Delish food blogs...

OK, I didn't dissapear from the end of the world, but my internet and phone didn't work for OVER 1 week!! How did I survive?? It was horrible, and this only happens in Africa. They come to update the system and they cut me off and never got me back hooked onto the system.... so I couldn't even make a phone call to them on their free number, because I had no connection! Frustrating week, but I did a lot of beading instead... so I made a postive out of a negative!!

And this post was on my computer for a whole week, so I am going to post it now and since it is almost weekend and I love food.. I am already thinking about my dinner when I just finish my breakfast... are you like that too?

So check out these amazing food blogs, these people are not only good in cooking and baking, but also in photographing their delicious meals... I am in aw every time when I see these mouthwatering pictures. I mean I have a nice kitchen, but the lighting is not that great in there... so how do these people always get such an amazing end product? I just don't get it, I tried to take some pictures of my meals, but it always doesn't do justice to the dish I made... so I rather give you the site where I take my recipes from and let all the credit go to them, because I can't top that anyway!!

Most the time I have something in my mind that I am craving, say for instant a kind of cookie (snicker doodle). Then I go to Food Gawker and search for snicker doodle. All kinds of snicker doodles come up, and I research them all, and chose the best recipe in my eyes. That is how I came up with most of my favorite sites. A good way to start: Food Gawker or the same sort of site: Taste spotting.

Dutch Girl cooking at Kayotic Kitchen, of course I had to start with a Dutch one.. I mean I can't forget my roots! Amazing mix of recipes, and the best Hummus! She has 3 versions!! Try them all ;-) Her Indonesian Chicken salad is also to die for!


Kiss my Spatula! You have to check this out: Delicious & Gorgeous!!
A Vietnamese girl who lives on the West Coast and stirs things up in the kitchen. Yummy recipes and such a beautiful pictures!


Tea & Cookies. Mostly recipes with food bought at the farmers market. Fresh, natural, honest cooking. But not only recipes and food, also cute stories. A delish frittata & healthy zucchini noodles w/pesto dish is now this week on her site. Check it out!


What's for lunch honey? One of my latest discoveries. Meeta is from India but lives in Germany and she makes the most amazing fusion Indian with modern cooking. Love her site, so bright and amazing pictures. You will love her as well!!


Seven Spoons. Tara writes and cooks on this site. She lives in Ontario, Canada. Her blog is interesting with beautiful pictures. I like her style of photographing, very cool site. Give it a try! She gives you a collection of thoughts, family life and food. By the way she has a good looking banana cream pie on her repertoire. Not the usual 'over the top banana flavored' puddings inside. No this one is genuine!


If I am feeling I need to go back to basics and need some Natural food, I always opt for Heidi Swansons food blog named 101 Cookbooks. She amazes me every time! She lives in San Francisco, so has a lot of access to organic fruit and veggies. And this is what I crave, good honest food! Although a bit harder to find here in South Africa I still go often to her site to get inspiration! I already wrote about her and gave some of her recipes before....


Since we have Thai children and we used to live in Thailand, these dishes are just one of my favorites. So whenever I yearn for the sweet, sour, spicy and salty condiments I go to 2 Thai sites. And one of them is Chez Pim. Pim grew up in Bangkok, but lives now in the San Francisco bay area. She has a career in food and creates the most authentic Thai recipes with gorgeous pictures. Alloy Maak Maak!!


The other Thai site is more traditional Thai food from Appon's kitchen. Find the recipes you see in your local Thai restaurant and recreate it at home. Go for it, you won't be disappointed. This site is very authentic as well!


But I don't only crave Thai food, I am into all kinds of Asian dishes. This is just my preferred way of cooking... all things Asia. I grew up with Indonesian food, because my dad had an Oriental store which specialised in the early years in only Indonesian food. Now they do all kinds of food. In Holland we have a lot of Indonesian people, and so the food became a staple as part of the Dutch. For all kinds of Asian food Rasa Malaysia is THE best site I find! As the name reveals, she is original from Penang, Malaysia. She has a huge collection of Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Filipino recipes. And they are GOOD!! Very active site, with lots of guest food bloggers so you get to know more of the food bloggers through her site. I just LOVE Rasa Malaysia, and you will too, promise!!


I go through phases in my cooking life and so there are days when I really am not into MEAT, so then I check out 101 Cookbooks or Vegan Yum Yum, an award winning blog with the most delicious veggies. Such a fresh looking site, you WANT to eat more veggies and totally forget the sausages you thought you were craving...NOT!!


