Kitchen accidents

If you have never cut yourself in the kitchen you are either very lucky or you don´t spend too much time in there.

I rarely cut myself but of course it does happen. The other day I was grating marzipan, I was making cinnamon buns with marzipan, and I managed to cut my wrist.
It hurt so much, and now 3 days later it still hurts and every time I lean on my wrist there is the painful reminder that I have to go and buy myself a new grater.

You see, the reason I cut myself was because I used a small grater that you just hold in your hand. That´s because I´m a cheapskate and didn´t want to spend the money to buy a proper grater that won´t fall apart after using it a few times.

Here in Brazil it´s not always easy to find good kitchen stuff. That includes a stainless grater at a good price. So when I found this little pink grater I thought that it was incredibly cute and of course it was cheap.

Obviously now after this incident I have decided to invest in a good stainless grater, no matter the cost. And the little beautiful pink grater? I´ll throw that as far as I possibly can!

This post belong on Brazilian Food Love, if you see it somewhere else, please tell me!

Menu Plan Monday July 23rd

This is the first time I participate in Menu Plan Monday.
Menu plan Monday is a theme that is held every Monday over at Laura´s.

We are on a budget this week so this week there are no extravaganzas at all on our table. Simple, healthy and cheap food. I am cleaning out my cupboards this week! So I am only cooking what I have at home.

Monday: Simple Tomato Soup w meat and Cheese bread, Pão de Queijo. * Recipe coming up*
Tuesday: Black bean burgers with basil risotto and fried cauliflower.
Wednesday: Rice and steak with mushroom sauce.
Thursday: Minestrone soup á la Linda
Friday: Lanche - Typical Brazilian hamburgers without the hamburgers but with sausages.
Saturday: Leftovers
Sunday: Lunch at my MIL, dinner- leftovers.

Minestrone soup á la Linda: No exact measurements as it depends on how many portions you want to make.

You need:
Onions
Garlic
Water
Herbs such as basil, thyme and salvia
Tomato puré
Paprika spice
Pasta

Quickly fry the onion and the garlic.
Add the remaining ingredients except the pasta, put it to the boil. Lower the heat and let simmer for another 20 minutes. Add the pasta. When the pasta is cooked, serve the soup with bread.

Simple, or simple??

Tags:menu plan monday, minestroni soup, brazilian, cheese bread

Lazy Cooking

OK I admit, I am lazy in the kitchen. But that is not due to laziness such as I don´t like to cook. But due to the fact that I haven´t got much time to stand in the kitchen. Before I had a lot of time but now, time is limited.

My husband like simple cooking so I think that is a great help. He is happy with eating only rice and meat while I want some kind of sauce or something to go with the meat. See that is a different between Europe and Brazil, they don´t serve sauces. So what I do is that I buy small soup envelopes and make sauce out of that. Easy and quick.

Another thing to help me on the way, or any stressed mother, is to make lots of food one day and not to be afraid to serve it two days in a row. As long as you make sure you have something different for lunch that should be OK. If you want to improve it you can add a sauce or make a different salad.

When you have kids and family you really can´t be that fuzzy all the time.

If my economy permits I buy a few easy snacks and put in the freezer. So some days we have only chicken nuggets and fried potato and salad, some days a take away pizza. Do I feel bad about this? Well yes and well no, there are other things that are ore important sometimes. So you have to make the most out of the situation.

Lazy cooking isn´t that bad actually, it can be really tasty. You just can´t do it too often or it will get boring.

Are you a lazy cook?

Technorati Tags: lazy cooking, cooking, kitchen experiences

Cooking with kids at home

I am at home with my 3 year old son at the moment. He is on school holiday until Thursday next week.

He is slowly but surely driving me insane, no question. But I love him to bits of course so I really shouldn´t complain. Every day, not only now when he is on holiday, I struggle to make dinner without feeling stressed.

Having someone calling you the whole time doesn´t really give you much pleasure cooking. I always try different things like giving him a snack or try and make him play with something. usually it fails. He keeps calling me and it is amazing that while I am writing this he hasn´t called me once. So really I should go and cut my chicken now.

We are having fried chicken with rice for dinner. It´s not something we eat very often as it´s fat. But once in a while...

If you have kids at home, what do you do to keep them busy while cooking? And don´t tell me that they are helping you... :)

A sweet tooth

I love sweets. Well actually I don´t like cakes that are too sweets.
But I love cakes!
I am always on a mission to make healthy cakes though. I want to cut the sugar but still make sure that it´s sweet. That means that my husband, who is Brazilian and used to sweet cakes, doesn´t think it´s sweet enough.

The Brazilian candy is extremely sweet. For me that is. I haven´t been able to find a favorite candy actually. I like some of the cakes they have but the candy.. no. Nothing special at all.

In Sweden we have Pick ´n Mix. I love that! That is something Brazil should have as well. in my Pick ´n Mix bag there is always salty licorice and chocolate. The Swedish milk chocolate is like no other. A perfect mixture of milk and chocolate.

The chocolate in Brazil is weaker, the chocolate taste is not as strong.

I have sweet tooth but it has to be sweet without taking away the flavor of the candy itself.

How do you like your sweets? Do you have a favorite candy?

Updates

It´s funny, I don´t even update this blog very often and yet there is a handful of people that comes here everyday.

That makes me very glad of course!
When you realize that you have readers you get a kick to continue and of course it´s the same for me.

So what will happen here in the near future? Well you can be prepared to get lots of food talk, foodbloggie talk, reviews and an insight in daily Brazilian life.

Thanks for stopping by! See you soon!

Abacate

I love avocado. It´s a wonderful fruit, yes it is a fruit actually, and you can use it in so many different ways.
I usually just use it in salads but you can make just about anything from it.

For more tips on how to use avocados and to see what nutrients it contains read more over at Daily Power Walk and Avocado, a versatile fruit.

How do you like your avocados?

Menu Planning

I was almost scared away from the splog thing that´s happened around the internet but I am not giving up :)

Menu planning is something that I am quite good at if I may say so myself. When I plan I plan for real. I usually plan for a whole month actually. I have certain steps that I use;

* Check all cupboards before - list everything!

* From that list see what you can make from your ingredients and what you need to buy.

This will save you money and you will know exactly what to eat/prepare for a whole month! Excellent if you want to save money.

I really should start making menu plans again. It´s been a while.