Lazy Evening

Sometimes when you have cabinets full of dinner possibilities, all you want are little things. Here's something nice:

open face sandwiches (whole-wheat ciabatta bread, leftover spinach-artichoke dip spread, and some turkey slices), "Petits Pois a la Maine", and sparkling cider.

I wish that the bakery bread at Roche Bros was a little less "holey" that it is. Even when it looks dense and crusty from the outside, it's really fluffy and chewy on the inside. Sometimes you just want a nice brick of bread, you know? And maybe something other than Italian bread or a baguette, which is basically just Italian bread cooked twice. A dense brown bread was really what I was going for, but all they had that I thought might be close was some whole-wheat ciabatta bread. Of course, it too is super holey and weak on the inside. If your crusty bread can't even hold up to having soft cheese spread on it, it's not worth making, in my opinion. But in any case....

I should probably explain "Petits Pois a la Maine". It's just regular green peas (frozen, in this case), served in a little bit of milk and butter. I call it "a la Maine" because it seems like every time I go to the boy's house (in Maine), his parents serve some kind of side dish in a little milk and butter like this; the first time it was peas, and after that elbow noodles(!). While he tells me that the latter is just a quirk of his dad's, Jordan said that every time he's ever had peas in Maine (with family, at Thanksgiving, etc.), it's been this way, and he thought it was wierd that I thought it was wierd! Of course, I secretly tried it for myself here at home, and it's pretty much the best way to eat peas as far as I can tell.