My First Easy Cheese/Meat-free Lasagna

Some recipes are waiting and waiting for you to be prepared and you still avoid doing it because not brave enough to just go on. It´s like that famous door that waits for you to be open and you spend the rest of your life in the front of it waiting someone to open up for you. 

No more waiting for me! Including in terms of recipe testing. When I want to do something and wish for it, I know now that everything is up to just me, the one and only in charge to make it happen.

Lasagna was one of those meals hard to be done at home. Not sure what was the psychological blockage about, but it was like this for a long time, until this Friday when I just put together all the ingredients and finally made it. 

The most important part of the preparation has to do with the cheese filling, as you need some experience in order to properly know what goes better for a tasty result. For instance, I´ve used ricotta chese, but I bet a cottage cheese or some labne with a less neutral consistency would have bring a stronger salty taste. Otherwise, it was not only a great fulfilling meal exprience for the main Shabbes meal, but also a cool kitchen project developed for and together with my son who helped intensively with the filling of the sheets. 

Next on the agenda is a meaty lasagna for whom I am trying to figure out the right ingredients right now.

Ingredients

125 gr mascarpone
2 beaten eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
125 gr. shredded yellow cheese
6 non baked Barilla lasagna sheets
1/4 red pepper, finelly minced
125 ml. tomato sauce, at room temperature
fresh dill, on taste - alternatively, you can use parsley
4 gloves garlic, finelly minced

Directions

In a bowl mix well the cheeses, the eggs, the salt, the dill and the garlic. Keep some cheese for the top of the lasagna. Pour the tomato sauce in a different bowl.

On a sheet of lasagna, add the tomato and the cheese filling. For the cheese filling, we used a cooking brush. Repeat the operation until you are on the last sheet. Add the rest of the tomato sauce - preferably have some extra to let the lasagna cook in its own sauce. On the last sheet, add the extra cheese and eventually some additional tomato layer. 

What I really liked about preparing this lasagna is that I figure out how many options you have for playing with ingredients, including when you are not mixing meat and cheese. You have a lot of options on the veggies side, for instance, by adding slices of fresh tomatoes, or aubergines, or onions or champignons, or corn, or even some fried potatoes - but it looks rather like a mousaka that I will try as well. 

In my variant of lasagna, there is no oil used and I loved it this way, but you can also add the oil if you want a greasy final result. A big lover of spices, this time I prefer to not add anything, but some oregano or za´atar goes good as well. 

For more tastier results, labne instead of ricotta and Greek cheese instead of the mozarella could help.

Let it heat in the oven at 250C. Serve it fresh, at the room temperature!

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Bon Appétit!

Roasted Strawberries, Are They Worth the Hype?

Why should you roast fruits when you can eat them fresh? The same goes to: why should you add sugar to fruits? If they are not sweet enough, you better find other fruits than damage their original sweetness? Hence, my dislike for sour cherries - besides the jam version. But I am open for new ideas and recipes - easy ones, too - therefore I gave a try to this one from Leah Koenig´s Modern Jewish Cooking.

Ingredients

250 gr. fresh strawberries, freshly washed and cleaned
100 gr. fresh lemon zest
4 tablespoon white sugar - brown sugar goes as well
Whipped cream - optionally

Directions

Add the strawberries, lemon zest and the sugar in a bowl and mix well. Let it rest for a couple of minutes.
Heat the oven at 250C at least 10 minutes before starting the roasting. Display the strawberries on a baking sheet and keep it in the oven for around 30 minutes.
Serve it warm or with some added whipped cream on the top.

I´ve been not very impresed about the taste, maybe because I was parcimonious with the use of too much sugar, but the other people in the house appreciated it and strawberries disappeared within minutes. Warm strawberries are a good idea, but maybe I have to see if they are a great one when prepared as a jam. Strawberry-experiment to be continued and extended in the next weeks.

Before the baking

Preparation: 15 minutes

Roasting: 30 minutes

Serves: 3-4 hungry humans

After the baking. Does it look like a painting? Love the genuine red colour

Bon Appétit!

Grean Beans with Pistachios and Labne

Half a year without posting and it paid off: the DA sunk, the regular revenues from my blogging and photography activities as well and the chances of being accepted for a serious collaboration with a serious brand are slim, if not completely non-existent.

Torned between the need of keeping an online face and the pressures on the personal front, I decided to take the break first, and come back. Now, I am back. Hungry, in the mood for experiments and keen to share some personal stories of resilience and mindfulness. 

