In this moment, I am content...

When we paid for our entry to the Anderson Japanese Gardens, the woman handed me two round stickers with Japanese symbols on them and said that if you read the circle it said "In this moment, I am content".   It surprised me how deeply that phrase impacted me.  It was like a shining reminder to stop and enjoy the moment, and to remember to slow down once in awhile and appreciate what, and who, I have.  Even before stepping foot in the gardens, my spirits were lifted...

The gardens were beautiful to say the least.  It was serene, peaceful, and quiet, even with a lot of people milling about.  The pictures explain better than I can, and even they don't do it justice.  The phrase on my little sticker flitted about my head for the few hours we wandered about, and I couldn't have chosen a better way to spend the day.   (It also didn't hurt that afterwards we at dessert first and had the best green tea ice cream ever made in their little restaurant, and then went to the Machine Shed Restaurant that serves some of my favorite chicken fingers in the whole world! :D)

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Sinful Garlic Bread

This pull apart garlic bread is my favorite bread in the whole world.   At times, I'd call it my favorite food in the whole world.  When I was younger and in a garden club with my mother (during my 4-H days) a Benedictine Monk from Peoria named Father Dominic came to give a presentation on cooking with herbs and taught us how to make this bread.

It... is... soooooooo... good! I can't even describe it other than it is garlic butter heaven with clouds of fluffy bread.

As his story went, Father Dom used to make this bread on days when the monks had both been fasting and silent for a considerable period of time, and were scheduled to break their fast/silence that evening.  He would make the (delicious!) Italian spice mix, mix it up with the butter, and after application to his fresh dough, let the bread rise for a few hours.  Now, this is why I call this sinful bread... you can smell it EVERYwhere when you make it, and Father Dom said the other monks would walk by the kitchen and, unable to speak, shake their fists in annoyance that he was teasing them so all day long.

I used to make a simplified version of this recipe for my friends in college, but you really have to use his spice mix to make it in its true form.  I do, however, continue to use frozen bread rolls due to time, and this time I had to use loaves, cut up.

Ingredients:

• bag of frozen bread dough rolls (the kind that rise) --- defrosted

• butter (1-2 sticks)

• Italian spice mix

(see Father Dom's recipe book which everyone should own: http://www.monasterygreetings.com/product/Breaking_Bread-vol_1/Breaking_Bread_with_Fr_Dominic )

• a 9 X 13 pan (or more depending on how many rolls)

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Directions:

1. Melt butter and mix with Italian spices


2. Roll each dough roll into the butter mixture


3. Fill pan with rolls to the point that they are squashed in together


4. Let rise (see the bag for time and details, usually 2hrs)


5. Bake


6. Devour

Beyond his awesome recipes, I have found Father Dom to be very inspirational.  His other book, Bake and Be Blessed, talks about baking bread as a metaphor for life, and discusses how everyone is a different type of bread.  It is not the least bit preachy, and focuses on the type of spiritual thought that I think anyone, church go-er or not, can appreciate.   I have a lot of respect for him, and I kind of want to just show up at the  monestary to see if he wants to hang out and cook.  Maybe I should call first...

Babaga… um.. smooshed eggplant

Attempting a diet friendly meal this evening, we made chicken, roasted peppers, tomato salad and some smooshy eggplant. I liked the eggplant more than I thought I would, it was the texture of fresh mashed potatoes, but with a more interesting flavor and spice.  Not to mention eggplant has hardly any calories! Hooray!

I cooked up a low carb wrap to scoop the eggplant with, topped the chicken with the peppers, and served the tomatoes on the side.  Tasty!

The eggplant was the most complicated (although not very)

• 5 garlic cloves with some cumin, red pepper, and olive oil in a foil grill packet


• Eggplant (whole, not skinned!) thrown on the grill until tender (we didn't quite get it soft enough to scrape out of the skin and had to saute it up in a pan)


• Blend the garlic and eggplant in a food processor


• Add about 1/4 cup strained yogurt and blend until smooth

Peppers

• Thrown on grill


• Black stuff scraped off


• Seeds removed


• Food processed to rough chop

Tomatoes

• cut into chunks with "goop" removed, lightly salted


• handful of white sweet corn (fresh, raw off the cob)


• tsp olive oil


• fresh basil


• salt and pepper

Yogurt garnish

• we used non-fat plain yogurt, and I made it more exciting with some cumin and other spice mix

Chicken: grilled plain, enough flavors elsewhere!