It’s Strawberry Time!

 

If you’ve had a chance to visit any of the outdoor markets lately, you’ve seen them. Piles of bright red berries, gleaming in the sunlight, just waiting to be taken home and devoured! There are a variety of strawberries here in Sicily, from the impossibly tiny fragoline to the gigantic fragolone, and every size in between. Although strawberries are a wonderfully healthy, low-calorie treat when eaten plain, I look forward to strawberry season for another reason: Strawberry Shortcake!

Spice Up Your Spring!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written about one of my favorite online shops. No, I’m not talking about Zappos, I’m not talking about King Arthur Flour, and I’m not talking about Burt’s Bees. While it’s true that all of those businesses get their share of my money, my most recent online purchase was from The Spice House. Does it seem strange to shop for spices online? I kind of thought so too. But one visit to their site changed my mind and after my first package arrived in the mail over a year ago, I was completely hooked!

I was one of those people whose spice cabinet was packed with old bottles of spices that had been purchased for one recipe or another and then never touched again.

The Minimalist Kitchen

Just saw a great Mark Bittman video and read the accompanying article on NYTimes.com about equipping an entire kitchen for $200-300. Although I am as guilty of lusting over ridiculously expensive kitchen equipment as the next foodblogger, living here in Sicily has really made me step back and think about what is actually “essential” in a kitchen. In a country where electricity is expensive and limited, I quickly learned that packing away my stand mixer, food processor and blender not only freed up counter space, but didn’t really put many limitations on what was coming out of my kitchen. We lived in an Italian villa for two years and rather than use a transformer to get my U.S. 110v appliances to work in my Italian 220v kitchen, I really did pack them all away. I purchased a 220v Braun hand mixer that had some useful attachments and an inexpensive food mill. I learned to love my knives, I rediscovered the joy of kneading bread by hand, and I realized that the pleasures of cooking really have nothing to do with the price or quantity of your kitchen equipment.

Nando’s Honey Garlic Wings

This is a continuation of my previous review of Nando’s Peri Peri Sauces. I had three sauces to try out–Roasted Reds Cooking Sauce, Peri-Peri Marinade, and Garlic Peri-Peri Sauce. I used the first two sauces in my chicken pizza, but I had different plans for the Garlic Peri-Peri Sauce. It seemed like the sauce might be good on some chicken wings, so of course I tried it out. Guess what? It was good on chicken wings 🙂

Spring Cleaning in January?

Today’s forecast:
Sunday in Catania, Sicily, Italy
Sunny and Pleasantly warm, 74°F/23°C
Wind WSW, 6mph

This is no joke, it is warm outside! Although we call this place Sunny Sicily, this is not normal weather for the end of January! But, as you can see in the photo, everything is green and the wildflowers are blooming everywhere. It feels and looks like spring here. The windows in my house have been open every day (much to the delight of my cat) and I actually have had the urge to do some spring-like cleaning around my house (that’s more unusual than this weather). Well, this morning I have also done some much needed cleaning around this blog.

Mac ‘n’ Cheese Alert!

If you’ve noticed the long (getting longer every day) list of food blogs I have listed over on my sidebar, then you must understand that I spend quite a bit of time browsing through tons of wonderful recipes on a daily basis. I’ve already run across more great recipes than I could cook in this lifetime.

I’d Like to Recommend…

Some of you might have noticed that for the last few weeks, my recipe posts have slowed down a bit. What happened? Well, I started a new class and I’m just not great at time management! I’m trying really hard to post at least one new recipe per week and when the class ends in a couple of weeks, I’ll hopefully get back to posting every day or at least every other day.

So, in the meantime, I suggest you check out some of the other food blogs that I have listed along the right side of my site because there are so many great recipes and photos out there! Even when I’m in school, I spend way too much time reading cookbooks and other food blogs, looking at photos on Flickr, and searching for recipes. My cookbook collection has been getting out of control and you might notice that the list of food blogs I visit grows longer every day! So, every once in a while I might add a post like this highlighting a cookbook and/or food blog that has recently caught my attention.

Today I want to introduce you to a site that I just can’t seem to stay away from lately! It’s called What We’re Eating and there are so many things that I love about it!