I am all about tradition. Even as a young child, I always enjoyed re-occuring events based on a date, an event, or time. I don’t know what it is about me that just loves a good ritualistic event. Maybe it’s the food. Most likely…Now that I am an adult and getting older and recently married, I have started thinking more about traditions, what they mean to me and what kinds of traditions I want to start for my own family.

When we lived in Vermont, we used to have Roberto’s girls with us every other weekend, and I loved cooking special things when they were there. Especially in anticipation of Movie Night. We would rent a movie and then make fun food, perfect for watching and eating at the same time. Recently Roberto and I decided that we really need to bring back Movie Night – even if only for us. A time to get our jammies on and eat fun foods. We have done this three times so far and it seems to be sticking. We have prepared some really fun finger foods and menus that I want to share in case anyone else has Movie Night and is looking for recipes, or wants to start a Movie Night tradition of their own.

So for our first official movie night, a few months ago, we watched Simply Irresistible. I made Lisa’s Olive Stuffed Cheese Ballsand Curried Deviled Eggs. We also mixed Greek Yogurt with Sumac, Za’atar, Sesame Seeds and Olive Oil and scooped it all up with warm whole wheat pita bread. For dessert we had leftover Key lime pie with strawberries that my mom had sent home with us after a visit. It was a great time. The movie, Simply Irresistible is with Sarah Michelle Gellar. A cooking movie where the emotions she puts in her food while she is cooking, affects those who eat it! Really cute film, especially if you are a die-hard Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan like we are, and therefore are bound to watch anything that has any of the stars from that show in it for all eternity.

The next movie night we had was kind of themed without meaning to be. I had Lentil Koftas with cucumber salad on the menu with a side of Greek style green beans. As we were frying the koftas, I was looking for a plate to put them on, so they would stay warm. Our good friend, Tony had given us a Tagine for a wedding present that he and his partner, Jonathan had carried back with them from a recent trip to Morocco. It had a lid and looked nice, so I decided to use it as a serving platter. Plus I have really been dying to use the Tagine! Don’t worry, I just made Chicken Tagine this weekend - so you will be seeing it in its primary use in a little while!

We ended up getting The Kite Runner as a movie and the theme of the movie really fit well with our menu. The koftas were really great, and I plan on making them again.

I have made the green beans for ages and they were a perfect accompaniment. Recipes to follow. The movie was excellent. It is one of those films that you can’t shrug off for several days. I had read the book and felt the adaptation was perfect.

For our third movie night we really wanted to try Elle’s Mango Buffalo Wings from last month’s Royal Foodie Joust.
I love the spicy and vinegar combination of buffalo wings, but I have never made them at home. When Elle entered the contest last month with a mango buffalo wing, I knew I would love it, so I got the ingredients to make them. They were wonderful, the perfect combination of spice and sweet that I adore with that vinegar hot sauce note. However, the movie, I Am Legend was not a big hit. There is a very bad scene in the movie involving an animal and I just couldn’t take it…I am a big wuss when it comes to these kinds of movies.

However, this one bad movie has not deterred us from continuing the tradition of movie night! Join us for movie night and let us know your best creations!

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Recently we had my family over for an open house. We have been in our new place for a while now and not everyone had been here to see it. So we decided to do a luncheon. I had two ideas going into this party – I wanted to make something rustic and old-school hearkening back to the times that Italians stopped what they were doing to enjoy a nice lunch spread together out in the fields, on a big slab of wood turned into a table. Also along this theme, I really wanted to make something using ingredients that we already had at home.

Too many times when preparing for a party, I decide on a menu and then go and buy all the ingredients. This time, I wanted to challenge myself more and use what was around. We had been to the Farmer’s market the day before and had gotten our staples: potatoes, tomatoes, squashes, onions and beautiful bread. We also had a bag of frozen mussels in the freezer. So I decided to make a regional dish from Puglia, called Tiella di Cozze or Mussel Casserole – it is said to have descended from Spanish Paella. Since we were having a crowd, I also added some shrimp to the dish, which was topped off with a delicious bread crumb and parmesan topping! It was wonderful.

We served it with a nice green salad,Garlic-Rosemary Foccacia from Maria, the bread lady at the Farmer’s Market and finished with a

Yogurt Carrot Cake with Toasted Hazelnuts . Keep reading for the recipes.

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I love polenta – it is total comfort food and a great base for a variety of vegetables and great with tomato sauce and cheese. My favorite way to make polenta is with sundried tomatoes, olives, cheese and spinach – put it in the fridge until it gets hard, dust it with flour and pan fry in olive oil. Served with a hearty tomato sauce it is really one of the best things to eat. This time though, I didn’t feel like frying the polenta – I wanted something lighter but still comforting and flavorful, so I decided to use the polenta rectangles as a base for lasagna. It was really good and something I will certainly make again.

