Nosh: wrecked

wrecked

Dear readers (if there are any of you left), I am so completely overwhelmed at the moment.

For the past few weeks I've been a hostage of my website hosting company, iPowerweb, who has performed the most incompetent and problem-ridden server migration in the history of the world. Not only are my website galleries, to which I have uploaded photos over the past five years, erased, but also moveable type posts that I had been working on. Today when I noticed that my website quota had dropped from 84 % to 1 %, my frustration rose to a level where my eye began to twitch and hasn't stopped. Maybe I drank too much coffee, gulping down the comforting liquid while perusing the wreckage of my website; but more likely, I have just HAD it. I haven't been able to post entries or check email since May 11 and my patience has dwindled down to about nothing. I could tear a super crusty loaf of Italian bread in half with my bare hands.

That being said, I hope to at least be able to post new entries from now on and that the worst is behind me. While my own website was being pillaged, I still followed your food blogs, with itchy fingers and a yearning tummy. It's true that food is a good medicine to restore sanity and a sense of well-being. So let me share a few simple pleasures that have lately brightened up the rainy Munich days and enhanced the sunny ones.

Here's one for those looking to slim down for the summer months: This pizza toastie has only 200 kcal. The base is a whole-grain organic "toaster" bread (you could substitute a whole-grain english muffin) that has first been lightly toasted, then topped with fresh tomatoes, 25 grams of half-fat mozzarella, a sprinkling of dried oregano and grilled in the oven until bubbling. Top with fresh basil and smile. Not a reinvention of the wheel, I know, but it's a quickie meal that satisfies.

This next one is an eggy dish. No matter my age, my mom used to ask if I wanted her to make me an "eggy" and I associate this word with the warm pleasure of being home.

That is what I call a brunchy salad of arugula with a soft egg and crumbled goat cheese. Yum.

Jamie Oliver has credit for the next item ... from Jamie's Italy, this is Rosemary and Orange Salt. I could imagine laying on beaches of this stuff. As you can guess, it gives "zing" to just about anything.

Some ideas: sprinkle on roasted meats, steamed asparagus, crusty toasted bread drizzled with olive oil and especially on fish that you're about to grill. I did a whole fish on the grill, seasoned with the rosemary and orange salt and stuffed with fennel.

Finally, this cous cous that I can only describe as addictive. The sunny color comes from fresh squeezed orange juice and it is flecked with aromatic orange zest. An abundance of mixed fresh herbs (oregano, basil, and mint), roasted red pepper, and sweet cherry tomatoes makes it the perfect companion to summer dishes.

I hope that will quench your appetite for awhile ... I am off to Verona and Tuscany to spend my birthday in website-ignorant bliss. Oh, and to eat. :)