Monday, April 20, 2009

A sandwich idea to make blue cheese palatable

I love most kinds of cheese and I would say the smell of "stinky" cheeses don't really deter me. However, my first inclination would not be to eat, purchase, or make recipes containing blue cheese. I eat blue cheese but it's not really my favorite in terms of the scent and appearance. Well, I recently had to purchase Gorgonzola for a mac and cheese recipe and I had quite a bit leftover. Gorgonzola is a veined Italian blue cheese made from unskimmed cow's milk. It's crumbly in texture like feta but has the classic greenish blue mold coloring of blue cheese. I was trying to figure out what to use the rest of the Gorgonzola on and I decided to make a salad and a sandwich. The salad was fine but the sandwich was soo delicious. The different salty/sweet flavors had this great complexity and really married together well. It's just a sandwich so I don't really have a recipe but if you just use the follow ingredients, I don't see any reason why the sandwich would not come out as anything but delicious.

Gorgonzola, Spinach, & Pear Sandwich

Take some crusty Italian bread, cut in half (center and top/bottom) and hollow out bread in the center to create crusty "boats". Sprinkle with olive oil.
Cut 1-2 pears into long slices approximately 1/4 inch thick (I used Barlett which is a softer pear but you can and prob should use a firmer pear such as Bosc or Anjou)
Spread leaves of fresh, washed spinach on the 2 bottom pieces of bread, layer pear slices on top of the spinach.
On the other side of the bread, fill with lots of Gorgonzola cheese and finely sliced red onions.
Now sprinkle red wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar on top of all halves.
Place sandwich halves in a pre-heated oven set at 350 degrees. Bake until bread looks toasty and starts to turn golden and cheese is melted.
Put halves together to make 2 sandwiches and enjoy!

Friday, April 3, 2009

Geek Love

Have you ever said out loud "I love geeks"? Or perhaps caught yourself making googly eyes at an awkward character in a Judd Apatow movie or tv show (excluding Paul Rudd, he is too classically good looking to be a true geek)? Well, chances are if you've ever worn leggings after 2006 or have ever watched "The OC", then have I got the book for you: geeky dreamboats: a celebration. A perfect way to fuse your ironic nature with your geek crushes. I particularly like how the title of the book is in all lower case letters - it makes it look even more adolescent than if they had just gone with the fake lip print.

http://www.fredflare.com/customer/product.php?productid=4814&cat=103#

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Silly T-Shirts

I was sent a Delia's catalog in the mail recently. I'm going to claim ignorance as to why. Regardless, I browsed said catalog and found this shirt which is ADORABLE. The question I pose to you is this: is it ridiculous for a mid 20 something to wear such a shirt? Is it less acceptable b/c it came from Delia's? Is it too self aware to wear this shirt while eating toast and jam in public?

Now I can eat like Liz Lemon

I am a huge "30 Rock" fan. I'm also a huge food fan. So when there was an episode where sandwiches played a pivotal role, I was really intrigued. I'm not going to bother explaining the episode for you, you can read about it below but I will say that I always figured the sandwich shop either a) never existed or b) was a real place in Queens that I would never find (b/c I seem to recall the teamsters got the sandwiches from Queens in the context of the episode). Regardless, I was using my Google Reader today and I came upon this gem on "Serious Eats"! The source of the infamous roast beef sandwich with dipping sauce that led Liz to declare that she could have it all while clearly kind of choosing a sandwich over love? Fiore's in Hoboken! And I live in Hoboken! And I once considered going to get a sandwich there! This is truly kismet. I will follow up this posting with an in-depth review of said sandwich but I was just so excited to find this information out after basically giving up all hope of finding out the source of this sandwich.

http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2009/04/the-sandwich-from-30-rock-sandwich-day-episode-fiores-hoboken-new-jersey.html

The only way I like bananas