For the Love of Food

Back in September my brother came to visit me for the first time while I’ve been living in Germany. As a birthday present, he and my mom gave me enough new spice containers to “renovate” my entire spice drawer.

These spice jars are great because I can finally scoop spices out of the jars with my measuring spoons as well as stick my fingers in for pinches of spices – my favorite mode of measuring.

Anyways, let me share my happiness in new organization with you:

All different sizes of spice jars:

4oz:

8oz:

only 3 empty jars left from 48!

This is what my counter top looked like during the transfer process:

All the empty store-bought spice jars and bag:

Originally, I had wanted to organize it as I had it before – by spice family, but it was too chaotic when all the jars of different sizes came together.

So, I settled on alphabetical order:

This is how the drawer is complete:

I keep my garbage bags as well as wax and parchments papers, meat thermometers, and butter in this drawer.

I think I am going to have to go to Ikea and get a bar to go across the inside of the drawer to keep the spice jars in place.  Although it looks like I have a lot of jars – and I do – they’re not enough to fill my 80cm deep drawer.  So, they shift around to my annoyance.  Anyone else have and ideas on how I could keep these babies in place without adding a metal bar to the inside of my drawer???

So..tomorrow I will share more of my other birthday presents with you, and the day after then, I will introduce you to my (fianlly) renovated kitchen!!

!!Update!! – You can buy these containers here.  The small containers are 4oz and the larger ones are 8oz.  The 4oz ones fit a “normal” sized spice container from the grocery store perfectly.  As mentioned before, my brother brought these to me when he visited because shipping outisde the US is only for orders of 1000 or more!!

Every month the Mother’s Day out place that my son attends has an international brunch buffet run by a mom. The grocery bill is paid for up to €35, and the cook is paid €30 for her services. It’s a voluntary option, but I think it’s a great way to introduce others to real traditional meals.

In September I cooked an American brunch as my contribution, and people were absolutely amazed at the types of American cuisine they had never heard of – namely banana bread muffins, buttermilk biscuits, and breakfast sausage. Waldorf salad and fruit salad are pretty well knows around the world.

I had guests so thrilled by this meal that I had recipes request after recipe request, and I even made a new friend – a Chinese lady with a son 5 days younger than mine who also loves to cook. And, I can attest to this fact now. She invites me over often for our sons to play and to show me how to cook her homemade Chinese dishes. She used to own a Chinese restaurant in Munich. So, eventually, I will share what I have learned with you… I am still catching up with posts from September..so it may take a while since it’s mid November and there is still October and November to cover!

Anyways, back to food… it was a hit. In October I cooked a Colombian brunch which was also a hit, but I forgot my camera!! And, in December I will cook a Texan brunch where I will even bring my own canned tomatillo salsa from this summer!

So, next time you are planning to make an American brunch for your family or friends, you can try this menu. It was a hit! Continue Reading »

The other day I went to my local baker and found there Maple Walnut Plaits. I had never seen them before, and once I tasted them I knew why.

They are so good that they sell out by 8am!!

I had to pre-order 4 days in advance to secure 4 of these babies. They are like eating light and flaky pecan pie slices

I want the recipe, but I cannot find one anywhere. I have come up with some conclusions:
-they use puff pastry dough
-they add the walnuts at the end of the baking process
-they brush the tops with apricot jam

But, how do they make the liquidy pie filling that I am so used to making when I make pecan pie. How do they braid it? How long do they bake it??

If anyone out there has a similar recipe, oh, please share!!

Back in early September I blogged about The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe I had found through Erin Cooks. I had tweaked the original recipe to be made with palm sugar and fructose in stead of brown sugar and sugar, respectively.

A week or so later I decided to go ahead and try the original recipe. Guess what: I can eat sugar!!! YAY! Life is back to “normal”. No negative reaction as I’d had in the past months – nothing except the taste of chocolate chip satisfaction.

Anyways, after trying the original recipe I was pleased by the results. The cookies baked and settled really well and looked absolutely beautiful. however, I did rather enjoy the flavor of the palm sugar more than that of the brown sugar.

But, alass, they are two different cookies….I guess I will just always have to make a batch of each to get the best of both world.

You can find the recipe here.