The creator of Food Gawker and Craft gawker (I will tell you another time about my love for arts & crafts) has also his own food blog named Sunday Nite dinner. It's about Food, Friends and a hungry bear. (I wrote about this site as well, a while back). It's a gathering of friends who cook together and share the recipes via this blog. Yummy, a fusion of East & West. I love FUSION!


And last but not least!
We all know that the Japanese have an art for beauty, for refinement, for all things delicate. They just know the art of living! If you look at Keiko's site Nordljus you know what I mean. She is a Japanese girl who lives in the UK. The blog has not so much recipes, but I didn't want to wit hold this site from you. She has some good recipes but the blog is just filled with beauty! The vibe of the blog is just magnificent, beautiful and gorgeous. Check it out, you will get hooked to her site as well! And try in the meantime some of her recipes; your taste buds will enjoy too!


OK, so now I gave all my 'secrets' away I would LOVE to hear from you!
What is your favorite top 3 or even top 5 of food blogs? PLEASE SHARE THEM WITH ME!!

Have a Wonderful Weekend!!
Love, M

Bye bye to our friends....

Last weekend we had a Sunday brunch with friends of us who are moving back to the US. These are the friends who gave us the 5 bunnies; Marny, Sam, Zack, Zane and Emma.

The guys had their last round of golf in the morning and after that we invited them for a brunch. However, I am still on my detox diet but since they are leaving next weekend, we couldn't do it on another day. So I decided to make a few dishes that I could eat as well.

While I was preparing the dishes in the morning I was drinking my green shakes and herbal teas... in the meantime the house started smelling just wonderfully with all these yummy aroma's and I couldn't eat them!!


So what did I make: A yummy Broccoli crunch salad, with apples, pecan nuts and this super duper almond vinaigrette. (I ate this veggie dish).


A savory asparagus bread pudding. (I didn't eat this one) A seasonal family style recipe that you can easily prepare the night before, although I didn't.


And a Ricotta Zucchini Cheesecake (which I also didn't touch) Although it is named a cheesecake there is no cream cheese involved. It's a bit lighter and less egg-y than a quiche. Very yummy according to Dirk!

I added a green salad with home made dressing that I could eat, but all the rest of the goodies, like a cold platter with different kind of cheeses and cold-cuts, 3 kinds of breads. All these delish things I didn't eat, and just enjoyed my green salad and broccoli salad. And for dessert a bit of fruit salad while the others enjoyed home made brownies with vanilla ice cream.

Talking about willpower or what?? Cooking for a big crowd and sitting with them on the same table and NOT touching a thing that wasn't good for me!!

But you know what? I had NO problem whatsoever... REALLY. Since it was my 19th day and I feel the last week on this detox diet I didn't care for all these heavy dishes anymore. Even though they weren't that heavy, I was more interested in these crunchy broccoli and green salad leaves and I was probably the one that enjoyed this brunch the most!

By the way: I am on my LAST DAY of my 21 day Detox and tomorrow I start with my 11 day AFTER Detox. That means that I will be adding 1 food group a day, so slowly building up to a full spectrum of foods again. During these 11 days I will have mostly my green shakes, but now I am adding some protein shakes to the regimen, and then salads, cooked vegetables, brown rice, and some fish and chicken. Red meat is NOT advisable and I won't go there either.

My total weight loss in 3 weeks in 15 lbs, not bad huh?

I can recommend this diet to anyone who has the stamina to go through a rigorous cleansing of your body. Because it feels amazing!!

I will keep you updated on my progress on the after results!
Have a Terrific Tuesday!
Mireille

Fabulous Friday

The girls are totally excited these days to wake up and come back from school... why? Because we have 4 bunnies! The first thing in the morning they want to feed the bunnies and after school the first thing they do is run into the house and go straight to the yard to greet their new friends ;-)
A friend of us is moving back to the US and had 5 bunnies, one is still at her house, they can't seem to catch him. But as soon as he is caught we will get that one too, so then we have 5!
Today Jasmine and Juliet invited 4 of their friends to have a play date at our house, so all their friends can come and see the bunnies. They are very popular these days, since everybody in their class wants to come over and see the bunnies... yeah, is it not the cute girls they want to play with then it is the cute bunnies LOL!

Jasmine feeding Scamper, the mom bunny


Juliet feeding Thumber, the black-white boy bunny.


Jasmine with Winter, the albino bunny with red eyes.


JJ with Thumber, he is her favorite because he comes to her!


And this is Spots, still a bit shy.


