eat, drink and just be!

run, shikamoo, run!

if you love food as much as i do and your job is sanitary like mine, you probably try to find ways to do some physical fitness. it has always been my concern with as much time as i spend at the computer, how stay healthy and sane. while i lived in san francisco, we had a great fitness studio across the street from our place which made it easier to exercise and harder to bring excuses not to! since i have moved to graz, it has been challenging to find a place that is close enough and i like it enough to exercise there. i also have so little time after work that i wouldn't have managed to go some where else for an hour of fitness and come back. i was lucky that i found a place by the river "mur" and since i came here i started running along the river. it's so peaceful by the river that my runs are even meditative for me. i started with 5k runs which i used to do in san francisco and added up a kilometer each ten days approximately. after about eight months now, i have run four half marathons and i try to run about three to four times a week.  although i should say running along the river is much more relaxing and fun than running in san francisco where i felt very stressed by so many people and cars. the first run i took part at was a 10k in at gesaeuse national park in austria. then i did a half marathon by woertersee. this one was a gorgeous run along a lake and it's a whole weekend event which brings a lot of people to this lake. although i was sick the whole week before my first half marathon, i managed to get through it with a pretty good time(02h.16min.) then i visited my husband and family in san francisco in september and while being there i ran the giant's half marathon which was a very fun run along the ocean from giant's stadium to golden gate bridge and back. it's the only run in san francisco which is not hilly. the temperature was also perfect and i improved my pace a little bit. a month after that i ran in grazer marathon and i got a bit faster and two weeks ago i finally ran with my sister in vienna at herbstlauf in prateralee. i used to run there when i lived in vienna and me and my husband got married there in the beautiful lusthaus. so i just have too many memories there. now that it's very wintery and cold here in austria i try to keep on running and stay motivated which is not very easy in the dark cold days, and although i love to eat austrian pastries, i try to eat them in moderation.;-)

now that i run a lot and i am also vegetarian, i am trying to find alternatives for my shikamooness to have tasty and healthy food to stay fit. i'm going to share these with you in my next posts and hopefully keeping you inspired.

holidays' summary

first of all happy 2012 to all my friends and dear readers from all over. since we can't celebrate it together, i try to summerize some of our holiday related food activities in this post. i start from the week before christmas when i made a couple of christmas cookies. i made two persian types of cookies to share with my frineds and bloggers from the bay area bonnie, gina, and patty. of course we missed many of you who are far away especially joanna.:-) i made raisin cookies and walnut cookies and a couple of days later i missed some austrian cookies as well and i made some vanillegipferl.

this was the first year we were at home for christmas and not some where else in the world. so we bought a tiny tree and my husband made a delicious beef wellington for the evening.

we lived in vienna over a decade and as much as we disliked the cold winters we enjoyed the winter activities a lot there. although it gets so cold, people are out all the time mostly because of the great tradition of having christmas markets all over the city that not only offers kitschy little gifts but also have great home made snacks and hot drinks. drinking gluehwein and hot punsch keeps you warm and you can stay outside and talk to your friends for the whole night when it's 10 degrees below freezing temperature. although we are not austrian we miss the culture a lot and we have some austrian friends here in the bay area. we decided to celebrate the holidays with them making hot drinks and eating some austrian traditional snacks. this way those of us who feel homesick get a little bit of warmth in our stomachs. we made three different types of hot drinks:

- gluewein: hot mulled wine: red wine, combined with spices and served warm. in austria they have the spices mixed like tea bags but since we don't have that here, we made them from scratch using some cloves, cinammon stick and anis. the best way to do it is to leave them in vodka and rum over night and then use the alcohol the next day. the proportions of wine, vodka, rum, ornages and orange juice depends on how string you want your drink to get. i guess the later in the night most people prefer to increase the amount of alcohol. one thing you have to be very careful about is to keep the drink on low heat all teh time. it should never get to boil.

- wiener feuerzangenbowle (viennese flaming fire tongs punch) is a hot new year's or winter punch made with red wine and rum. one of our friends even brought the main ingredient for this drink which is a big sugar cone. the process of making this is more fun than making other hot drinks. you have to pour all teh ingredients(wine, juice, ornages) in the pot first and then leave a gitter on top of the pot and put the sugar cone there then pour some rum on the sugar cone and set it in fire. the sugar-fire caramelizes and falls into the pot.

since we had a couple of kids and pregnant ladies among our guests as well, we serve a kinderpunch too.

- kinderpunsch is an alcohol-free hot punch which is made of hot apple or orange juice with spices.

