For the Love of Food

Yesterday I cooked something slightly out of my comfort zone…and I liked it! I LOVE shrimp and garlic and herbs and butter, but together – no way! Well, I had to change my mind last night…

This month for Taste&Create I was partnered with Jessica from Cooking up memories and when I saw here Ina’s Baked Shrimp Scampi I was intrigued. I’ve never heard of a baked shrimp scampi dish that included panko bread crumbs. What convinced me to try it was the fact that it had so much lemon in it…which is my favorite way to eat shrimp – just with lemon on it. Continue Reading »

I haven’t blogged in what seems like forever. I have been cooking a lot more lately and taking pictures for you guys, so I hope to be sharing more recipes with you in the near future.

This is a favorite sandwich of mine: meat, vegetables, and guacamole spread. This topped with some fresh alfalfa sprouts is pure heaven…unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a hold of any or grow any in time.

Ingredients for 1 sandwich:
2 slices of Bread, toasted
2 Tablespoons Homemade Guacamole (recipe here)
Mustard
3 extra thin slices Turkey Salami
3 extra thin slices Smoked Ham
1 slice Emmentaler (Swiss) Cheese
shredded Lettuce
3-4 wedges Herb-marinated Artichoke Hearts
3-4 Garlic & Herb-marinated Kalamata Olives

Directions:
Spread the guacamole on one slice of bread and some mustard on the second slice of bread.. Top with the meats, cheese, and vegetables.

Enjoy.

Recently I received a comment on one of my posts where a fellow blogger expressed her frustration with her food photography – all her pictures look the same – was her complaint.

Upon checking out her blog, I noticed that she has only been blogging for a few months and that her pictures look just like mine did 4 years ago: very one-sided.  I remember back when I first started blogging and taking pictures of my food that I was always so frustrated that my pictures never ever came out the way I had seen them with my eye.  The “simple” explanation is that my eyes are much better lenses than the one on my point-and-shoot camera and that the brain compensates quite a lot – much like the brain of a digital camera.  Except, that, well, a human brain can do much much more…so far.

So, for those of your who are just starting out, planning on starting out, or wishing to advance to the next level, this post will help you. Continue Reading »

Welcome to Taste&Create hosted by me at For the Love of Food. I want to thank you all for your patience with the email “hick-up” I experienced last week. One good thing that came out of it is that we got a lot more people to sign-up including some bloggers that have never participated in Taste&Create. I love meeting new bloggers!

Just a reminder that this month is different:
-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 1st of April.

Sign-ups for April’s Taste&Create will end, as usual, on February 8th.

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

My father-in-law is taking cooking lessons at Williams-Sonoma and in February we received three cooking sets from him that are geared towards children. The one my son loves the most is the Jungle Animal Pancake Molds (recipe included on the box). Most mornings he wakes up and asks my husband for a “Linen Pa-cake” aka: lion pancake.

To be honest, I am not a huge pancake fan mostly because I am not a fan of eating sweet foods for breakfast.

But, these pancakes are really fantastic, and when I’m in the mood for some thing sweet for breakfast, these really hit the spot! Oh, and did I mention that they taste just like vanilla ice cream!

One of the tricks my husband learned with the pancake molds is to let them heat-up on the pan so that the sides of the mold are warm enough and release the pancake easily enough to flip. When we’re not in the mood to use molds my husband makes pancake “bears” by pouring a large circle and then two smaller circle ears. Continue Reading »

I love Caribbean food. To be honest, I think most of the food I grew up eating in Miami was Caribbean in some way or another.

My husband and I took our honeymoon in Belize. Many people don’t know about this wonderful little English-speaking country just south of Mexico. We quickly fell in love with the relaxed atmosphere, the people, and the fantastic food.

One of my favorite dishes that I had the pleasure of eating while I was there was shrimp and conch ceviche. Unfortunately, in Germany conch is no where to be found. My goodness…it’s hard enough just finding decent tortilla chips..needless to say a little sea critter!

So, when I saw Meeta’s Monthly Mingle this month with the theme of Caribbean Cooking I was really excited. I looked through all my recipes. I have tons of Cuban recipes and some jerk recipes I’ve been meaning to try out. But, I settled on shrimp ceviche mostly because of the (lack-of) time factor. Ceviche is quick and easy. It’s ready in 20 minutes. You can’t really beat that.

Most of the time it is served as a snack or an appetizer, but I often enjoy it as a light meal with some tortilla chips. Continue Reading »

Only 1 person signed up for Taste&Create this month!!

In the 1,5 years that I have been running this even I can’t remember us having less than 20 participants….something must be wrong.

In case you all just got caught-up in Spring fever and forgot to sign-up

OK, so my email DID completely die and I never got any of your emails over the last month BUT I have fixed the problem and I just went through 56 mails and found all of your sign-ups that you sent me over the month.  So, don’t worry, if you signed-up before you are still signed up.  If you forgot, I am still keeping the sign-up extension open (sorry for all the confusions!):

I am extending sign-ups for 1 week until Wednesday March 18th. On Thursday March 19th I will post and email the partners list.

Posting will be extended until April 1st.

Happy blogging and I hope to hear from you all soon!

sign-up at: tasteandcreate [at] rezimo [dot] com

For those of you who are feeling the week rush by and would still love to make a homemade meal for yourself, here are 30 recipes from my blog that you can prepare and have on your table within 20 minutes.  Yes, that includes vegetable cutting time.

See the links to the recipes bellow: Continue Reading »

Well, I have some really exciting news to share with you all today. I am now 15 weeks pregnant with my second child!

Most of you have noticed that I don’t post as frequently anymore and being pregnant is one of the reasons why. When I’m not doing my household chores or playing with my son, I am napping from utter exhaustion!

About a week ago I started to become less tired and have taken up more cooking myself. Up to now my husband has been doing most of the cooking.

One major downside I found to being pregnant this time around is my inability to cook or look at food on websites like Tastespotting. Some dishes look tasty and then others just make me want to puke…and dishes I would normally like otherwise. Luckily, that part is over and we are on to happier more food-filled days…along with warmer and sunnier days I hope! This winter is driving me crazy! Every time I saw snow start to fall I felt like puking…I need Spring!

Ok, so the recipe I am sharing with you today is for a Colombian soup that my mom would make for me on my birthdays because it is a bit time consuming. The last time I took the time to make it myself I was pregnant with my first son…that was over 2 years ago!

The great thing about making such a big pot of soup is that we were able to eat it for a whole week. Otherwise, you can freeze potions in freezer bags and just warm-up to eat at a later time.

I hope you all enjoy this soup recipe as much as I do! Continue Reading »

I am very excited to share with all of you that my 10 money saving tips for in the kitchen have been featured on the Chew On That blog.

Every month I receive an email from Chew On That asking for my opinion on a food-related matter as part of their Monthly Mouthful. I have been lucky enough to be taking part in it for at least a few months now. This time when Hillary emailed me I just couldn’t stop writing…I had such much to say and so many tips to give that she decided to feature my words as a guest post! I am truly honored.

You can find the whole post here.

A small example of what a 25 square meter (250 square foot) garden can produce in one day by early summer.

This is a very short synopsis of the tips/topics I covered (there’s about 1 paragraph worth of comment from myself on each topic): Continue Reading »