This is going to be a really short blog post.  The reason being that a book I ordered a week ago just arrived and I NEED to finish reading it tonight.

My husband found this book “Twelve Hours Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old” (by Suzy Giordano, Lisa Abidin) recommended by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing. My husband really likes reading his books, so when he recommended a book that promised we would finally get sleep at night, we pounced on the chance to buy it.

Any of you who are parents know how hard it can be to go sleep deprived for a few weeks.  Well, our son is now almost 21 months old.  That’s means that in 2 days it will be exactly 101 weeks since I’ve had a decent night’s sleep.  Well, maybe I had a night or two in there – thanks to my mom when we were visiting or when she was visiting us.  Either way it’s been a long time since I’ve had the promise of decent sleep.

So, I am going to leave you with these short words, and I will be back tomorrow with more food.  I am reading my way to a good nights sleep.  Oh, and I will tell you ina few weeks if it has worked…I do really hope it does.

Welcome back to Taste&Create hosted by me at For the Love of Food. I want to give a very very special Thank You to Min from the Bad Girl’s Kitchen who hosted last month so I could go on vacation with peace of mind that everything was being taken care of.

I also want to apologize for Taste&Create not happening in September. Life just came crashing down on me, but after a nice relaxing vacation in Ireland, I am back with more energy and resolve.

Just an FYI: next month’s sign-up will go as planned from December 1-December 8, but because of the hectic holiday season, submission due dates will be extended until January 15th. There will be no sign-up in January then and the following one will be in February.

Just a reminder:
-the rules can be found here.
-please do not email me your submission, go to the Taste&Create website, register/sign-in and submit your entry there by the 24th of November.

Here is this month’s partner list: Continue Reading »

Well, my garden isn’t full of tomatoes anymore, but it still was in September when this shot was taken.

I had such a great selection in my garden this summer. I had sweet early-blooming yellow tomatoes, grainy and pretty looking Reisetomatos, cherry tomatoes, pear tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, yellow currant tomatoes, and my all time favorite: super sweet black zebra tomatoes. Continue Reading »

We love making toads in a hole for breakfast. But, it gets boring just looking at a hole in a piece of toast with some egg in it. So, I thought I’d mix it up a bit for a cute effect.

This would make a great Easter or Spring Time breakfast.

It’s easy – if you have a little chick-shaped cookie cutter. Continue Reading »

I know that coffee flavored ice tea is not something you hear of everyday, and it’s probably not what you’re envisioning either.

This is, yet again, another recipe I am sharing with you from the month of September…back when it was warmer.

Back in August when we were in DC for a business trip with my husband, I decided to walk into Starbucks (for maybe the third time in my life) and by a Frappuccino for the first time – decaf and with chocolate flavor.

Being as hot as it was, and having just walked about 7 miles (for fun – yes) from the DC zoo south to Georgetown, we were sweating. I let my son taste this nice cold drink and, let’s just say, I never got it back. What can I say, it’s the 1/4th Colombian in him that loves coffee flavored things. Still…I will not let him drink caffeinated beverages until he is older.

So, to help beat the heat one warm September day, I decided I wanted to make a sort of Frappuccino – it seems like a simple enough drink to make, and it was. I used a tea that I have that actually tastes like coffee. It is made from roasted grains and fruits. So, I did not flavor the traditional American Iced Tea, but rather, I have a tea that tastes like coffee and I “iced” it. Then, I topped it with some homemade whipped cream. It tastes best if you stir in the whipped cream to your drink before you drink it all!

I imagine that you could also use this recipe (with or without cocoa powder) to make other great frozen tea drinks. Continue Reading »

It has been quite a while since I made this – almost 2 months, actually! But, as my husband makes fun of me for, if it was good, I remember it – even if it was a meal I at 24 years ago. Food is a very memorable part of my life.

This ice cream left a very big impression on me. It was creamy and very flavorful – and really really easy to make. It did have a slight “sour” flavor to it due to the sour cream in it, but it’s something I can get used to.

I can’t wait until Spring/Summer rolls around again so I can make this – these would make great popsicles too!

I was inspired by the absolutely beautiful ice cream pictures of this recipe on My Feasts. Continue Reading »