I've just found out that butter and cream cheese are very best friends!

You may pick up your portuguese bread (the superquoted one), put some butter in it and smelt that in the stove. After that, with the bread hot yet, add a upper layer of cream cheese. "That's eat". Now you may find out too that good friends are made for live togeher!

sunday-time lunch (by h.chiurciu)

For who doesn’t know it, I am living alone for a brief season.

The big challenge in this home-reality, at least as I see it, is to go from the state of “quotidian client” to “quotidian server” – that is, to become myself the generator of my own routine.

And what could be more routine-ish in a house than meal time, am I right?

With an erratic presence within the domestic events as mine, the traditional “tons of food => meal for 3 days” scheme doesn’t have much use. Cooking individual plates everyday can be quite a delicade activity, but the freshness of each meal gives the one-man-house style a unique charm.

After a very greasy Saturday, almost entirely based upon the uses of animal protein (a sausage tortilla for lunch and a potato & bacon pie by the afternoon, made with the deep-hearted company of Tiago de Mello], I’ve decided to fill my belly with the vegetables and greenery that I have inside my fridge.

Being so, I made myself a beautiful vegetable dry-stew (with no gravy intented), used as a sidedish for the already-introduced Lithuanian pie [originally called Kugelis]: i used onion and French garlic on butter, zucchini and carrots in slices and a handful of well-chopped Collard greens, all seasoned with shoyu and a pinch of sesame oil. And it worked out pretty well!

Also, i had lunch in my backyard! =3

tosta con tomateen (by h.chiurciu)

So today i had breakfast, and it was my favorite in the world breakfast: the spanish tosta con tomate! Of course, i am no great spanish tomatoaster, but i’ve figured out a rather simple way of enjoying this great dish at home.

First, a tomatoe: ideally big, red and ripe, but i usually use any tomatoe i find on fridge. You peel it (wich can be not so nice in a cold weather, if the tomatoe was in fridge like mine), slice it in four or whatever and microwave it! A minute and a half, within the medium potence, shall be enough. It is supposed to melt down in a fresh pulpy sauce. Then i like to smash the pieces to make the sauce a bit thicker and add a bunch of salt and olive oil (in Spain, they use A LOT of salt, but you can take it easy if you want). One could season it with oreaganne, but i dislike the idea for it is too italian and pizza-ish and everybody puts oreganne on everything and i’m sick of it. (added by Tiago: i’m sick of what we know by oreganne: it seems to me that it is very well possible to have really great flavor with a fresh one, not this “dry” thing we have in the supermakets.) So i stick with the original Spanish Flavor: salt and olive and tomatoes!

Then you use it with the bread. You can use any kind of bread, toasted sliced bread or toasted regular bread or even a regular old bread, like i did. I suggest you stick with the toasted or dried-up breads, because of the delicious way the tomatoe re-hidrates the stiff dough while still leting some parts of it really crunchy and interesting to bite. I used a stiff and 3-days-old mini-portuguese bread - portuguese bread is a kind of bread that i have never seen anywhere outside brazil, not even in portugal (added by Tiago, again: in fact i have heard that in Argentina they have a suppose portuguese bread as well, very similiar to ours, but in paris i went to a portuguese bakery and there was nothing about this.); i find the best here in Pirituba, so when you come for a visit you should stop by and try it!

This is what i find one of the worlds best breakfasts in the world, because of everything: it is simple, nutritious, delicious and makes you feel like a classic anarchist! ~ or even a fascist, if thats your zing, because everyone can enjoy a good tosta con tomate!!!

Tiago: But, what about the beverage? How can it fit to a liquidbreakfast?

H: Personally, i dont use to have liquidbreakfasts; in this case, i find the tomatoe all the liquid i need to have. But if you like, you can combine it with cofee or orange juice, I suppose.


T: ok, i do agree. but, what about tomatoes juice? I mean, as beverage.

