The other night, I had a few girlfriends over to see the new house, hang out, and catch up. It was so nice to be able to bring my kitchen table outside to the backyard, use candles when it got dark, drink wine, and talk! I love how people can really take you out of your head space–in a refreshing way. What I mean by this is sometimes I find myself so wrapped up in what I am doing, a project, or task, that I forget about everything else. I can get serious tunnel vision when it comes to zeroing in on completing something! But even so, that tunnel vision can creep up on me when it’s not totally necessary–and I find myself using it as a fallback during daily routine stuff which I am not so into. This is when getting together with a bunch of close friends can be really great–they get you out of your head and thinking about completely different things! After this dinner, I felt as if I had exhaled–and definitely laughed a lot.
It’s been a bit hot here in Portland this past week and the tomatoes here are STUNNING. Absolutely gorgeous and in their prime. My favorite are the little green baskets of the heirloom cherry tomatoes you can get at farmer’s markets and the grocery store–little yellow, orange, and red ones. The colors are bright and beautiful and the flavors are even better! So I thought I would showcase these flavors in a simple tomato salad. It was a good idea 
. I then served a dish of fresh creamy feta and kalamata olives on the side in case anyone wanted to turn it into a Greek salad. I also made hummus and some pitas. I love to make hummus, it is super easy and I know exactly what’s in it–plus it is fresher and more flavorful. I like to use a lot of lemon in mine . For dessert, I made brownies. I had been seeing brownies around lately–in reading (novels, blogs, and magazines–I guess that says a lot about what I read!) and generally just around. It’s kind of like when you start to notice, say, the color red. You just see it everywhere all of a sudden! That’s how it felt like with brownies. So I had to make them. These brownies were delicious and chewy. The cinnamon and coffee give them a Mexcali kick and next time I might nix the cinnamon to have an even deeper chocolate experience. These were especially good with red wine–I highly recommend having a glass with one of these brownies if you make them!
Tomato Salad
Put into a huge bowl: half a pint of colorful cherry tomatoes, cut up one or two more large heirlooms too, a thinly sliced cucumber with most of the skin removed, cut up one or two Italian peppers or “Jimmy Nardello’s” as they are also known, finely chop about 1/4 red onion. Then pour a generous helping of nice olive oil on top (about 4-5 tablespoons), sprinkle some nice coarse sea salt on top, some oregano, and some pepper. Cut a lemon in half and squeeze the whole thing on top. Toss and serve.
Hummus
Put into a food processor:
1-2 large garlic cloves
a good handful of Italian parsley–pulse together
Then add:
2 cans garbanzo beans
about a tablespoon of tahini sauce (you may want more or less depending on how you like it to taste, more if you want a more bitter flavor, less if not)
a good run of olive oil–about a 1/2 cup (I usually just turn the bottle over and count to 
cut a lemon in half and squeeze that whole thing in there–sometimes I even add a little zest too
and some salt.
Pulse it all together until creamy adding a little of this or that until the flavor is right for you. (Usually I need more lemon or olive oil.)
Brownies, recipe via Culinate
6 oz bittersweet chocolate (around 60% cacao)
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon coco powder (any kind)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1-2 tablespoons ground instant coffee
3/4 kosher salt (don’t use regular table salt!)
1 cup all purpose flour
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8-by-8-inch baking dish, or line it with a piece of aluminum foil. (The foil is wasteful, but it allows you to remove all the brownies easily from the pan.) In a medium saucepan, combine the chocolate and butter and cook, stirring frequently, over medium-low heat. When the chocolate and butter are evenly melted, remove from the heat and let cool while you mix the rest of the ingredients. In a medium bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, cocoa powder, cinnamon, vanilla extract, coffee, and salt. Stir in the butter-chocolate mixture, then stir in the flour. Scrape the batter into the prepared baking dish and bake until a tester inserted in the center of the brownies comes out mostly clean with only a few crumbs attached, about 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool at least half an hour before cutting. Cut the brownies in the pan or, if you used aluminum foil, use the edges of the foil to lift the sheet of uncut brownies out of the pan before cutting into squares or rectangles.
Bon Apetit!
