Mmmmm.....Italian.....

Very often the best food is the simplest. You can spend hours cooking complicated crazy food, and in the end it is just that....complicated. Sometimes I find that the best way to have a really great meal is to take simple ingredients and throw them together with whatever I happen to have in the fridge. The best part is, in these days of pesticides, hidden ingredients, and weird preservatives, the more you can do from scratch the better it is for your health.

Recently, my husband has started teaching himself to bake bread from scratch. Now I may be able to cook, but baking bread is not something I enjoy...mainly because I love to play with my food. A fringe benefit to this new motivation to bake (other than the wonderful smell that pervades the house), is that I have fresh bread to use in dinners. Last week it went into the stuffing for the poussin, and this week it was used in a little bruschetta.


The chicken and zucchini were simply broiled with olive oil, salt, and pepper. The sauce for the chicken was olive oil, lemon, parsley, garlic, mustard, and honey. Add a little balsamic vinegar to the zucchini, and serve with Doug's pain complet topped with tomatoes, shallots, parsley, and olive oil. All in all a easy, tasty, dinner in which I attempted to pay homage to the simplicity of Italian cuisine.

(mea culpa: this Italian meal was paired with a white Portuguese table wine...but its citrus and honey notes paired perfectly with the garlic and lemon flavors of the meal.)