Six days to go - a last minute christmas gifts guide

It's six days to Christmas, you're overworked, stressed, and angry because you are late with all the gifts. Don't worry. We want to help you with six ideas for six days to go! We have choosen some cool stuff everybody could appreciate... and food lovers above all the others.

1 - Jamie Oliver's confiture packagings! You can choose between mustard, orange marmalade, apricot jam and many others. (check out the whole site, it's great!)2 - Cloud shaped chopping board by Snug.
3 - We are totally in love with this panda skillet! So cute. FredFlare imported it from Japan.
4 - What?! A beer making kit? This is the best gift a girl can buy for her man!! Or her dad. Or brother. Or, uh, for herself. By FredFlare again.
5 - Funny book about what you should eat "the day after". It offers some creative hangover cures. Useful for everyone in the family after the christmas party. Buy it on Amazon.
6 - Cane You Join Me Tea Infuser (such a nice name) by ModCloth!

AND!

If you need some ideas for your christmas party recipes, we can help you again. Here in Italy, we have some boring traditions about christmas food: a lot of pork, lentils, panettone, every year the same stuff. We found some alternative menus around the web. Our suggestions are:

From the left corner on the top:

- If you already opened Jamie Olivier's site, maybe you noticed all his holiday recipes

- And its "vegetarian christmas" section is worth reading.

- Here you can find some interesting cocktail recipes

- Glazed ham and other delicious plates, on Better Homes & Gardens

- These Candy Cane Truffles looks awesome, and the whole site is very nice.

- Gingerbread biscotti by Chocolate and Carrots, another interesting food site.

This is what we found.
Now, t's time to wrap OUR gift and go shopping for OUR christmas dinner ;)

You will certainly be informed! 

Cheers :)

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Laketopia and the Magical Land of Glittery Flying Pumpkins

Last weekend we hopped in the car with no gas, no cash, and hungry as fuck. Heading to a small town in the Alps. Two lakes, infinite acres of woods and a cabin are all there is.

We ate in a cute place, a very special one. Ordering Spätzle and pumpkin soup, both pretty good. Our hunger was unstoppable, so we ordered frico and polenta as well. All of this, while drinking too much wine. :). The walk we had afterwards was quite interesting. 

These are some images of the day, Enjoy! (your teeea)

Yummy finds!

We found some nice stuff around, lately. And it's all about food :)

 These pretty anatomical fishes cushions <3 the long one is hilarious.

This awesome limited-edition water bottle by Minifanfan

Some weeks ago at Ikea, Cecilia couldn't resist to buy the colorful “BARBAR” bird tray, the cutest kitchen accessory ever! And some cute napkins as well :)the colors are beautiful.

This parchment paper is very creative. Created by Ashley Ross, with step-by-step instructions.

And, last but not least the most wonderful packaging ever.
Designed by Marc Valega, the hilarious Beatles Juices.

That's all for now. Have a great weekend and bon appetit :)

"Get Ready For Another Slice of Pie!"

-Couldn't think of a more appropriate quote this time. Google it if you need some help ;)

This week we had some of our best friends over and wanted to make something sweet to offer them after dinner (we will make a post soon on what THEY cooked for US that day, stay tuned!)

This is a glorious short pastry chocolate-apple pie.

It's made with few ingredients but we the results are super rich :)

it's almost completely handmade (except for the pastry which we bough in sheets). The cream filling is made with ricotta cheese, sugar, eggs and crumbled chocolate, and the topping by hazelnuts and amaretti, both crumbled.

We made two of them, we had it as dessert and as breakfast for the next two days!

We hope you like it! See you soon (with some thai food…)
:)

 

 

A(t)SAP

As lazy italians, when hungry and not willing to wait longer then 10 minutes, we cook pasta. It's so good that while water is boiling, you have just enough time to think what the sauce is going to be.

Ever since living in Venice, we've been eating lots of fish. This post is no exception :)
We stir-fried some finely chopped onion, fresh clams, parsley and drizzled with olive oil (please ignore the non-cleanliness of our stove..)

Fifteen minutes later both sauce and pasta were ready. We where ready as well :) 

(Actually, we were starving!)

We wish you a great day while we digest this plate
:)
Bye Bye!
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Introducing some musical suggestions...

We've been talking about sharing some of our favorite music with the followers of this blog... so we finally did! Every so often (and when Cecilia will feel like drawing some new stuff out) we will put out the playlist we have on while cooking: this is the first one.
Last night our neighbours came home with freshly caught fish, they were so kind to give us six of these mediterrean creatures. :) We have no idea of what they are called. But they were edible and good. Here is the first playlist, enjoy!

