food

Our friends had a birthday party for their lovely daughter today, celebrating her first year. Awesome guys! My son's almost 2, and all I could say after year one was up was, "THANK YOU LORD BABY JESUS- that was tiring." So, congratulations, dudes. Your daughter is a lovely little muffin that I'd love to NOM NOM NOM. My friend pulled me aside at the party and asked me if I could get a couple of shots of the cake. Of course! I would have done it anyway if she hadn't asked, so this made it less awkward for me to pull out the camera and start shooting. When she steered me inside and pointed it out, my jaw dropped. I was all like, "OH. MY. GAWDDDD! That is the cutest birthday cake I've ever seen!" So, without further ado, I present to you the world's most adorable birthday cake, ever: Unfortunately, my friend's daughter and my nephew share a birthday, so we had to jet from party #1 to party #2 in order to catch all the family action- wh...

I would like to say a very happy birthday to my mother all the way down in Los Angeles. She is a remarkable and wonderful woman who I respect and adore dearly. It makes me sad that she lives so far away, although I am quite sure that we will live near one another someday. Since I wasn't able to spend her birthday with her, I decided that I would bake a cake in her honor, a dark chocolate cake made with an abundance of beets. I don't really know when beets started making their appearance in baking, but I have seen them popping up a lot lately. Ever since I saw Bea's Dark Chocolate & Beet Brownies recipe , I have been quite curious about the combination of these two seemingly different flavors. This cake recipe is one I came up with myself using a combination of many cake recipes I found on the internet. I used fresh beets grated very thinly, resulting in a very moist texture much like a carrot cake. The flavor is deep chocolate, not very sweet, with a sort of rich earthi...

I fully admit that I am completely obsessed with muffins. No, not the kind you get at your local coffee shop or god forbid, a convenience store- I'm talking about the soft, warm muffins that are made fresh in the kitchen or inside a great bakery. Thinking about it, I am quite sure that I basically love them all: banana nut, bran, apple, chocolate chip (especially double chocolate chip), maple, blueberry, etcetera. One of my favorites, though, happens to be carrot, perhaps due to my extreme adoration of carrot cake. I don't really know what it is but carrots seem to give off this certain sweetness and flavor that I am completely in love with when mixed with the usual combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Plus, they are known for adding a great amount of moistness. Carrot baked goods are also a great way to use carrots that are starting to get a bit limp (I had some from Saturday's farmers market that had lost all their crunch). These spiced carrot muffins are the per...

Some of you might know that since my first beautiful batch of chicken stock , I've gone a little stock crazy. Buying whole chickens has put a big dent in our grocery bill- it's awesome! Instead of spending 8 bucks on organic chicken breasts for one or two meals, we buy a whole bird- split it up into portions for a few different meals that week, freeze some, and make stock out of the rest. I seriously recommend it. Now that we're doing that, we keep stock veggies on hand all the time- carrots, celery, onion, pretty much. Of course, sometimes, the veggies start to get floppy and gross, and if we don't feel like making stock RIGHT THEN- we usually just pitch them. Last time I noticed them losing their sheen, however- I pulled a sneaky move. I tossed them in the freezer to be used later. (My husband doesn't like using odds & ends for stock- he says, "Your stock pot is not a garbage can!" Whatever, dude! You'll thank me when you taste what I m...

So, as I promised before, I decided to bake something that was inspired by my recent vacation to Hawaii. One of my favorite things about going there during the summer is the wonderful fresh food. There are juice and fruit stands all over the islands with bounties of beautiful pineapples, melons, guavas, papayas, and of course, coconuts. Breakfast for me was my favorite part of the day because it usually consisted of macadamia nut pancakes with coconut syrup, guava juice, and a bowl of sweet and delicious tropical fruit. My only complaint was the coffee which to me could not compare to the rich muddy flavor that Portland coffee has to offer. But all in all, my food experience was a great one. When I was considering what I should make for my island-inspired dessert, I quickly chose to go for the combination of flavors that I identified most with Hawaii: pineapple and coconut. I cannot even tell you how many pina coladas and lava flows I sucked dry during this past trip (and the trip pr...

photo pulled from the web . Before writing my recipe this morning, I wanted to note that this is our hundredth post! We started this website back in April as a way to share our extreme love of food and have had so much fun doing it for these past four months (wow, 100 posts in just four months? We've been busy!) And thanks to all of our readers, we have gained a wider audience and been able to communicate with others all around the world, so thank you. We hope you all continue to read about our daily adventures inside (and sometimes outside) the kitchen. Truthfully, I don't have all that much to say about these chocolate chip cookie bars because really, how wrong can you go with a pan filled entirely with a thick delicious cookie? As I spread the batter into my 9-inch cake pan, I knew this was going to be a flawless dessert. And a dangerous one- the kind of dessert that can easily be finished in one short evening, especially when paired with the inevitable hormone fluctuations ...

