Something Sinister

Unfortunatly I did not make the deadline for last weeks Illustration Friday Submission, but I already had an idea for something I wanted to paint. I wanted to give my husbands boss a thank you card for letting me borrow her Twighlight movies. I'd been wanting to see what all the fuss was about. Hubbs boss loves vampires so I hope she likes her thank you!

Caprese Crostini Plus 10 Variations for Easy Summer Meals



Caprese is so pretty! I could eat it year round. Also, if you grow a little basil and some grape tomatoes in a pot you have lunch almost daily. It's just so fresh, it's like eating a salad but with big hunks of bread and cheese! chEESE! CHEESE! I almost feel silly giving you a recipe for this because it's pretty much slice and serve.  But here you go, plus a few little variations for you. :-)   

Fresh Basil ( Julienned )

Grape Tomatoes sliced ( I like these becasue they are so sweet and easy to eat )

Fresh Mozzarella  sliced 1/4 thick

A loaf of French Bread sliced a little thicker than the mozzarella

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Balsamic Vinegar

Cracked Black Pepper

Sea Salt or Kosher Salt

To make the Crostini preheat your oven to 375. Brush the bread with olive oil and pop in the oven for about 6 minutes. Let it cool then layer your mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil. I sprinkle with a little more olive oil, some of your balsamic, then salt and pepper. 

Variations: Think about replacing the bread with a few of these ideas. 

1. Bowtie pasta, and dice the cheese. So good when the cheese gets all melty!

2. Try doing the bowtie pasta cold, just add a little parmesan salad dressing and you have a cold summer pasta salad 

3. Chopped hearts of romain lettuce 

4. Fresh baby spinach

5. Toasted Deli Thins, Peppridge Farms makes them as well as a few other companies, I prefer the multi grain. I ate this almost every day last summer! So yummy!

6. Spinach tortillas 

7. If you want your caprese crostini hot you could skip the first toasting part of the bread and go ahead and assemble everything (minus the balsamic) then pop it in the oven till the cheese is all bubbly. Then add your balsamic and drizzle with a little more olive oil.

8. Replace the grape tomatoes with a thick beefsteak tomato and just top it with the cheese, basil, olive oil, balsamic, and salt and pepper.

9. Make bite size hors d'oeuvres. Cut out the bread in little rounds or squares just a little larger than the tomato slice. Stack your bread, cheese, and tomato then salt and pepper, ad a whold leaf of basil and maybe a black olive if you like. Hold it together with a toothpick then sprinkle with your olive oil and balsamic. If you don't like olives try three of four capers cradled in the "boat" of the basil leaf. That would be the basil leaf facing down.

10. Caprese Kabob. Cook some cheese filled tortellini and start layering your tortellini, cheese, tomato, and basil on a skewer. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic then salt and pepper.

   

Here is one of my sandwich thin versions....honestly this is so good!

Below is a caprese salad I made using Aristotle Basil. I bought the basil at a cheese shop, the owner grew it for making pesto. Unfortunatly the shop is no longer there. I may have to order one of these plants online.

Well, if you have not guessed by now I really love caprese. :-) Don't forget this weekend is the SUPERMOON! I hope I can get a few good shots! My moon pictures never turn out so great, but since moonrise will be a good time (7:30am if you're in Kentucky) I've got my fingers crossed.

Have a great weekend everyone!

-Shelly

Welcome Summer Goodbye Spring

The hot morning tea that by noon will be iced

the seasons first berries all sugared and sliced

I just thought I would give you a peek at a page from the little book my sister and I are working on. Today feels very much like the picture above. It’s sunny and warm, windows are open, there are strawberries to pick, and who does not love iced tea on a warm day…85 degrees to be exact! For some reason it feels like Friday to me. Maybe I’m looking forward to the weekend a little too much. I have plans (that I’ve yet to tell the husband) to go on a picnic. He’ll be just fine with it, I plan to lure him with fried chicken. He’ll do just about anything under the spell of fried chicken. If I could learn to make hoecakes like his grandmother did I bet I could get him to do the laundry! Ha! Anyone know how to make amazing hoecakes? To be honest I'd never heard of them till I moved to Kentucky. A southern dish for sure. Hubs loves hoecakes. We went to the Paula Dean restaurant where he couldn’t wait to try them. I think he liked them, but they still weren’t like his grandmothers. I doubt anyone, even Paula Dean, could make them like she did. ;-)

Off to clean up the poor Robins nest and broken eggs that landed on our patio last night. It was a little windy and may have been too much for the little nest. This is our second nest this spring to not make it. A wren put her nest in a hanging basket on our front porch, I think all her landing and taking off was a bit much for it because the basket fell off the wall and the nest obviously went with it. I miss the little wren waiting on the front porch for us when we would get home. She didn’t seem to be too afraid of us, she would just watch us go in and out the house despite the nest being a mere 3 feet from the door and at shoulder height.

