Tortillas with Stone Fruit, Mixed Greens, Goat Cheese, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Okay, so strictly speaking the tortillas aren't critical. But they make a nice base for this light, simple summer meal. You could certainly use flour tortillas, but since I'm avoiding gluten and rice tortillas are really kinda expensive to buy, I'm featuring this using corn tortillas. The tortillas also make great absorber of stone-fruit juices.

The stone fruits, if you're not familiar with the term, include: nectarines, peaches, and plums among others. You can also include the almond, olive, cherries, and elderberries. Probably any of these things (except maybe the almond) could work in a variation of this dish. I've had this to eat a couple of days in a row now, which may speak less to it's goodness (though I do think it's good) than to my transient state of being. I don't want to have a lot of ingredients on hand, take up much room in other people's refrigerators, or feel like I'm weighted down by food. The sun-dried tomatoes and stone-fruits in this dish would make me think of summer even if I ate this at a different time of year (and thanks to the wonders of mass transportation of veggies, I technically could eat this any time of year, but I don't think I will).

Last summer, I made a ton of oven-dried tomatoes when I had a vendor who would sell them to me cheap (a large box of "cooking" tomatoes--meaning ones that were bruised, split, or otherwise ugly--for less than $5). But I haven't lucked out in that way this summer. Instead, I've been buying my sun-dried tomatoes from an Italian foods market for an incredibly reasonable price. Needless to say, I've used fewer sun-dried tomatoes this year than in previous years. Oh, how I yearn for the day when I have a garden of my own and a bunch of tomatoes! In this dish, sun dried tomatoes add a nice earthiness and color to the top of your salad-on-a-tortilla.

This Goat is Trying to Eat my Camera Strap

Marinating the stone fruit in agave, honey, or another sweetner allows the natural juices of the fruit to be released from the cells--the technique is called macerating and if this seems unfamiliar to you, this same technique is often used with strawberries meant to top waffles, ice cream, or angel food cake. For best results, you'll want to chop your fruit moderately finely (smaller than the fruit--peaches--I show in the pictures here).

When I make this dish, I think of my friend Brenna and her boyfriend, Will. This past November, they braved a wet, Midwestern late-fall day to trek two hours west with me to visit a goat farm. We all fell in love with goat cheese that day--I liked it already, but didn't realize that as goat cheese ages, it becomes "goatier"--the quality I didn't like in some goat cheeses.

Tortillas with Stone Fruit, Mixed Greens, Goat Cheese, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
4 8-inch tortillas (I use corn, but you could use rice, flour, or another type)
4 peaches, plums or nectarines, or a combination, chopped and marinated in 2 teaspoons agave or honey for at least 10 minutes
8+ ounces mixed greens (feel free to use more, especially if you're opting out of tortillas entirely)
2 ounces soft goat cheese*
3-4 sun-dried tomatoes, cut or sliced into very thin strips
Balsamic vinegar

Place each tortilla on a plate. Spread 1/4 of the chopped fruit on each tortilla and allow to rest for 5 minutes, so that the juices begin to saturate the tortilla. (If you're not using a tortilla, you might want to place the chopped fruit on top of the salad greens).

Add 1/4 of the mixed greens on top of the fruit, on each plate, then crumble 1/2 ounce of goat cheese on top of the greens.

Arrange the sun-dried tomatoes over the greens and goat cheese, then drizzle with some balsamic vinegar, to taste. Serve.

*To make this vegan, make sure you use agave instead of honey, tortillas made without animal products (i.e. lard), and instead of soft goat cheese, leave it off entirely or mix vegan cream cheese with some fresh herbs. This last variation is what I've done twice now, using plain Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese (because I had that on hand).

Chocolate-Dipped Frozen Banana Bites

Banana Bite with Sprinkles

A while back, my friend Annie made chocolate-dipped frozen banana bites and brought them to a party. I'm not sure which website she found the idea from, otherwise I would try to credit that as well. However, there are a lot of variations of this recipe out there. Annie was trying to clear out extra ingredients from her kitchen before she went to Wyoming.

These banana bites are simple to make and fun to eat. I say this even though I stopped eating bananas earlier this year, after deciding that I couldn't support them ethically (even fair trade bananas have their issues) or environmentally. When I eat bananas in the future (I decided), I planned to eat ones that are not the traditional Cavendish bananas sold in stores--there are so many varieties, and eating other varieties may encourage their sale. (I could go on about this, but it's just as easy for you to Google the problems behind Cavendish bananas, if you're interested.)

However, when the local store has a bin of bargain bananas (99-cents for a 1/2 peck because they're going brown) and when I'm babysitting a 2-and-a-half year old and a 5-year-old 40 hours a week, and when the Midwest is (was) in the middle of a major heat wave, I'm willing to compromise my banana-thoughts. Especially when I'm not the one buying the bananas.

