Smells Like Bruschetta

Each Monday evening we have a get together called Family Home Evening with the members of our church congregation or ward.  We usually have about 30+ young single adults there.  On the fourth Monday we have a dinner.  Each month the group in charge of the dinner picks a theme and with the creativity and energy of the young adults of our ward you can be assured that no two potluck dishes will be the same.

This month the theme was "Euro-dishes": some dish inspired by European cuisine.  Jana really got into it this week and did some online searching for inspiration.  Her criteria: simple, as in able to be whipped together in 30 minutes or less because she gets home from work at about 5:30 and the dinner was to start at 6:30.

She found a recipe for Bruschetta.  On the way home from the Rec Center after work she stopped at Walmart and picked up some prebaked french bread and other ingredients: two flavors of cream cheese, deli sliced roast beef, fresh Roma tomatoes and fresh green onion.

She painted each side of the sliced (yes, to save time she even found presliced french bread) bread with olive oil and baked them.  When toasted she pulled them out of the oven and let them cool for a few minutes so they wouldn't melt the cream cheese.  She then employed me to help dress the bruschetta.

It was quite fun and the finished result looked every bit as appetizing as the full colored pictures online.

For my part I cooked some bacon, sauteed some diced onions then added whole green beans and stir-fried them, adding peanuts and a "savory blend of spices".  We then headed for dinner.

The loving thing was just the fun of creating something together and laughing and joking while exercising our culinary inspirations.  Jana likes to say she doesn't enjoy cooking but it's fun watching her, in her most pragmatic way, create something fun and different than the normal fare.  

One of the things that originally drew me to Jana was that, when we first met and worked together on that play so many years ago, I could see that we really worked well together when confronting a common project – in that case, the play.  It is still true.  We do work well together and it's fun doing simple, out of the routine things that allow us to add a dash of creativity and a dollop of fun to the recipe.

I think loving things smell surprisingly like Italian bruschetta.

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