For the Love of Food

Rice with mushrooms and noodles is a take on a favorite recipe of mine that my aunt makes called Mushroom & Almond Rice.

Since I have a guest over for Thanksgiving this year who was allergic to nuts, I omitted the almonds (only to find out she was not allergic to almonds!!) and substituted with dry soup noodles that soften when cooked.

Continue Reading »

This cranberry sauce is my father-in-law’s recipe. And, this is the only part of our Thanksgiving meal that we didn’t actually make ourselves.

While we can find (expensive) cranberries here in Germany -yes, Ocean Spray to be exact – my father-in-law sent us some of his homemade cranberry sauce as a gift, and it would have been a shame not to use it – since it tastes so good.

I did not grow-up eating cranberry sauce. I’m not sure how old I was the first time I tasted it – maybe I was already in college. So, I am not as “in love” with it as my husband is. Our guests enjoyed the sauce with their turkey, but, my husband, as usual, pulled out a spoon and finished it off after he finished his meal. Continue Reading »

Welcome to Taste&Create XVI – the December & January edition!

This Taste&Create is an extended edition because of the winter holidays. So, 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(1-8), 2009.

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 January, 2009.

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

When I was in high school (has it been 8,5 years already????), in French class, we were all given the task of finding a French recipe, reproduce it, bring it to class, and share with one another.

I was so head-over-heels for this recipe that I asked my mom to let me make it at our next Thanksgiving meal, and it was such a hit. It’s now a staple of all our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

French Mushrooms in Crème Frâiche is always everybody’s favorite dish and there’s never enough – no matter how many times I double and quadruple this recipe! Continue Reading »

I just wanted to remind you all that sign-up for Taste&Create ended on the 8th of December BUT, I am extending it by a few days/hours.

So, if you can get your info into me by 5am tomorrow I will put you on the partner list. I’m in the time zone of UTC +1 – that’s 11pm Eastern Standard Time tonight, or 3pm on Thursday in Sydney, Australia.

If you’ve never heard of Taste&Create you can find out more here.

Please send your sign-up request to tasteandcreate [at] rezimo [dot] com

with the following information:

your name
the name of your blog
your blog’s address
your email address

This is a great, simple, and quick side dish for any meal. I made this for Thanksgiving and they were a hit – even though I forgot the salt!

The “secret” to this being a quick dish is the pressure cooker. Continue Reading »

This is my all-time favorite stuffing recipe. The “secret” ingredient in comparison to other stuffings are the cooked walnuts.

This year’s homemade bread also stepped this recipe up a notch. In previous years we have always used bagged whole wheat bread, but this year in accordance with my theme of a completely homemade Thanksgiving, we decided to make the bread from scratch. My husband chose and made a no-knead bread that tasted like American sour dough bread. It gave the stuffing my flavor and texture than the whole wheat bread. And, I think this will now become our traditional stuffing.

We also went ahead and made our bread 2 weeks in advance of Thanksgiving to give it plenty of time to dry out.  I then froze it and took it out to defrost (on the counter-top) 2 days before Thanksgiving.  It too about 6-8 hours to be completely defrosted.  I also went ahead and made the stuffing the day before and stored it in a heavy-duty bag until it was time for stuffing the turkey.  It was the first time doing this, but I was trying to make Thanksgiving day as stress-free as possible.

Our Thanksgiving guests were completely head-over heals for the stuffing this year. One of them even called a few days later to ask us if we still had more (even after we sent him home with some). It always good complement to the cook when that happens! Continue Reading »

This is a great no-knead bread recipe. It’s a bit like an American sour dough recipe without the long wait of making a starter.

I ended up using this bread in our Thanksgiving Stuffing (will post the recipe tomorrow), so the appropriate instructions for drying the bread for stuffing are also included. Continue Reading »

My husband turned this “ordinary” old music cabinet that we got on Ebay into an awesome multi functional cabinet.

As I said in my last post:

I have to say that it is the most exciting piece of furniture in our apartment because it works as a tromp l’oeil. It goes from being this: Continue Reading »

So, slowly I have been opening my home to you. And, I have been putting off showing you my living room, bedroom, and hallway. Decorating takes a while when you want it to grow organically, but I have hit the proverbial wall when it comes to parts of my living room, so I am asking for some help.

For those of you solely interested in the Music Cabinet Hack: please see this post with all the details.

Ok…so about my living room. Continue Reading »