Here's what happened:

Mom of the kids brings home the 1/2 peck of bananas, after a trip to the grocery store and says: "I thought you could make make banana muffins or something with the kids. O really likes to stir." And I say, "Sounds great. I'd love to."

However, the kids did not want to make banana muffins. So I sliced three or four of the bananas into 1/2-inch  slices and melted some chocolate. I dipped the banana slices into the chocolate and shook off the extra. For the toppings I used: sprinkles, coconut, or sunflower seeds (one topping per banana slice). Then I froze the banana slices until the next day--but I've read that this could be done in three hours. The next day, chocolate-dipped frozen banana bites made a perfect treat after a couple hours playing at the park when the heat index was in the mid-110s.

For my banana bites, I only dipped the bananas in halfway and some of my slices were probably closer to 1-inch. Here's what you'll need:

Chocolate-Dipped Frozen Banana Bites

1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons canola oil
Assorted toppings (chopped salted peanuts, salted sunflower seeds, shredded & unsweetened coconut, sprinkles, mini M&Ms, toffee candy bites, etc.)
3-4 ripe bananas, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices

Microwave the chocolate and canola oil on high for one minute and the stir until the chocolate is smooth and the oil is incorporated. You don't want the chocolate too hot, but if all the lumps don't disappear after about 1 minute of stirring, microwave on high for an additional 15 seconds.

Place each topping in a shallow dish or on a plate. Line a baking sheet with foil or waxed paper and then arrange the banana slices on the foil. Using fingers, dip one banana slice in chocolate, coating halfway. Shake off excess chocolate and then dip in one topping. Using other hand, sprinkle more topping over banana (if desired). Transfer to the foil-lined sheet and repeat with remaining bananas. Freeze until firm. Pull out 10 minutes before serving so the banana can soften slightly.

Urban Art

Kirksville, MO

Columbia, MO

Recently, as I've walked around my town, I've noticed more graffiti. This makes me happy, but only because it's tasteful graffiti. The paint isn't drippy looking and it seems to be placed in tiny places that you wouldn't necessarily notice if you weren't looking. I've seen similar graffiti in other towns, including Columbia, MO and Nashville, TN. It's a lot of places, of course, but you have to be on foot (for the most part) to notice these stenciled graffiti "bombs."

These graffiti stencils say something and most aren't tagged with an artist's signature of any sort. Maybe I like this about them as well. It seems a little more universal that way, like (I'd argue) art should be, a little more like I might know the person who created the graffiti. And who knows, maybe I do. From what I can find out, many of the graffiti stencil bombs are created by graphic design majors (or just people who happen to be pretty good at GD) and I know a number of people I'd include in that category.

However, even graffiti on the trains that run through town make me happy, when the graffiti artist was talented. There's something I envy in the images or words on these trains, in the ability to create clean art with a spray can and a metal surface--when I wouldn't even be able to create a replica on a sheet of paper. I envy the illicitness of the activity (and resent that it's illicit at all--cities and other municipalities which employ their graffiti artists to create murals make me happy because these actions help make graffiti art more legitimate in the public eye).

But, I also happen to really like graffiti. A year ago, I had the opportunity to drive around southern Iowa and somewhere near Kalona there's a fantastic barn covered with graffiti. I wanted to get a picture of it, but I wasn't the driver and couldn't convince the driver to stop. Alas.

That's not to say I love (or even like) all urban art. Far from it. Some of it is offensive, or shows no talent, or is just paint on public property. A couple of summers ago, the playground I grew up playing on -- one located in the middle of a neighborhood -- got graffitied with blue paint. No images, no words, just paint on equipment.

Anna Helping Show Off Guerrilla Knitting

If you google "urban art" you'll find entries for the Urban Art Awards, Street Art Awards, and others. Perhaps the most famous (currently) of the urban artists is Banksy, a British street artists whose work you may (or probably) recognize. There's also JR, a French artist. His TED talk, Use Art to the Turn the World Inside Out is worth viewing, if you haven't watched it. But you may also start to find things about "yarn bombing." Guerrilla knitters, and others, yarn-bomb everything from street lamps to cars. The point: to make
the world a little more beautiful, to add visual interest. To help us open our eyes.

The images below are graffiti stencils I saw on my way to my food co-op this morning, to buy cream so I could make butter with a little boy I've been watching this summer (that project was a success). He watched the train (also graffitied) and I took these pictures. I've also taken pictures of an angry trash can, a fighting (but not ninja) turtle, the oil bottle shown above, and others. I like taking pictures of urban art and you'll probably see more of these images on this blog over coming weeks and months. I'd love to know your thoughts about urban art.