Photo Dump

Seb's favorite place to be, aside from right on top of the cats, is standing on the side of the tub. His balance is freaky-good. 

Lord help the person who tries to remove him from the tub. This usually ends in a middle of the morning bath. 

They could both wait this out all day. Seb is waiting for Patches to come in, and Patches is waiting for Seb to let her in. 

This keyboard keeps him busy during Zita's clarinet lesson and Freddy's cello lesson. I never turn it on, but that hasn't stopped him. 

Freddy during his lesson. 

Among all of the Seb photos on my phone, I found this one of the chicken enchiladas that we had last week. Never am I more popular than when I make enchiladas. Everyone's mood is suddenly so light and loving towards me. Too bad they are actually quite labor intensive. (Cook's Illustrated version) 

A friend's new kitten. 

I think this dough turned into cinnamon rolls, but I can't be sure. 

Giving Sen an apple in the high chair buys more time than anything else. 

I've been trying to get a good video of Seb walking all day! but II almost never have my phone with me so it isn't very easy. For baby book purposes, Seb has been walking since last weekend. 

Goin' Native

So much of my cultural identity is tied to the food i cook and serve the family. I use cooking and baking as a way of transporting myself home, and making sure that the kids are fluent in the international language of food. This has left a lot of growing room for their love of some Portuguese staples since my childhood foods do not include classic Potuguese dishes. It's not often that I cook traditional Portuguese meals, and making this reminded me why that is.
Mothers will understand what I mean when I say that the work/ appreciation ratio was a little off balance.
With my trusted slow cooker on hand and three trips to the store under my belt, I decided to tackle couve lombarda com salsicha, aka cabbage and sausages.
 Not pictured : cracked pepper, white wine, bay leaves. One can also add carrots if inclined to do so.

Pre boil the cabbage for a few minutes until it's soft enough to wrap around each sausage. 

Use tooth picks to secure the cabbage leaves around each sausage.

Dump everything in the slow cooker with onions and garlic on the bottom.

Wait a few hours

Serve with rice 

I will not be making this ever again, but it's always good to do something different. 

My Go-To Basic Stir Fry

Whenever I make a stir fry, I use the same ingrdients as a base, and then add to it depending on what I have on hand.

pantry staples:

Sesame oil
Soy
Teriyaki
Vinegar
Fish sauce (not pictured)

fresh:
garlic
onion
lime
ginger
pepper
cilantro

on this particular day, I made it a veggie stir fry by adding green beans and broccoli.

With warm weather upon us, I am going to be making a lot more veggie and salad dinners. Sorry boys!

Ginger Cookies

Let's talk about ginger for a moment. These past two weeks will go down in family history as the week that I put ginger in everything. These cookies were the umpteeth and last ginger laced delicacy I made as Zita suggested that she was more than done with ginger.

This is the first time I made ginger cookies, and it most certainly won't be the last. There's nothing to it.

This recipe is molasses free:
http://www.food.com/recipe/molasses-free-gingerbread-343321

I used a teaspoon to measure out the refrigerated dough.

One can make two versions using the same dough. For crispy tea-dunking ginger snap style cookies, turn off the oven after 7-8 minutes and leave the cookies to harden.

For chewy bendy melt-in-your-mouth ginger goodness (shown above), remove cookies from the oven promptly before they are too brown (around 8 min., but know your oven!) and allow to cool off the baking sheet.

I'll save the rest of my gingery cooking for another post. Happy Weekend!

Chestnut Season

I have so many great photos of our day out in Sintra and the rest of Halloween, but I just can't will myself to get the camera from the car, haul myself upstairs, upload them, and then create a blog post.

Instead, I leave you with tonight's dinner taken by the iPad- chestnut soup! We have loads of chestnuts put aside, cut and ready for roasting over the fire after dinner.

I'm back at the hospital tomorrow morning so maybe my next post will be as a mother of four....

Nesting Hits the Kitchen, and Other Updates

I've been deep in house projects since the weekend. We took almost everything off of the kitchen shelves and out of the cabinets, and did a major clean out. It was so therapeutic! All of these things are headed for the door. This shot doesn't include the 4 big bags of stuff we got rid of.