The only one that is missing is Fio, he is a black male. Our friends are trying to catch him for days now, but he won't let them ;-) And then the bunch is complete. Pfew, 5 pets at once, for somebody who isn't used to animals, that is quite a lot. But at least these bunnies stay outside!! That was the only reason for me to take them.

And if you are thinking that soon we will have more bunnies, no, no, no! These are neutered, so no more bunnies!! LOL

And in case you want to know how I am doing, since the girls are doing great! Well, I have a little sit back here. The last 2 days I didn't loose anything, and this morning I even gained 1 lbs!! Shocking to me, since I follow the Detox Diet so well! I am not cheating, so what is going on?? Not too happy with that! I also feel very bloated and a little discomfort. I am glad I have an appointment for a colonic later this morning, maybe that helps. So I am on Day 17, but my weight loss is only 12 lbs.

In the meantime I am craving wholesome veggies to start after my detox and this is a totally yummy recipe I found on 101 cookbooks, but this could have been MY recipe since I do almost always do my cauliflower like this. Especially if you burn it a bit, it gives it this nutty taste that I like so much. So try it out, it is delish!
Here is the link for the recipe.



Have a Fabulous Friday!
Mireille

Fabulous Friday

I haven't been blogging much, and I haven't forgotten you guys... but my Internet connection is not working with me this week. Rain makes the connection very slow, inconsistent or not working at all. So it has been frustrating to sit behind the computer this week. I hope it will be better next week, I have a lot of catching up to do!!

Yesterday I had an Indian cooking class at my friend's house Anita with 3 other moms from AISJ, so much fun and so de-lish!! Thank you Anita!! I will do a separate posting about that later.

So whenever I have a cooking class I am totally in the mood for MORE of that same country! And I totally emerge myself into all kinds of things from that culture. So this week is no difference and look what I found, some great pictures of Henna painting and a gorgeous lady dancing with painted henna hands. I must ask Anita what hat means, I believe it is that she is getting married??

Today on Fabulous Friday I am going to make a wholesome vegetarian Indian dish, which I of course found on my fabulous website 101cookbooks.



So this recipe for today Garam Masala Tofu scramble, and I know a lot of you think... TOFU, I don't like that. But really even if you think you aren't a tofu fan, this one might win you over, and I encourage you to give it a go.



The links for the website and recipe are all in here, so enjoy if you are eating vegetarian today or this weekend, go and check it out. There are so many fabulous recipes from Heidi Swanson, she is really the best!!

Have a Fabulous Friday and even a better weekend!
Mireille

Fabulous Friday

I am going to get some structure and continuity in my blog, on Mondays I am going to post a picture to the I ♥ Faces website, and some Mondays I will also do a regular post. It all depends if I have a lot to tell you guys ;-) On Wednesday I will do the Wacky Wednesdays pictures and on Fridays I am going to give you a fabulous recipe, so I called it Fabulous Friday. A good way to start the weekend! The rest of the week are the regular postings, the adventures of Jasmine and Juliet here in South Africa, our trips, things that happen around the house. Things that catch my eye, other websites or blogs that I stumble upon etc..etc..



On Fridays the girls are out of school at 2:15pm and they are allowed to watch some TV. The other days in the week they have no time for TV since they want to play or swim after school, do their homework, shower, eat and go to bed. So for them it is also a Fabulous Friday!!

I like to start and eat a bit more wholesome, vegetarian, so when I was browsing the web I found this magnificent, beautiful and de-lish website 101 cookbooks from Heidi Swanson and I signed up immediately to get all these wonderful recipes in my inbox. Just print it out, go to the supermarket, prepare and EAT. No more thinking of what I shall make, because for me that is the hardest part of cooking....to come up with something different every day. I mean I have a lot of sites that send me these daily recipes, but most of them aren't what I want to make, but this site is exactly what I was waiting for. I am so glad I found it! And of course I like to share the good things with you all...my cyber and blogging friends :-)

So each Friday I am posting this wholesome vegetarian dish that I will be eating THAT day. So at least on Friday we will eat vegetarian, but I am hoping to add more vegetarian days into my week. Not easy, since the girls and Dirk are meat lovers, I could easily live without it, so maybe we do a vegetarian main dish and some days I just add some small portions of meat to theirs....

Today I am making Ten Minute Tasty Asparagus and Brown Rice Recipe.


I like the 10-minute part of it ;-) Since Dirk is still in Lichtenstein till Monday I am cooking easy and fast recipes for the 3 of us.

Have a Fabulous Friday y'all!
Mireille