They looked kinda cute so it was really hard to open them up, while staring at their very cute eyes :(

We cut five or six potatoes and layed them on it. Three or four spoons of olive oil, some salt and pepper, and they looked like they were ready to go in. I think we cooked them for 30-35 minutes.

At this point we were listening to Blossom Dearie's Blues... by the way, we hope you like our playlist!
Stay tuned for the next one :)

Eating somewhere different than our own kitchen.

I always heard of it but never went. The other day, after a meeting in Conegliano, a friend Romina had lunchbreak together and went to EAT'S. It's more then grocery store, its a mix between the good old feeling of shopping for food at the local store, where you can ask question and get suggestions from specialists and eating local and freshly prepared products at the bistro', located right above it.

The atmosphere is very cosy and although during rush hour you may have to wait a little bit to get seated, it's really worth it. Romina and I ordered two different plates and shared them.  Radicchio and Beef breaded meatballs, filled with Montasio cheese and a very simple yet tasty pasta with salmon and cherry tomato sauce.

This is a link to their website, the store has regular shopping hours, while the bistro remains open till midnight! Check it out.

Goat cheese nightmares

The other day, while at home trying to figure out what to cook for lunch, looking in the fridge we realized our main course was not going to be very glorious, so we had to put some effort in making AT LEAST a good appetizer!
We poured a glass of wine and started pulling out of the fridge everything we had.

This is what our sick minds came up with. Little ciabatta bread lightly grilled on a pan with some olive oil then filled with soft french goat cheese, grilled yellow peppers and italian anchovies. We are unsure if at that point we sank our teeth into these sandwiches we were also completely drunk, but they were really good!

POST SCRIPTUM: Almost a week after eating them we feel totally sane. But while cooking we started thinking the cheese we used could have possibly been possessed by the devil. Again, the cheese is really good but the little mascotte on the box was sort of scary :)

Last dinner of summer

We totally love the taste of avocado and salmon together. 

We also love to play with paper, ribbons, scissors and make our plates look nicer!

Preparing these beautiful ten-ingredients-sandwiches we starded daydreaming, talking with Cecilia's mum about the opening of a gourmet sandwich restaurant on a tropical beach somewhere :) The september sun made us think about a life by the sea with cats, music, beer and good stuff to cook everyday.

clicky-click on the photoz to enlarge it!

clicky-click on the photoz to enlarge it!

Ok, let's talk abou these guys. It took a couple of hours to digest them, It was an explosion of flavors (maybe too many) but we can guarantee, if we'll ever open a bar, our stuff would be the best you've  ever eaten.They're made with love <3

Anyway, we had an incredible hot September and some warm days in October. Now that autumn has arrived, we sadly realized that eating in the yard is one of the reasons we miss summer already.
We hope you're having a good beginning of the "cold season", stay warm, drink lots of tea and be happy.

Cheers :)

Three colors popsicles

It’s hot, our fridge is stuffed with all sorts of tropical fruits, carefully selected to contain the most amount of water. After eating them like normal people, we got a little crazy and gave them new life mixing them! We layered the resulting mixture in empty yoghurt plastic containers, then froze them. What you see below are two of the little monsters that came out of the freezer: kiwi-yoghurt-watermelon and cantaloupe-yoghurt-watermelon popsicles! <3

They taste amazing if you enjoy them sitting in bed while reading a book. 

Cook In, Eat Out.

Eating outdoors may be one of the coolest things you can do in the summer! We think it’s even better if you can do it at your own house.

Recently our good friends Matteo and Giulia stopped by and we quickly decided to put together our lunch with some leftovers from the previous days: above, croutons with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and basel leaves.

These are whole wheat spaghetti, topped with zucchini and mint patè and served with cherry tomatoes. On the other side our first part of the dessert: peaches poached in very very local Cabernet Sauvignon from our friend Marina.

Below, something you must try before you die: Baci (“kisses”) from Il Gelatiere, a gourmet ice cream shop in Udine, our town. They are basically frozen ice cream cupcakes, coated in white chocolate (but actually tinted in different colors). A slice of heaven.

I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree.

Less is more. And it has never been more true when it comes to cooking. This is (simply) bread and homemade peach marmalade: it was made with fruit growing in our own backyard! From a tree that has been there for over ten years - and some sugar.

What's cool about this variety of peach is that they look like regular peaches, but they kinda taste like nectarines, turning into a perfect mix of sweet and sour.

Bitter Sweet Sweet Sweet.

These things are just as good as they appear. We weren't even hungry because, for the second day in a row, our area is a having crazy warm and humid climate, 40°C (about 100 degrees Fahrenheit). The heat prevented us to really cook but not to run to the store and buy some bread, thin sliced bacon, nectarines and grapes. The result is what our hands were able to put together with some help from a fan, strategically placed in front of us.