My Madison Bistro

Can you remember the last time you had a dessert so good, you wanted to lick the dish? I can, because it happened tonight. I had a fridge full of Meyer lemons, and I knew I needed to do something with them quickly. I’d been thinking about making lemon mousse for awhile now, but I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to do with it. And then raspberries popped into my head. If I could just find some nice raspberries, that’s all this dish would need.

As luck would have it, I was able to get both golden raspberries and red raspberries. Could this be fate?

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Tags: lemon, raspberries

Last night, I had a lovely dinner planned. It would be simple, fast, and delicious, a toned-down version of another dish I love. It’s one of those dishes that has few ingredients, but they all just blend so well together…the sum of the components is so far superior to the individual ingredients.

So what happened, you ask? Well, allow me to back up a step. I was out of town this weekend, and I didn’t restock my kitchen when I got back. I thought the food I had remaining from last week would still be fine…but it wasn’t. I came home to moldy grape tomatoes and spotted basil. ONE leaf of basil looked good yet, so I tore off that leaf and thought about what I could do with it, given what I had to work with.

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Tags: Cheese, pesto, pita, Pizza

I have a confession: this was a freezer meal. You see, I’ve been really wanting to make Anne Burrell’s Bolognese again (and boy, do I have a story to go with that dish – stay tuned), but I had some meat & mushroom sauce in my freezer that I really had to use first. This is another one of my very own recipes that isn’t really a recipe, it’s just something that I cook. However, the last time I made it, I happened to write down exactly what I did.

And, it freezes beautifully, so when you have a night like I did last night, where you simply don’t want to cook (there’s that dishes thing again) but know you should, you can whip up a meal in minutes.

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Tags: pasta

If you keep a stash of cheese and crackers or good bread in your house, you will always have an easy lunch or dinner option. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a meal consist of cheese, whole grain crackers or bread, and some fruit or a salad. When it’s dinner, I’ll throw in a glass of wine.

Today, I really, really wanted salt. Needed salt. Usually I’m a sugar kind of girl, but about once every month or two the salt craving hits me over the head. I’ve found it’s easiest to simply indulge it right away, before it’s done too much damage: think going through the drive-thru for some fries or picking up fish and chips for dinner. Yes, cheese and crackers seems like a much safer option.

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Tags: Cheese, Crackers, Vegetables