As everyone here knows, I am obsessed with figs and fig recipes. Their exterior beauty is exotic and captivating, while the soft, creamy sweet fruit on the inside is so unexpected. I just adore the fig and since summer is drawing to an end, I am posting two more fig recipes I think you will enjoy:
Parmesan Stuffed Figs with Balsamic Reduction and Drunken Figs.

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First it is time to announce the winner of this Month’s Royal Foodie Joust!

This month the ingredients were chosen by Marye of Apron Strings and Simmering Things as she won last month’s Joust.
Her choices were: Zucchini, Buttermilk and Chipotle

The Winner of this month’s Joust is Mehgan of A Craving For Perfection for her entry of Zucchini Stuffed Chicken Breasts with a Buttermilk Chipotle Sauce:

Second Place is Valli of More Than Burnt Toast with her lucious and decadent Chocolate Zucchini Cake with a Chocolate Chipotle Sauce :

Third place is Cris of From Our Home To Yours with her Vegetarian Chili:

Congrats to all the participants and please join us next time! If you have not become a member of our forum yet, please register today!

I have also been awarded two very special awards and so I would love to take this award moment to thank Madeleine of Madeleine Cocina for selecting me for the Premio Blog Solidario for blogs who (if you speak Spanish):
“premiar a los blogs que destacan o han destacado en alguna ocasión por su solidaridad con los demás.”
or as she explained to me are for bloggers who help other bloggers. So thank you so much Madeleine! I can’t thank you enough for thinking of me!

I also want to thank Valli of More Than Burnt Toast from the bottom of my heart for nominating me for a Thoughtful Blogger Award:

“The Thoughtful Blogger Award is for those who answer blog comments, emails, and make their visitors feel at home on their blogs. For the people who take others’ feelings into consideration before speaking out and who are kind and courteous. Also for those bloggers who spend so much of their time helping other bloggers design, improve, and fix their sites. This award is for those generous bloggers who think of others.”

So congratulations to everyone and I hope everyone has a great weekend!

It is not very often that I feature recipes of celebrity chefs on this blog. Of course, I watch cooking shows, frequently and I have my favorites, but mostly they give me ideas and inspiration for creating my own recipes. I will learn a new technique and I will want to try it out – not necessarily in the same way as it was laid out on TV. However, it just so happened that I fell in love with two recipes done by everyone’s favorite Italian chef – Giada De Laurentiis ( I will post the second recipe at a later date). This dish, is a pasta dish where the sauce is made from squash. I love squash and I am always looking for new and interesting ways to cook this, and I was just enamored by this dish. So for once, I followed a recipe exactly how it was written. There are of course a few changes I would make in the future, which I will note at the end of this post, but all in all it was a delicious and unique dish! It is perfect to stock away for the fall season when many of you will have gardens or farm shares overflowing with squash. You will appreciate this recipe then!
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Here is a quick reminder that the voting for this month’s Royal Foodie Joust challenge is underway. So please stop by the forum to place the vote for your favorite!

Now on to Ratatouille!

Ratatouille is the perfect summer dish as it incorporates all of the season’s bountiful vegetables like eggplant, zucchini and bell peppers so it is a perfect way to close out the summer, which is quickly drawing to an end. For those with a nightshade allergy or sensitivity this is the worst thing you can eat, but for those of us fortunate enough not to have that issue, it is a welcomed treat and a solution to a surplus of summer vegetables.

Ratatouille, besides being the name of a wonderful movie, it is a traditional French Provencal comfort food – a dish of stewed vegetables. It can be served as it is with a nice crusty bread for scarpetta – the Italian word for “sopping up the juices” or wiping your plate clean with a piece of crusty bread – something I am a pro at! Clearly the Italians are smart to actually have one word to describe this phenomenon! Or you can serve your ratatouille as a filling for crepes, or over pasta for a wonderful change of pace. This recipe can be modified in one hundred different ways. We had some leftover juices from a Chicken Chianti I did (will be posting that recipe soon) and so I used this as a base to stew the vegetables in. I also added some sun dried tomatoes for an extra sweet and summery element. Bon Appetite!
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