My appreciation for the wonders of puff pastry knows no bounds. If you keep a package of puff pastry in your freezer you can do all kinds of delicious things with it.  You can make a savory palmier or a sweet palmier.  All you need is a sheet of puff pastry and a little filling of some kind and you can have a plate of these in 30 minutes.

Puff pastry is your friend.  And if you don't know that yet, let me introduce you by making this quick and easy summer appetizer.

Frozen puff pastry is one of the greatest things you can keep in your freezer.  You can make last minute appetizers with it, desserts, breakfast pastries and use it to top pot pies.  You can certainly make your own puff pastry, but it is very time consuming and the commercial version in the grocery store is very good. I like making these very easy appetizers with puff pastry.  You just lay out a sheet of the pastry, top it with cheese and a vegetable and bake.  

We sure bake a lot of bread in this house.  I used to make focaccia bread a couple of times a week, but lately this incredibly easy artisan bread has been on our dinner table most nights.  I wanted to get out of that rut and thought I'd make these easy herbed flatbreads for a change.  I hadn't made these in ages but they are easy and fun to make and can be also used as an appetizer.

This delicious bread is sort of a cross between a cracker and a bread.  It's a great excuse to break out your pasta rollers, if you have them.  The dough is divided into small pieces and passed through pasta rollers to make a nice flat bread.  If you don't have pasta rollers, just roll them out by hand but the pasta rollers make it so much easier and faster.  These little breads don't have to be a uniform size or shape - it's kind of rustic anyway if they are not.  

This bread is one of my favorite things to serve as an appetizer with some wine, cheese and olives.  It's a pull-apart bread that is scented with cinnamon and cardamom and is slightly sweet, made with a little milk and sugar. It's really delicious.  I got the recipe several years ago out of one of my favorite all time books, "Love by the Glass" by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, the long time wine writers for the Wall Street Journal.  Their column, which ran for twelve years, was called "Tastings" and Brian and I religiously read it.  In addition to writing about wine, John and Dottie always snuck in little bits about their own life and children and if you were a long time reader, you got to feel like you knew them a little.  After I read their book, which is really a memoir of their life together, their love of wine and some favorite recipes, I really felt like I knew them.  I've read "Love by the Glass" three times over the last few years and it's more charming and funny every time I read it.  So we were stunned this past week when we read, at the bottom of their column, these words:

"This is our 579th—and last—"Tastings" column. The past 12 years—a full case!—have been a joy, not because of the wine but because we had an opportunity to meet so many of you, both in person and virtually. Thank you."

Huh?  We couldn't believe it.  No explanation, nothing.  I haven't been able to find any information on what happened or what they are going to do now.  Their Facebook page is just full of people expressing good wishes to them, but no word from them.  Hopefully, they will resurface on the web somewhere with their excellent writing.  Until then, I think I'll curl up with their book again and reread some of their fun stories.  This bread was their most requested recipe.