 

 

 

foodbuzz blogger festival

i had a fantastic weekend taking part in foodbuzz blogger festival. i try to share and summarize my experience with you in one blog post. it was great meeting so many amazing bloggers especially ones that i have been following their blogs for so long and finally meet them in person. i also totally missed those of you who are far away and couldn't come all the way to san francisco. 

the festival started at the beautiful terra gallery with some wine and appetizers. i met a lot of interesting people there. first of all gina (who you might know her from those gorgeous cake pops she made). i should say gina also brings every one together. she has introduced so many fantastic bloggers from the bay area and all over to me such as emily. one of the bloggers who came to the festival from far far away; all the way from kuala lumpur is joanna. it was such a pleasure to finally meet her in person. check out her magnificent blog to get to know more about her chic and gorgeous treats.:-)

this is joanna taking picture of me taking picture of her (a recursive picture.)

after the coctail party, we had a magnificent dinner. there were so many good dishes that i just have to mention my favorite ones.

- ceviche shooters: these fantastic small portions of ceviche were made of snapper, lime juice, cilantro, jalapeno, and tomatoes. it has a lot of similarity to my seabass ceviche but i think it was marinated much longer which has given it a great flavor.

- brandade (salt cod) cakes: these fish cakes were one of the best little bites i had that night. the flavor of caramelized leek has made it so special.

there were tons of dishes but i only mention the ones that i really liked. i also was not a fan of the desserts. there was nothing very yummy to talk about.

second day started at federated media (foodbuzz headquarter) which is luckily a couple of blocks away from where i live. i took part in a couple of very interesting sessions. one of which that was very interesting was held by a couple of bloggers who are great photographers. it was great to hear their advice on how to take better pictures for you blog. the other session i went to was held by stella and irvin on how to use social network for your blog. since i am an engineer and nerd myself, i have my own resources to know a lot about social media technically but it's great to hear from non technical people about other aspects of it.

after the sessions we chit chatted a bit and then headed to metreon to the taste pavilion. for the tastings we could also bring our plus ones with. so i took my husband with me. since he comes from a farming family, he really enjoyed seeing all these californian local small farmers and food producers. i should say he specially enjoyed a fresh pressed apple sider since his father and granfather used to grow cherries and apples.

indeed there was a lot of marketing going on the taste pavillion but it was also very inspiring to see how some of the small local businesses has succeeded. one of my favorites were different small food makers that were sponsored by foodzie. they have a great blog that shows where each of the products come from. another favorite of mine was to talk to endive growers. you might know from my post on endive salad that i am such a fan of endives. i have to eat about three of them each week at least. they are a great snack and also good in different salads or great to fill them with dips. meeting these california vegetable specialists, i learned that all endives produced in the us come from this one place in northern california which was started in 1978 (so endives in the us are almost the same age as me.)

another interesting product was ticings.com. they make beautiful edible customizable icing sheets and artisan sprinkles. i would love to use their icings on brownies in different occasions.

at the tasting pavilion i was also lucky to meet tyler florence and get his autogram. he also demoed cooking pork chops at the gala dinner the same night. the saturday's dinner was mostly a better food but we were a bit rushed into eating it that i couldn't enjoy it as much. but it was great anyways to meet all the bloggers again and spend more quality time with them. we also ended up going for another drink afterwards to continue our converstions.

some of the hightlights of gala dinner was brandt beef farms filet mignon and meyer lemon roasted prawns or heirloom carrots, celery root puree, and pepper demi. this was delicious, especially i really like the heirloom carrots. the dessert was a san francisco trio: - sourdough bread pudding - cowgirl creamery cheesecake - scharffen berger chocolate mousse. from the three of them only the cheesecake stood out. i really love cowgirl creamery products. they are some of the finest and best cheese in the city. this dessert was the only one that had a very suttle taste. the other two were too sweet that you couldn't taste the great ingredients.

it was a wonderful experience to be part of foodbuzz bloggers' festival and enjoy all these activities with like-minded bloggers and friends. i totally recommend to any food bloggers who are interested to take part next year and i'm thanksful to foodbuzz that has brought us all together. i'm very happy that i took part but also very tired of not having a weekend. so i am going to enjoy a restful weekend sitting at the fire, reading books, and drinking tea. hope you have a great weekend too. either anventurous of relaxing.

