The Sweet Life

This is something that I made spur-of-the-moment for dinner, after working all day Saturday. I'd made the frozen nougat before, based on Johnny Iuzzini's recipe in his book Dessert Fourplay , for The Candy Bar . S. met me at my place, and initially, I'd planned on just making a salad since I'd found some really good Pear Vinaigrette at Trader Joe's while shopping with K after work. But then, I got to thinking that it would be nice to have something light and cool for dessert. Needless to say, I was very busy, making the nougat, piping it into flexi-molds, freezing them, throwing together a nice almond sponge cake and cutting honey oranges into supremes, all the while trying to think of a sauce. Oh yeah, and putting together a salad of mixed greens (I cheated), shaved fennel, pear, and my new dressing. It came together nicely, so today I finishing a plating and took photos. What would I change? I'd make a little loop out of pulled sugar and garnish the no

I must confess something: I never ate Pop-Tarts as a child. It's not something I am ashamed of; on the contrary, I'm glad my mom limited my processed/sugary food intake. It's just that for some odd reason, I wanted to make a home-made version of something I've never had before. It could be that I may have tried them once (in college?), but they were so sweet that they put me off and I felt that I wasn't missing anything. Grocery shopping during the week, I found some beautiful rhubarb in the store and wanted to make something full of spring. Originally I was going to make a strawberry-rhubarb filling. But, of course, when I woke up and went to the store (three to be exact), I only found one that had a few stalks of rhubarb, and they were such puny, soft, pale looking things that I rather felt sorry for them. So, I bought more pears to go with the one I had at home and made a filling. The dough is a basic pie dough, and the filling is something I put together