Bacon and oregano homemade pasta and two silly people having fun in the kitchen together

I have read that food can bring people together. I think it’s true – many celebrations involve family and/or friends around a table. And one doesn’t need an established occasion at all – having friends over for dinner for no apparent reason is equally wonderful.

Joao and I make our Sunday lunches a special part of our life. Work and traffic jams already keep us apart on weekdays and there’s

Crash-hot potatoes

I was devastated when I learned that Tastespotting had been closed. Luckily for me and for all the foodies, there new options for our daily dosis of food porn: Food Gawker and RecipeMuncher. Go check them out!

Deb, from the super yummy Taste and Tell, has mentioned a couple of times that she has trouble choosing side dishes. Deb, my dear, these are for you! Not only they are extremely simple

Crepes filled with corn and nutmeg

Don’t you love going through cookbooks/websites with lots of photos? Isn’t it wonderful to know what to expect – visually speaking – from a recipe?After taking a look at this, I knew I would end up making it. I’m a big fan of crepes and they look so adorable served this way!I thought these were good, but in my opinion they would have been better with some sort of sauce. I think the sage brown

Linguine with olives, thyme and lemon

Some people hate Martha, but I’m one of those who love her. :)I got this recipe from her website; the original version calls for pappardelle, but I chose to use linguine (one of my favorite pasta shapes). I think the substitution worked well.It is a quick, easy to put together sauce and it smells wonderful, but one thing that didn’t please me much was finding large pieces of zest in my pasta – as

Ricotta gnocchi with lemon thyme butter sauce

I know that many people frown at the simple mention of the name “ricotta” - right, C.? :)I’m not one of those. I really like ricotta and find it very versatile. You can use it in both sweet and savory recipes and jazz it up with a diversity of flavors.Valentina posted this gnocchi recipe a while ago on her blog in Portuguese and it sounded so easy I had to try it myself. Another use for the

Artichoke and lemon linguine and I've won a book!

Food bloggers are the best, aren’t they?The talented Allen had his first book giveaway and I won! Yay!!He’s sending me this amazing book, which comes with a DVD. I can’t wait to start making recipes from it!Thank you, Allen!I once tried a no-carb diet. Needless to say, it was a huge failure. I avoided rice and potato and bravely resisted cakes and cookies. But there are two things I can’t live

Parmesan wafer salad

Donna Hay again. Bear with me, please. :)

This salad was published on her magazine #29, in 2006, and it was part of an article in which she showed the readers some of the recipes from a book she was releasing back then. Such a teaser! I chose this salad because I love each and every ingredient in it, but I must admit that seeing it on the cover of the book made me think of how special it would

Two side dishes worth trying: Jamie's potato salad and Martha's roasted asparagus

I beg of you – make one of these recipes. Or go wild and make both. You won’t be sorry, I promise.

Fresh asparagus are something quite new to me – I don’t ever recall seeing them in supermarkets when I was younger. But ever since I spotted them for the first time there was no turning back – I became a huge fan. In my humble opinion, fresh asparagus will taste great no matter how you make them

Roast chicken tray bake with tomatoes and potatoes

A couple of weeks ago I watched "Jamie at Home” for the first time – it was an episode about potatoes. I love potatoes – who doesn’t? – and all the recipes were mouthwatering. Joao must have thought so too, because he asked me to make this chicken for lunch on the following day – and he is a beef guy. BEEF.

I didn’t have a pen at the moment to take notes, and I don’t really remember him giving

Pasta with tomatoes, olives, grana padano and basil

Joao loves pasta but he’ll mostly have it with tomato or bolognese sauce. He tried pesto when I first made it and liked it, but still looks at other pasta possibilities very suspiciously. That’s silly and I always tell him that.So when I choose different pasta recipes to try he goes all “I want mine with bolognese sauce, please” and I go “ok, same old pasta for you, mister”. I won’t force him -

Spaghetti with garlic and spinach and how I love You Tube

Love it. Just love it.There are loads of interesting things there - music videos (something our stupid MTV hardly ever plays), interviews (I saw a really old one with Duran Duran the other day, so much fun) and food TV shows. I can watch the ones I missed before upgrading my cable TV and also the ones that are not aired here in Brazil. Like bill’s food.Even though my heart belongs to Gordon

Roasted squash salad with tahini

My husband thinks I’m funny. He tells me that all the time – maybe I am. I find it a good thing, actually.
One of the things that make him laugh is when I almost scream “God I gotta eat that” while going through my cookbooks. Depending on the “reading”, I say that quite a lot.

I saw this salad on a book Monday night and more than quickly wrote down the ingredients I needed to buy, in order to

Autumn spicy rice

I know, I know, it’s not autumn anymore – and the hot days here in Sao Paulo keep me pretty aware of that… but being a rice lover it was impossible for me to resist this recipe.

I don’t eat meat and you know it – and even when I did, back in the day, I would never eat pork. It’s nothing religious or anything, I just don’t like it.

I always have chorizo sausages in the fridge since Joao loves

Spaghetti with basil, smoked ricotta and roast bell pepper

I’m always interested in new ways of cooking pasta.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love fresh tomato sauce (I only use homemade) but pasta gives you so many possibilities that it’s almost a sin not to try other sauces and ingredient combinations.

If you are in a hurry and have to put dinner together quickly, this is a really good recipe: you can take a shower while the peppers are roasting

Crispy goat’s cheese, tomato and basil salad

Another recipe by Donna Hay – from her magazine, issue #35, to be more specific.

I’m a huge fan of hers and those of you who have been around my blog for a while already know that – Joey and I go hand in hand in our love for Donna’s recipes! :)

I tried goat’s cheese for the first time while on vacation last September and can’t imagine how I had lived without it till then. I tried it on salads

Butternut squash compote – doce de abóbora

One more recipe I cooked especially for Joao - one of his crazy out of the blue requests. :)I had never made butternut squash compote before – we call it doce de abóbora and it’s such a traditional dessert here (not to mention easy to find) I guess I just took it for granted.Luckily Google was there for me. I found many, many different recipes online but the minute I saw one of my dear friend

Lemon Pasta

Thank you all for your lovely comments on my last post – you sure do know how to put a smile on a girl’s face!

There were two different holidays here in Sao Paulo and I didn’t go to work for 6 days in a row – how great is that? :)

I had a wonderful time at home, friends over for dinner, my sister spent a day with me (we played Super Mario Bros. a hundred times). I took care of my herbs and

Spinach, cheese and walnut baked risotto

I have seen so many delicious recipes with spinach around lately that I felt like cooking with it, too.

This time, I got the recipe from Donna Hay Magazine #33 but I changed it quite a bit. It was my second baked risotto and what an easy dish to put together! Not to mention that while it’s in the oven you can sit on the couch and watch TV – like I did, watching my newest addiction.



This is

Pasta al pesto (and another gift)

Yep, I’m a lucky blogger. You guys have spoiled me so much!I have received many gifts from different parts of the world and that is so amazing.The beautiful place mat you see on the photo is a present from a very dear Brazilian friend, Luna – thank you for making my table more beautiful, sweetie!Some people are so versatile. Take Mark Ruffalo, (one of my favorites) for instance: he can be cute,

Tomato, Minas cheese and eggplant salad

Isn’t it wonderful when a recipe exceeds our expectations?? I love it when that happens. This salad is one of those recipes.When I saw the photo on the book, I thought it would be good. But it turned out to be really, really good.The dressing plays an amazing part here – and the garlic is the one to blame. I have a friend who loves to cook with garlic and I’m sure he would like this dressing very