 

 

foodbuzz 24X24: hallowien kuerbisfest

since me and my husband lived in austria for over a decade and used to go to the pumpkin province of austria - styria - where "kuerbisfest" or "pumpkin festival" was celebrated every october, we wanted to bring a bit of the austrian autumn to san francisco. to introduce some cultural and culinary experiences to the city and combine them with halloween, we invited a couple of friends to our home for "hallowien," which, in german, means  "hello vienna." to make our event even more special, foodbuzz is featuring our "hallowien kuerbisfest" for their october 24x24 food event. the foodbuzz's 24x24 showcases food blog posts from 24 foodbuzz featured-publisher-bloggers of 24 unique meals occurring around the globe during a 24-hour period. i am thrilled to be featured this month.

for the event, i decided to have all courses somehow related to pumpkin. for that, i found several great recipes from an austrian recipe database: ichkoche.at. if you know german, this is a great collection of recipes. since i don't live there any more and have access to more variety of produce in california, i tried to make variations on the recipes and create some of my own ideas.

we started off with a kuerbissalat (pumpkin salad), steirische kuerbiscremesuppe (styrian cream of pumpkin soup), and kuerbisauflauf (pumpkin casserole.) 

ingredients for pumpkin salad:

- mixed greens

- cocktail tomatoes

- pumpkin chunks

- pumpkin seeds

- pumpkin seed oil

brush the pumpkin chunks and seeds in separate baking dishes with some olive oil and lime juice and leave them in the oven. preheat the oven to 350f.  leave the seeds for 10 - 15 minutes in the oven and the pumpkin pieces for 30 minutes. mix them with the greens and tomatoes and garnish it with the pumpkin seed oil. this oil is very common in styria. it has a very strong taste and aroma which makes it a perfect garnish for very simple salads. i prefer to have it even just with mixed greens. 

 

ingredients for the soup:

- four small pumpkins

- three shallots

- one whole garlic

- butter

- vegetable broth

- sour cream

- chives

- parsley

- marjoram

- cumin seeds

- salt and pepper

- pumpkin seeds

- pumpkin seed oil

- ginger

i baked the pumpkins for 30 minutes, then carved the insides out; this way it was much easier to carve. chop shallots and garlic and saute them in a dutch oven with butter, crushed ginger and cumin seeds. add the squash meat and saute a couple of minutes. add vegetable broth slowly. stir and let it cook on low for twenty minutes. taste and add salt and pepper. mix the soup in a food processor with chives, marjoram, and sour cream. garnish it with pumpkin seeds, parsley, and pumpkin seed oil.  guten appetit (as the austrians say)!

ingredients for pumpkin casserole:

- two layers of puff pastry

- six eggs

- bacon

- two shallots

- pumpkin chunks

- celery root 

- mozzarella cheese

- butter

chop the bacon and shallots in small pieces and saute them together until there's no fat left on the bacon. saute the celery root chunks and pumpkin chunks about ten minutes. in a bowl mix eggs, salt, pepper and the sauteed ingredients. preheat the oven to 450f and smear butter on two baking dishes. lay the puff pastry on the baking dish. pour the mix in the baking dishes and bake it for twenty to thirty minutes. add mozzarella on top and bake for another ten minutes. enjoy.

after having so much as appetizers we needed a break before starting with the main dish. we also paired most of our meal with a great dry austrian gruener ventliner. it's a very refreshing dry wine which i really enjoy with vegetarian food or lighter meals.

we recently bought a small projector and we decided to make this year's halloween a bit more scary and fun by having a movie marathon during the food feast. the only problem is that when you eat so much, you get sleepy and can't watch too many movies.:-) we should have started our party earlier but then we couldn't use the projector because it was still daylight. we have so many leftovers that we should have scary movie nights the whole next week.;-)

finally although we were so full, i served the main dish. it also took a long time to cook it. i cook rice very often but mostly persian style. this time i wanted to make a risotto, so our main dish was pumpkin risotto with baked chicken.

i salted and peppered the whole chicken with potatoes, whole carrots, onions, and rosemary and put it all in a dutch oven, in the oven. after about half hour, i added two cups of broth and let it cook for another two hours. in the meanwhile, every twenty minutes, i basted the chicken.

ingredients for pumpkin risotto:

- four small pumpkins

- six cups arborio rice

- two bottles of dry white wine

- one litre of vegetable broth 

- saffron

- three shallots

- olive oil

- nutmeg

halve the pumpkins and bake them about 40 minutes in the oven. carve the meat out and keep the skins for filling the risotto in later. peel and chop shallots and saute them with olive oil in a big dutch oven. add the pumpkin in and add salt and pepper. add one cup of rice and a cup of wine and stir. keep on adding rice and wine and broth and stiring. never let the risotto get dry. taste every now and then and adjust the amount of salt and pepper. dissolve one teaspoon of saffron in hot water and add to the mix. add a little bit of nutmeg for taste. fill the pumpkin halves with the rissoto and enjoy it with or without the chicken.

