Palma chose ginger for us this week. While doing research I realized that many recipes using ginger are Asian in style, flavor and nature. When I found this one for baby spareribs with a ginger-orange sauce, I knew I wanted to make them. It was a two step, two day recipe - one afternoon I simmered the ribs and chilled them over night. Today I finished them off with the sauce, glazing them in a large frying pan. They were delicious. Thanks, Palma, lots of good nibbling ahead.

Again late to the posting, even though I made this one before we left town for the weekend. I love stuffed mushrooms, but decided to look for another mushroom treatment since there would be no one around to eat the stuffed ones. When I found this recipe for marinated garlic mushrooms, it seemed ideal, in part because it is a very California recipe, and in part because it has given me a large container that I can use for a Thanksgiving small bite. Always thinking ahead, or at least I like to think I am.

This is a recipe from a contest at the Gilroy Garlic Festival held annually in the town of Gilroy, in north central California, which is the Garlic Capitol of the World, or so they claim. It was the winner of the 1979 contest.

Gilroy Marinated Garlic Mushrooms

As you all know by now, I am totally about the simple (but kudos to those of you who have done olives in multiple ways this week). And when I saw olives, I thought about a really simple small bite that one of our faculty members, Sr. Harriett, brought to an office potluck last holiday season. These were so tasty, a combination of rich and salty, that I asked her for the recipe. I have to admit I was not totally surprised when she brought me a copy of a page from the Betty Crocker Cookbook, yes that very one with the red cover and binder rings. When I looked in my own copy, circa my 1975 wedding, there it was, in a section called "Nibbles". And indeed that is what these are, nibbles, think martinis, think rumaki, think 1962.

Olive Cheese Balls

Deborah picked a fall classic flavor for this week and while I love pumpkin, I realized when looking at the recipe spectrum, how many of my favorite fall recipes using pumpkin were sweet, not savory. So finding a small bite, an appetizer, was the challenge. When I saw this recipe for Pumpkin Hummus, and realized that I also needed an appetizer for a party on the weekend, I knew this was going to be the one. The only thing I changed in this recipe from a November 2005 issue of Cooking Light was to add a can of garbanzo beans (chick peas) because it just seemed to call out for the taste and texture.

I was better about getting this week's challenge done and posted to Slow Travel than I was about doing the blog entry; I will plead guilty to having had a really nice weekend up north in the Santa Cruz area.

I had some fun again reading pecan recipes and sorting through a few; my first choice was to stuff mushrooms with pecans, bread crumbs and cheese, but then I ran across this recipe for a savory cookie on the web page of the Georgia Pecan Commission. I had done something similar a few years back and recalled it was a hit for the holidays. So, after baking part of the recipe, I have frozen the remaining rolls of dough and plan to use them for Thanksgiving nibbles.
While waiting for the dough to chill, I decided to make a batch of curried pecans with the rest of the large bag that I actually had in my nut drawer. I brought both cookies and nuts to Santa Cruz to share with Rachel, Addison and their roommates, so they join me in thanking you, Sheri, for the ingredient of the week.

Smoked Salmon Mini-Quiches

This was "my" ingredient week, and I took inspiration from the smoked salmon that we brought back from Alaska in June, nicely vacuum-packed and awaiting a reason to eat same. I am the big smoked salmon fan in our family, coming from a lox and bagels tradition, but David is not a fan of the cured salmon laying prettily atop cream cheese and said bagel. He does, however, like it smoked, and presented cooked in omelets, souffles, quiche, that sort of thing.

So I found variations on recipes for making mini-quiches and adapted them into one that I thought we would both enjoy. I also had a mini-muffin pan in the cupboard, another inspiration for the recipe. Unlike some of my other small bite recipes, the ones that could be more than a bite or two, this one is definitely a small bite.

Polenta Bruschetta with Pesto Goat Cheese

I spent a lot of time this week looking at goat cheese recipes, and in the end I put together a few ideas from a few recipes to get this one; up to the day before the bruchetta mixture had been a tomato slice in my head. Again this is a recipe that can translate into a small bite (with plate and fork), or an appetizer (two on a plate), or for us, it was Saturday lunch. This morning the pesto goat cheese and bruschetta became toppings on sourdough toast.

Bacon, Blue and Avocado Quesedilla

You really can't be a true California Girl without loving the avocado, at least that's how I feel. When we bought our house in South Pasadena 25 years ago, there was an ancient avocado tree in our backyard, but it wasn't at all healthy, and when we took it out, we replaced it with something else. To this day there are times when I regret that decision.

