THE BEWITCHING KITCHEN TURNS THREE!

Posted in General by sallybr

It’s hard to believe it’s been 3 years since I wrote my first post, unsure of where it would take me. Since then, I’ve published 447 articles, and went from having a couple hundred page views per month to over 20 thousand!

If my life was a smooth, uneventful ride, I would bake a cake for the occasion. A cake chosen from the several options suggested last year in the comments, fingers crossed that it would be as gorgeous as this baby:

Instead of uneventful, our life seems to follow the script of North by Northwest. 😉 All kitchen stuff is now divided between two homes, we are surrounded by boxes, and constrained by deadlines. No cake this year, I’m afraid. Instead, I celebrate by bringing you the first giveaway in the Bewitching Kitchen!

Leave a comment on this post from now until the end of June, and on July 1st I will draw the name of the lucky winner. The prize?

A copy of “The Brazilian Kitchen“, a book I recently fell in love with and wrote a post about. Everyone is welcome, from all over the planet, as long as the mail service can reach you! 😉

To all my readers, subscribers, followers, friends (in real life and those special friendships formed through the blogosphere) thank you for your support! And a special thank you to Fer, from Chucrute com Salsicha, who (maybe without ever being aware of it), was my main source of inspiration to become a food blogger.

I close this post sharing two photos from our new home: the view from our kitchen window, and a spot at the corner of our backyard. Just a teaser, we are not moved in yet, but sort of camped there for a couple of days last week. The two of us, a bed, a kitchen table. and the amazing performance of fireflies outside the window during the night…

ONE YEAR AGO: The Bewitching Kitchen turns two!

TWO YEARS AGO: Bewitching Birthday!

THREE YEARS AGO: Welcome to my blog!

13Jun2012

THE LITTLE APPLE

Posted in General by sallybr

ONLY ONE WEEK TO MOVING DAY!

Some women might wonder if a college town in the middle of Kansas will have fancy shoe stores, trendy clothing or jewelry. I am a lot more concerned with fresh produce, seafood, and unique flours. After our recent visit to “the other Manhattan”, something tells me we’ll be just fine! After all, as my friend Adele so cleverly stated:

“Happiness is a well stocked grocery store” 😉

Whole crabs, stone crab claws…. CHECK!

Steelhead trout, Alaskan cod? CHECK!

Ultra-marbled rib eye steaks? Premium beef? CHECK!

Veal for ossobuco? CHECK!

Beef bones for stock? CHECK!

Cheeses? CHECK!

We’ll be able to make our own peanut or almond butter…

Tomatoes of all shapes and colors are waiting for us…

Special flours and grains sold in bulk, I can buy just what I need for that very special loaf of bread!

A market with every kind of Oriental noodles known to mankind!

Olives in bulk, including some type of green olives I’d never seen before…

Red Velvet apricots… not sure how good they are, but I love the name and their beautiful color…

Passion fruit, guava, and other exotic fruits. Not politically correct if you are into the local food movement, but… a food blogger’s dream!

Is there a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow? I think so! 😉

Dandelion greens? Not sure what to do with you yet, but…it’s so nice to meet you! 😉

And the icing on the cake: our future home is just 15 minutes away from this spectacular view, right at the outskirts of the Konza Prairie!
We are ready for this adventure!

ONE YEAR AGO: Majestic Sedona

TWO YEARS AGO: Watermelon-Induced Daze (we miss you, Pits…)

26May2012

SUPERMAN

Posted in Fitness, General by sallybr

As I’ve mentioned before, my fitness guru is Tony Horton, and I’ve been using his P90X system for 3 years. I’m about to finish his awesome new series, P90X2, with only one workout left to do (yeaaaaah!).

I’d like to highlight one particular exercise in his routine, called Superman. It’s already present in the original series, but in the X2 version it gets a little harder: instead of short 10 second intervals of the posture, you try to hold it for a full 45 seconds. As the weeks go by, the idea is to raise your legs and arms higher, or add resistance by holding a bar.

I am sure Tony Horton would appreciate my own take on it, as it adds a bit more flexibility to the range of motion in the upper arms. Normally, I get the added resistance from both sides, but due to the nature of the gadgets I had available, this time the right side of my body got some extra attention!

ENJOY!

12May2012

A BEWITCHING MOVE AHEAD

Posted in General by sallybr

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“There’s no place like home”
(Dorothy Gale, The Wizard of Oz, 1934)

My life has been an amazing journey. I’ve lived in different countries, worked in different labs, and changed my line of research quite a bit over the years. The last drastic move was from Paris, France to Norman, Oklahoma, in what was classic “culture shock.” However, the past 18 years in this small town were the happiest of my life. It’s always great to go back to Paris, or visit New York, to spend time in California, or chill out with my folks in Sao Paulo, but life in a college town has unique appeal. And because we’ve had such a great time living and working here, we expected to call Norman our home forever.

But it was not meant to be. A new, exciting adventure lies ahead: Phil accepted the position of the Head of the Department of Biochemistry at Kansas State University, so we’ll move our home (and our lab) to another college town! About the same size of Norman when we first arrived here almost 20 years ago, Manhattan seems like a great place. We are ready to face this challenge together. If it all goes according to plan, we will move around the last week of June, and then move the lab a couple of months after that.

“Home is wherever I’m with you.”
(Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes, 2009)

6Apr2012

IN MY KITCHEN, APRIL 2012

Posted in General, In My Kitchen by sallybr

Following Celia’s footsteps once more, I share with you what is going on in our kitchen this month.

In My Kitchen…. A little celery miracle!

Did you know that if you cut the base of celery and place it in water for a few days a new celery plant will grow from it? All you have to do is plant it in your garden. Thanks to a tip from my friend Cindy, I have my own celery experiment going on, and this baby is now outside (fingers crossed for a long, productive life!)

In My Kitchen…
Homemade pain de mie, recipe from The Bread Bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum, perfect to spread with any of the tasty concoctions by American Spoon, from Michigan. (I don’t work for the company and have not received any freebies to evaluate and/or promote).

In My Kitchen…. one of my favorite bowls, made in Italy, with a nice image of Tuscany. Just looking at it makes me happy!

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In My Kitchen…. two special gifts from our friends and neighbors, the super-gardeners V & M

Romaine lettuce, picked from their garden just a couple of hours earlier!

Amazing spinach, very flavorful, that went into a spinach risotto, soon to be blogged about! 😉

In My Kitchen…. A new passion, hibiscus flower tea!

I was intrigued by this post and could not rest until I got some hibiscus flowers to play with. The color of this tea is amazing… stay tuned to hear more about it.

In My Kitchen…

A bundt cake tester with a probe that changes color when the cake is perfectly cooked in the center. Yeah, I need all the help I can get as far as cake baking is concerned.

In My Kitchen…

Normally our pepper grinder is full of black Tellichery pepper, but I could not resist getting this bag of colorful peppercorns, to shake things up a little

In My Kitchen….

My newest toy, a tortilla press! Corn tortillas from scratch are infinitely better than store-bought, and a good quality press makes all the difference. A blog post about it is in the works…

In My Kitchen… especially for Codruta & Smidgen….
THE BREAD KNIFE!

and, finally… from the backyard, two cool dudes wanted to say hello and hope that you enjoyed this little tour through their favorite spot in the house!

Oscar + Buck = Double Trouble on the horizon… 😉