Pai moved the refrigerator to every possible spot because it never felt like it was in the right place. We've settled on a new place, but that will entail removing a whole set of deep shelving and getting new cabinets for the refrigerator's old spot. I don't have any pictures since it's not so easy to just dash up the stairs for the camera without feeling like I'll drop the baby right on the landing. This whole kitchen project started when we realized that 5 people hardly fit around our kitchen table and 6 would be impossible.

We finally harvested the wild quince growing near our gate. I was lead astray with a recipe that called for water and it turned out too runny. It solidified a bit with a second boil and sitting over night, but I think I will call these preserves instead of jam. I can't wait to try a dollop over plain yogurt with a sprinkle of granola, or drizzled over pancakes. yum!


  Isn't the color just gorgeous? They are white like apples in raw form, but darken as they cook.

Freddy and I also made our annual quince apple pie with crumble nut topping. Again, no photos.

Fall colors are almost non-existent in Portugal, but the tennis courts where I spend half of my life happen to have vibrant red leaves. What a treat.

Zita and Freddy went on their first field trip of the year to the Pavilhão de Conhecimentos in Lisbon where they were all filmed for a news segment. Here they are just before. Sorry about the sun Freddy!

I've been incorporating a lot of squash, pumpkin, and carrot into dinners, as one does at this time of year, and these squash fries added great color and something new to our table. The kids never turn down anything labeled "fries."

Feeling Like Fall

We didn't stop at the muffins, we also roasted two large trays of vegetables, baked 12 mini steak pies, and a loaf of pumpkin walnut bread.

The family loved the veggies as a side with steak, I ate them with one of my favorite meals- a busy roasted vegetable salad with seeds and smoked salmon.

Zita decided that a good Fall centerpiece was missing and used quince with pumpkin on our cake plate.
I can't wait until it's cold enough to put a fire in the fireplace.

Dinner Idea

Thai chicken with almonds and red pepper over rice.

5 Minute Prep Lunch

Roll out puff pastry and lightly score into medium sized squares.

Add smoked salmon, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese, and basil  (there are endless possibilities for toppings, this just happens to have been what I had in the fridge) 

Bake until pastry is golden brown

One plate had a discrete pile of cherry tomatoes when lunch was over, but it was an overall crowd pleaser. I served  it with a mixed green salad.

I make different versions of this all the time and never go without a puff pastry roll in the fridge.  I'm hard pressed to think of an occasion when puff pastry would be inappropriate.

Perfect Dinner

on a hot Spring evening: shredded rotisserie chicken, cucumber, tomato, cilantro, and cheese on a corn tortilla. I miss my California avocados somethin' fierce.

Rest of Freddy's Birthday

After opening presents with all five of us crammed into our bed, we told Freddy to check the sala to see if any presents got left there.

He was so happy to see a brand new bike. For the last year, Freddy has been riding his sister's old pink bike that we spray painted black so that made this new very masculine bike all the more appreciated.

He reaches the pedals with ease, but can't reach the floor. Since he grows at an average rate of 10 cm a year, he should have that extra little bit of height needed in no time.

Freddy requested a pre-historic dinosaur scene cake. I made the base using the Joy of Cooking wedding sheet cake recipe baked in my turkey roasting pan. The chocolate volcano is made of the same chocolate cake I made with Freddy - the chocolate truffle cake. The volcano frosting is chocolate buttercream.

I think we need a closer look for good measure.

We had the cake and and singing at Freddy's school and from there we drove a few minutes to a local bowling alley. The 15 guests arrived in 10 minutes increments, which meant that I spent the first half of the party greetting parents at the entrance and then sorting out each child's shoes. 

 Here's a tip for parents: if you send your 5 year old to a birthday party, teach your 5 year old to take off and put on his or her own shoes so the hostess of the party doesn't judge you for being an enabling mother of an incompetent child.*

Moojie was a super star helper. The whole thing would have fallen apart without him. Most of Freddy's friends thought Moojie was Freddy's dad and called him "Pai do Freddy" throughout the party. That might have been my favorite part of the day. Who they thought Pai was, I have no idea, but the whole situation was amusing.

When the last guest was picked up at 6:45, the adults were in agreement that it would be our last bowling party, but Freddy had a great day and that's what matters,  I got home in time to pull together Freddy's dinner request- spaghetti strung through hot dogs.

I got this photo from Google. Ours had ketchup faces.

