Indian Pizza

On our most recent trip to Europe, Boyfriend and I had some pretty amazing food. I would say it was some of the best food of my life. We started with authentic Indian food in London, a perfectly roasted chicken in Paris and amazing pizza in Italy. We ate schnitzel in the Alps, wieners at a castle and finished up our trip at a dimly lit restaurant, smiling over plates of curry. It was a crazy twelve days.

Yes, I said twelve days. We travelled through seven countries in seven days. We would have made it eight, but just couldn’t see how to get to Belgium and make our flight home. In honor of this crazy week and a half in Europe I decided to combine two great culinary palettes. Indian plus Italian equals delicious.

Casatiello

I’m a big fan of the two-in-one. As a kid I had a massive collection of skorts. You know, skirts with shorts sewn into them? Actually I have a ton of them still, but I wear them when I teach Bodystep classes… Skorts are awesome.

I know we’re all big fans of the printer/scanner/copier! I mean, what did we do before we had them? Walk to several different machines to do our printing, scanning and copying? Crazy talk. That’s like having multiple remote controls for all of your TV attachments, silly.

Now who has a cell phone that is just a phone? Even my not-so-fancy Palm Centro (it’s blue!) is a phone, computer and lets me play solitaire. Love the multi-tasker. Someday I’ll have a fancy phone that lets me start my car from another state, maybe I’ll have to get a fancy car first. One step at a time!

The bread that I made this weekend from the Bread Bakers Apprentice is just that, a multi-tasker. It’s also a time saver! It’s bread, cheese and meat, all in one! No need to make a sandwich, just slice a piece off and you’ve got it made!

Key Lime Mallowpuffs

Yesterday was one of those days.  You know what I'm talking about, right?  Day starts and it's so humid that you can't tame your hair to look like something other than a wild animal.  Your walk to work is punctuated with drops of rain and gusts of wind.  Finally arriving at work you realize that you have to start your day with the thing you hate the most, running a column (insert your least favorite task in place of "running a column").

I don't know if it was the rain or my crazy person hair or my dislike of running columns, but the day just wasn't happening for me.  I also blame the book that I've been reading.  I keep getting sucked in and wind up going to sleep at midnight each night.  A totally normal time, except when you wake up at six every morning.  So tired...

I drudged through my day, things getting better, then worse, until finally it was time to go home!  A mere fourteen hours after I had entered the building.  I blame that last hour on the NMR, it just wouldn't tune.  Appartently that was my fault because I forgot a step while changing the probe.  (Sounds sciencey and fun, right?)  I'll have to remember next time I do that, don't wear hair pins while changing the probe.  Why?  The NMR is a 500 mHz magnet, and it tries to eat hair pins, ie, pull them out of your hair.  It's a very strange sensation.

Even though my day was kind of a bummer, at least I had these cookies to help me through.  Originally I was asked to make Griffins Mallowpuffs.  If you are a native New Zealander (like the person who made the request) you'll know just what I'm talking about.  If you're from the northeast, then you know them as Mallomars.  Unfortunately, Nabisco only makes mallomars in the fall as they tend to melt in the summertime.  Instead of sticking with the traditional vanilla marshmallow on vanilla cookie (like a mallowpuff), I decided to continue my key lime trend and make a Key lime pie Mallowpuff!  Make these and your day will be a little brighter!