to take for lunch. I'm glad he forced me to try the chayote, because it's a nice change of pace from our usual salads, keeps well in the fridge, and is apparently full of various vitamins and minerals. I think we'll be experimenting with it in other recipes too.