I Like Knowing that Someone Likes Florida

I was in Pensacola, Florida for a couple of days this week, attending an advisory board meeting for a vendor whose software I rely upon heavily to support the much-loved employee testing process at Accenture.  I stayed at the Hilton Gulf Front Resort – a nice enough hotel with really nice views of a decent looking beach that I never quite made it to.

I’m not a huge fan of Florida – it just seems like an overly hot, overly humid place with excessive number of buffet restaurants…but that’s not the point of this post.  The point is that I found someone who does like Florida, specifically, someone who loves his hometown of Pensacola.

I’m impressed by this.  I’m impressed by people who are so proud of their town that they are well-informed as to its history and enjoy showing it off to those who visit.  From this person, I learned that Pensacola is the oldest city the US, having been settled in 1559…that it is nicknamed “The City of Five Flags” due to the five governments that have flown flags over it during its history: Spain, France, Great Britain, Confederate States of America, and the US… and that Florida used to extend all the way to Texas.  On top of that, I got a pretty fabulous tour of the Naval Air station and a genuinely warm invitation to return in the future.

I’m not so impressed with Baltimore that I’m feeling a huge need to brush up on its history… but who knows, maybe someday that will change… or maybe we’ll move somewhere that will inspire me to get actually visit areas beyond the 10 square miles of where my house is.  Wherever we land – be it here or elsewhere – I hope I develop the same type of pride in my home town that my colleague has of his home town of Pensacola.

It’s All in The Dressing

My all time favorite salad is from Cosi – their signature salad.  I think it’s the mix of the pistachios, grapes, and gorgonzola in their  sherry shallot dressing that does it for me.  For that reason – this is my “go to” salad (and look, there’s a recipe for it linked above).

Since it’s my go to salad… I serve it a lot, and while I could eat it five nights a week, I think my husband and friends are getting a bit sick of it. So… this weekend I went off in search of a new salad.

 I found one that looked interesting – first because the combination of honey and balsamic vinegar just sounded good, second because my husband really likes beans, and third because I already had all the ingredients on hand.  I’ve posted the recipe here – Honey Balsamic Bean Salad – its a slight adaptation to the original version that I found on 101cookbooks.com (which she found via a book called “Teaching Dad to Cook Flapjack”).

One more thing I discovered yesterday – my friend Kim has much prettier serving dishes than I do (example – the bowl in the picture above).  Much to my husband’s dismay, I think I might start making a habit of taking my camera with me to friend’s houses so I can take pictures of my recipes in their dishes.

My Introduction To Quinoa

I made my first Quinoa dish last night – Quinoa is a new grain (well, technically its not a grain, but it looks and tastes like one) for me, I hadn’t even heard of it prior to looking through Heidi Swanson’s book, Super Natural Cooking.   Quinoa is a super food, high in protein and amino acids, and all kinds of other good stuff.

It’s a fast cooking, hard to screw up grain – two things I really like in an ingredient.  I found a recipe for Lemony Quinoa on allrecipes.com and after a few slight modifications, ended up with a delicious dish that I ate as my main course and my kids and husband ate alongside their chicken tenders.  (well, that might be overstating a bit – one kid tasted it, said it was OK, the other kid wouldn’t allow it on her plate).  Check it out:  Citrus Quinoa

Oh, and its pronounced KEEN-wah.  I mention that only because I’ve been calling it KEE-no-wa until just now.