Friday, 16 January 2015

Christmas at home

It's really been a while.
I was home for Christmas and although it was short and tiresome it was totally worth it.


 {lights on Copou}





The weather was Ok, I guess. We had a little bit of everything. Some sunny decent days and then some hardcore freezing mind numbing snowy ones.

Precious time at home was the most important.




 
 

{monkey bread}

There was coffee in our new french press almost every morning, cooking, a bit of baking, loads of dirty dishes all the time.

I finally tried monkey bread. I followed Deb's recipe, of course. It was delicious and everything you would expect, like hot miniature cinnamon doughnuts. I made them in the evening so we could enjoy them the next morning with our coffee, cause there was no way I was waiting for the dough to do it's thing in the morning. I have to admit they were better right out of the oven, still warm, as we ate the whole thing on the left right then and there and the monkey bread loaf on the right survived until the next day in the evening. Other than this I did no other baking.
We did cook a bit. I made the Soba Noodles with Peanut-Citrus Sauce recipe I was talking about here a while back, but with no soba noodles, of course. R liked it a lot, I like it too, so we made it like three time. Other than these two recipes I did not do anything else remotely special. We mostly ate at other peoples places.













  We watched the Back to the Future trilogy three nights in a row while at home at my parents' house with my sister and good pizza while it was brutally snowing outside. The movies were as awesome as I remembered, and having seen them when I was little I wanted a hover board like that.

Also while at home I had to throw away my fashion magazine collection and it was a pain in the back. Literally. R was kind enough to help me carry them to the dumpster. I did however kept a stash of magazines I really like: D/ la Repubblica delle Donne. I prefer it over any other magazine out there. But it also felt so good throwing out things you don't like anymore, and keeping just the essential things.
I went to school once or twice before Christmas hoping to meet up with some colleagues and Dna Maria. It was good revisiting the familiar sewing workshop where I'll be starting work at the end of summer, people I know from school. Sadly it was too short, all of it.





Monday, 8 December 2014

You must watch

I have found my favorite new show. It's called Inside Amy Schumer and it's pretty good. Have a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzlvDV3mpZw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU2L5AUKtyc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNJhwtx4AJc

sorry, the embeded code thing don't work. copy these up there.

I've been devouring the first two seasons like it's nobody's business. I love it. It's so funny. I didn't know much about Amy Schumer but Jerry Seinfeld invited her on Comedians in Cars getting Coffee and I decided to check her out. I did and I am so happy.

http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/amy-schumer-im-wondering-what-its-like-to-date-me

Tuesday, 2 December 2014

Home never seemed so exciting as it does now














 Things have been going ok. I'm just a bit worried about the amount of homework I have. I have an exam exactly after I return from the Christmas holiday and still so much to do for that, and other stuff for other disciplines.
 Having said that, I am so excited to be catching a plane home next week on Thursday. I can hardly wait. I don't even care about the long plane ride, the stress of the ride and all that. I'm just so excited to land in Bucharest. I miss everyone at home, so much.






The city here is definitely in a holiday mood. It's nice but it would be great if I had R here with me.
I spent half a day at the beach this weekend and it was quite good. There were so many people surfing, the water cold, a lot of dogs playing, couples...I walked a lot on the side of the beach and then took a bus to get home bringing along with me a lot of sand, cause my room wasn't messy enough...

















Sunday, 16 November 2014

Cooking and food related stuff

 {salted peanut butter cookies}

{vanilla ice cream sandwich}

 {Chinese supermarket}

{miso, sambal olelek, sesame oil, bok choy, kimchi, sprouts} 

 {roasted pears}


I use cooking as a distraction from school, bad weather, bad days at school, feeling lonely.
It's gone great so far; I did a handful of recipes, new recipes.

I have to admit I'm really psyched about this Chinese market located not to far from my home. I just feel a bit intimidated, cause they have loads of stuff and ingredients and I've been trying to narrow it down to a few recipes to do.

I've mostly been cooking recipes from one of my favorite blogs out there: Orangette. Molly, the writer is awesome. I mentioned her a while back, as she has a podcast I listen to now and used to listen massively at home in Iasi. Molly has a couple of recipes there, Asian inspired, and I gave those a try. I have no photos, cause I forgot to take any but be sure they were good looking and pretty delicious. The recipes are: Soba Noodles with Peanut-Citrus Sauce ( I did not use soba noodles because I'm not a big fan, at all. They are made of buckwheat flour and have a distinct smell and taste that I just think takes over. I used regular noodles from my Chinese store) and Kimchi Fried Rice, which was deliciously garlic-y. These recipes made a couple of servings so I was able to eat them several times on weeknights and did not have to cook every time a whole new thing.

I did this cookie recipe and these roasted pears last weekend. The cookies were good, I shared them around. People were pleased.
The pears deserve a whole new paragraph. Like seriously. They were just wonderful. If you have the chance I urge you to do them as soon as possible. I was planning to cook them on a day/weekend like this: cold, rainy, miserable. But instead I did them on a sunny and breezy afternoon and they were just as good. But imagine cooking them on a lousy, cold evening. We all know pears are hard and require a fair amount of chewing, but this way of cooking makes them like pudding, so soft, so vanilla-y, caramel-y and they will make you eat them all at once. I did ten halves/ five pears and they barely made it for me to eat them the second time. Next time I'll do more of them, and maybe share them, maybe.


{natas}
{ espresso shot}

{roasted chestnuts - pretty common here}

A bit on Portuguese food habits.
Given Portugal's location and all that stuff, I was expecting people here to be eating loads of fruit and vegetables, sea food ( they do, a lot) like it's sister Mediterranean countries: Spain, Italy. But they don't really. Not that much. I mean, they do have loads more exotic fruits and veggies and sometimes a trip to the supermarket can be an exciting adventure, but at least in the house I live and at the school canteen, people are eating fat, greasy foods. What is up with that?
From what I've seen at school, I've recognized a pattern. School courses start at 8-9-10 am and at 10-10.30 they take a brake - the professors and students also. They get coffee - (they drink these petite coffee shots with sugar, which I can't understand. They are really into their coffee) and maybe a pastry and they smoke a cigarette or two, do a bit of socializing.  Then they go back to their course and at 1 pm everybody stops what they're doing and they get lunch at the canteen(some bring their lunch from home and heat it up in the microwave). The break is an hour long. They eat - pretty slow, talk, have a coffee and maybe dessert at the end and then some more smoking. Then at 2 pm everybody gets on with some more classes. And this is what I find very difficult to do. There were times when I almost fell asleep in my chair. You just slump there and try to concentrate. It's hard to pay attention after the siesta you've had.
All in all, as you've noticed, I prefer cooking my own recipes rather than trying out their stuff. At least for now.