Our friends came over in June and the night before the despedida party for one of the brods we went out to eat at Wegman’s (haha, ironic, huh; preparing/cooking for a party but we eat out instead) — we had the usual offerings from the buffet but brought home this

Bread Pudding.
Don’t bother.
All the goodness comes from the externals — the toppings, the caramel sauce, etc. Great pudding does not have to be disguised or gussied up to be good. IOW this isn’t one of them:(…

Ube Roll from Christine’s Bake Shop in New Jersey — “contributed” by another Pinoy friend/hubby’s brod. It was very good, light and spongy like a cake roll should be. The only thing that turns me off is the obvious use of food coloring, though I don’t know how else the bakery could pull off such a lively purple.

Ed & Cecile Pinos
Christine’s Bake Shop, in 2 locations
743 West Side Ave
Jersey City, NJ 07306
(201) 332-8332
31 Veterans Plaza
Bergenfeld, NJ 07621
(201) 385-8971
Fax: (201) 387-6225

I’m doing a sourdough starter today, from Mary Jane (Butters)’s book. It’s very simple — 2 cups of organic whole wheat bread flour + 1 1/2 cups purified water. Stir in clean bowl and cover, leave on kitchen counter. Every day I’ll be adding 1/4 cup water and 1/3 cup whole wheat flour, for 6 days. The seventh day it should be ready. I’ll be posting daily pics:) — hopefully this experiment will work! First time I started one I killed it the third day. The next time was successful, and I made a wonderful round loaf, but I ended up throwing out the leftover starter because I forgot to feed it and it died on me. This time I promise to be more diligent, and hope the blog will remind me when I get lazy:)

good information on the food of Brazil, Patagonia, Argentina, etc.

- historical notes will be useful for B.A.

LOTS of relationship facts, e.g., cebiche (not a typo), escabeche, asado, salsa de mani, etc.

WorldNetDaily: Starbucks: A habit easily broken

Just got in about an hour ago after the 17-hour drive from St. Louis. Have a ton of groceries and luggage to unpack. My first stop was at the garden where I was greeted, after having been gone for 2 1/2 weeks, with lots of tomatoes, , a giant zucchini, 2 little eggplants, a bunch of espanola and serrano peppers as well as some thais, and 3 cauliflower heads. At least I don’t have to go out to shop for produce for a week. The weeds have been busy too however, so the next few days will be spent getting the garden back into shape. I pity the boy who mowed the lawn — he probably couldn’t tell which were weeds and which were my plants LOL, so he left the weeds that were getting into the beds. Wise choice, I say:D.

I also checked my picture folder and realized that my original goal for this blog (to be able to document the seasonal dishes I prepare) is being defeated because of this picture backlog (I still have pics from June that I’ve been meaning to blog about!). I have been meaning to turn the pictures into posts but I will have to post 4-5 times a day if the recipes are to be organized seasonally…. So, the shortcut solution is to post the pictures in the blog the day they were taken, and I will add the recipes when I get the chance or in response to requests. This way, I’ll at least have a pictorial record of what we ate from month to month.