Walnut butter cake

For today's post I have three people and two blogs to thank!

In this time of the year, food blogs get crowded with recipes of Cinnamon rolls. And they look great! If it wasn't for on little problem... I hate cinnamon!Seriously, I don't like the smell, the taste, not even the cinnamon bubble gum that are so famous here!

So I was wondering what to do next for my holidays eating. And I found myself looking for cinnamon roll cakes. Don't know why, but there were so many beautiful recipes that I wanted to give a different twist on one of them.

The two recipes I found and wanted to try out together were a recipe from cinnamon roll cake from scratch, baked by Anna from Crunchy, Creamy and Sweet and a recipe for walnut butter that I got from Shauna and the Chef at Gluten Free Girl. Thank you girls (and Daniel, cause chef is a guy). I really apreciate the recipes and the cake turned out great!

4C - Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcake

Here we go!

Christmas is right around the corner, and one scientist can't help but already smell it... and taste all deliciousness from the holidays!

To me, nothing shouts "It's Christmas!!" from the top of their metaphorical lungs, more than Chocolate chip cookies!

My mother and I found this recipe years ago, on the back of a condensed milk can. And it has being our go to recipe every holiday since than.

Baked apples "Frosted Muffin"

You know when you are a child, and you watch those cartoons, and they have a beautiful
dinner table, full of delicious dishes? And always (ALWAYS!) there's a whole pork with an apple in it's mouth! Seriously, seems that every pork needed an apple in it's mouth. Even in one episode of The Simpson's, they had a pork-style roasted Flanders, and he had an apple in his mouth!I don't need to say it was one of the Tree House of Horror, right? (You guys will notice along the way, I'm addicted to Simpson's!)

So, when I was younger, I didn't knew why was that. So I grew up, and still didn't knew why was that... Until I had my first pork leg with apple sauce. WHAT A REVELATION!! It just goes along with the flavor so much!! I want to eat just the meat and the sauce, and nothing more!

Sweet, Sour, Swine!

We're getting closer to the holydays! Every food blog is going crazy about Christmas yuminess. 

Here in Brazil we eat different things for christmas. We eat pork, cod fish, Turkey (we don't have Thanks Giving Day, so Christmas is our Turkey day). You guys have to remember, we're going through summer here! So, we don't actually have hot cocoa, but we do have chocolate desserts!

Since I started here not too long ago, I was getting used to the blogsphere. Now it's my turn to start showing off some of our food. And how about we start off with some Pork Loin? 

I found myself wondering what to do with it... Hmmm... Pork Loin always goes well with something sweet. So... What better than Honey Mustard Marinated Pork?

Gnocchi mimetics

In the begining of this year, I was heavier than I am now. I let myself go during College and for a while I did nothing about it. So, there I was, in the line of a bookstore, waiting to pay for my books (sometimes I go to the bookstore like someone who goes to groceries shopping, just stuffing my basket with things I might use later). There was I, thinking about my life and I saw this book Je ne sais pas maigrir (link pro Amazon). The Dukan Diet Book! Of course, by than, I didn't knew anything about the Dukan Diet. So I bought it and took home. I gave myself two weeks to read the book and prepare to change my way of cooking and eating.

Well, I followed the diet for a few months. It basically consists in reducing you intake of carbohydrates at the minimum and feeding yourself with proteins, oat bran and water.

I lost weight! 16 pounds to be preciselly! Enough to feel better about myself, and get back, bit by bit to eat normally.

When you get in a diet where it's cut basically all carbohydrate. You start to crave even the simplest of breads! The major trick to go trough Dukan Diet is to get creative! I set up a board in pinterest to gather ideas of Dukan recipes.

I've done a lot of them, and got different degrees of sucess. But my favorite of all was the gnocchi. A delicious gnocchi that is not a  gnocchi, get it?

A positive spin on pizza!

Husband says that a portuguese pizza is an excuse to make a pizza of anything you have in the fridge. That's a (not entirely) lie! The fact is that he don't like a lot of the toppings. But he's actually no parameter!He likes basically no vegetables at all.

Every now and than I try to make him try something. I'm most sucessful when he doesn't know what he's eating. Sometimes I tell him afterwards. Sometimes he remains in oblivion... But a portuguese pizza is not something that remains in oblivion. The toppings are right there! And since husband is in a conference out of
town this week, I'm indulging myself with some pizza that I'm the only person in the house that likes it.

Raw material test #1

I have to admit, I started this blog because I like to do two things: Try new things, and talk about food! And right now, I'm gonna do both!

In the first post last week, I told that me and husband went to an international fair and bought a whole lot of food over there. Well, I tried a few of them, very simple things. I bought also some sauces and other things, but I'm waiting to try them in a more elaborated dish.

First thing I tried was this Frima. Actually I wanted to try it as soon as I got home, but all I had time was shower and sleep.

Fig 1: Raw material of today? Frima!

The cheeseburger approximation

Bread, hamburger and cheese. 

It doesn't need much for a nice cheeseburger. 

The beauty of it, is that, you can go random around what you do with just this three and end up with some cheeseburger that might not look very cheesburgery, but tastes amazing!

Fig 1: An approximation of a cheeseburger

Hungarian Colaboration - Lángos

So...
Husband spent 20 days in Hungary earlier this year. This means he missed my birthday! Not that I had a big party or something like this. But he wasn't here when I turned 26! This was enough for him to have to pay. And by payment I mean presents!!!

He was great in that matter! He bought me earrings, a necklace, a shirt and.... TA-DA!

Fig 1: The gift

A Hungarian Cook book! Do I really need to say it was my favorite? Didn't think so.
Between getting the book and now, so many things happened! We started looking for an apartment, we found it, we rented, started making all that little things like painting, installing a new shower... And all those little annoying details that are needed to make a house livable. There goes almost a month living in the house and eating things that could be put together really fast.
So, to celebrate the house being (almost) ready. I decided to break in the hungarian book and figure out something to cook. It was friday night, so the choice was going for something fun, something weekendy!
I remember Husband going on and on about a street food they had over there: Lángos. 

Introduction - Let's experiment

Good morning, Starshine!

This, is another food blog. But not like all the others. Because this is mine, and I'm not quite a

regular cook. I'm a scientist. Although I'm not always mad, I'm a scientist 24/7! This means I have a passionate/pathological curiosity about everything that surrounds me.

I've been cooking since very young, and have been among scientific information since very young too! Nothing more obvious than me putting two and two together and combining these two passions.

The idea of the blog has been running around my head since last week. I came up with a name, Runned some ideas trough husband (that is cool enough to agree with every crazy idea I had for it), decided to open up with this post and here we are!

Last wednesday I went shopping for the first time with this blog in mind! We went to an international fair that happens every year around november december.  They had an International market, where I went insane on kitchen products! Specially japanese gadgets! If someday I ended up going to Japan, I'm gonna need some adult supervision to avoid expending my whole money on kitchen gadgets. I won't say exactly what I bought... Not now at least.  But here is a nice picture of the food part of our shopping (the drinking part was already chilling in the fridge). 

With this blog, I sincerely hope to make some friends and get in touch with other bloggers out there! At first the posts will air at monday and wednesday. Any changes I let you guys know!

Let's experiment!