Coffee and Memes and the Java and Me...

A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup...ahhh!

Memes are perfect for coffee hour - a creamy café au lait, a crisp wedge of biscotti, and just enough time for a quick chat full of extraneous information.

Like a valentine from a crush in my glorified kindergarten shoebox, I got tagged for the 5 Things Meme by Helios over at Tales from a Veggie Kitchen. So now, without further ado, the 5 Things Meme...and a recipe for some delicious Pistachio Biscotti.

5 Things in My Freezer

• Two litres of homemade chicken broth, leftover from the chicken rice adventure
• Kate's Sea-Salted Butter (doesn't she look like Baby Kate?)
  
• A pint of Ciao Bella's Blackberry Cabernet Sorbet with a solitary spoonful left in the bottom
• Lemon zest
• E3Live blue-green algae, which I take every day

5 Things in My Closet

• A buckwheat pillow
  
• A satin prom dress I bought on sale and never wore
• A skirt I got and silk-screened at the Swaporamarama (and if you look carefully, I think you can see the back of my head in the background of this video)
  
• A polyester red cowboy shirt I got at the dollar store years ago and don't throw away because I can always envision a scenario in which I might need it
• One of those jangly belly-dancer things

5 Things on My Bookshelf

• Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio
• Reweaving the World: the Emergence of Ecofeminism by Irene Diamond and Gloria Orenstein
• Prodigal Summer (and all other books) by Barbara Kingsolver
• Book of photographs by Richard Avedon
• Three editions of the game Scrabble, including the original Scrabble, Super Scrabble, and Travel Scrabble
• 
  

5 Things in My Purse

• A wad of receipts
• Burt's Bees lip shimmer in "nutmeg"
• A cloth grocery bag
• A sudoku torn out of the newspaper
• Little gribbly bits
  

Pistachio Biscotti

INGREDIENTS

2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup granulated sugar
1½ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1½ cups shelled unsalted pistachio nuts (about 6.5oz)
2 large eggs
¼ cup honey
¼ cup high-quality olive oil Grated zest of 1 large navel orange

(Note: If you can only find salted nuts, rinse them in a sieve under cold running water and dry thoroughly before use.)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir in pistachios and set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, honey, olive oil, and zest. Use a fork to stir the egg mixture into the dry ingredients, stirring until the dough clumps together.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and press the dough together. Divide in half. With lightly floured hands, gently shape each half into a log 13-14 inches long. Carefully transfer the logs to the prepared baking sheet, placing them at least 3 inches apart. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until logs are well risen and firm. Set the baking sheet on a wire rack and cool the logs completely. Reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees.

Peel away the parchment paper and transfer the logs to a cutting surface. Using a serrated knife, cut the logs on the diagonal into half-inch slices. Line the baking sheet with clean parchment paper and place the biscotti, standing up, on the baking sheet.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until dry. Set the baking sheet on a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

Yields about 35 biscotti.

This recipe is brought to you from The Good Cookie by Tish Boyle. For more of Ms. Boyle's beautiful recipes incarnate, visit Ivonne at Creampuffs in Venice; she introduced me to this marvelous cookbook.