Beth Fish – Peaceful Reader

We went out of town this weekend to attend a Bluegrass Festival in Des Moines. I do love to travel and going anywhere requires finding a few good restaurants to try. On this trip our main foodie experience was Gusto’s Pizza near downtown. This place does not have just your average pizzas plus they do gluten-free crusts for any of their pizzas. I didn’t snap any photos because I was too busy eating. With names like Buffalo Springfield, Vincent Van Goat, Francesco, and the Fromage A’Trois it was very hard to make a choice. With all the menu choices we somehow missed the special of the day which was a spicy Thai pizza.

{Gusto’s Pizza-just NOT the pizza we ordered}

After much deliberation we voted to get the Francesca which featured an Alfredo sauce, mozzarella, Roma tomato, artichokes, cremini mushrooms, and spinach. It was divine. We ate almost the whole thing. There is one lonely piece waiting for me in the refrigerator for lunch or dinner. Groovy Girl got to design her own small pizza; shrimp, fresh basil, Roma tomatoes, and extra mozzarella. She was in pizza heaven and she had a wonderful cream soda to make her smile.

My friend and I both tried 2 different salads from the menu as well. Mine was the Fromage Bleu featuring apples, spiced walnuts, mixed greens, red onion and balsamic vinaigrette. I wished for more bleu cheese crumbled on top-after all the name features bleu! My friend ordered the quinoa continental and it was by far the winner! A small amount of quinoa mixed with mixed greens, goat cheese, roasted butternut squash, dried cranberries, and balsamic vinaigrette. I am going to re-create this salad at home! All in all it was an amazing trip to Des Moines. Oh, and the Bluegrass Festival; it was fantastic as well.

We made it safely back yesterday afternoon just in time for Groovy Girl’s school fundraiser. Last night at about my bedtime I realized I needed to make something for our church potluck. I whipped this vegan curry dish (from allrecipes.com) in about 40 minutes and it was a huge hit. The bowl was scraped clean. Surprising as it was pretty spicy. No leftovers. I’ll have to make more. It’s been a good food weekend for me!

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads weekly foodie meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts.

We made pickles for the first time ever as a family and it was a fantastic learning experience for everyone. I dream up lots of plans but don’t always follow through so when I announced part way through the summer that I was interested in making bread and butter pickles they males in my house did small eye rolls and gently nodded their heads. My daughter, of course, was gung-ho from the beginning. I googled bread and butter pickles and found this man, Drew Kime’s wonderful website/blog and just followed his easy steps. We bought baskets of smaller cucumbers and mixed them with regular sized cukes from our farmer’s market, rinsed them and my son took charge of slicing.

From above cucumbers to these delicious pickles. We will have pickles all winter long plus I’ve given a few jars away. They are just the right amount of spicy to sweet. My husband and I just sat down and ate lunch together: two pieces of soft bread, stone ground mustard, thinly sliced radishes, salad greens (two scores from this morning’s market), sharp cheddar, and a jar of homemade pickles to dig into=YUM sandwich!

This post is part of Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads. She’s got something appropriately timed about witches and wine with a giveaway included.

Other news: I’m very close to finishing linger by maggie stiefvater. I wish I was in Mpls this weekend for the Kid Lit conference as she is the headliner and I would love to hear her speak and maybe have an opportunity to shake her hand. I have this weird excitement about shaking hands with certain peeps. I can feel the eye rolls and fond smirks even as I type this!

Tag: Beth Fish

February; Weekend Cooking

Cucumbers to Pickles