Come November, about 75% of the people I know well enough to mark their birthdays on my calendar are about to celebrate another chapter of their lives during the next handful of weeks. Whenever there’s related festive gatherings of 3 or more people – and the promise of food – involved in the shindig, I’ve noticed a peculiar drop in the upkeep of the Birthday Cake tradition. Not in general, mind you, just the children of winter seem to have lost interest in the concept for no evident reason.
Continue reading “Gingerbread Panna Cotta & Blood Orange Curd”
Mmmh after last week’s Tom Kha I found myself on a roll. With exactly the right weather raging on outside to justify a soup/stew/curry kind of cooking rush and exactly the right temperatures battering the windows to add a bunch of chillies to the mix, I decided to tackle the almost impossible task of kinda-sorta reverse-engineering another dish I’ll sorely miss now that our favorite Thai Restaurant has closed up shop.
Many of you guys probably know by now that hiking is one of Hubby’s and my favorite outdoorsy things to do all year round. Just in case that’s not your cup of tea in general, I won’t bore you guys with a tree-hugging back-to-nature kind of speech, I’ll just tell the foodie within you a little secret: if you find yourself in an inspirational lull when it comes to food, go out for a hike.
Aha, temperatures have dropped down to a level that allows chocolate to make an appearance in a non-ice-creamy or unintentionally-melted state~! By now, of course, the mindnumbigly aggressive Christmas brainwash, brought to us by our favorite food industry, is already in full swing, selling Christmas sweets since mid-September.
Today’s dish is one of the reasons for Hubby and me to look forward to autumn after we had our fill of the summer sun each year – at least from a foodie’s point of view. As soon as quince season swings by some time between mid-September and early October, this is one of the first dishes on our dinner table to celebrate the occasion!
Back on solid ground! Sort of. I think… Well, I suppose you guys know how busy things can get as soon as you get off a plane and return to day-to-day business after a vacation. Busy enough for time and space to seemingly bend around you, forming a sneaky little bubble while you’re not looking. Those bubbles, on top of everything else, have a nasty penchant to Shanghai you by popping you out into full awareness (and possibly panic-mode… with a ginormic headache to boot) about a week later, and, of course, leaving you to figure out where on earth the last week went all by your lonesome.
Managing leftovers has never been so exciting~! See, up until a handful of weeks ago, I was under the impression that Hubby and I would skip out on the whole vacation thing this year and save up some quid for a far away bucket-list getaway next year instead. And sure, with a major travel destination dangling in front of your nose as the proverbial carrot, staying in for the year might not be all that yawnilicious.
Like I mentioned last week, August is Stonefruit Paradise in our region. Locally grown apricots, nectarines, greengages, plums and a whole army of relatives all but bury the displays of our markets this time of the year.
After last weeks Homage to Cow, so to speak, I decided it’s time for a vegetarian dish. Actually, scratch that – I’ve made this one several times before actually paying any attention to the fact that it’s “vegetarian”. To me, this one is proudly wearing the colors of August in our region, highlighting the delicious stonefruityness of the month and (quite literally) wrapping up the deal with a hint of the signature delicacies at home just a little further down south.
If you’re experiencing the same mood swings of dear Mother Nature that we are suffering through these days, you… well you probably won’t be sitting in front of your screen, reading something about a potentially heat-generating activity like cooking. But if you do, I’ve got great news for you! This week’s dish is a really refreshing and light, yet surprisingly filling number that’s basically done in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Perfect for high temperature- and resulting low energy levels~