French Onion Soup

First, let me start with telling you that I will be travelling again, so I wont be around here too often till October. Turkey is waiting for me, and I am really excited.
Secondly, I am currently reading An Everlasting Meal, and I guess many of you have heard of it or read it, too. Tamar Adler has such a beautiful voice on paper, and all I'd like to do after reading a chapter of her book is visit her and hug her (because you know, hugging people can express all kinds of emotions. I love to hug people) I planned to read it in the train or on the beach, but I just could not wait to start.

After reading a few pages all I wanted to do is visit a farmers market, buy lots of veggies and start roasting them. Our fridge is rather empty at the moment, in preparation of quite long absence, and so I did not find too many leftovers I could turn into new meals. I need to do this more, use every little bit of a vegetable, making vegetable stock, turning leftovers into fantastic meals.
But today, I found myself with little else than leftovers from my father's birthday party last weekend. Beside the white bean crostini, I also made crostini with goats cheese and onion confit. People love these, and unlike last year the were not hesitant to try them. Nonetheless we ended up with lots of leftover onion confit this year and I already thought about throwing it out, because there is only so much of it you can eat on slices of bread with a little cheese.

But inspired by Tamar Adler, I decided to make a French Onion Soup with the leftovers. If you do not have onion confit on hand, then this recipe is not for you. Though I can certainly recommend making a big batch of it and using it in grilled cheese sandwiches, on pizza, with pasta or many other things throughout the week.
But when you have the onion confit on hand, preparing this soup is a matter of minutes. I give aproximate measurements below, but it is really easy to throw together and you should not need any measuring spoons.

Tapas

I am a recovering perfectionist. I expect things to be just as I imagined and planned them. This obviously results in lots of disappointment and stress. Then I offered to plan and prepare an "apero riche" for my mother's birthday. I think I talked of nothing else for about a week before her birthday. I had lots of ideas I knew my mother would not be too fond of - my family is not as experimental as I am when it comes to eating. They like the familiarity of the things they always prepare for birthdays and other celebrations.
I came up with a few ideas that were not too new, not too strange, but not boring and old either.
Everything turned out great, the food was a success and we made enough for everyone. (and way too much of the lentil and couscous salad...)

I'm going to share with you the recipe for Goats Cheese and Onion Confit Crostini. They sort of had a slow start, people were not too sure about the cheese, about the amount of onions and so only a few were eaten at first. But after that, when every one who tried one wanted more, we had to go back to the kitchen to make more.
The combination of the tangy flavor of the goats cheese and the sweetness of the onions is delicious, and makes people come back for more.

Galettes Bretonnes and Cookbook Challenge Update

I have been cooking from my cookbook but did not have time to take pictures, or the food was not really picture worthy.
Soon we'll travel to France again, like last summer, and we'll cycle through the Bretagne. We've been there last year too, and a culinary specialty of this region is the Galette Bretonne. It is similar to a Crêpes but made from buckwheat flour. They are great with savoury fillings. We made a Spinach filling and a Goats cheese and onion filling. I want to share the Goats cheese filling because it is more typical of the region, and also because my boyfriend made the other one and I'm not sure how he made it.