Catching Up -Caprese on a Skewer

I remember, not that long ago, when my kids would return to school after having the summer off. It was always fun to see the other parents and do some catching up. Since we live in a rural area our kids often didn't see their school mates all summer either. That is so different from my experience growing up in a suburb. We saw our neighborhood friends all year round.

We moved to our farm when my daughter was in 5th grade. It didn't take long for me to become involved in the school activities. One of the ideas that I came up with was to have the school's Parents' Club (our version of PTA) host a back to school bar-b-q on the first Saturday after school started. The Parents' Club provided free hot dogs and sold water and sodas. Everyone who came brought side dishes to share. As the afternoon light lowered, long tables from the cafeteria became loaded down with pasta salads, green salads, rice salads, baked beans, deviled eggs, platters of watermelon slices and lots of cookies and brownies and other delights. Parents brought lawn chairs to sit in or blankets to spread on the school lawn for sprawling on as we ate. The leadership students supervised the creation by the little kids of giant bubbles using flat trays and big bubble wands. It was a great way to spend time catching up.

Recently Sweetie has been getting e-mails and phone calls from guys he knew in grade school and high school. Not sure how it all got started, but guys he has stayed in touch with heard from others and his contact information was passed along. It has been bitter sweet because some friends have lost spouses or are ill themselves and one guy called to let everyone know that another friend had just died. There was a lot of good news and fond memories, too, so he was glad to do some catching up, all without Facebook.

Our daughter has been hearing from old friends and former schoolmates, too, but hers has been mainly through Facebook and MySpace. There was a young woman who used to babysit for Max who contacted her, too. We had been wondering how she was so it was nice to see, via our daughter, that J has grown into a beautiful woman and has her own little one to care for and a happy marriage, too.

How do you catch up with old friends?

Now for a catching up recipe. I made this dish a while ago but it got lost in the end of summer shuffle. Now that the clocks have been moved back to "regular" time I guess I better get this posted before it is completely out of season. I made it again today so I could do photos to replace the ones I scrambled on the digital film by answering the questions 'do you want to reformat?" wrong. Not sure what I was thinking...another brain fart I guess...but there went a bunch of photos. Nice thing about an old brain is that I had also forgotten what most of the photos were images of, so I don't really miss them.

This is a total steal of a recipe from the lovely Giz and Psychgrad at Equal Opportunity Kitchen blog. I think they used it for the wedding reception. We just had our for lunch, but it was equally delicious.

Elle's Note: You can use pre-marinated mozzarella balls or cubes of fresh mozzarella, of you can marinate your own as I did by letting them marinate in a mixture of olive oil, dried oregano and basil, garlic, salt and pepper...amounts to your own taste. You could make it with plain cheese if you are in a hurry, but the added marinade flavors take this to another level.

Caprese Salad on a Skewer
adapted from a recipe at Equal Opportunity Kitchen

1 fresh mozzarella, cut in cubes or 8 or more oz of fresh mozzarella balls, marinated (see note above)
1 pint basket small yellow pear tomatoes
4-5 medium red tomatoes, cored and cut into bite sized pieces
fresh basil leaves

On wooden skewers alternate each of the ingredients, starting with a red tomato piece, skin side to the bottom of the skewer. Eat.

How's that for a simple recipe?