One of the most inspiring cookbooks I´ve read lately is Leah Koenig Modern Jewish Cooking. My kind of cookbook where simple kosher ingredients are mixed creatively. There are plenty of things I´ve learned from this book, but in the next 4-5 posts will share the most relevant for my current cooking state of affairs, as it allowed me to try and experience new ingredients, products and tastes. As usual, I´ve adapted the recipes, added extra ingredients or eliminated some. 

Here it is, for the sautée green beans with labneh!

If there is a Middle Eastern product that I am always longing for, there it is labneh. I love the texture, the versatility - it goes so well with fish, bagel, eaten from the box, prepared with dill - and the consistency. It combination with green beans, sautée, Iranian pistachio and walnut oil, among others, it can be easily eaten as a meal in itself, as it is heavy and nutritious. The preparation may take some time - around one hour - but it elegantly save your entrée part for the Friday evening meal.

Ingredients

200 gr. green beans, washed, with the ends on both sides

2 full tablespoons walnut oil

5 big garlic cloves, halved

around 20 Iranian pistachios, crushed in a mojar (the original recipe mentioned almonds, but I prefered to keep it up with the citrus note) 

2 full tablespoons lemon zest

1/2 tablespoon salt

100 gr. normal butter

250 gr. fresh labneh, from the fridge- as an alternative, you can add some parmesan and any sort of hard cheese on the top as well

Directions

Heaten the oil in the pan at 250 for around 10 minutes. Add the garlic and roast it slowly for a couple of minutes. Add the beans and the lemon zest and slowly roast it from a side to another. Add the butter and keep mixing up. As the beans may be a bit too green, the butter tenders it. Continue with the pistachios and keep mixing. 

When ready, wait for a couple of minutes until it cools down, add the labneh - or your choice of cheese - on the top and serve it either as an individual dish or as a companion to fish or summer salads. 

Serves: 3

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Cooking time: 30 minutes

Bon Appétit!

BACK in the Blogging Business

Back! I am finally back in the business of lifestyle/fashion/food/health/parenting blogging. Since last November, it was a long hiatus, but sometimes life is moving on way too fast to catch up, even for someone so fast and multi-tasking as me.

I missed terribly updating the blog, but besides some unpleasant medical problems that are addressed currently with the highest consideration, I needed some time off for reconsidering the entire content I publish on the blog. 

What really happened during this time will be probably shared in one or maybe more blog posts in the coming days or weeks. What will really happen is that I am more than ever decided to continue my journey of sharing inspiration for busy women, that are not giving up and despite all the challenges on the way, they will keep fighting. 

The structure of the blog will not change, only hopefully the content will improve, and, hopefully again, there will be more frequent posts. I will try to feature more articles about health, wellbeing, work and life balance, as well as healthy eating. As I am not an expert on the topic myself, my plan is to have as many experts and specialists as possible sharing their inspiration, through guest blog posts and interviews.

One of the things I miss the most those days - more about that later - is cooking and eating in general. I slowly made my way to food despite being a former anorexic and in the coming posts I will like to explore more my relationship with food and how I succeeded - almost on my own - to evade the traps of the eating disorder. In addition, I can´t wait to start experimenting in the kitchen again, learning and sharing new recipes, spices and cooking techniques. I have lots of cooking books to review and get inspiration from, therefore wait for a lot of tasty posts soon. 

Last but not least, I want to feature creative minds and small entrepreneurs, preferably women, active in a variety of domains. My mission is to inspire women to dare find and express their voices, therefore, and hopefully I can offer the best examples in this respect. 

Expect also posts about hobbies, parenting pre-schools active boys, dating, weekend tips, self-help book reviews. 

I am back in the business and happy to connect with both potential sponsors, contributors and many new readers! 

Keep in touch with good news very soon!

Cheesy Cornbread Muffins for a Snacky Weekend

Autumn is almost away and the days are getting darker and much, much colder - at least in the part of the world I am living. The body is getting tired and we need more often small energy snacks to keep up walking through the day.

For those longing for a power snack but afraid there is not enough time for baking it ourselves, I'm bringing you just another easy muffin recipe, made of cornflour, cheese - lots of it, milk and...many more easy ingredients. It's ready in less than one hour and fills your breakfast, dinner and lunch, plus the short snack breaks with a lot of healthy energy.

