The Hungry Crafter

Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention as — abracadabra! — yesterday’s leftovers turn into today’s grilled slices of ciabatta, warm mushrooms, and shaved Ombra cheese right before your eyes!:

Fantastic! (My kingdom to not have killed my parsley plant five times over already, but that’s another story…) Even without the parsley, the leftovers were better than the first go round. The Ombra cheese was a much better pairing, although it probably doesn’t hurt that Ombra is just about my favorite cheese ever.

This past weekend, I found myself down at my favorite Boston specialty shop, Formaggio Kitchen. Last time I was there, they were out of Ombra, so I instead went home with a well-aged Gouda (with the delicious little crystallized bits — swoon!). As stunning as that was, I was nonetheless super excited to see the Ombra back in stock this visit, so I was sure to snatch up a wedge along with some other goodies:

Two of these are also old favorites of mine:  In the middle, there’s Formaggio’s homemade crostini made from day old Iggy’s bread. The cranberry walnut bread makes an amazing crostini when rubbed with olive oil and herbs! To the right are the “Chocolate Salty Oats” cookies from Kayak Cookies. Huge, thick chocolate cookies loaded with oats and the occasional chocolate chunk, topped off with sea salt. Outstanding.

I first discovered Kayak Cookies at the Food & Wine festival at Foxwoods in 2008. I mention this only as an excuse to write about the Pain D’Avignon booth that included the cookies in their display. For my Cape Cod relatives — please go visit Pain D’Avignon on my behalf!!! Let me see if I can scrounge up a photo so you can see exactly why I’m pretty much convinced that this bakery is the mecca of bread.

Getting back to my recent trip to Formaggio, however, let’s just admit that both the crostini and cookies are long gone, and move on. The last item in there is a French salted caramel. Haven’t quite figured out what I want to do with that yet, but I’m thinking that may warrant some homemade French vanilla ice cream.  Yes, yes…ideas are brewing now…  Hmmmmmm.

to be continued…