Tomato Bruschetta

Jeanelle, one of my dearest friends, my former roommate and a current expatriate residing in Amsterdam had a feature on her blog today about seven things you might not know about her. Kind of like a chain letter for the blogosphere. She had been challenged to do it by some friends of hers in her blog community. Yes, there are whole communities for people like us. Travel bloggers, mommy bloggers, fashion bloggers and my favorite, food bloggers. Basically if you can think of a topic, someone is blogging about it.

At the end of her confessions she challenged some of her favorite bloggers to do the same. And guess who one of them was? No… Oprah doesn’t have a blog. But I do. So here it is my friends. Seven things you probably don’t know about me.

1. I have two middle names. Roxanne and Kugler. Roxanne was a great friend of my mom and dad’s who passed away in a car accident not long before I was born. I think part of them wanted to name me Roxanne, but it would have been a pretty painful reminder. Kugler is my mother’s last name. She wanted us to all have part of her family name in ours, so she gave us her last name as our second middle name.

2. This might surprise you, but I am NOT Italian. Contrary to my complexion, my love of Caesar salad and my constant desire to make pasta, I do not have one ounce of Italian blood.

3. If I wasn’t crazy allergic to horses, I would LOVE to be a cowgirl. I think horses are the most beautiful and amazing creatures and if it wouldn’t send me to the hospital I would want to be around them all the time. I would move to a ranch in the middle of nowhere and eat steak, listen to country music and play in the hay.

4. Spiders are my biggest fear. But I REFUSE to kill them. If there isn’t someone around to kindly remove the spider from wherever it has made a home, I just give it whatever room it has chosen. You want the bathroom my little 8 legged friend? It’s all yours until Eric comes over to remove you.

5. Even though I have many hobbies, I really wish there was one thing I could be an expert at. I’m a jack of all trades, but a master of none. I would really love to find one thing and completely master it.

6. This one is really unflattering, but I am a super jealous person. I have learned to mask it pretty well, but deep inside I am gripped by jealously A LOT. I wish I could make it go away, but I don’t know how. If you have any suggestions, I would really love to hear them.

7. I am obsessed with tomatoes. I would really like to put them in just about everything. When I was in grade school, my mom would send me a tomato with my lunch instead of an apple and I would down that thing! This leads me to my recipe for today, tomato bruchetta.

In my early years when I wouldn’t eat much other than Caesar salad and cheesecake, bruchetta was the exception to the rule. I would love it when my mom would order it and let me have some delicious crusty bread with a huge mound of tomatoey goodness on top.

Bruchetta is an insanely simple and fresh appetizer that will blow you away with flavor. I highly recommend it for your next date night, dinner party or roomie food Tuesday.

You will need…
32 cherry tomatoes diced
16 basil leaves chopped
¼ cup of red onion diced
8 garlic cloves, 4 finely chopped and 4 for rubbing on your bread





Salt and Pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
8 slices of your favorite crusty bread (I use sourdough but others will work)

Mix the tomatoes, basil, onion, four garlic cloves and olive oil in a bowl and season them with about a teaspoon each of salt and pepper and set aside.


While the flavors of the tomatoes and herbs are melding, toast your bread. When your bread is toasted and had cooled so you can handle it, use your remaining garlic to scrape delicious garlic flavor all over your crust bread.

When all your bread has been garliced, pile the tomato mixture on top of the bread and serve.


Then sit back, relax with a piece and watch the rest disappear.

Love and Beer Floats
Angela