Ingredients
1 cup cornflour
15 gr. baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 full tablespoon cooking oil
3 medium-sized eggs
2/3 cup milk, at the room temperature
11 pigeonheart tomatoes, cut in quarters
1 full cup shredded cheese

Directions

Heat the oven art 250C, at least 15 minutes before starting the baking. Add the ingredients, one by one, while whisking them well. Let the composition to rest for a couple of minutes, then pour it into 12 muffin papercups. 

Bake it for around 20 minutes or until ready. I've personally preferred them a bit crispy on the top, therefore I've kept it for almost 30 minutes. Your muffins are ready!

Serves: 12 crunchy tasty cornbread muffins

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Baking time: 20-30 minutes

Bon Appétit!

Product Review: ISANA Automatic Face Cleaning Brush

One small kid, several jobs, several blogs, lots of things to do in just 24 days. My mother always used to say that regardless how busy you are, you should never neglect your face. You better wake up at 5am twice the week to have a mask than spend one month or more completely neglecting yourself. I was not necessarily a well-behaved kid, listening to what my mother say, but her face was always good looking, regardless the age and the life hardships and illnesses she went through. 

In her memory, I am trying to keep up with my self-care, beauty rituals, either by using a face mask - twice the week, or by trying to get some treatments - once in a while - or practicing some healthy beauty tips. Of course nothing compares to the professional knowledge of a beauty practician, but as for now, my investments are better done in other areas therefore I am doing a lot of things by myself, using beauticians' advices and family lessons.

Face cleansing is very important as it is the basis of a healthy skin. It eliminates those dead cells and add a healthy touch to your face. I religiously remove my makeup every day, but in the last year I feel that I need some more serious treatment, which includes deep peeling and a treatment to add more vitality to my skin.

Therefore, when once I've seen ISANA Face Cleaning Brush, I decided to go for it in a second. As it costs under 15$ -  with batteries included - it does not include a high investment risk. It comes in a box, with a small bag to keep the product between uses, with three different brushes: silicon, normal and smooth. The product is small so it does not take too much storage space. The instruction booklet is written in a couple of languages - among which Hungarian, Turkish, German and Polish, but - unfortunatelly - no English. 

I am using it for already one month and very happy with the result. My skin looks healthier and I feel less guilty for not taking time off for my beauty routine. I have a small beauty parlor in my home and I can happily live with that.

The normal and silicone brush applies to all types of skin, while the smooth one is recommended for special types. I have a normal type of skin and I happily and successfully used the three of them. It works. The normal brush is recommended for intensive cleaning, the smooth one for gentle cleaning, while the silicon is good for peeling and deep cleaning. 

You can use it in several ways. Either on a wet skin or after using special face cleaning products, applied either directly on the brush or on the face. 

The automatic system has two speeds and a cycle lasts around 60 seconds. Every minutes it stops automatically. I personally used it for maximum 3 cycles. More than that it might provoke iritation or hurt. I've used it through circular movements on the cheeks, forehead, nase and chin. A couple of seconds - less than 30 - for each of this side is enough. 

After you are done, you can apply your usual daily creams. 

The brushes should be cleaned following every use and dried with a clean cloth. You need to be careful to not use it close to the eyes and, as in the case of all such products, keep them away from children. 

It is very easy to use - practically I do it early in the morning, with one hand, while the other hand is busy preparing the coffee and the breakfast. It makes it a good beauty care product for the time when too busy for scheduling an appointment at the beauty salon.  

Easy Peasy Apple Muffins Recipe

Apples are one of the main ingredients of a successful Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) table. You can bake them, or just slice them and dip them in the honey, turn them into kugel or...do whatever you want with them. Everything is accepted because...it's Rosh Hashanah. 

This year, I was very comfy with not cooking non-stop for days - or even weeks. I wanted to make things as simple as possible and bring love and happiness to an otherwise traditional table, instead of tired faces. Because muffins are a very loved baking item in our household, I had the idea to have them with apples. You have tradition, and little cakes and an easy baking process and not too many ingredients. Eff it! Ready, steady go!

Ingredients

1 cup white flour

8 gr. baking powder

2/3 cup white sugar

10 gr. vanilla sugar

4 medium-sized apples, finelly shredded

1 tablespoon cinnamon

Directions

Heat the oven at 250C, preferably at least 10 minutes before starting the baking.

Add the ingredients, one by one and mix well to have a homogenous composition.

Pour the content into the muffin papers.

Bake them until ready.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Baking time: 30 minutes

Serves: 12

Bon Appétit!