The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

This salad was one of those unplanned surprises. I had intended on using up all of the asparagus I had purchased from the Farmers market in my chicken salad and was a bit alarmed when I realized I would only need about half. It was one of those weeks where I had planned almost every meal and I absolutely hate the possibility of having something go to waste.

Fortunately, being the over-eaters that we are, it wasn’t particularly difficult to find a way to add an additional course into one of our meals. Never is come to think about it. This might be the reason why I am not fitting into my jeans the way I used to and have been wearing leggings almost exclusively for the past month. I might have to look into that. Oh well! Never trust a skinny cook, right?

I’ve been seeing all kinds of shaved asparagus salads over the past month and so I was immediately drawn to this when trying to think of creative ways to use up the rest of mine. Seriously though, this salad is another one of those extremely easy ways to impress. Aesthetically its almost perfect and will take you about 10 minutes to prepare. Also, the taste of raw asparagus, thinly shaved may even have the power to win over those asparagus skeptics in your life. I know it did with mine.

There really is nothing that pleases my hubby more than some open face sandwich action. It’s among his top 5 favorite things to eat and I would bet that it might actually be in his top 2. It doesn’t really matter what you put on the bread, as long as it’s piled high, it could be almost anything that you fish out of the fridge and it would still be “the best thing he’s ever tasted.” Men are funny.

Because of this we tend to eat bruschetta a lot or some other variety of sandwich fare. More often than not these also end up to be quite simple, as they are usually the result of random items left at the end of the week. After being away for a few weeks on vacation with my girlfriends, I was feeling generous and decided to plan his favorite and perhaps more lunch appropriate meal into our dinners for the week.

After 2 weeks of eating white bread for almost every meal, I haven’t been able to eat anything but fresh vegetables since I got home. I know it seams a bit simple to be posting a recipe as basic as an heirloom tomato salad, but this is what I’ve been eating so tough! Ha! No in all seriousness there were some amazing looking heirloom tomatoes at the farmers market this morning and I just wasn’t strong enough to leave without a few of them. For the most part I’m powerless against these, when I see some good ones I just can’t walk away.

This salad is so simple and really needs nothing aside from some ripe heirloom tomatoes and maybe a bit of olive oil and some sea salt. I added in the pea shoots and thought the sweetness really complemented these amazing subtle tomatoes, but of course they aren’t necessary.

As some of you may know I’ve been in Egypt for the past 2 weeks. Sneaky I know. Just when you think I’m at home making macaroni and cheese.

There really is no need to to state how amazing it was, so I thought that while I get myself straightened out and back in this timezone I would post a few pictures that for me highlight our trip.

Over the last few months Mac and Cheese has been the #1 internal blog search here on The Hunger Struck. It’s funny because I remember back in September when I first started this blog thinking about how much I was looking  forward to writing about my favorite Mac and Cheese recipes. I’m particularly fond of my history with this classic American comfort food, so this was the perfect excuse to make one of my absolutely favorite things.

Several years ago when I still lived in San Francisco, along with a few friends, I was a Macaroni and Cheese connoisseur. We would go to the cheese section of Rainbow and spend a ridiculous amount of time figuring out what cheese combination to try out  in our next experiment. Naturally some of these Mac and Cheese adventures were more refined than others, some were pure and simple while others seemed more like an experiment in excess and were as dirty as Mac and Cheese can get.

We were cheese obsessed and quickly mastered the art of the weekend brunch cheese plate, often followed by the weekend dinner grilled cheese, which would generally include niman ranch bacon and be washed down with cold glasses of makers mark. We were the very definition of hedonism, our behavior driven by our mutual love of cheese. That was the life, although I have reformed my behavior a bit since then, my devotion to cheese is stronger than ever and mac and cheese is definitely one of my most favorite ways to showcase it.