I am slowly, but surely, warming to fennel. Until now I haven't been a huge fan of aniseedy flavours (and I still passionately dislike liquorice sweets), but I've discovered that fennel can be very tasty after it's been subjected to some heat treatment. Here's an easy autumnal vegetarian fennel and tomato gratin that made an excellent main dish, but would also work as a side dish to pork or lamb, or even some gutsy fish perhaps. Any other hot fennel recipe ideas I should know about? Fennel and Tomato Gratin ( Apteegitilli-tomatigratään ) Adapted from this BBC Good Food recipe Serves 4 2 large fennel bulbs (about 600 g) 2 Tbsp vegetable oil (I used cold-pressed rapeseed oil) salt 2 garlic cloves 400 g can chopped tomatoes Topping: 5 Tbsp dried breadcrumbs 50 g grated Parmesan cheese Trim the fennel bulbs (remove outer tough layers) and cut into thin wedges. Keep the fronds for garnish! Heat oil in a saucepan and add fennel. Season with salt, cover and sauté on a low heat...

Honestly, if you had told me at age 11 that in 13 years, I'd be sitting at a table with Matt Sanders discussing canning methods, I'd think you were insane. To put it mildly, in the 6th grade, we did not get along very well. But- over a decade has elapsed, and through the magic of mutual friends, the internet, and the contained biosphere that is Portland, OR- we have become friends, and chat sometimes on the computer, or occasionally over coffee if we bump into each other at the cafe. Recently, talk has turned to canning. Matt's doing his family a solid by carrying on canning recipes given to him by his grandmother (which is awesome, in my opinion) and today he decided to put up some peaches. My mom canned jam frequently when I was little (and still makes freezer jam pretty often), but my involvement was usually limited to trudging up and down the big hill in our backyard with a massive bucket of blackberries, then grumbling about the heat in our muggy kitchen as I wash...

As much as I hate to admit it, I can feel the summer getting closer to an end. Halloween decorations are being stocked in stores (way too early in my opinion), cold weather is occurring a bit more often, and pumpkins and apples are appearing around our neighborhood. I love autumn, but I really try to hold onto the warm summer days for as long as I can and enjoy soaking them up to their fullest. This usually includes partaking in warm weather treats like ice cream, lemonade, and most importantly, popsicles. I find them to be the perfect summertime treat: fruity, refreshing, and not heavy, something you can easily devour two to three times a day. I admit, I really love the cheap and overly-sweet popsicles that come from the grocery stores and ice cream trucks (anyone care for these ?), but I find the ingredients to not be the healthiest choices for my kids. So this time I decided to purchase a fabulous frozen treat mold and make my own healthy popsicles out of yogurt, berries, and honey....

And so, I have returned from a wonderful vacation to Kauai . My time there was spent lazying around in the sunshine, jumping into rivers, spending time with family, and most of all, eating and drinking fabulous foods and fruity cocktails. But for now, I won't be getting into that- be on the lookout for a Hawaii-themed post in the near future. Just know, I am back. Before I left on our vacation, I was trying not to eat overly fatty (getting bloated before having to wear a bathing suit wasn't really something I wanted), so I decided to make something out of Heidi's health-conscious cookbook, Super Natural Cooking . Her recipes always sound absolutely delicious and very rarely ever use the general "bad" ingredients (white flour, refined sugars, etc.). I chose to go for her Power Bars recipe, since they seemed like the perfect healthy snack food- plus, it was something I could throw in our carry-on bag for the plane ride. The end result was quite good. They were heal...

Delicious, juicy, refreshing, just enough different, effortless, quick. Thank you, Maryam and Barbara !! ( Arbuusisalat apelsini ja mündiga )

Last weekend I cooked an Indian meal. I don't know if my favourite Indian food bloggers Meeta and Nupur approve, but the meal felt definitely Indian enough for us two :) It wasn't an elaborate feast - I baked some naan-breads and sprinkled them with nigella seeds , made an aromatic chicken curry , roasted some broccoli with garam masala , and prepared a really flavoursome aubergine curry (that's eggplant curry in American English) with tomatoes, coriander and nigella seeds. The latter was the big hit of the night - plenty of flavour and character, beautiful vibrant colours, and not too many calories. The recipe is very slightly adapted from the August 2008 issue of BBC Olive Magazine , and I will definitely make it again if I want a nice vegetarian aubergine dish. Aubergine curry with tomatoes & coriander ( Vürtsikas pommuhautis tomati ja koriandriga ) Serves 4 1 onion, chopped oil 1 large or 2 smaller aubergines/eggplants, cut into 1 cm slices 1 tsp turmeric 1 tsp ...

The first time I walked into little t , I knew. I sat down with my bowl of granola, yogurt and berries, sipped my complimentary cucumber water, and gazed into the bread case with PLANS. little t is a new bakery in SE Portland, a few miles away from my apartment, and it might be one of my new favorite places. But it was really true love the first time I noticed the compact loaves of pretzel bread sitting in the case. Let's face it- I could make my own pretzel bread , but a quick glance in the cupboard showed that I didn't have any flour, coarse salt, or even cornmeal for dusting. Boo! Besides, the idea I had stirring gave me an excuse to walk to little t and enjoy the lovely rain we were finally blessed with, after a scorching weekend. Yesterday morning, we stopped into little t for breakfast and I saw on the menu that they actually have a ham & cheese on pretzel sandwich, so I had one, and it was amazing. Those huge hunks of coarse salt- dear lord. But that didn...