Hope you've had a wonderful week, I think I will start my friday now!
-Shelly

Todays Painting

I really enjoyed doing yesterdays painting for Illustration Friday, the concept of it anyway. Often times I'll come up with an idea but maybe don't care for the first production so I'll go on and try another. Well, here is the second one. I really like this one and am thinking I may do two more so I have a set of four. For some reason I like sets of four. :-) 

Illustration Friday Submission "Worn"

Grandpa V. and Grandpa R.

Yesterday was Fathers Day and I was lucky enough to be able to spend the afternoon with my dad and the rest of my family. It made me think about my parents who have both lost their fathers in recent years. It put my grandfathers in my mind. I miss them but remembering what amazing people they were makes me thankful for the time I had with them and it’s a good feeling.

Grandpa V and Grandpa R

Have you ever watched the movie 16 Candles? I grew up in the 80’s so anything with Molly Ringwald was a prerequisite. One of my favorite things about the movie is the difference in Grandparents. I always thought it was strange how different my grandparents were until I saw this movie. Then I realized there are probably a lot of people out there who have grandparents like mine. On the one had I had the very conservative religious “do the right thing” grandparents and on the other hand I had the very liberal “live your life and make no apology” grandparents.  This was great for me, I think a healthy dose of both makes a good balance and recipe for life.

I’ll start with grandpa R. He had an infectious laugh and would turn bright red from laughing so hard. He cursed at IU basketball games, proclaimed to be an atheist, thought all politicians were pond scum, loved to tell ghost stories and watch creepy movies, he drank Tab, loved his mean dog Muffin ( the family joke was that we’ve all been bitten by her), and always told my sister and I great stories of the horse Frankie kept in the attic. Frankie was a character he made up for us and would do a silly voice. When we were older Frankie got a gorilla and kept it in the wooded area behind their house. He said the woods were misty…get it…gorillas in the mist! He was so silly but he was also a man of opinions who made no apology for it. If you didn’t like it, he didn’t care. This made him really good at giving great advice. He also always made sure to tell you that you were worth a million bucks, you were beautiful, talented, and could do whatever you wanted in life. This picture pretty much says it all, my favorite thing about Grandpa R. was how silly he was.  

Grandpa R being the Boogie Man!

Grandpa V. could not have been more opposite. He was a good Lutheran, always serving his church and community. He even received a few awards from the Governor for his service. He loved to sail his boat with my grandmother, he traveled, and was heavily involved in politics. He played the violin, had season tickets to the symphony, smoked a pipe, drank his coffee black, ate butter and lunch meat sandwiches that I thought were so gross. He loved big family get-togethers where all my aunts, uncles and cousins would rent cabins for the weekend at Lake Shakamak State Park. He always had a huge smile on his face the very minute he saw you. He also gave great advice and encouraged you to follow your talents and dreams. One of my favorite memories of Grandpa V. was him watching Sense and Sensibility with grandma and I. He kept trying to guess what was going to happen to the broken hearted Marianne Dashwood. This is when I realized he was a romantic as well.   

Grandpa V. always looking distinguished 

I often hate that they are gone, I would give anything to see Grandpa V’s big welcoming smile again and I know Grandpa R. would so be enjoying all the ghost hunting shows that are on TV now! Haha. He loved to tell this story about a demon on the ashtray, but I’ll save that for another time!

Cafe Curtains

New curtains in the kitchen! A few months ago we decided to give the kitchen a fresh coat of paint. We went from a dark yellow cozy room (not really my style) to a fresh, clean, bright, light grey/blue.

I'm in love with my cafe curtains!

Here is the before. I liked the yellow and I love my windsor chairs (they are now in the dining room...I'll show you that below). But I had these directors chairs that we stored away and I thought the fabric on them made a nice compliment to the cafe curtains. Now I just need to find a new table. I'm thinking something in white, or maybe something I can paint. The current cafe table will go outside. It's just a little Peir One slate table I picked up years ago when I lived in Arizona. It was an end table for most of it's life, but it's actually an outdoor table!

   

 The windsors are very happy next to the piano.