Tag: family

Gender Divide

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Tonight we bring you another easy and healthy Nicaraguan recipe. We’ve been exploring Nicaraguan recipes for the past week or so and it’s fairly varied with heavy indigenous, Creole and Spanish influences. According to Wikipedia, the Pacific Coast cuisine makes use of local produce with the most common being corn. The Caribbean Coast tends to use more seafood and coconut. Our first Nicaraguan recipe, Curry Seafood Stew, clearly comes from the Caribbean side of Nicaragua. So tonight, we head to the opposite coast and have a recipe with a bit of Spanish influence.

I’m really diggin’ how simple and fast these meals have been so far, especially after our cooking marathon the past few weeks. I’m also lovin’ that Miss A and I have gotten to spend some quality time in the kitchen together. Cooking earlier in the day for that much-needed natural light has its benefits. And so, Miss A and I bring you the Ensalada de Jicama y Naranja (or Jicama and Orange Salad). Continue reading →

All’s Quiet on the Home Front

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Last night was an unusual occurrence. Mike was working in the city for most of the weekend while the kids and I were busy keeping busy. Then yesterday evening the kids went to visit Mike’s grandma with their Nana and Papa and I escaped to a yoga class. When I came home it was just Mike and I for dinner – and at a normal dinner hour!

Now it’s not unusual for us to put the kids to bed and have an at home cooking date night, or to even drop the kids off at Nana and Papa’s for a night on the town, but to find ourselves at home, alone, at the dinner hour – unheard of. So we decided to launch our next international adventure alone, with a recipe we knew we’d enjoy, and eat it in our dining room. (I don’t know that we’ve ever sat down to eat in there aside from Christmas Eve or a random dinner party.)

So where are we venturing off to now? We’ll get to that in a minute, first we bring you “Bloggers Unplugged,” a fun little game of questions in which we were tagged by Charles of Five Euro Food. Charles as you may remember is the creator of this delicious baba ghanoush that we made for Christmas and have enjoyed for lunch over and over again. Thanks for the recipe and the tag Charles. Here are the questions fielded by both Mike and I.

1. What, or Who, inspired you to start a blog?
Mr. N was our inspiration. We had talked for a long time about exposing the kids to different cuisines from around the world. Mr. N, who was really excited about our “experiment” thought we should write a book about the experience. Well, it’s not exactly a book, but I think he approves. 😉

2. Who is your foodie inspiration?
Well, first and foremost, Mike expanded my horizons with food exponentially very early on in our relationship. Many of our early dates revolved around fantastic restaurants or cooking at his apartment. One of our favorite dishes to this day came from those early dating years. We may get around to sharing that one of these days. Other foodie inspiration – well the many food blogs we read. They’re always inspiring us. And of course Chopped. 🙂 Continue reading →

“Energy and Persistence Conquer All Things”

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I don’t think that Benjamin Franklin was referring to a Chopped Challenge, but let me tell you, that’s what this event and this particular basket took – energy and persistence.

Our final dessert round began after an epic clean-up of this mess.

It was late, it was dark (thus some of the not so great pictures), it was New Year’s Day…but persevere we must! That, and you better believe the kids weren’t letting us off that easy. They wanted their dessert! So on to the dessert basket offered up to us by Kay, the always inspiring, artistic genius at Pure Complex. Her basket of Oranges, Red Miso Paste, Kettle Chips and Cottage Cheese won by a landslide victory (Kay your family all came through!). And we thought the last basket challenged us!  Continue reading →

Rocked Lobster

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Tonight we bring you our main course dishes from Sunday’s Chopped Challenge. The basket for this round came to us from Sally at Bewitching Kitchen and included lobster tails, edamame, buckwheat noodles and chipotle peppers. We were a bit intimidated because if you’ve been to Sally’s blog, you know she’s always coming up with inventive dishes that look deliciously full of flavor – without fail – and we wanted to make sure we did her proud.

We were also a bit nervous and baffled about how to combine edamame and buckwheat noodles with chipotle peppers. This one was definitely throwing us. Do we go Asian or Southwestern? Ultimately we went both directions. I went towards Asian flavors and Mike embraced the Southwest. And while our dishes may not look as restaurant-worthy as the last round, these were hands down our favorite dishes of the day. Mr. N and Miss A were also very excited about the lobster. You should have heard Miss A, “Is it ready yet? Is this the lobster? Is it dead? Can I eat the lobster?” Apparently we taught them well in Maine this summer. Continue reading →

Scallops and Drunken Chestnuts

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Yesterday was our epic Chopped Challenge for Mike’s birthday celebration and our New Year’s Day fun. The baskets of ingredients were provided by members of our blog family and put up to vote by our readers. We completed three rounds including an appetizer, main course and dessert recipe. It was a crazy day of cooking, spills, dirty dishes, laughter, a bit of competitive jabbing and absolute fun. Thanks for all of those that participated and followed along. We hope you had some fun too. 🙂

Now as promised here are the first recipes from the event. We’re going to kick off with the appetizer dishes. We used the ingredients suggested by Linda at Savoring Every Bite (who has some fantastic recipes – we’ve tried several in fact – not to mention amazing party planning/hosting skills) which included Chestnuts, Brandy, Polenta and Scallops. The measurements provided in the recipes are approximated as we didn’t do too much calculating yesterday. We mostly went on gut feel and tossed in what we thought worked.  Continue reading →

Chopped Challenge Begins…(A Live Blogging Event)

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Our chopped challenge begins with the appetizer round.  We’ll be posting live updates through the day, so check back often!  Our voters were generally kind, hopefully our judges will be kind as well, though we don’t expect them to be as kind as the Dalai Lama himself.

Continue reading →