For inspiration this week, I turned to the California Avocado Commission and adapted one of their recipes to better suit our tastes. Well, better suit my tastes, since David is not fond of these dark-skinned pebbly fruits, or their thinner skinned cousins, and this quesadilla recipe could be further adapted to serve us both. It has been a very hot week here and this recipe, which like my shrimp tacos, can serve double duty as both appetizer (the small bite) and is equally tasty as a light supper or lunch. And that is how we ate them last night. And we both were happy with the results.

The Beautiful Avocado

Sun-dried Tomato Basil Swirls

This week’s inspiration was “simple”, what with preparations for and observance of Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish New Year. I also wanted something I could take to a weekend picnic. This recipe is a variation of one I found on a box of puff pastry in the freezer, and I used ingredients that I had in the house, other than the sun-dried tomatoes. Even though we have no humidity to speak of on this coast, drying my own tomatoes was apparently not on my culinary radar, but how cool that some of you thought to do this.

Thanks for the inspiration, Amy.

Crab Cakes with Creamy Caper Sauce

For this week's recipe I found something that had two of David's favorite things: crab and capers, and I feel like I have never used them together before. Like last week, this could be either a small plate appetizer or a light entree. I found the recipe in a June 2000 Bon Appetit and adapted it to our tastes.

Today the Sunday Slow Travel band of cooks embarks on a new adventure, the world of small bites, or appetizers, or starters, whatever word fits your style best. And with a twist on our usual style of either cooking from a particular cookbook, or trying the same recipe, each week, we are going to do something new: each week one person picks an ingredient, and each of us will pick a recipe using that ingredient.

This week, our Alaska fisherperson, Cindy, starts us out with shrimp. And I, looking ahead to our ST GTG next March in San Diego, where we have already planned the ultimate Fish Taco Tour, decided to make Grilled Shrimp Tacos. The recipe is one I have adapted from a 2003 Real Simple. If you eat one, it's a small bite, if you eat two, then it's either two small bites, or a main course.

It is June 28th. I have been back to work for almost two weeks, and before we leave for St. Louis tomorrow morning, I have a few things to finish up.

I have been a bad blogger, not a reluctant blogger, just an indifferent one. My last blog post was over three weeks ago, and while I actually did make the last three salads in the Sunday Salad Samplers lineup, and while I did post about it over on the thread, I dropped the ball when it came to this blog.

So, all I want to do today is just post a few pictures of those salads, not the recipes (if anyone who hasn't made these, which means if anyone who is not in the ST community actually reads this blog and needs a recipe, write me), and definitely not all the pictures I took of the cooking process. I have been a bad blogger, and I need to finish this project. Oh, I also still need to make a watermelon salad, maybe I can do that for a Labor Day picnic.

The basil plants are having a successful summer, in fact they have been making pointed comments (in their growth) about it being time for pesto. Since we were leaving for a visit to children and grandbaby this week, I decided that I should make a batch on Monday, and then I could bring some with me.

I have a very easy recipe for pesto, one that I found online years ago:

This is a recipe from Palma, who says of her choice,

"This is a great side dish with grilled chicken or fish. It is served cold, so you can make it ahead, and let the flavors blend."

Since it made a pretty large bowl, and since I was going to make enough dinner so that I could bring it to a friend who had had surgery recently, I decided that grilled teriyaki salmon would be a good choice to serve with the salad.

view from Orvieto, June 2008

So am I excited? Hell, yeah, it is very exciting to be planning another trip to Italy. We knew that 2009 would be an "off" year, what with the grandbaby and the wedding, and even though the wonderful Alaska cruise came up in a most unexpected manner, it has been awhile since I have done any Italy planning.

Thanks to changes in my school calendar year, I will be on summer break a week earlier next year, and when we realized we could actually spend the first half of June in Italy, we decided that as soon as the window for FF tickets opened with American Airlines, we would see what we could do. That actually found David on the phone with AA during wedding week in Bodega Bay to arrange our trip there, and just this weekend we were able to arrange flights back. This is how we work, first flights, then the rest, although we do have to have some idea of where we want to start our adventure. Flying from the West Coast, we find that it is far easier to use the bigger airports, like Rome and Milan, it's harder to make the connections to the smaller ones like Venice or Florence, especially when using FF miles in Business (we feel so fortunate to be able to take this trips in Business, and yes, we are spoiled rotten, as someday this pile of miles will probably run out).