Goat Cheese with Roasted Grapes

"I'm not hungry, I'll just pick." That was my mother's mantra when I was growing up. I embrace this notion - although my "picking" can add up to a substantial meal. My beginnings for Small Bites Sunday is probably genetic.

My mother is ageless. Truly. She doesn't have an assigned age. Or - if she has one - we don't know it. Nor did we know the ages of her sisters. My cousins and I spent a lot of time around each other's kitchen table guessing at the ages of our aunts and respective mother's. What we all know today - is - it doesn't matter.

What mattered was being together around food. Small bites. Big bites. My mother had the Italian touch with pasta, salads and all meals Mediterranean. When I was young, she also started taking home these little cards from the wine store that was the start of the magazine Bon Appetit.  Thinking "this looks good," she experimented with all cuisines. In her Peking duck phase, I would come home from school to find ducks hanging in the back of my basement. I was not amused. Then.

There was the Christmas when she baked 225 cookies to serve 7....

After moving to Minnesota, she would pick up two live lobsters at LaGuardia and bring them back to St. Paul to have a Maine feast with my father. At an early age, she introduced me to lox, artichokes, fondue and halavah. She also (with barely a cent to her name), managed to take me to the old Met for special children performances in opera and to the New York Town hall for ballet created for young people. (And she wonders where my theatre gene came from!)

Thank-you Mom for my love of cheese, care with a meal and those lovely legs that I got from you! This is for you. Happy Mother's Day!

Life is good when simple grapes turn into become tender and cherry-like via the simple task of roasting them.  Robustly sweet, they make the perfect foil for the slight tang in a goat cheese.

I found this on Glow Kitchen's blog. She dressed it up more with honey and her photos really do it justice. I encourage you to view the original recipe here. This is such minimal work for grand results. My kind of cooking.

Roasted Grapes with Goat Cheese - serves 4-6 depending how hungry everyone is!
1-4 oz goat cheese log
2-3 cups red grapes
1 teaspoon sea salt
Herbs to garnish
10-14 pieces crostini or crackers

Take your goat cheese out of the fridge 60-90 minutes ahead of time to soften. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Spray baking pan (cookie sheet with rims works) with Pam. Once the grapes start to caramelize, they will stick. Scatter grapes on pan. Toss with a little sea salt. Bake for about 25 minutes until grapes reduce, give off some liquid and sweetly start to caramelize. Cool. Serve atop goat cheese atop crostini!

I served this at a meeting for my "Big Project." Meeting ended after 2 hours. Nobody left the dining room table until 5 hours later. I think that constitutes "a hit!"

Happy Mother's Day to all of you generous and caring caregivers out there!