Birthdays & Books

This past weekend we had our first of several family summer birthday get togethers at the B and SIL's house. There is one thing you can know for sure when we go to their house. We will eat delicious food. This time was no exception. The food is always great because they like great food, like to make good food and SIL's mom is a cutting edge foodie to the highest degree. I get so excited when I know I'm going to spend some time with her: we are going to talk about food. I know I talk about food a lot but you need to know I am always holding back. I want to talk about it more than I do. I can't help it. To feed my passion for all things food and to keep me from driving those around me crazy talking about it 24/7 I read about food. SIL's mom gets me. She gave me the most wonderful unexpected gift. She gave me 2 cookbooks. Not your ordinary books, not the kind most of my friends would have or even read but someone needs to know about, "Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal." It has a picture of a pigs head in a skillet. The other book, "The Art of Charcuterie." Charcuterie is the art of preserving meat. You probably eat charcuterie. Salami, sausage, bacon, prosciutto, paté, pancetta, hot dogs and the like. We've got charcuterie going on in our garage right now. Salami, bacon and pancetta are curing in Prince Charming's converted garage refrigerator.

My contribution to the celebration of birthday foods was a puff pastry with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Like almost everything I make it was several ideas pulled into one. I keep puff pastry on hand along with sun-dried tomatoes at all times. It's not uncommon to have goat cheese but we always have a large variety of cheeses in our fridge so this recipe could be made with another cheese. Something crumbly would probably be best like blue cheese, Feta, ricotta. Today I made these again to use up the second sheet of pastry only today I added diced bacon just to see if it made them better. It was good but they are just as good without the bacon making them excellent vegetarian snacks. You could take these to a gathering or serve them as part of a meal. You can be sure you will want to eat more than one. Goat Cheese and Sun-dried Tomato Bites.