Darn Good Eats

Wow...I had not realized it had been so long since my last post! It's been a hectic but fun last few weeks not leaving a lot of time for cooking at home. That isn't to say I haven't been eating well...quite well really! Here are some highlights:

• An incredible night in the North End at Cantina Italiana. I hadn't been to this restaurant since 2002 and it was as good as I remembered, though the service was a little iffy. I had an absolutely delicious simple salad of arugula, pine nuts, shaved Parmesan and aged balsamic that I think I literally inhaled. For my main dish I had the same thing I'd had years before and always remembered, the chicken saltimbocca, because I wanted to see if my food memory was accurate. It was indeed. And they make their own pasta. How can you argue with that? All of this was of course followed by a chocolate chip cannoli from Mike's Pastry.
• A great new breakfast find in Harvard Square - Zoe's. It's a Greek diner in the purest sense and I don't think it requires any more explanation that that!
• The discovery of Pita Pit delivery. Again, need I say more?
  
• Mama's cooking. As she readily admits, none of us ever thought a highlight of being at home would be my mother's cooking but thanks to years of Food Network watching and a great food market (seriously next time I'm home I should count how many times the word "Wegman's" is uttered) she's quite the chef these days. Brunch on Saturday was my personal heaven - bagels, lox, whitefish that my mom picked straight off the whole fish, chocolate chip muffins, and fresh fruit salad. Later we had sausage and peppers and this incredible tomato salad from Giada DeLaurentiis that is probably one of my favorite salads ever. The next day we went to brunch at our favorite local diner (I had french toast, big shock) and then had barbecue chicken and grilled salmon for dinner. We tried a new potato salad recipe from Barefoot Contessa that I think we all agreed was one of the best we'd ever had! High recommendations.

So as you can gage, I am rolling back into home and I'll definitely be hitting the gym a little harder. As for tonight, I just made my basic tofu stir-fry. For dessert, I had a bowl of plain Greek yogurt with a bit of maple syrup and some cranberry nut granola I bought this week at the Copley Square Farmer's Market. Unfortunately it is a little early in the year for produce in New England. But I definitely hope the bakery I bought the granola from is back again! I love fresh granola but I'm not as much of a fan of the stuff you get in a box. Usually it's expensive but this bag was only $4!