The beauty is the rugged terrain, and the serenity. You can choose to explore the island by car, or just stay in and do nothing. Me and my friends did a little bit of both.

We are taken care of by our friend Giovanni Matta who operates In Sicily, and knows Pantelleria better than anybody. And who made sure we saw the best of the island. He also runs the Pantelleria Collection, an assortment of rental homes, and he was kind enough to let us stay in one for the week. I can honestly say, if you’re coming to Pantelleria – or anywhere else in Sicily – you can’t be in better hands than those of Giovanni.

While I wasn’t able to repeat that restful snooze, as the week passed, I felt myself being lulled into the rhythm of island life. But it was explained to me that residents of the island were less-interested in the sea that surrounds them, because they’ve been invaded during their history, by people arriving on their shores. That, and a lot of massive volcanic rocks that line the coastline, means that if you want to come and swim, you should find a place with a pool. Which we had.

Because Pantelleria is closer to Tunisia than Italy, (it’s about 40 miles to Tunisia, and 80 mile to Italy), there are heavy North African influences on the island, from the flat houses with white-domes that blend into the landscape, to the cuisine, which often features North African ingredients, including couscous, pine nuts, honey, dried fruits, and spices. One of the best dishes we had that week was a lovely seafood couscous at Altamarea restaurant.

Although Pantelleria is an island, it’s not especially known for its seafood. And I only saw one fish market on the island, which is kind of unusual. But most of the seafood I was told, comes from mainland Sicily.

If you really want to make Shan’s outrageously delicious brownies you are going to need some bourbon.  3 tablespoons to be precise.  This leaves quite a bit of whiskey goodness in the bottle.  The way I see it you have two choices – drink the leftover bourbon (a perfectly logical decision) or make yourself some mouthwatering ribs.  My man wanted to ribs and I aim to please (or maybe I wanted to post something meaty for Father’s Day…).

Meat in general is always scary for me due to the fact that a. I do not prepare or make it often and b. have to rely on others comments because it’s not something I consume.  With that being said I do enjoy making new things, regardless of whether or not I eat them.  Admittedly barbecue ribs at home had me a little hesitant – I feel like all over the country masters have their secret recipes and the ribs have to cook for hours on end in a very specific way.  When I spied this recipe on pinterest however I was sold.  The ribs are beautiful and the recipe, including a homemade sauce, could not be simpler.

First, combine your spices, you’re going to rub the ribs with this mixture later.

Next grab a paring knife and remove the filmy membrane from the bone side of the rack.  This step was not my favorite.  At all.  (In fact editing the picture of it made my stomach turn a bit.)  After that disgusting task is complete you can rub your meat with spices, wrap in foil and stick in oven for 2.5 hours.

While ribs are in the oven it’s time to whip up the sauce.  You get to use something called “liquid smoke”.  I opted not to read the label of what ingredients make up such a product, some things are better left not knowing.

We love turkey and chicken burgers around here, and have been eating them a lot more often now that it’s summertime and I seem to crave burgers all the time.  Not only are they inexpensive (around 5 dollars of meat gives us meals for two days), but they’re so easy to make, they provide a healthy lean source of protein, they fill me up, and there are infinite flavour combinations to experiment with!

It’s hard to persuade Ryan away from our favourite buffalo chicken burgers, but I like trying new things, so recently I decided to make chicken fajita burgers.  I actually intended to use turkey but didn’t realize I’d grabbed chicken until I got home – either works though!

These basically taste like chicken fajitas but in burger format, thanks to the combination of fajita spices in both the burger and the veggies, the sautéed peppers and onions on top, and optional (but delicious) extras like mashed avocado, tomatilla salsa, and cheese!

The way I wrote out the recipe makes this look like a lot of ingredients and work, but it’s really not.  Most of the ingredient list is dedicated to the spices you’ll use to create your own fajita seasoning, but if you like, you can make this even easier with a premixed fajita spice!
 

For weeks I’ve been busy with moving the content from my old blog(s) to here and well, you than get into the situation where you find things you don’t necessarily want to hear. It seems that losing weight is a recurring theme. Over the course of the last 7 years I’ve followed all sorts of programs. Once it might be the 12wbt program (12 week body transformation), the other time I am all into spinning, then it is a month of paleo and the list goes on.

Can you guess where this is going already? Indeed it is that time again… How do other people do it?? I see all these skinny foodbloggers (yes they do exist!) who bake beautiful cakes and other delicious sweets. And ok, a lot of them are 30 years younger maybe, so that’ll help somewhat for sure.