I've given you so many sweet recipes recently that it's definitely time to share a lovely savoury recipe instead. Here's a quick pickled cucumber salad that would keep nicely a week or so in your fridge. It's gutsy, has got lots of flavor and crunch, and tastes lovely. I nibbled on it straight from a bowl, but it would make a nice side salad to some grilled meat as well. The only downside is that you only get about two 500 ml jars out of this amount. If you give one to your mum or a dear friend, then you're just left with one jar yourself, which is no way enough ... For best result, use small crisp cucumbers and not the long supermarket ones. Pickled Sliced Cucumber Salad ( Marineeritud kurgisalat ) 1 kg small crisp cucumbers 2 large onions 1 garlic clove, finely chopped 1 Tbsp sugar 1 Tbsp sea salt 1 Tbsp vinegar (30%) freshly ground black pepper 1 tsp Dijon or Estonian mustard 1 to 2 large dried dill "blossoms" (ask from the market) Slice the cucumber a...

Summer's still in Hawaii, and I'm here in Oregon where it is BLAZING EFFIN' HOT, Y'ALL. I think it was like 104 today, or something like that. Needless to say, I haven't been cooking much at all, and salads don't make particularly interesting blog fodder. It's funny, because I sure did a lot of complaining when the weather was rainy, and now I'm melting. Oregonians really do love complaining about the weather, haha! Luckily, starting Monday, it's supposed to get nice and cool. Please accept these photos of my friends Ed & Christie's kitchen: Hope everyone is staying hydrated. :)

Another neat raspberry idea, this time a light and coconut-scented crumble. We loved this with lightly whipped cream, and finished it in no time at all. The recipe is adapted from a Swedish food magazine Allt om Mat (12/2008) and serves 6. Raspberry and Coconut Crumble ( Vaarika-kookosevorm ) 300 to 500 g fresh or frozen raspberries 3-4 Tbsp sugar 1 tsp potato starch/potato flour Crumble topping: 150 g butter 200 g coconut flakes (unsweetened) 100 ml (less than half a cup) caster sugar 100 ml (less than half a cup) plain/all-purpose flour To serve: whipped cream (season with vanilla, if you like) Gently mix raspberries with sugar and potato flour and scatter on a buttered pie dish. Melt the butter, stir in coconut flakes, sugar and flour. Crumble the mixture on top of raspberries. Bake in the middle of a pre-heated 180 Centigrade oven for 15-20 minutes, until the coconut crumble is light golden brown. Serve warm or cold with some whipped cream.

Summer just went to Hawaii with her family, so blog posts may slow down a little. (In case you haven't noticed, things have been sparse the last few days as she prepared for her trip.) I've got a few dishes planned for this week, but all the ooey-gooey baked goods are going to have to wait until Summer returns, since I'm kind of a dunce when it comes to baking. (And I'm kind of on a diet. Kind of.)

How many chocoholics are out there? Hands up, please!? Well, I thought as much. If you like chocolate as much as I do, here's a recipe for you. It's adapted from Sue Lawrence's lovely cookbook "Sue Lawrence's Scottish Kitchen: Over 100 Modern Recipes Using Traditional Ingredients" ( UK link / US link ), but I've reduced the sugar content by one-fifth with no ill-effect to the texture, but your hips - and tastebuds - will thank you for that, trust me. You'll get a moist and flavoursome chocolate brownie with sweet-tart raspberry spots throughout. Raspberries are one fruit/berry that really thrive in the cool and humid Scottish climate, so various raspberry desserts abound in Scottish cookbooks (think of cranachan , the traditional Scottish oat-raspberry-whisky concoction; more recent and prettier picture here ). Luckily, raspberries also love Estonian climate - and my mum's garden - so I can easily access these lovely sweet-tart berries here. My de...

I've been looking forward to my husband's birthday for a few weeks now. I saved my tips from the last few weekends of working so that I could treat him to a whole day of goodies- just a payback for all the sweet birthdays he's hooked me up with over the years. Last year he bought me a tattoo! After a morning at the farmer's market (picked up some small eggplants that you'll see later this week!), an afternoon of asparagus & chevre pizza slices at Hot Lips, dropping off our son at the grandparents' house for an overnight stay, and snacking on fancy cheeses we picked up at the market (dill havarti and smoked gouda, mm)- the time came to decide on dinner. I'd been kind of hounding the husband for the last few days- excited about what restaurant he might choose. Since I'd purposely saved up some cash, we weren't particularly worried about spending, so I had visions of fancy dishes floating around in my head. But, when it came down to it, he jus...