favorite photos

As mentioned yesterday, I wanted to post some of my favorite food pictures from the past year. It was funny, I was looking at my photos to find one for our background (they aren't mashed potatoes, they are cardamom scones!) and realized that my cooking from October 5, 2010 was horrendous. Around November I started making my seasonal soups (I was so cold and hungry!) and by February I was starting to experiment with some recipes. In March I was really experimenting with new recipes and Courtney, one of my best friends, came to visit me in Morocco and she is a real foodie. I took the summer off, ate frustratingly bad dining hall food in Switzerland and enjoyed an occasional good gelato or piadino or pizza, and was happy to move into my cute little pink house here in Bulgaria and start cooking again. Anyway, a collection of favorite food photos that I have taken:

vanilla roasted pears, bulgaria

 granola bars, morocco

 braided lemon bread, bulgaria

 homemade pop tarts, cinnamon and strawberry jam, bulgaria

 tomato and corn pie, bulgaria

 attempting to make lemon curd, bulgaria

 cinnamon, sugar, and brown sugar roasted pears, morocco

 roasted cauliflower and caramelized onion tart, morocco

 homemade pizza, morocco

 candied oranges, morocco

 sliced potatoes for potato chips, morocco

 bread dough, morocco

 white cheese pizza sticks, morocco

last cooked meal in morocco, beef and prune tagine, for my parents, with my roommates! 

cardamom ginger scones, morocco 

(currently the blog background)

... and those are some of my favorite food pictures! I love my kitchen here in pink house, it definitely has a multitude more appliances and dishware and counterspace, etc, but the granite countertops in Morocco were nice for working on and also provided a nicer background for pictures than the wood table here. I will find a way to take nice photos though.

::edit::

Most of the recipes were from Smitten Kitchen, though I think the potato chips were from another site. The scones, however, were courtesy of Courtney when she came to visit me in Morocco. Here is the recipe for them:

Courtney’s Cardamom Ginger Scones

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

¾ tsp ground cardamom

1 egg

1 cup yogurt/crème fraiche

¼ cup chopped candied ginger

½ cup sugar

preheat oven to 375

mix dry ingredients first

then add stick of butter (cubed into small pieces)

add egg, yogurt, sugar, and ginger

mix together until thick dough mixture

cook in oven for around 25 minutes

These scones are heavenly. I never really ate candied ginger before, but it works really well in this. I wanted to make this a few times when I didn't have all the feature ingredients, so I used the scone base with chocolate chunks, cinnamon, and cardamom and it tasted like teddy grahams. I think I have also tried a couple other mixtures, but my message is essentially that you should feel free to play around with it. My dad asked me if I thought he could use the recipe for jalepeno cheese scones, and I think that could definitely work, though I'll never make it for myself because I don't love spicy foods. I think if you decreased the sugar and replaced the 1/4 cup of ginger with shredded cheese and jalepenos, it would probably end up all right. If anyone tries it and has either success or failure, let me know! Writing about these, I definitely need to make a batch. 

I bought blueberries (for 5 leva or about 3.5 USD) Sunday night at the grocery store to make blueberry muffins, but I have been so busy grading (54 papers and 36 tests in 4 days, 18 papers to go plus several lessons to plan and I'm being observed by the president tomorrow) that I haven't gotten around to it yet. Hopefully tomorrow I will have some time to bake muffins and study for the GRE since tonight and last night I also made dinner (post to come, they were both quite yummy).