Recipe Testing

I just completed my first recipe attempt from The French Women Don't Get Fat Cookbook--sardine tartines! It's one of the menu items for my proposed brunch of which I plan to "test" each recipe beforehand. (testing my skill at executing the recipes--not testing the recipes themselves) 

a tad over-toasted, but still quite lovely nonetheless...

True to Mireille's claim, the recipe did take less than twenty minutes to prepare. It was my first time "deboning" sardines and I wasn't sure if I was doing it properly, so I used my fingers to feel around for any additional pieces; the ribs pulled out quite easily in a single piece. The rest of the recipe was--more or less--a breeze. Next to deboning the sardines, chopping the parsley was the second most time-consuming task...

THIS RECIPE is not only extremely simple to follow, but also very affordable. The sardines I bought were on sale for 99¢ and the parsley was about $1.50. Most money-saving of all was the fact that the bread that I used was the truccione saré from Sullivan Street Bakery that was in danger of being thrown out at work! (I currently have one bag in the freezer and one in the fridge)

simply too good to throw out--even if it is day-old bread!

I toasted the "foraged" bread with my toaster oven set to medium, in hopes of softening the bread up a bit. But without keeping an eye on the oven, the toasts came out a bit darker than I would have hoped for. But being that I was the sole taster of my cooking, no (major) damage was done. As Julia would say: ... if you're alone in the kitchen, who is going to see?