for dessert, i made some scary cupcakes and pumpkin tiramisu. i won't explain the cupcake in this post because i used the same ingredients as the cake pops i made last week.

ingredients for pumpkin tiramisu:

- six egg yolks

- one cup mascarpone cheese

- two cups espresso (cooled)

- four spoons port wine

- fourty lady fingers

- one cup heavy whipped cream

- one cup pureed pumpkin

- three spoons sugar

- one teaspoon cinammon

- one teaspoon vanilla powder

- pumpkin seeds

in a large bowl beat egg yolks and sugar until thin and pale. add mascarpone and beat until smooth. add cinammon, vanilla, whipped cream and pumpkin and mix for another two minutes. in a bowl mix port wine and espresso. dip each ladyfinger into the espresso mix for a couple of seconds and place them in small dishes for a layer. spread a layer of mascarpone mix  over ladyfingers. arrange another layer of soaked ladyfingers and top with mascarpone mix again. leave tiramisu in the fridge for a couple of hours. sprinkle with pumpkin seeds and cinammon. guten appetit!

we had so much food and our guests also brought some wonderful cupcakes that we didn't manage to eat any of the tiramisu! we need another party to eat all the leftovers! 

thanks to foodbuzz for the opportunity and looking forward to next weekends foodbuzz blogger festival.

 

 

 

 

 

meeting bakerella

me and three other bloggers (bonnibella, spcookiequeen, and eatliverun)  from the bay area got the opportunity to meet bakerella at a cake pop contest at foodbuzz office today. bakerella (angie dudley) is in san francisco today for her book tour and foodbuzz hosted a cake pop contest. so i had to make a dozen of cake pops. i'll tell you all about my experience with cake pops. i have never made them before and reading and seeing it on so many blogs and videos, it seemed to be straight forward and easy to make these little cute things. but i should tell you that the reality is really different. especially if you try to think out of the box and change the ingredients a little bit to create your own cake pop it can get very tricky.

i explain the whole process of how to make cake pops in general and teh challenges i had with it. then i'll explain briefly how this amazing time with bakerella and foodbuzz team went. the basics of making cake pop is almost the same as cupcakes. you need the same sort of ingredients. the difference is only in how you implement it. you bake the cake first, then you crumble the cake. ( i prefer to use a fork to crumble them into very tiny pieces.) then you add frosting into the cake crumbles and make a dow with it, then make tiny balls , or other shapes you want out of the dow and leave these little creatures in the fridge and let them cool for a couple of hours.

melt the chocolate or other type of coating you have in a bowl inside a boiling water pot. i prefer this method to the microwave one because it melts the chocolate slower and is more consistent and you can keep it warm while you are dipping all your cakes in. then take the balls out of the fridge. insert a lollipop stick and dip them in the melted chocolate or other dip you prepared. then let them cool on a styrofoam or egg cartons.  

i made my cake a pumpkin cake to give it a seasonal taste and added saffron to white chocolate for my coating to only use natural made colors. the trick with saffron is that you need to dissolve it first in hot water and doing so and adding the hot water to the melting white chocolate totally changed the consistency of the chocolate which is not optimal for dipping. since the chocolate gets less thick it's more pain in removing the extras from the balls. i also used pieces of pistachoes to decorate my cake pops, because for me they are already very sweet and can't have yet another sweet layer on top of them. 

i also added some rose water and orange zest into the white chocolate to give a little more flavor that goes well with saffron. unfortunately bakerella didn't even taste our cake pops and she judged only by their looks and of course there were some amazing looking cake pops from some bloggers and foodbuzz team. it was fantastic seeing bakerella and asking for advice about cake pops. she also signed a copy of her book for us and it was such a great pleasure to meet her. she is such a sweet heart and an amazing person. it was great hearing her success story from her. hope you get to try making cake pops and for more tips and tricks check out her books and you'll see how many different variations of them you can make for every possible event. enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

hike and bbq

in recent weeks we have been having indian summer in san francisco, which means it's much warmer than the middle of summer. so we try to get out of the city as often as we can on the weekends and spend some time hiking, not only urban hiking as in the colder months of the year. a friend of mine, negin, has suggested a fun idea: let's go hiking every weekend and then bbq afterwards. which totally makes sense because we burn some calories when hiking and then we are allowed to have a feast and eat a lot of yummy food afterwards.:-)

in the last weeks, we the hike and bbq plan twice. once we went to the redwoods of portola state park. one sad news about state parks in california is that about 70 of them are closing due to the budget cuts this year. please share your ideas to help them not get closed on the page i have linked to.

