I moved!!

You will find me here starting today:  Smell my kitchen

Wish me luck and I hope you’ll enjoy my new blog!!

Love,

Raluca

The Blagger’s banquet is a great event put together by food bloggers to support a bigger campaign: Action against hunger

I find the event extraordinary and I will try to support it as much as I can.

How it works: On the 15th of November we will meet at Hawksmoor for an exiting dinner cooked, served and sourced entirely by bloggers. Bonus: we will have a blagger’s auction, where we will auction items we’ve blagged.

All funds raised at the auction, together with the money raised on banquet tickets  will go to Action Against Hunger.

It will be lovely if you could help us with anything: food, drinks, items to auction. You offer it, we use it to a good cause, so don’t hesitate to contact me if you want to help us out: sassyfoodie [@] gmail [.] com.

For more details about the banquet you can also visit:  Eat like a girl

Because it will be on the next one!!

So..stay tuned for the big announcement.

For a couple of weeks now, I am thinking about changing the name of my blog.Don’t ask me why, the answer will probably sound really silly to you.

The confusion comes from the fact that WordPress doesn’t actually allow you to change the name of the blog, so, if I want to do this I need to actually migrate everything on the new blog..

This takes time, and courage, and so many other things.. What template to choose, how should the header look like, should it be girly or not? These are the big questions now .

Anyway the point I am trying to make is that I’ll probably have an announcement for you soon, so keep checking this space.

I remembered: another reason for this post is to tell you that I am still cooking, and I have loads of posts in the waiting room, but first I need to decide on which blog to actually post them.

See you soon!

He is my first Chef’s knife, that Alex bought for me from Selfridges a week ago.

I can’t tell you how happy I am to have him on my side .

He even helps when I am not sure the food is great..
You see Alex can’t say it’s crap now, since I have a very sharp Mr. Fredricksen on my side, if you know what I mean.

So? What do you think of him?

Isn’t he such a good looking thing?

They were really nice and helpful and now I have on my desk two new grinders that they’ve sent me.

Thank you Chef’n and Dexam for this!

Hope they will last longer this time.

————————————————————————————————————————-

A few days ago, I was telling you about my kitchen gadgets and I presented the cute Mini Magnetic PepperBall set that I bought. You have to admit it looks nice, and it is so much fun to squeeze the ears to get fresh ground salt or pepper.

However, last night the ear from my PepperBall broke in my hand.  You should know that I am not the strongest person, so I can’t really understand how this happened after just 3 weeks of using it.

Not sure if I should think I was unlucky, or if this is just a pretty product instead of a great design and a reliable product in the same time.

I wrote an e-mail to the guys over at Chef’n and I am just waiting to see what they have to say about all of this. I’ll let you know.

The autumn is here and so we had a great experience just cruising through the stalls: orange, reds, greens and other beautiful colours just amazed us; not to mention the smell or apples, pears, pumpkins and occasionally seafood.

Not sure about you, but I find autumn absolutely gorgeous and I think these pictures might convince you I’m right:

This makes me want to try a pumpkin pie recipe, and I will, yes soon I will.

Forgot to tell you a story..I am nearly 28 years old now, but I still have some issues with proving my age it seems.

Just a few days ago I went to Waitrose and tried to buy a Pumpking carving kit (for kids!!!) that has some small tools (it’s true some of them sharp) and a pattern booklet..I went to the cash register and the lady asked for my ID.  I didn’t understand at first, so she had to explain that I look very young and she is afraid I might injure myself with the little tools..So I had to take out my driver’s license to buy a Pumpking carving kit.. Now that I own it I just need some pumpkins to have some fun!!

To come back to our sheep , other autumn colours, and delicious recipes to think about, like: onion soup, or galic soup

I have to admit that after seeing these amazing little things I am absolutely craving for a lemonade as well :

And it also smelled like croissants and bread and delicious olives, hmmm, can’t wait to go back:

Of course there are some things that can’t be missing if we talk about autumn and markets: apples, pears and more colourful delicious pumpkins:

We had a lovely day on Saturday, and now I have loads of recipes to think about .