And I can really hate myself, Really hate myself. Because we were doing so well! I lost fifteen kilo and before I know it it’s back on. Well not all of it, thank god, but still too much. Way too much.

And I know I do it to myself, right. So it’s not as if I can claim it is anyone elses fault, but the problem is that I like everything and eat everything too. So I háve to back (and taste) and I would really like to eat everything, but not gain weight.

Do you think that can be arranged maybe?

So… here we are again. Ten kilo heavier than I want to be and something needs to be done about it. I do not want to end up in a program like Obese or something along those lines. No thank you very much. But I also said it before; I don’t believe in all those fad diets out there. I know exactly where I go wrong. I just need to learn to eat in moderation and not succumb to snacks and too much of everything. Just a small piece of cake and not three slices. A few cashewnuts with a glass of wine and not a bag of cashewnuts and a whole bottle. O and the worst one is when we have one of those nights; no cooking but just lounging with wine, bread and cheese… And even that I believe is ok once in a while but just not every week.

I was going to try to make this into a passion fruit meringue pie ice cream but after tasting it with just the passion fruit curd and meringue, I didn’t think it needed another ingredient. However a few buttery biscuit crumbs such as digestives – sprinkled over the ice cream at the end, along with the crumbled meringue could be very nice too. I simply love the name passion fruit and all the wonderful connotations that come to mind with it. It truly is very exotic and even sexy as fruits go. Here in South Africa we call them granadilla – a slightly less sexy name, and so for  the benefit of a more international audience I shall refer to them as the former hk idc.

It’s worth making the components to this ice cream from scratch and in advance with the advantage that they make more than what you require. I have used my passion fruit curd, which is a lovely and easy recipe and lasts a few weeks in the fridge. I made this batch with the last of the seasons fruit recently and its perfect to spread on biscuits or cakes or simply spoon out the jar. It also freezes very well if you want to store it for a later occasion Standees.

For the meringues I followed the recipe for these pink swirl meringues, simply leaving out the pink and making them smaller. I also adjusted the baking time to 1 1/4 hours and lowered the oven temperature to 110 C. Once they were baked I turned the oven off and allowed them to cool inside yellow coffee mug.

If however you are able to find good quality meringues and passion fruit curd, it could save time by buying these in. This recipe would also be lovely with lemon curd and more along the lines of a lemon meringue ice cream.

I hope you enjoy my recipe as much as I enjoyed creating it.

 

So I missed the whole Cinco de Mayo, post everything you’ve ever made that might have a hint of south of the border flavor plus your favorite margarita recipe.  Life happens.

Truthfully, I drink margs on the reg.  Not just Cinco de Mayo or the weekend… pretty much whenever I’m in the mood for one so why not share one of my favorites with you today china virtual office!

I bartended my way through college (and grad school), and while I’ve always been a margarita lover, in the last few years I have become particularly picky about how my margs are made.  My pickiness began while I was bartending at a hotel in San Diego.  This hotel was on the water and catered to high end family vacationers and important people on business trips.  We made amazing margaritas, and well, they should have been for the price we were charging healthy lifestyle.

So what makes for an out of this world, knock you right off your feet, margarita?  Two words – fresh juice!  Put down the pre-made mixes and back away.  They are full of a bunch of junk that you don’t need.  There are really only three ingredients required, plus a little bit of elbow grease, and before you know it you’ll feel like you’re sitting under an umbrella on some white sandy beach Natural stone.

In the nearly four years that we’ve written this blog, we have never made a pancake recipe (shocking, I know!). But actually, we’re simple breakfast people: me with my whole grain English muffin and PB, and Alex with his wait-until-I-get-hungry-then-eat-massive-amounts-of-yogurt-and-granola Neogen Korea.

One of my complaints about pancakes has always been that they are not filling enough: when I do eat them, I carbo-load and then go into a sugar-induced coma, after which I crash, hungry just a few hours later. So, my goal with this recipe was to create a hearty pancake: filling, yet still light and fluffy, as well as gluten-free, since it is the most versatile way to cover a variety of dietary needs otterbox review.

8 to 10 trial runs later, here’s the recipe! (We’re not sure whether it was 8 or 10, we lost count after a while…) Like this bean burger, we went into major trial and error mode: first the pancakes were too thin, then too thick, then not lemony enough, then not sweet enough. We found the trick is using oat flour (which you can make yourself using a food processor) and combining it with just a bit of gluten-free flour (or wheat flour, if you’re not gluten-free) to keep the cakes light and fluffy.

