The Simplest Summer Dessert

Grilled stone fruit is an incredibly simple, insanely easy and absurdly delicious dessert.  I've made this many, many times and it is always a crowd pleaser.

Here's what you do:

- Get your hands on some *ripe* peaches or nectarines

- Cut in half and remove the pit

- Sprinkle with sugar (regular or brown)

- Heat up the grill to very hot

- Place fruit flesh side down and leave it there until you get some nice grill marks (about 3 minutes)

- Flip to the other side to finish (about 2 minutes)

Once the fruit is grilled my favorite way to serve it is with a scoop of really good vanilla ice cream in the middle.  You can also eat it plain, with some whipped cream or with a scoop of greek yogurt.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday 100th Julia Child!

I adore Julia Child.  Today would have been her 100th birthday.  So, celebrate by eating something delicious or even better COOKING something delicious.

Grilled Nectarine and Tomatillo Salsa

Last week's CSA box was FULL of tomatoes!  This meant that it was time to make some salsa.  Sunday night, I brought my CSA goods over to my parents house and we made the following salsa to go with our fish tacos.  The salsa was fruity, spicy and delicious with tortilla chips and on top of the fish.

Ingredients:

1 Nectarine

2 Tomatillos

2-4 tomatoes (depending on size)

2 cloves of garlic

1/2 onion or more to taste

1 jalapeño (remove seeds and be careful not to touch them!)
1 green pepper
1 lime

a bunch of cilantro

Salt/pepper

Chili powder

Cumin

Directions:

Fire up the grill, cut nectarine in half and grill until soft and charred.  (About 5-8 minutes)  

Place the tomatillo on the grill, whole for about 8 minutes

Once grilled, let cool and chop.

While that is on the grill, chop up everything else into salsa size pieces.

Place everything in a bowl.

Cut lime in half and squeeze the juice over the ingredients.

Add spices to taste

Salsa is delicious served with tortilla chips, on fish tacos, or over grilled chicken breast.  If you have any leftover it should keep for about a week in the fridge.

Enjoy!

MN Food Truck FAIL

As I mentioned last week, I was really excited for this new event called the MN Food Truck Fair.  It was promoted as a festival of all the food trucks in the metro and a sampling of over 25 different craft breweries.  My friends Joe and Jackie and I had purchased a groupon for $25 which was get us into the event, unlimited craft brew samples and a juicy lucy from the Blue Door Pub.  So, it was in great anticipation that we headed downtown on a beautiful August afternoon.  Little did we know we were heading into a maze of chaos, disappointment and hunger.

We approached the event site and were immediately met with a huge, winding, dense line of people.   This caused a little confusion because it was 12:45 and the fair was to open at 12:30.  Turns out, the organizers were not prepared to open on top so wait we did- for about 30 minutes.  Hungry and thirsty and already frustrated.

Just part of the massive line..

Once we got into the fair we were met with about 12 different truck choices.  Not much of a festival in my opinion.  Also, every truck had about a 20 to 30 minute wait to get any kind of food.  Therefore, we made the quick decision to head for the beer tent first to start sampling.  We were met with another long line.  Once we got up to the front the choices were actually really good (they even had an Octoberfest!) but everyone was only allowed a dixie cup sized portion and only one at a time.  After a 20 minute wait, getting a dixie cup of beer was like a slap in the face.  The entire time we were there we only got 2 cups of beer.

Jackie, Joe and our serving of beer :(

After our stop at the beer tent we went to claim our Juicy Lucy from the Blue Door Pub tent.  The Blue Door was really the one bright spot of the entire fair.  They were turning out sliders really quickly and making sure everyone was taken care of at their tent.  The Blucy (blue cheese and garlic stuffed inside a burger) was phenomenal!

Blue Door Pub- workin' it!

After our sliders we were still hungry so we all split up and jumped into different lines with the plan of meeting back up and sharing what we had.  I went to Chef Shack, Joe went to Twisted Sister and Jackie went to Stanley's.  Joe came back with some decent pulled pork carnitas.  After realizing that Chef Shack only had three options left (many trucks ran out of food 2 hours into the event) I came back with some good pulled pork Nachos.  And Jackie, well, Jackie never made it to the truck at Stanley's.  After waiting in line for over 25 minutes we decided to leave.

The fair was a total bust.  We will never go back. Ever.  The organizer was poorly organized, unprepared for the crowd and did not appear to communicate the number of attendees to any of the vendors.  The day was just a total and complete mess and we definitely did not get our money's worth.

We ended the day drinking away our sorrows at the Monte Carlo. The bartender said they had been overwhelmed by the number of disgruntled fair goers who waltzed in to finally get some food and drinks.

MN Food Truck Fair

I am pretty excited about this weekend.  Sunday is the MN Food Truck Fair in downtown Minneapolis.     The food truck scene in the Twin Cities is big and continues to grow.  However, unless you work downtown it can be difficult to catch up to one of these trucks.  Most trucks will set up shop downtown for the lunch rush and maybe hit a farmer's market on the weekend.

For the fair, we purchased VIP passes (thank you groupon) which will give us access to unlimited craft beer samplings (and there are a LOT of vendors: Breweries), live jazz music and a juicy lucy.  In addition to that I am looking forward to trying food from:

• Chef Shack
• Foxy Falafel
• Hola Arepa

I'm headed down there on Sunday with my friends Jackie and Joe.  Both have promised to wear their fat girl pants and share.  Check back next week for all the details.