But since they say: When in Rome act like Romans , I had to try and make some pancakes, and now I’m so in love with them, that I actually never prepared any crepes in a long time..

Now that I think about it maybe I should..soon..some savoury ones – with salmon, chives and creme cheese, or chicken and mushrooms? We shall see.

So many people enjoyed them, and I think now it’s time for me to share the recipe with you. To be honest I am not really sure where I found it but it works just fine for me.

Ingredients:

190 gr plain flour

365 gr buttermilk (if you can’t find buttermilk – I know that for example in Romania – my home country – this is probably close to impossible to find – you can mix around 300 gr whole yogurt with 60 gr whole milk – and you’ll get buttermilk)

5 tbsp caster sugar (only 3 if you don’t like them sweeeet)

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

pinch of salt

2 eggs

Method:

In a bowl mix together all the dry ingredients until well combined: flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder and sugar.

Separately in another bowl beat the eggs until fluffy, add the buttermilk and vanilla extract and mix until well combined.

Pour the eggs mixture over the dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Be careful not to  over mix or you’ll lose the fluffiness.

Heat a pan over high heat, and then turn the heat to medium low.

Pour the batter in the pan and wait until the margins look cooked and it’s bubbly on the surface, than turn the pancake and wait another  30 seconds or so.

I served them with Golden Syrup – which in my opinion is some sort of liquid candy floss – and they were amazing!!

I have at least 2 posts in my drafts – one about some delicious pancakes with Golden Syrup, another one about Vanilla cupcakes and one about Red Velvet cupcakes, but I struggle to write them.

So I decided to write a post about the latest gadgets that entered our family.

Probably the first one I should mention is Ratatouille – or a small mouse (we hope ) – that lives with us for over a week now.. We believe he’s quite smart because the mouse traps with glue and cheese don’t seem to work on him..Oh, well, we’ll keep trying .

The second gadget I’ve added to our kitchen are two really nice PepperBalls that are now living on our fridge’s door

We just love squeezing the bunny ears to ground some salt or pepper in lovely dishes .

To keep them company we’ve got the little magnetic teaspoon/tablespoon mesure that I absolutely adore, and not only cause of his delicious colour

Ohh..and I am not over yet

For our 1st wedding anniversary, Alex got me a nice little green iPod with a very very special engraving, but that wasn’t all .

He knows I am a kitchen freak, and soon will probably be even worse than that, so he got me two gadgets I was craving for a loooong time: a garlic card and a chop-to-pot!

How can you not love this little thing especially when it helps you with the best ingredient of them all: garlic .

The last one, for now, is the Chop-to-pot cutting board that I think is brilliant. It’s the kind of design so simple, yet so ingenious that makes you think – How come I didn’t think of this?… The answer to this is: you’re not a product designer.

Still I am happy somebody thought of it, so that I can use it in my kitchen .

Can’t wait to add more gadgets to my collection.

I think next I should really buy a proper chef’s knife, a Le Creuset casserole and a Kitchen Aid .

P.S. I did check some of the lists in one of my previous posts:

- bought some jars

- pickled some celery, cauliflower and carrots – now waiting for them to be ready to eat

See some more gadgets on: Craving for

I saw Julie and Julia in a private screening at Sony offices in London. It was great and I can’t thank enough to Niamh over at Eat like a girl and the guys at Duckworth Publishers for the invite.

The movie is absolutely great, and I loved Meryl Streep playing Julia Child, both me and Alex thought she was amazing. It’s a lovely movie even if you’re not into cooking, but it’s true it’s even lovelier if you are.

I am reading now the book I’ve received at the screening:  My life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme – and I am enjoying every page of it.

Can wait to start “My year of cooking dangerously” by Julie Powell.

The point is: go see the movie. It’s a mix of stories, a feel good movie.

Let me know what how it was .