FOOD.

Cheese Fruit Log

I make this when I have people over sometimes and it seems to be a favorite, which is great, because it's pretty easy to make.  I got the recipe from a Christmas cookbook I bought at the UCLA library in undergrad (God knows why... impulsive purchase along with a Burt's Bees kit with poison ivy soap and mosquito bite ointment and a strange bar--yes, a bar--of shampoo that I don't ever imagine using unless I get a buzz cut... I'm outdoorsy to a limit, and poison ivy soap sort of exceeds that limit.  But I digress...), and here it is!

Ingredients:

-1/4 cup shelled pistachio nuts (I just use salted, dry roasted ones, and I chop them up by hand because washing and drying a food processor is too much of a hassle--I mean, because you get more of the flavor and texture of the pistachios that way. Yeah.)

-4 oz. cream cheese at room temperature

-50g dried apricots, finely chopped (uhhh... I don't know wtf 50g in dried apricots looks like, so I just eyeball it based on how much the bag of apricots holds or just chop up a tad more apricots than I do pistachios)

-3 green onions (3? Really? Don't know if I ever actually counted out 3. Whatever. Just don't put in so much that it would start to get weird.)

-1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, drained, finely chopped (Once I tried it with the sun-dried tomatoes that come in a bag. Nasty. Definitely get the ones in oil.)

-3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Directions:

1.  (blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit about preheating your oven and putting the chopped pistachios in there until they get "golden" and stuff... anytime a recipe calls for roasting pistachios or walnuts or hazelnuts or any kind of nut before using I just get annoyed and go on to the next recipe as a matter of principle because I find it pretentious.  It takes a lot to make such a ridiculous task worth my while. Like I said, just use dry roasted, salted pistachios and you're golden.)

2.  Beat the cream cheese until smooth.  Fold in the dried apricots, green onion and sun-dried tomatoes, and add some pepper, to taste.

3.  Form mixture into a log.  Sprinkle the combined pistachio nuts and parsley over saran wrap, shaping it into a rectangle that's as long as your cheese log.  Roll your log in the mixture.  Don't forget the sides.  Wrap it in the saran wrap and put it in the fridge for 2-3 hours until firm.
(the cookbook actually gives the proper dimensions for the log and rectangle, so here they are, if you're dying to know: the log should be 20 cm or 8 inches, and the rectangle should be 20 cm x 6 cm or 8 x 2 1/2 inches.  As you can see, I made a square.  I could care less. You can make a trapezoid or an octagon or a fucking parallelogram for all I care, just make sure the matter comprising your shape of choice ends up covering your cheese log.  That's all.)

Bon appetit.