Bruschetta, radio and animals

As you can see, I love to cook, it is the way I unwind at the end of the day. I get into my comfy clothes, pour a little glass of red wine, open the fridge and my imagination goes wild. Cooking is not only fun, it saves us money, and it is a way I can be sure that Zak and I are eating healthy meals. Some nights, however I am more hurried/tired/sick and am in need of a quick and easy meal. Bruschetta is the perfect contender for nights like this. It's quick, nutritious, and is made by ingredients you usually have in the kitchen at all times.

Source

Here is my method of preparing bruschetta:

3 or so cups of diced tomatos I like to use Roma because where i live they are cheap and flavorful, but you can use any kind you can find, or even use canned if you don't have any fresh.

2 cloves of fresh garlic, chopped very fine

1 handful of fresh basil chopped fine

1.5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp dry red wine

a few dashes of balsalmic vinegar (very light on this as the dish is already quite acidic!)

1 loaf of italian style bread (or anything crusty and relatively small in diameter)

Combine tomatoes, basil, balsalmic vinegar, and wine in a bowl and mix well. Heat a small skillet on med-high until hot, add olive oil and wait for the first whisps of smoke to appear. Those whisps let you know the oil is now hot enough to cook in. Now add the garlic and swirl in the oil until fully coated with oil. Let cook until the garlic just starts to brown, if you let it get too dark it will be bitter! Now pour the oil and garlic into the tomato mixture and mix well.

Slice your bread about an inch thick, and toast it, using either a wide toaster, toaster oven or the skillet you browned the garlic in (yum!). Now, just put everything on the table and your done! Easy and delicous!

Now, one more thing I would like to share today is this amazing new-ish show on NPR called Radio Lab. You can listen to it for free online. Basically the show investigates interesting things and tries to discover the science behind them. It is entirely different than anything I have ever heard in my life, and it is better that your just listen to the show rather than me trying to describe it to you.

I just listened to their episode on animal minds. I have always been SUCH an animal lover, so I was very excited to hear what they found out about what goes on inside the minds of our wild (and domestic!) neighbors. I grew up on a horse ranch, and we also boarded other types of animals like donkeys, goats and cows. Spending so much time with animals, you learn, at times they seem so much like us, you could swear that a horse has the same exact feelings you do. Then they would turn around and do something so inexplicable you would realize, that is an animal who has a comepletely different way of seeing and reacting to the world than I do. It's very interesting.