H: What about it? I use bottled ones to make gazpacho! But that’s hardly a breakfast. I like it, as a beverage, but when i was a kid i liked it more (maybe because it was the best thing i could have on wedding parties). Maybe it’s quite the young drink, now thinking.

food presentation

sometimes its all about how you present your daily food to yourself.

not many to say but plenty to show

Of Salad Showdown

I have to self a salad showdown on house. Persons say on popular culture, “Kid have to had salad on kid time”, because it makes good to growing on adult – the vitamins and colorfull colours. But, I speak of popular culture – its what flys in mouth to mouth everywhere – kids don’t like no salad. I have sure I have been a kid in that years behind, and I have sure I have also delighted salad when I was a kid. I ask you people: do you liked salad as in kid time?

So I went to adult now, or to young man, i.e., teen, and continue to like salad. Don’t worry, folks, I am not starting to say you to become vegetarian, because I am long from vegetarianism myself (favourite foods includes meat in many ways), but as admiror of Teen Food and having being in general no good on kitchening, I offer now fresh solution for the teen today.

If you live in house with garden, I envy you, because step one to you become culturing your own vegetables! But if you are urban livers of buildings like myself, you have to hope to find all your salad-to-be in your street fair (Here there’s plenty of them – what about there?) or supermarket.

Vegetable reign is sympathetic in many ways: funny shapes, colours of rainbow, tastes to sweet and bitter, different textures... all tastes pleased. I will tell you my personal favourites: tomato, lettuce, carrot (but have in head – you must grate it, like thin chops of Wood or cheese; otherwise, it is hard and the olive oil do not pour so nicely in between), the palmtree inner parts (we call it ‘palmito’, eventough it is now prohibited for being no ecology), cucumber and rocket, that bitter marvel that many kids dislike when kid.

So you just wash everyone and cut as you like, it is very practical. Having that done, I suggest a nice bowl or superbowl, so everyone can have salad. Disposition of everything, that is, presentation, is usually very important, to yourself or to others. So have that done, put some salt and olive oil! You can bring some others reigns food, for instant, you can take pistaccio for a more various taste.

Have you a go on salad, I hope you have enjoyed!.

Today we were four, and we talked about teen food.

We so started to talk about eggs and breads (sounds like fish and chips for me…). Someone make a hole in the slice of bread, put in the fryingpan and break the egg into the hole. Seems to be very nice egg-shaping!

Another possibility discussed was about putting the raw egg into the bread, and then, them together, into the ironbreadtoaster. Because of a misunderstanding, i thought he talked about the electricbreadtoaster (the vertical one). So here i am, hungry, thinking of this conversation. BUT, there is about twelve hours i ate an egg, so this is not time of trying out those recipes.

So that i remember there is some nutella chezmoi, waiting to take me to a fat guy. I'll try to have a portuguesebread (in fact, it is more similar to frenchbaguete, but this is how we call that in brazil), fulfilled with nutella by the method of the hole. This thing, pressed (to fit in the toaster), is going directly to the eletricalbreadtoaster.

This is going to be served with some chinese jasmine tea i have.

And you will never know if this recipe got succeeded. I just can tell you that you should try, as well as any other one, by the way.

This is the way it is learnable, by trying, and, maybe, getting it right.

tale of the acquired taste

i didn´t receive any instructions on how to approach the subject matter, but i'll try to keep myself within what i consider to be part of it...

it seems to be a natural process, natural in the sense of it being quite common, that as a person grows older and sleeves fall short under his wrists, tastebuds would ripe and belittle all that once might have been said to be pure flavour delight. suddenly sweet sickens and bitter captivates. well, not exactly suddenly. it usually happens within a long lingering process that is aging.

can we consider that our minds and our tastebuds grow together? we better not. just as we learn along the way, not even the maturing process can happen on its own.

still, sometimes it just takes a subtle movement, a gentle touch. sooo much easier than just maturing...

to me, it did: couple of years ago, i took "another first attempt" on blue cheeses. their smell just made me sick. this time, in delicious italian bread and with some olive oil drizzled on top of it, it just seemed like perfection.

i didn't need to do anything to start appreciating it. it just dawned on me. usually, maturing seems to be harder. but then, it were probably my tastebuds who were different.

still, just as life might seem too hard to take it all and get it together, i love to engorge myself on those simple sweet tastes occasionally, just as if i would hide under my mother's wings.

so sweet...