Found in fridge:  waning baguette, cottage cheese, jar of roasted red peppers, one sad tomato.   You know, ricotta gets all the glory, but cottage cheese, drained and mashed a bit, is really the same thing when it comes to recipes.

Ingredients:
Half jar roasted red peppers
Basil
Tomatoes, grilled as here
Baguette
Cottage cheese

Instructions:
Drain and mash your cottage cheese until it looks like ricotta.  Toast your bread as you like.  A lower fat option is to toast it, but I like Julia Child's way -- grill it in olive oil!  Put your grilled tomatoes, red peppers and basil in a food processor and pulse it up.  You just want to get it spreadable, but still have the individual ingredients show themselves.  Layer your bread with cottage cheese and then tomato/basil/pepper mixture.  Devour.

These are so super yummy.  I made a batch of these for a potluck recently and they were devoured in minutes. 

Ingredients:
24 King's Hawaiian Rolls 
1/2 pound shaved ham
12 slices Swiss cheese
3/4 stick butter
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon dried onions
Poppy seeds for garnish

Instructions: 
Slice the King's Hawaiian rolls in half. Line the bottom of a 9X11 baking pans with the bottom halves of the rolls.  Spread the ham over the rolls, and then layer the Swiss cheese on top. Place the other halves of the rolls on top. Set aside.
 
In a small sauce pan, combine the butter,  mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and dried onions. Over medium heat, stir until  the butter has melted to create the sauce. Pour the sauce over the tops of the rolls. Sprinkle poppy seeds over the top.  Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil, and then refrigerate for at least three hours -- overnight is better.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the covered rolls in the oven for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake for an additional 5 minutes, or until the cheese has finished melting. Serve warm or at room temperature.

By the way, these are also just as yummy cold -- great for lunch!

Ingredients:
1 (15-ounce) can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup olive oil – really good with rosemary olive oil
1/4 cup (loosely packed) fresh Italian parsley leaves
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
 
Instructions:  Place the beans, garlic, lemon juice, 1/3 cup olive oil, and parsley in thebowl of a food processor. Pulse until the mixture is coarsely chopped. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer the bean puree to a small bowl.

Happy birthday, Bishop Tutu!  Thank you for your tireless work to make the world a more peacfeful place for all of us.  Desmond Mpilo Tutu is a South African activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. 

Born: October 7, 1931 (age 81), Klerksdorp

Awards: Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Gandhi Peace Prize

Ingredients:
2 avocados, cubed
1 onion, minced
1 tomato, chopped
1/2 cup cilantro, minced
1/2 lemon, juiced
Salt to taste
16 oz fresh peas, steamed

Instructions:
Mash avocados in food processor.  Pulse remaining ingredients until incorporated.   Chill for 1-3 hours.

One of the most popular dishes on P. F. Chang's appetizer menu is the spare ribs that comes slathered with Asian-style barbecue sauce. The Asian flavors you pick up comes from the addition of sweet hoisin sauce to a fairly rudimentary barbecue sauce formula. Chang's menu says these ribs are spare ribs although they appear to be much smaller, more like baby backs. You can certainly use either for this recipe, just be sure to trim the ribs first, since the restaurant version is lean, clean ribs with no extra meat or fat hanging off. 
 
Ingredients:
1 cup ketchup
1 cup light corn syrup 
1/2 cup hoisin sauce (I make my own from a recipe found here.)
1/2 cup water 
1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
2 tablespoons minced onion 
1 tablespoon rice vinegar (or white vinegar)
1 rack pork spare ribs 
4 cups vegetable oil
1 teaspoon sesame seeds 
1 tablespoon diced green onion


Instructions:

1. Make the sauce by combining ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes, until thick. Cool. 

2. To cook the ribs the P. F. Chang's way, you will need to first boil them in water. Heat up 12 to 16 cups of water in a large saucepan or Dutch oven. Add a couple teaspoons of salt to the water. As water boils, trim the excess fat and meat off the ribs. Slice between the bones of each rib to separate the ribs. When the water is boiling, toss the ribs in, bring the water back to a boil and boil the ribs for 12 to 14 minutes. No pink will show when they are done. Remove ribs to a plate to cool. 

3. When the ribs have cooled you can either store them in an airtight bag in the refrigerator until you are ready for the final cooking step, or you can move on to that step now by heating up 4 cups of vegetable oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. The oil should be about 375 degrees. You can also use a deep fryer for this step, but your fryer will likely require more oil. 

4. When the oil is hot, drop 4 to 6 ribs at a time into the oil. Fry for 2 to 4 minutes or until the meat browns. Drain off the ribs on a rack or paper towels. Fry all the ribs before moving on to the next step. 
 
5. Heat a wok or large skillet over medium heat. When the pan is hot, toss in all the ribs and coat with the sauce. Simmer the ribs in the sauce for about a minute while stirring and dump the ribs onto a serving plate when they are all well-coated with sauce. 

6. Sprinkle the ribs with sesame seeds and about a tablespoon of diced green onion, and serve with a pile of napkins. 

Makes an appetizer for 2 to 5.