Friday! Friday!

Kai has a big swim meet tomorrow in Fresno, which is about a three-hour drive from us. At the beginning of the week, we'd planned to drive up today after school, so that we wouldn't have to get up on a Saturday at 4:30 for Kai to go on the bus with the rest of the team. By yesterday, we'd decided that we'd just tough it out and have Kai go on the bus, and we'd leave a little later ourselves...at six or so. That means that we're really enjoying our Friday, sitting in the living room with a fire in the fireplace, watching the rain come down outside, savoring the chilly weather. Last week, it hit ninety degrees one day...which pretty much sums up Central California in the spring. Here's hoping that it's not raining tomorrow.

I like how some bloggers do the "Wordless Wednesday" thing, and a while back Tracy either sponsored or encouraged "Pink on Saturday," or something like that. I've been thinking that I'd start having a "Food on Friday" theme. Russ and I both like to cook and love adventurous eating, not weird stuff (to us), but mostly exploring ethnic and fresh foods, so I kind of like the idea of recording some of our food "successes." It'd be fun if some of my blogging friends followed suit, so I could steal your recipes and pass them off as my own to my unsuspecting friends and family!

Today I'm going to share a food success that I had a couple of weeks ago. I'm in a small book club which meet every six weeks for so. We've had some truly memorable food experiences together, usually inspired from the book we're currently reading. Our last book was Mr. Pip, which I enjoyed, if you can say you've enjoyed a book with so much tragedy. The content of the book didn't lend itself to a food theme for our meeting, so we all agreed to have high tea, basically...with wine instead of tea, ha, ha.

I brought pimiento cheese tea sandwiches from my Teatime at the Inn cookbook. I love that cookbook;  the sandwiches remind me of a wonderful tea, which included pimiento cheese tea sandwiches, that Paige and I shared with my sister-in-law, Ann at the Haymarket District in Lincoln, Nebraska years ago.

Pimiento Cheese Tea Sandwiches

3 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
3 Tbsp. mayonnaise
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
3 cloves garlic
8 drops Tabasco
1 6-oz. jar pimientos, liquid drained and set aside
1 Tbsp. chopped parsley, chopped
12 oz. grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans
 5 thin slices fresh tomato
alfalfa sprouts
10 thin slices whole-wheat bread, crusts removed

Combine cream cheese, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, Tabasco and pimiento liquid in a food processor and pulse several times; add parsley and pulse several more times. Turn mixture into a large mixing bowl. Stir in pimientos, cheddar cheese, and pecans. Chill for 6 hours. To assemble, place tomato and a handful of sprouts on 5 slices of bread. Spread pimiento cheese mixture on remaining half. Put tops and bottoms together. Cut each sandwich into 4 triangles.



I skipped the tomatoes this time since they're not in season, but they were delicious without them, and certainly very healthy, considering they had sprouts in them, ha,ha.