Sometimes a quickie hits the spot — Pineapple Bread

It’s the weekend. Which means, of course, that you have time to relax. Or to spend time with your family, spend time with your friends, clean your house, water your plants, and also cram in sixty million errands into two short days (and people who do not have to be in an office on weekdays, can you do your errands then? Thanks.) Weekend time, much like weekday time, is to be treasured, and sometimes I treasure that time by spending it cooking, one of my favorite activities. I lovingly research recipes, and plan meals, and braise and roll and bake and chop. Sometimes, I do not.

Last weekend, though, I had six women (the lovely ladies of my book club) coming over for an early brunch, which means I had to clean my place like a madwoman (I have a toddler, aka a storm of destruction and chaos in my home) and, oh, cook something brunchy. I’m not great at brunchy. And I didn’t have the time to lovingly pore through my eight thousand cookbooks and find something.

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Grilled Pimento Cheese Sandwiches

My grandmother belongs to that certain generation that came of cooking age in the 1950’s and embraced the introduction of convenience foods with fervor.   This means that Cool Whip is in her freezer, Jello is in her salads, and every dinner party starts with crackers and spreadable cheese — a lurid orange concoction with unpronounceable ingredients that conveniently comes in a tub, or, for more elegant occasions, a ball rolled in pecans.  (To be fair, my grandmother is otherwise a very good cook, and it is entirely possible that my grandchildren will find my ca. 2009 obsession with sriracha and pico de gallo to be equally quaint.)

When I was asked one time to bring hors d’oeuvres to a family party (all parties in our family are potlucks) I cast about for something new besides the regular old brie and crackers, and remembered a program I had seen on the Food Network.  On this program, someone had been exploring the food traditions of this exotic land they called the American South, and had set forth at length about a cornerstone of this food tradition — pimento cheese.  Bingo!  I thought, homemade spreadable cheese.  I figured my grandmother, at least would appreciate it.

Savour Fare has moved! For the rest of the post and the recipe, please visit Savour-Fare.com

Carrot Pudding for Fussy Eaters

When I was pregnant with the Nuni, I ate prodigiously of a wide variety of foods. I have read that the mother’s diet can be “tasted” by the baby, and babies develop a preference for the familiar (supposedly to protect their delicate systems from the danger of eating an unrecognized foodstuff. Of course, anyone who has ever had a baby knows this is a load of hooey, because there is nothing that babies like to eat more than something that is clearly not food, be it crayons, paper, or random bits of crap they find on the floor.) I figured that the Nuni would develop an early love for Indian food, for Brussels sprouts, for roasted peppers, and that MY daughter would not, in fact, be a picky eater.

Savour Fare has moved! For the rest of the post and the recipe, please visit Savour-Fare.com