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Sometimes, I get really wacky ideas. I’m not even all that sure where this one came from. One minute, I’m nosing around my pantry trying to find something I can call dinner, and the next I’m at the grocery store buying peaches: a girl with a plan.

For some reason, I decided that peaches and polenta would go really well together. I don’t eat polenta too, too often. As my brother says, “We’re not mangioni di polenta.” (Mangioni di polenta just means polenta eaters, but as far as my bro, and most Southern Italians are concerned, it’s an insult directed towards Northerners.)

However, I almost always have a bag of cornmeal in my pantry for cornbread and the like, and as I’m cleaning out my kitchen to head off on my summer adventures (Cannes, Mallorca, and Paziols), I decided to pull a few dishes together with polenta. Last week, I was eating it plain with sugar on top, like my mother used to make Cream of Wheat and Cream of Rice in the morning, but yesterday, I decided to have some for dinner.

This isn’t a sweet dish by any means: you could certainly sweeten the polenta itself to make it an adequate dessert, but for me it was dinner, so the only sugar was the natural sweetness of the fresh peaches (by the way, am I the only one who prefers yellow peaches substantially to white ones? I bought some white peaches by accident this morning, and while I ate them, I was horribly disappointed.)

I can’t wait to start eating all this fresh produce that’s out in stores now. Try this for a breakfast treat (or if you’re strange, like me, for your dinner.)

Peaches and Cream Polenta

1 cup 2% milk
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, grated
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 4 oz. container plain, lowfat yogurt
1 peach, cut into sections

Heat the milk over low heat and add the cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Slowly add the cornmeal, stirring all the time. If you find that the cornmeal soaks up the milk too quickly, you can add a little bit of water. When the polenta is cooked all the way through, turn off the stove and spoon about 3/4 of the yogurt container into the pot and stir. Place in a bowl and top with peach segments and the remaining yogurt. Serve hot with extra cinnamon if desired.

I’m about to head out to Cannes for the film festival, and then to Mallorca with the Canadian for a month before I start my job in Paziols again, so I’ve been trying to save money. Food-wise, this means living out of my pantry: in the fridge, I have a bunch of potatoes, a lot of plain yogurt, some milk and some eggs. It was time to get creative.

I invented two different baked potato recipes last week, and both were amazing. I hadn’t had a baked potato in a very long time, so I was surprised at how easy they are and how different they taste from boiled or steamed potatoes.

Here are the two recipes… more stories to come shortly!

P.S. Sorry I’ve been so M.I.A. lately… I’m really working hard at starting up my other two blogs. Come by and check them out if you’re interested! Links further down the page…

Baked Potato with Spinach and Yogurt

1 potato
1/2 cup frozen spinach, heated and drained
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp. olive oil
1 4 oz. container of plain yogurt
1 tsp. chives
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the yogurt in a cheesecloth over a bowl to strain. Pierce the potato on all sides with a fork. Place the garlic cloves in a ball of tinfoil with some salt and olive oil. Place both the garlic and the potato in the oven on the middle rack. After half an hour, rotate the potato.

When the potato is fully cooked, after about an hour, remove it and the garlic from the oven. Remove the potato flesh from the skin, keeping the skins whole and about a centimeter of potato in the shells. In a bowl, mash the potato with half of the strained yogurt, the spinach, the roasted garlic, and the salt and pepper. Transfer the mashed potato back to the potato shells. Mix the rest of the yogurt with the chives and top the potatoes with the yogurt.

Curry Baked Potato

1 potato

1 tbsp. prepared red curry paste

1 4 oz. container yogurt

1/2 cup frozen spinach, thawed and strained

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the yogurt in a cheesecloth over a bowl to strain. After one hour, removie the potato from the oven. Remove the potato flesh from the shells. In a frying pan, combine the curry paste, the spinach and the potato. Heat through. Remove from the heat and stir in the strained yogurt. Return mixture to shells.

I found this picture lurking from when the Daring Bakers baked baguette back in the winter. This is what I did with mine, besides just eat it plain: slathered with mustard, some good roquefort cheese and slices of hard-boiled egg, this sandwich reigns supreme over most other sandwiches I’ve ever made… could be the homemade baguette, but I’m thinking it has more to do with the quality of the ingredients available here in France: spicy mustard, good flavorful blue cheese and fresh eggs.

Egg and Cheese Sandwich

1/2 baguette
1 hard-boiled egg, sliced
2 tsp. good, spicy mustard
2 oz. good blue cheese like roquefort or gorgonzola

Slice the baguette down the middle and spread both sides with mustard. Add the egg and cheese, and season with a grinding of black pepper if you like. Close sandwich and consume. Smile.

I’ve often heard that the difference between French food and Italian food is the mindset: the French seek to make something incredible out of what seems like nothing. A croissant is just butter and flour, when it all comes down to it. A baguette is yeast, flour, water and salt. For the French, it’s all in the technique.

The Italians, on the other hand, seek to show off the best of the ingredients, barely adding anything at all. Prosciutto è melone is just that: prosciutto and melon. When I used to stay with a friend whose mother was Italian, she always served us an appetizer of thinly sliced cucumbers and salt: one of the best things I’ve ever had.

When I was in Italy, I came upon this phenomenon once again. I was there with a class of Americans, most of which had never been to Italy or tasted true Italian food. My professor usually ordered for us in restaurants, suggesting a dish he had tried in that restaurant, and also ordering an assortment of fried appetizers. I tasted some of the best pizza, spaghetti with tomatoes and mozzarella, and insalata caprese I’ve ever had.

I use the term insalata caprese lightly. We had taken a boat to Capri from our home base of Naples, and after hiking most of the island (whining and moaning the whole way… I won’t lie), we found a spot by the water and ate our lunch. I had bought one tomato and one ball of buffalo mozzarella, and there, with very little ceremony and over a plastic bag to catch the milk from the mozzarella, I created my own insalata caprese.

I’m sorry that I’m going to have to cop out today, but I just started not one, but TWO new blogs, and the whole formatting and setting up thing is taking up a lot of time. For now, go check them out, and I promise to be back in action with stories of my trip to Naples tomorrow!

My new food blog is going to be a collection of all of my original recipes! You may recognize some of them from this site, but the stories are new, the photos are mostly new, and a lot of the recipes are new! Check it out here.

My travel blog is going to be very exciting… with lots of stories, and although this time I’m trying to branch out from food writing, we all know that for foodies that’s not too possible. There’ll be lots of suggestions of things to see and places to go when visiting most of the cities I’ve seen. Check it out here.