This is also my contribution to Marie of Proud Italian Cook and Maryann of Finding La Dolce Vita ’s Event: Festa Italiana. All Entries due March 22nd. Please click on either of their links for participation guidelines!

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Man, I am getting in a lot of blog posts this week! I guess there is just so much good stuff going on in the food blogoshpere that I want to support and be a part of. Sometimes, I get so backed up with other food related posts that I wait until the last minute to get my entry in for a Foodie Event. I wish I had time to do them all! I just love the creativity in this community! Food Bloggers ROCK!

Which leads me exactly to this post and this Foodie Event which is called Eat To The Beat and is the brainchild of my friend
Elly from Elly Says Opa! Elly says she was inspired to create this event because her love of music is about as big as her love for food! I completely concur. I have always believed that my life would be so much better if it had a soundtrack. So since I have started working from home, I can listen to music all day long and it just makes my life so complete. I can’t imagine cooking without music, dinner parties or meals without some kind of music playing the the background. So in a way, I have created a soundtrack for myself!

Press Play:

As you all who are regular readers of this blog know, I do bellydancing and I love it. Due to this fact, much of my music collection is what we call in this house “bellydancing music”. If the music hails from the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey or any of the places in between it is referred to as such.

And as all of you know who read this blog, I love all the foods from those regions as well…coincidence? Most likely not.

So this gets me to the meat of this post. We were having friends over for dinner last week, and I wanted to create a fun atmosphere – so we did small plates – meze, antipasti, tapas, whatever you want to call it. I was really getting into all the dolmas or stuffed grape leaves people were making in the weeks leading up to it too – So I decided to combine Peter’s from Kalofagas and Mag’s from Hommus w/ Tabbouli to make my own version. I also made the Labneh from Mag’s blog as well, which is a soft Lebanese yogurt cheese, plus I re-created the Middle Eastern Meatballs with Orzo I had made last year. However, this time I made my own meatballs with the leftover ground meat from the gyros the week before. I just added and egg and some bread crumbs and baked the meatballs in the oven at 400 F for about 25 minutes. The meal was a huge hit and we had a great evening.

I chose this song, Desert Rose, click here to see the original video, the partnership of Sting and Cheb Mami, who is one of my most favorite artists and who is a very big star in his native Algeria and much of the “bellydancing music” world. His voice is unique and beautifully haunting. I also love Sting and give him major props for introducing Cheb’s beautiful voice to the western world through this song.

For more by Cheb Mami, click here.
To hear more of his music, click below.

Now for the recipes:

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Okay guys, I am giving away secrets here. I use yogurt in a lot of my cooking. It is one of my culinary secrets. When a dish needs a little extra tang or some creaminess, I dig out the ubiquitous carton of plain yogurt in my fridge. I prefer the Greek style yogurt, as many of you know, but sometimes it is not available, so I just go for the all natural, organic plain stuff. No one can ever guess that it is in there, but it really adds a wonderful element to some of the best dishes I have made.

My Dad and Step mom were here this weekend visiting us. I wanted them to see the things about St. Augustine that we love so much, so on Saturday AM, bright and early we took a trip to the Farmer’s Market. We picked up some beautiful fresh local shrimp. We got some more of those huge Meyer lemons. I had pasta at home already and standing there at the market with fresh shrimp, lemons and beautiful green spring onions a plan began to form. This is the kind of cooking I love – being inspired by the best products you can find. The recipe is almost secondary.

After the market we took them to the the beach where we are going to get married in April. As you can see it was REALLY cold here this weekend. I am so glad I brought my parka with me from New England! We had a really great time. Roberto was the best sous chef ever and we had a great time cooking together in the kitchen while Dad and Kayzie relaxed in the living room with a glass of wine (did I mention that Kayzie is a wine distributor and they brought their own wine on their trip?! - lucky us!) The pasta was delicious by the way…

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Here we go folks, another Fabulous Farmer’s Market recipe! This is really fun and challenging. Stay with me because I still have two more meals to show you - still from out FIRST Farmer’s Market Adventure! This weekend my Dad and Stepmom are coming to visit and guess where we are going Saturday AM - you guessed it! I will try to get some better pictures of the market itself…this was the best I could find from our maiden voyage.

Anyway, I digress…

I am a die hard beet fan. I just love them. Maybe it is their beautiful color, maybe it is their sweet taste, maybe it is the fact that they just SCREAM health. Whatever it is, when I see good looking beets, I am all over them, I can’t resist.
My favorite way to prepare them, is to roast them. It just really brings out their sweetness – it is like making vegetable candy. I could eat em by the bowl full. But me, I love the entire beet, I love the sweet purple root and I also adore the bitter greens. Nothing goes to waste – just the root if it is still attached.

