home/food

It's been good.
We've done a bit of moving around the furniture, cleaned a lot, made the place feel like us. I've already bought a kitchen cart and a rug and a few kitchen ware and we still need a few more things.
It's a one room apartment with a kitchen about the same size as the room, a little hallway and a decent bathroom. It's perfect for us. There's so much space I can't believe it.
The neighborhood is Ok, I guess. There are a few kids around in the afternoon screaming and playing down in the playground, but it's fine.

 My plants are not doing so fine; well, not all of them. The mint and basil are going strong, especially the mint, she's tall and proud. But my ranunculus is not. It's probably because it doesn't get enough sun, because we're facing north and there's no room outside the window for them to sun bathe. It's sad, cause it was going so well and I thought they would make it and I would have beautiful flowers, but no... I still have some bulbs left, and I'll probably try again but I'm not sure it will work.

 {kitchen window view}

 {the main and only room}

{farmers' market buys}

I've been cooking a little since we settled in, nothing new or exciting, as I'm just getting around the new kitchen.

 {mint lemonade}

 {pretty little potatoes}

             {roasted potatoes+ dill/garlic yogurt}                      {tomato soup*+nibbles}

{double chocolate banana bread** - recipe here}

 {mini pizzas***}

 *The tomato soup is a regular around here. The recipe is Jamie's and it's this one. There is another one of his, where he says to add a can or a couple of cans of whole tomatoes - to give it more body and get more of a creamy, less soupy thing. I did not have a couple of cans of tomatoes,and I just needed to get rid of five tomatoes so as to not throw them away sooner or later( we're not big tomato fans). So with five tomatoes I did not make a lot of soup, thus I did not added so much water, plus I skipped the cream/yolk/vinegar part and just added some cream before eating it. Sites everywhere you find this recipe advise you to serve this soup with grilled cheese sandwiches...yeah, in an ideal world. I'm not mocking, sure that would have been great, but it didn't happen.

** Being the first time making this bread I'm glad I did it, but I'm not sure I'll add it to my favorite recipes list, because the combination of chocolate and bananas is just not my thing. Of course, we finished it off in a day after baking it, but that's because we did not have anything else sweet in the house.

*** Mini pizzas cook way faster than a big regular one, so it's good.You'll notice that one is slightly more yellowish than the other. It's because it's been fried before putting stuff on it and going in to the oven. I've discovered this way back a few years in Jamie's Jamie's Italy book (great, great cooking book), but never really got to try it out. My fried pizzas weren't that different from the baked ones but I'll tell you why. I should have made them thinner than the baked ones and then the whole experience would have been different, I'm sure. It was funny, because frying the dough made the kitchen smell like we were making doughnuts. I will definitely do a better job the next time, by making them right.

This was supposed to be a post about our new home, not food, but they're both very important to me, so it's OK.