We Cooked Seafood By the Seashore – Sicilian Mussels and Rolled Sardines in Sicily

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When we were planning our epic European summer trip, my boyfriend and I chose to stay mostly in apartments – we did this partly because it was cheaper than staying in hotels and more private than staying in hostels (which we did in Naples, and that was a weird flashback to my twenties), but only partly.  The other reason we chose apartment living was, as ever, food-related: we wanted to be able to cook, ideally making use of local ingredients we wouldn't have access to at home.

So, given that information, you might be surprised to learn that we didn't cook in our own place once for the entire trip – not in Berlin, or Bologna (where we did cook in someone else's home), or Rome, or any of the other cities where we had access to our own kitchen.  Oh, sure, we made coffee, and ate cheeses and meats which we bought at markets and grocery stores, and drank wine...but we didn't actually cook a meal.

My Bologna Has a First Name – Learning to Make Pasta the Bolognese Way with Taste of Italy

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Holy crap – it’s been a YEAR since I posted here.  I am so ashamed.  To be fair, the past year has been the busiest of my life so far: I started teaching middle school, jumping right in at the deep end with no previous full-time experience, and I was (as you’d probably have guessed) completely consumed.  Any time I had to myself was spent grading, answering parent and student emails, lesson planning, or maybe, if I got really lucky, zoning out in front of a crappy TV show with a bottle of wine and my concerned boyfriend.  Needless to say, I didn’t cook much, let alone photograph it.  Which is too bad, really, since my apartment was super cute and photogenic, and living off Goldfish all year left me unhealthy and heavier than usual by June…  

Anyway, excuses aside, I come back now to share just a smidgen of the bounty from my much-needed summer vacation!  My boyfriend and I saved up a few thousand dollars, freed ourselves from our responsibilities, and set off for Europe the week after school let out – we went to Berlin for a week, then took trains through Austria and all down through Italy, ending in Sicily, and then we hopped over to France for a few weeks to help a friend with her new baby.  It was a pretty epic 7.5-week journey (all of which is documented on my Instagram feed), and while we didn’t cook often, what we did cook was as epic as the trip itself.

Dinner Party Perfection: OMG Lasagne

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Normally, my posts here are about dishes I've made and photographed a ways before writing about them – I have a running tally of foods to 'put up on the blog'.  I don't always go in order, but I rarely get around to posting within a week of making something.  This time, though, I just couldn't wait, and I'm getting this post in just under the one-week wire because I had to share.  This lasagne is just that good.

How good, you ask?  Well, I made a 9x13 pan of the stuff, with 1.5x the meat the recipe called for, and there were only five of us eating, but there were still barely any leftovers; what little there was left, the bf and I fought over the next day like little kids bickering over the last piece of cake.  It was so good I was sneaking bites of it as I put it away, long after our guests left (I also sneaked some bites the next morning, before the bf woke up – sorry, honey! (not really)).

What to eat when there's nothing in the fridge: Mishmash Salad

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The bf and I have been crazy busy lately.  He's spending all hours at school and in the hospital (for school), and I'm trying to edit the first draft of my manuscript, wrap up my MA, and deal with book proposals and agent queries, all while still working part-time.  There are a lot of people out there who pile more than that on their plates, and plow along just fine.  But we're not those people.

We're the type of people who get home in the evening and go straight for our computers, each of us hoping that the other will sort out dinner while we zone out in front of youtube or food blogs (respectively).  And that's where this salad comes in.