I got gorgeous beets at the Farmer’s Market. In fact this dish is the dish I made the night we went to the Farmer’s Market. I just could not wait to dig in! I paired the roasted beets with goat cheese and pine nuts and served it on a bed of baby greens and wilted beet greens. It doesn’t get fresher than this guys. We just loved this salad. We ate along side crusty country bread also purchased at the Farmer’s Market dipped in reserve Greek olive oil from Kalamata. It was heaven.

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On our last trip to the Farmer’s Market we also procured some little eggplants. Not the Japanese kind, just small eggplants. I love getting these because they taste so amazing – like eggplant is supposed to taste. Many times when I get the big ones they are full of seeds and the flesh is bitter, even when you salt them and let them drain. But these small ones are delicious and need no salting. One of my favorite things to make with eggplant is Imam Bayildi or The Imam Fainted. Apparently it is the copious amounts of olive oil in the dish that made him faint, but it is not clear whether he fainted from meanness or delight, so the legend says.

I have loved cooking since I was a young girl. I spent many many hours in the kitchen with my grandmother and my mother watching. That is what they say about writers – we are observers first and foremost, as being involved would make us lose our perspective. But I also helped these ladies of the kitchens. I was cooking full meals by the time I was 12 years old. My first love affair with food was with Greek cooking. The first time I had Dolmas, Tzatziki, Melitzanosalata and Feta Cheese I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I understood the magic of food – how it could transport you somewhere else. So began my love affair with food and traveling the world through my palette.

My love of food was noticed early. My grandfather used to love to watch me eat because he could tell how much I enjoyed it. When my friends came over to play, we would experiment in the kitchen, trying to bake cakes- that was before I understood about baking powder and soda, though – so you can imagine the many flops! I am not sure when I received this cookbook:

but I remember always having it – it was one of the first of many and probably still my all time favorite Greek cookbook. The recipes are easy to follow, it is unpretentious , the pictures of the food are drawn and it is where I learned that an eggplant is called aubergine and zucchini, courgette, which made me feel very smart and wordly.

I suggest when making Imam Bayildi, make extra. It is delicious and it goes down very easy!
I welcome comments from all my experts in Greek Cookery out there. I have never seen this dish on any menu at any Greek restaurant I have ever been to…do you have any stories about this dish?

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I really believe in the concept of eating with the seasons. On the occasional times I have been able to do that with regularity(when I had a CSA membership, when I lived on the Navajo Reservation) I have felt great. Like I really had a concept of what the earth produces at certain times of the year - you know The Harvest. I also found that it made me much more creative, culinarily speaking. You have all these veggies of the same kind for weeks in a row – how can you make them interesting? After having these experiences of seasonal eating, I have always wanted to live near a farmer’s market so I could keep up the good work. When I lived in MA and when I travel back to The Northeast and I find myself in Boston, I always get jealous of the people living there that have access to one of the best farmers markets I have ever seen. They have meats, cheeses, breads, fresh fruits, veggies, nuts, grains, food stalls where you can eat, ad infinitum. It is a playground for anyone who loves food or anyone who is looking for quality product – local, organic, FRESH and inexpensive! Granted living in rural MA we had our farm stands which don’t get me wrong, are pretty great. But I just envied the variety these people in Boston enjoy. Then I start blogging and I read blogs like Figs Olives Wine and Once Upon a Feast and you hear Amanda and Ruth talk about the importance of eating local and fresh and you see these wonderful photographs of the Farmer’s Markets in their communities and I think to myself, why doesn’t every town have this? Every town used to have this.The market has always been, for centuries, the mainstay, the hub of a community, have we become that out of touch?

Well I guess the Foodie Fairies have shined their light on me, because now I get to live in a community that has a farmer’s market and a good one at that. This is good news because it is more fodder for my kitchen creations and my writing. I hope to be inspired, challenged and in love with this market. I will do my best to do right by it – get most of my produce there, meet the farmers and learn who they are, just get back in touch with the earth, even in this small way. I love simplicity - great ingredients that still taste like they are supposed to after they have been enhanced by a few other simple ingredients. If Leftovers are rooted in simplicity, the other side of the coin is this.

And did anyone see the SIZE of that Swiss Chard Leaf up there?

How about this LEMON? Yes it is the size of a an orange, 5 for $2. Unbeatable.

This leads me to Today’s Recipe: Swiss Chard and Potatoes

This recipe is near and dear to my heart – it is my adaptation of one of my Grandfather’s recipes and as those of you who keep up withthis blog of mine know, I love my grandfather. He had 3 things he made: Home made Italian Sausage (mild AND hot), Pepperoni Eggs and Swiss Chard with Potatoes. His version is very simple – thinly sliced potatoes, garlic and onions fried in olive oil, mixed with chard, salt and pepper. To mine I add the juice of one lemon and Parmesan cheese. I then put it in a casserole and bake it in the oven for 15 minutes at 350 F. Then I broil it for a few minutes to get the Parmesan crusty and browned. It is simple fair but my goodness is it good, especially when you use such quality ingredients!

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