Ooops are we late?

Cecilia had these pictures stored in a folder for a while, and just realized we've never posted them! On halloween I spent the morning picking up hazelnuts with my friend Martina. We came back home and decided to use some of the pumpkin to make pasta. Pasta alla zucca :) We chopped a quarter of it in big pieces and cooked it in the owen for about 20 min, then stir fried it until it became a soft salsa.

Sorry for the late update: we've been busy, and stay tuned for the images from London!


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My Last California Lunch

The day before Mattia left Santa Barbara, last June.

I decided to treat myself with the best possible wine and food tour I would want. Hopped in the car with two friends Beth and Edo (who is soon going to be a special guest cook on this blog, so stay tuned), we drove up to Los Olivos, about 45 minutes aways from Santa Barbara. It's a small farmer's town famous for good local wine and steaks, with a perfect not-so-warm summer weather to sit outside. I have really good memories of that day.

For lunch we had beef filet with homemade french fries and rucola and three different types of dessert: the best vertical tiramisù of my life, chocolate brownie with caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream, and a little chocolate cream filled cake with raspberries on top.

YES YES YES, it was just as good as it looks like!!

We have a flight waiting for us on Thursday. We are ready for a five days vacation in London, and be sure we'll take a lot of photographs and show you all the fantastic food we will have!!
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Enjoy your teeea

This is a Christmas present from Cecilia's mom. (Thanks Miffi!).
We woke up on January 1st and decided to try it.

It's a delicious pomegranate and strawberry flavored tea! With little pink sugar hearts in it :)

The latter box is very cool, with victorian style ornaments, like cupcakes and teapots. We will definitely keep it to fill it with other stuff. Like... drugs? No, we didn't say that, did we? No we didn't. Oh, by the way, talking about tea, you should check out the best tea-recipe of the web: here. We promise you won't regret it.

Hope you have a fabulous weekend!
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The Neverending Story of the Camera Cookies

Five months ago Cecilia was looking for a birthday gift for Mattia. Browsing the web she found some awesome camera shaped cookies, handmade by Manjar Sweets. Unfortunately they didn't ship to Italy :( so, Cecilia begged the very helpful Susana from Manjar, to make an exception. She discovered that Susana was about to travel to Milan... she was so kind to bring these cookies from Texas to Milan and ship them once she arrived to Italy! Just in time.

The fact that you see the pictures right now, after five months, is the proof we are lazy italians...

They are so cool you feel bad eating them, in fact we tried one per type but the rest of them is still kept in the box... it's nice simply to know they exist. But they are delicious!

Susana just opened her first "real" shop in Texas, but if you can't visit it, check out:

Her Etsy shop
Her site, and
Her facebook profile.

Try Manjar's products. We love them!

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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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