Cybertron Flower

I spent the week at the most useless meeting ever - seriously, if you invite people, have a plan of what you want to accomplish and how to get there. You may want to change it once you see how things develop, but have a plan. Don't ask people you invited "so what do we do next?". Argh. Those are five days I will never get back - and the older I get and the longer I work in this field (and realize that the first week I can host a certain visitor from Spain is in July - everything else is already planned out in some way!), the more I believe that time is the most expensive thing you can ask from people is their time. And to add insult to injury, I also got to enjoy sleet (in its British English meaning not the American English one) for the three hours that I had to explore Bern.

Anyway, it was not only awful. At least I spent some of the evenings with a friend an another person I like, drinking - beer in their case, coke in mine, since Switzerland does not really do cider in tiny corner cafes - and talking. And on my way there, I met with nefertina86 who was a joy to talk to and introduced me to my new addiction, Luxembuergerli (think tiny macarons). (Plus I got another visit by an (LJ) friend sorted out minutes before my own flight started!)

Now I am looking forward to the market tomorrow, friends coming over for dinner and pandemic on Sunday and cooking with another friend on Monday (I have a terribly early meeting in Amsterdam on Tuesday, so I will be sleeping at her place which will save me about an hour time in the morning - yay for friends who understand this). And here is what I want to cook on Sunday as well as a few other new recipes I loved from the last half a year or so:

Red Pesto Ravioli with roasted tomatoes [vegetarian; can be made vegan by leaving out goat cheese and using vegan pasta]
This one is back from when 101cookbooks was a great work - an old favorite that I never linked to and that I am going to make for my friends. A great vegetarian dish that is especially good for entertaining: easy to make but looks and tastes very sophisticated.
Don't leave out the roasted tomatoes, they are awesome and really make the dish shine. You can simplify the dish by using normal pasta instead of ravioli and just going for some red pesto or tapenade with the roasted tomatoes; the simplified version is my favorite way to use up old, soft tomatoes (cherry tomatoes work best but others are OK, too.).

( 10 more recipe recs )