Just over 4 months after I started blogging I posted an exciting post to let you (and mostly myself) know that I’d passed the 1000 unique visitors point. Today, at this very moment, 25 days and a couple of hours after we moved the blog to it’s new home, we’ve passed the 1000 mark again.
It went a lot quicker, this time. My bounce rates and average time on the site are way better than they were when I first started blogging. And most of all, I have a large amount of returning visitors.
So here’s a huge thank you to all of you who visit this blog, especially those who comment or contact me. Thanks for the loyal support. Thanks for moving to this new place with me. And thanks for coming back quickly!
(Oh, and thank you, mr. Google, for telling me all this, I really like to know!)
We’d bought cooked (oven roasted I think), marinated spare ribs from our local butcher a couple of times. They were great, very flavorful, which is why we kept buying them once in a while. Just reheating them in the oven was enough to have nicely flavored ribs on the table.
However, they weren’t fall-of-the-bone-tender. They were always the same, adapted -flavor wise- to the general public’s taste. Tasty, but not extraordinary. Nothing extra special.
Another problem, if you want to call it that, was that the membranes weren’t removed from the bottom of the ribs. I knew that I could do better myself. Adapt them to what I like in a rib. What we like.
After smoking the chicken breast, I figured I could use that same method to smoke ribs. Sure, It wouldn’t be extremely smokey. It wouldn’t be the ultra slow barbecueing which I love in the US. But I figured it would give it some extra flavor. I still had an ‘award winning’ rib-rub I’d bought at the Savory Spice Shop in Colorado the summer before. So all I needed was a rack of not yet marinated, uncooked ribs. Fortunately the butcher had some in the back that he hadn’t prepped yet, so I was good to go.
As a kid I thoroughly despised eggplant. I have no idea why. It was too spongey, too chewy for my liking. Or at least it was the way my mom made eggplant. What I recall from that time is her making eggplant boats. Stuffed with ground beef and the inside of the eggplant and some seasoning, then cooked in the oven. I have no idea what exactly happened to the eggplant, and I know my brother, my mom and everyone liked it, but I just couldn’t get used to the texture.
I don’t recall the first time I actually tried eggplant and enjoyed it. I’m fairly certain it was a mistake-order in a restaurant. Probably ‘Melanzane alla Parmigiana’ in an Italian restaurant. I possibly asked what melanzane was and I assume they told me wrong or just said ‘vegetable with tomato sauce and lots of cheese’. I can hardly imagine any other way someone could’ve convinced me to try it. I do know that I was probably 20 years old or so.
The way it was prepared that first time, changed my view of eggplant competely. I loved it. The soft texture, tender, but not spongey at all. The wonderful flavor that merged with the tomato and cheese. Ever since that one dinner where I was tricked into trying it, I’ve loved it.
Nowadays, I eat a lot of eggplant. Heck, I actually have an eggplant-plant in my little urban garden. I often just grill it, quickly, and eat it as a side. Parmigiana – that dish that made me fall in love with eggplant, is a regular occurence as well, but sometimes I get creative.
Cookies are one of these things where correct measurements and ingredients are of the highest importance!
The attentive visitor of this blog might have noticed it already, but with the new layout of the blog, I added an extra page, solely dedicated to ingredient adaptations to the (top) navigation bar on this site.
But why should I adapt anything, Valerie?, you may ask. Shouldn’t people just be following your recipes to a T?
Well, yeah, sure, that’d be great. However. I live in the Netherlands. The readers of this blog live all over the world. Some ingredients have different names in different countries. Sometimes something just doesn’t exist and you need to replace an ingredient. And cup-measures are different from a cup you drink from, so if you don’t realize how I measure my ingredients, you might end up following the recipe to a T and ending up with rock-hard cookies. (Yes, I’ve heard that complaint before!)
Since I can’t come to every single kitchen and personally show you (Nonononono, baking soda is not baking powder. Nonononono, this calls for cilantro, not coriander seeds) I figured it’d be useful to pull all these notes and messages together and make a list. It’s a page in development. And it’ll probably always stay that way. I might divide the page up a little more, into categories and sub-pages, maybe add more sub-pages, who knows. But until I find the time for that, this is it. A fairy long list with translations, explanations and adaptations of ingredients used in my recipes.
I’ve been sick this last week. While I was trying to deep clean my marble kitchen floor out of the blue I suddenly got this terrible throat ache. Literally while I was cleaning. A day later the violent coughing and fever started. I sincerely despise these late-season flues.
Being sick means I don’t really want that much food. And whatever I eat needs to be easy. No hours in the kitchen as all I really want to do is lay on the couch and be miserable.
So this week has been filled with easy-peasy dishes. I’d simply put some steaks and peppers on my stovetop grill, or made some easy chicken soup. And I made this potato salad. Quick, super easy, and even my flu-ridden tastebuds recognized that this was tasty.
Networks