These cakes would be lovely for a special brunch (especially in mini-version, if serving for a crowd). In fact, we developed the recipe in honor of Fair Trade USA, who is celebrating Mother’s Day this year by hosting brunch recipe contest. If you’re so inclined, would you navigate over to the Fair Trade Brunch Pinboard and vote for our recipe by pinning it? The voting period is May 1-11; only re-pins from Fair Trade’s board will be counted. Thank you so much storage cubes!

Last week I was at Sam’s club, like every Saturday morning picking up my weekly supplies perusing through the fresh produce section.  I was pushing my buggy (yes ‘buggy’ – that’s what us Yinzers call a shopping cart) through the aisles, taking my time looking at everything when I spotted the most incredible Portabella mushroom caps.  Each cap was literally the size of a dinner plate!  I have never seen them that big; I mean EVER! And for like $3.50 I was all over that!  So I brought them home but then kinda sorta forgot about them for a few days.  I got side tracked with other things to make that when I “re-found” them I was tickled pink!  Since my tummy was on the fritz and hating most meats (it does it every once in a blue moon) I figured it was perfect timing to use these face-sized mushrooms Alexander Hera.

Since it’s Lent now I try to come up with truly meatless dishes as even though most people eat seafood on Friday there are tons that hate seafood.  I took out the gorgeous portabellas (I wish I had taken pictures of them because they were MASSIVE!!!) and cleaned out the gills. Now you don’t have to remove them as they are edible. Most chef’s remove them as they will discolor your sauce and make it muddy.  For this dish, it’s totally your call.  I just do it out of habit.  Once I chopped them up I could have easily stopped there with the veggies and just added the binding ingredients and seasoning but I wanted protein and a more well-rounded flavor profile.  That being the case I opened up the fridge to see what other veggies I could add.  Garlic is a must and onion as the onion adds moisture. I spied some fresh broccoli and thought that would brighten up the dish not only visually but in flavor profile.  However what I didn’t have was protein. Sure the eggs were a great source of protein but I want more.  I opted to add black beans not only for color, protein and flavor but also texture.  They, unlike cooked broccoli, mushrooms and onions stay semi-firm versace bags.

These burgers just came together beautifully.  Since I had made black bean burgers in the past (that are friggen AMAZING!!!) I knew the best bet to really get these to stick together with as little filler (bread crumbs) as possible was to mash half of the beans.  That really helps to bind the stuff together without adding a lot of bread crumbs making it then almost meatloaf-like headphone amp.

When I came back (a little early), Luis was getting everything ready for lunch and piling cheese and chiles directly on the griddle, and smearing crisp tortillas with black bean puree and queso fresco (hey, where’d he get that in Paris?) – and I waited patiently at the counter for my spicy sausage (picadillo) tostadas and tacos, along with a real, honest-to-goodness Mexican grapefruit soda Bordeaux.


The two gal-pals from California that I befriended at the counter, one of them said, “Oooh…my lips are tingling!” which is the desired effect of Mexican seasonings, for many of us. And while other places have “toned it down” with respect for local tastes, everyone here seems to be happy with the heat Barolo.


I was hoping that Photoshop had a “Remove Turkey Neck” setting, but then I remembered that when eating tacos, you’re not really supposed to be concerned about what you looked like and I dove right in, too. But maybe we can call it “Taco Neck”, which I’m sure I’ve gotten from eating so many tacos iphone skins.

For caramel, I just had to say, “Caramelize the sugar” instead of “Put the sugar in a pot. Heat it over low heat, stirring gently, etc…” and people would know what I meant. The French measure spices and leaveners using regular “coffee” and soup spoons, not specific measuring spoons, and it always makes me smirk a bit when I read tests from the states about how one scale is .0005 degrees more accurate than another, or how various measuring cups can be off by 1/4 teaspoon that others, and everyone wringing their hands about what bakers should do and how life will go on as we know it Flower shop?

Ay caramba! Of course, measuring is important, but baking is actually not as precise as people think it is, and it’s nice to be more relaxed about things and enjoy the process rather than get all worked up about the tiniest of details. And when in doubt—just add more chocolate Port wine.

I was offered a brownie and foolishly, I didn’t take it. But I had plans to come back that day for lunch which was in about an hour, and wanted to make sure I had plenty of stomach space reserved for those tacos iPhone cover.

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