*Apologies for judging but part of my bitterness is due to an extreme pregnancy-related smell aversion to bowling alley shoes. That and 5 year olds really should be able to put on on their own darn velcro shoes for crying out loud!

Not Gazpacho Season Yet

We're having a reversal of seasons here, and these drizzly days have gotten me thinking about good old chunky American stews and soups.

With two heads of broccoli in the fridge, I googled broccoli cheddar soup and made the first recipe that came up- the Almost Famous recipe on Foodnetwork.com. Of course I altered it, by using mostly milk instead of half and half, and by using only half the amount of cheddar called for, but it was still a comforting bowl of fattening, delicious, perfect-for-a-drizzly-day soup.

Here are the photos:

milk. butter, onions, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and 2 bay leaves

Lots of broccoli and 1 chopped carrot

I could have eaten it like this, but the kids prefer pureed soups to chunky soups.

The cheese was wisked in at the very end. It got thumbs down from Freddy, and thumbs up from everyone else.

Random Catch Up and School Lunch Idea

My camera has been in the car for days so I don't have any cute blog pictures to put up. Easter break is a distant memory and a weekend of homework, tennis, a birthday party, keeping the house in order, cooking, more cooking, and cleaning, certainly did a good job taking away that vacation feel. Oh, and the unusual cold and rain aren't helping either.

Freddy's tooth is still hanging on, Pai has been burried in work, Zita is busy getting ready for her first communion, and Moojie has a count down going for days left in the school year. I think there are only 45.

Now for the school lunch idea- quiche cupcakes. Not real cupcakes, but mini quiche baked in a cupcake pan.  We took a cupcake pan and lined it with dinocaur, colored, and white cupcake liners.

We rolled out pastry crust and cut small circles to line each cupcake.

Next we filled each one with a combination of ham, cheese, spinach, and roasted veggies. I kept three with just plain cheese.

We mixed 10-12 eggs with salt and pepper, and evenly filled each one. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

The kids don't mind eating these at room temperature and it was a great way to get away from sandwiches.

When There's Nothing to Eat in the House

What do you cook when there's no food in the house? I default to crepes filled with whatever contents I can scrape up from the fridge or freezer. I always have frozen spinach so spinach crepes were an obvious choice.

This recipe makes 11 crepes:
3 cups flour
3 cups milk
3 eggs
pinch salt
1 tbsp wheat germ
2 tbsp butter

The filling is just spinach, ricotta cheese and some other white plain white cheese from the fridge.

 I fill them and roll them like burrittos

 and then just warm them in the oven so they don't dry out

If your kids don't prefer spinach, purree the spinach with whatever cheese they like, and rebrand the dish as "monster slime pancake roll-ups." It's all about marketing when it comes to children's eating habits.

Weekly Menu

We had a meat-free week last week and all have lived to tell the tale.

Here's the menu:

Monday:  Bacalhau à Bráz (cod with potatoes and egg). I know it looks kinda gross, but it's actually yummy


(not my photo)

Tuesday: Baked Salmon, busy mixed green salad with seeds
Wednesday: Shrimp and portabello mushroom risotto
Thursday: Roasted veggie and spinach lasagne ( yes, with mascarpone!)
Friday: Pizza

By Saturday I had heard more than a few comments about how everyone was dying for a good steak, so I went to the butcher Saturday afternoon and picked up almost 1 kg of steak to grind and make burgers. We had two nephews and a baby neice in the house, so simple burgers were in order with 6 kids to feed.

Sunday: Thai coconut peanut chicken over rice

So it wasn't exactly meat-free, but we held off until Saturday and it's something I'll be happy to repeat.

Example of Menu Requests in Action

Just when I thought I could get away with serving pasta in the absence of any dinner requests, Moojie texted his request in the nick of time!


Stay tuned for Valentine's Day prep.

Tinna to answer your question- I've never known picanha as anything other than picanha, but according to wikipedia, it's top sirloin cap steak, not to be confused with just top sirloin steak. I wound up getting vitela de lombo which is a nicer cut (veal). Below is the final result, or "proper dinner" as Moojie requested.   Nothing like an artery clogging dinner to make a teenage boy happy and full, at least for the next hour or so.

Here's Mr. Freddy cutting the chouriço that is cooked with the black beans.