'It's Bean In The Family For Years' cannellini beans on Pugliese bread recipe illustration

This is my entry for the Global Cuisine Challenge. I love Italian cuisine and I would love to go back to Italy again someday soon to explore more of its food and places!

I personally use this recipe using our local Pan de Manila pan de sal bread and bottled pesto sauce. This is an easy recipe my kids love making it for their snack. :)

(FAVE MEMORY) Toasted ravioli was the food of my childhood. A St. Louis tradition, I had no idea it was an unusual food until I traveled outside of Missouri and saw the puzzled look on peoples' faces when I mentioned toasted ravioli. I remember my aunt always serving them for my cousin's birthday parties, cook outs, and other events, and all of my cousins and I gathering around the table to dip them in marinara sauce and greedily eat them. My mother used to heat them in the oven for me when I had a late night and needed a quick dinner, and they would always accompany dinner on homemade pizza night. There are many ways to do toasted ravioli - with beef, cheese, vegetables, or even mushrooms - and they are all special and tasty in their own way. Toasted ravioli will always remind me of my home, St. Louis, and all of its quirky food traditions.

My husband likes to say I complicate flavor profiles and in this case, he might be right. ;) I like hummus to have a rich flavor, so here goes. This was adapted from a recipe I found years ago somewhere on the web.

I love pine nuts! The only problem is they can be expensive. One reason they are so costly is due to shortages and harsh weather changes, which effect pine trees. In a pinch: Use shelled, unsalted pistachio nuts, or chopped walnuts as alternatives. Pesto is traditionally served as a sauce with pasta. It is also delicious on potatoes, rice, couscous, or spread on a piece of crunchy bread.

This is a visual representation of the ingredients for pesto.

Food Geometry | In thinking about the geometry of food, I needed to look no further than my garden, ripe with all the makings for a grilled pizza: tomatoes, chives, basil & oregano. As a letterpress printer I like experimenting with forms, and pressure printing is a wonderful way to capture the details in plants. I arranged the leaves of the ingredients on my Vandercook 4 press, inked them up, layed cotton paper over top, and rolled the carriage down the press bed to impress the images into the page. The tomatoes were a beautifully explosive disaster, so I gave myself permission to print circles instead. I then went back & printed the tomato leaves overtop the red circles; the perfect final touch. As I printed the aromatic oils were released from the leaves, making my mouth water. The hand lettering was done with a fountain pen, rather than wood or metal type, to capture the spontaneity and ease of my new favorite late-summer meal.

The food with the most elegant of geometry. It comes in squares, triangles, circles, and toruses (bagel 'zas). This piece illustrates the mathematical beauty of pizza in all its form, from the ingredients up.

The ultimative summer risotto - because summer time is tomato time...

I love anything Thai, so a refreshing Thai basil sangria for the summer is definitely a double win! The porthole was created as an aesthetic idea for people to be able to see the nicely arranged ingredients of their cocktail, as the servers in a bar/restaurant are pouring their drinks out through its spout.

Smoothies with superfoods in them! This is one of the best ways to make sure you have a super start to your day!

Super Food Entry

Fruit infused water. A healthy substitute to soda and sugary drinks.

Super Food Entry

Super Food Entry! I love herbs and spices. Life would be so dull without them. And BONUS almost all delicious herbs and spices are also superfoods! Woohooo! What's your favorite spice? Here are a few of mine.

A fresh italian salad, great to enjoy outside in the summer with family and friends