Showing posts with label Rice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rice. Show all posts

Friday, October 12, 2012

Walnut "Meat"balls


Hi friends, it has been quiet around here for a little more than a month now, but I am back now, and have lots to share with you from my trip through Europe and Turkey.
If you wish, I can talk about our trip later, but for now, I am just happy to be back. And to be sharing a few of my instagram pictures from the trip.
This sounds so ungrateful, happy to be back, after such a great trip, seeing such an interesting country, and what can I say except that I am very grateful, and I enjoyed this trip a lot. And eventhough I am not one to get homesick, there are certain things I miss once I have been without a home for a while.


I think it is very human to seek the comfort of familiarity. We are creatures of comfort, and a month stuffed with new impressions and changing beds offers little space to just be.

So I loved eating out, trying all the Turkish food we did, and I did love the meze, but still, I really missed cooking. The only cooking we did in the whole month was just in the beginning, when we made a Greek salad in our hostel in Istanbul. And I am so happy to be able to cook again. To be making things, not just consuming. And I think I'll share some Turkish recipes in the future, but for the past week I craved something different.

These walnut balls are the first things I cooked after coming home that I think is worthy of sharing.
A while ago I turned from almost vegetarian to vegetarian for real, and ever since I feel the need to come up with recipes for things I no longer want to cook and eat.
I did not loads of meatballs before becoming vegetarian. When we both ate meat, my boyfriend and I made Moroccan inspired meatballs once or twice, with cinnamon and dates. I really loved those. But other than that, I dont have many fond memories attached to the consumation of meatballs, but I still do miss them. I miss the possibility of making meatballs when I want to.

This is where these walnut balls come in. I looked at a few recipes for vegetarian meatballs over the last weeks and months, and using nuts in them stuck with me. I kept the flavoring pretty simple this time, some mustard and parsley, a little paprika, salt and pepper. I plan to make them again, and then follow my memories of the Moroccan meatballs we made quite a while ago.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Zucchini Risotto

Every spring I wish I had the opportunity to tend to a garden. I look at seed catalogues, online and offline, together with my mother. I might even order something even though I do.not.have.space. Craaazy, I tell you. Then I visit my parents, frequently, just to get my hands dirty. I talk to the tomato seedlings, to get them to grow nice and quickly. I try to sneek in one or two plants I personally would like to grow, this year's butternut squash is performing nicely, there are already dozens of little squashs visible and growing. 

One advantage of not having a garden myself is a) I don't have to be home and water almost daily, and b) I am not flooded by zucchini. 
I do love zucchini, though, and I have been preparing quite a few things using a zucchini or two. This risotto is a double zucchini risotto (double chocolate sounds better, but we'll leave it at zucchini this time). One zucchini is grated into the risotto, to make for a bit a lighter risotto. The other zucchini is diced, panfried and scattered over the creamy risotto.


Saturday, July 7, 2012

Vegetarian Paella


Lately I felt that I don't share enough of me here on my blog. I am rather shy and a people pleaser in real life, and I guess that is the way I wrote here, too. I am always reluctant to be open and to share my feelings and let people into my life because it makes me vulnerable.
This is life, I know it. Being vulnerable is a good thing. Only when we are open to hurt can we really feel joy, experience deep connections with the important people in our life, and express ourselves freely.
Today I want to share 10 things about me that you (probably) did not know about me.

1. I have said it above: I am a people pleaser, and I don't really like that about myself. Writing it out makes me cringe, I don't want this to be my truth. But I am, and I guess to some degree I'll always be, but I want to not care so much about what other people think of me.

2. I started this blog almost 1 1/2 years ago, but for the first year I only told my boyfriend about it. I told my parents this winter/spring, and shared it on facebook. But the girl I lived with, and shared a kitchen with, never got to know about it. I just did not tell her. I guess that relates to Nr. 1 above.

3. In my free time I enjoy learning about neuropsychology. This stuff is so fascinating, I get books from our university library and read them in the train, I listen to Berkeley podcasts while I work. I read a lot when I was a kid, but at the moment I prefer reading science books to novels.

4.  I lived abroad, in Barcelona, for 5 months when I was 16 years old. Then after school I lived in Galway, Ireland for 3 months, improving my English and just generally having fun. But never in my life have I left Europe. I love to travel, but somehow I always end up in Europe. This summer we are going to Turkey, which is technically between Europe and Asia, so this is going to change soon.

5. Sometimes I am too lazy to shave my legs. I just am. Until I want to go swimming or wear a dress.

6. During school, we were supposed to run lapses every year. I actually don't know how many because I managed to skip every single year. I was the master of skipping sport exams.

7. During all my teenage years I only wore long shorts. And not bikini or bathing suit. I just did not go swimming. I was hot all summer long. But I did not care as long as I could cover up my body.

8. I cut my hair myself. I have curly hair, and I always had troubles getting the cut I wanted. Why do hairdressers always think they need to give me 6oies hair?

9. When I listen to music I mostly just listen to one song on repeat, or the whole album on repeat. It drives my boyfriend half-crazy I think. But I usually just want to listen to something in particular, and if it suits my mood, over and over again.

10.  When I was a kid, I wanted to be a boy. Girls were so complicated, with all that discussion about who can be who's friend - I never understood it. I was always a boyish girl, and still today I am not really a girly woman.

And now I want to share a recipe for paella with you. I mentioned above that I lived in Barcelona, Spain for half a year. But while I lived there I did not once have paella. My guest mother did not know how to cook, the only thing she did was fry up some meat and open a bag of pre-washed salad. We cooked paella at school with our Spanish teacher, though, and later when I returned to Spain I did go out to eat paella.