after a gorgeous hike in the woods we headed to negar and houman's place and they made a fantastic bbq persian style. two of my favorite persian kabobs are joujeh kabob(grilled chicken) and koubideh(ground meat kabob). here i explain briefly how persians marinate the meat before grilling.

ingredients for joujeh kabob:

- chicken legs or chicken breast pieces

- lime juice(one lime for each two pieces of meat)

- yogourt(one spoon for each two pieces of meat)

- olive oil (enough)

- salt and pepper

- saffron (melted in a cup of boiled water)

you marinate the chicken in these and leave it over night or for at least a couple of hours. then put them on the skewer and grill them on a medium heat.

ingredients for koubideh:

- ground beef or ground lamb 

- one onion for each kilo of meat

- salt and pepper

peel and grind the onion and combine it with the meat in a bowl. kneat with your hands for five to ten minutes to form a paste that will adhere well to cooking skewers. cover the paste and let stand for 15 minutes in the room tempreture. using dampt hands roll small portions of the pasteinto a sausage shape and mold it firmly around a flat, sword-like skewer. (you can find these skewers in middle eastern stores. do not ever try to use other types of skewer, because i have tried and that causes a disasterous fall of the meat in the fire.) cover and keep the meat cool for a couple of hours. grill on a medium heat 3-4 minutes on eat side. you can also grill tomatoes, bell peppers, and onion on skewers. persians like the grilled tomatoes the most because it adds great juice when you eat the kabobs with rice. nousheh jahn!

halfway to septuagenarianism

it was my husband's 35th bithday and i tried to make it special for him. so we invited about 25 of our friends to party together. when i wanted to plan the party i thought of small dishes that are easy to eat and can mostly be served cold as well without loosing their taste. after looking in cooking magazines and different food blogs, and using my creativity a little bit, i came up with these dishes to prepare:

- lemon orzo with chicken

- bacon quiche

- black-bean chili

- proscuitto-wrapped pears and apples

- mango schrimp ceviche

- caprese salad

- fennel potatoes

- grilled pepper poppers

- edamame succotash

- endive salad bites

- chevre and walnut filled dates

in addition, i made a chocolate-strawberry-hazelnut cake as well. i made so much frosting that i still need to make another cake to make use of that.:-)

some of the dishes were more time consuming than i expected, especially when you want to prepare for a huge number of people and some were just as easy as they sound. i'll post the recipes for each on seperate posts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

yellow stone and grand teton

it was our anniversary and there's no better way to celebrate it in the wilderness. we hiked a lot, saw tons of wild animals and unique landscapes. we saw beautiful geysers and hot springs in yellowstone. tons of beautiful herds of animals such as bisons and elks in the gorgeous hayden valley and lamar valley. even a couple of grizzly bears; three of them eating a dead bison. we had wonderful hikes to some beautiful scenic mountains at grand tetons and enjoyed being surrounded with cold water lakes on the mountains.

the only thing that was a bit rough while camping in yellow stone and grand teton was finding diverse ingredients for grilling at nights and sandwitches for hiking. so we ended up eating pretty monotone for most of the week. eggs or omlettes in the morning, cheese or other cold cut sandwitches for lunch, and grilled saussages, and vegetables at nights.

having only one mini burner and a very hot fire could be challenging some times. i guess after this trip we mastered the tempretures for grilling on the camp fire and cooking omlettes on our burner. the vegetables we grilled were usually corn, tomatoes, bell pepper, garlic, and potatoes. we even made use of some of them in the omlette of the next morning.:-) 

the only fancy dinner we had was on our anniversary night at Jackson Lake lodge with a fantastic view of a valley with moose, elk, and tons of birds. i totally recommend their huckleberry margarita while you are sitting in the balcony. i should say the quality of fine dining was not comparable with any fine dining experience in the big cities, but at least there was a nice variety of local ingredients such as: elk salami and bison carpaccio as appetizers. elk salami was very lean and enjoyable. the bison carpaccio was a bit bland for me but maybe it was just the way they prepared it and the meat itself might be more flavorful. my main dish also was a nice cut of elk meat but the sides were not very special. what i enjoyed a lot was a chocolate dish as dessert which included a very heavy chocolate mousse (not a moose though) and a very nice cold mocca.

i totally recommend yellow stone and grand teton for the wonderful adventures and volcanic activities in the area. i could bear  the lack of diversity in food since those unique views are totally worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

paella and camping

last weekend we went an hour east of the city to get more sunshine and less wind and just be in nature with a group of friends and enjoy hanging out at the fire and eat and drink together. we also ended up swimming in sacramento river. that area is not very touristy which makes it a perfect place for a spontaneous camping trip. we were about ten people and each time we go camping a couple of people take responsibility for food. this time were the spaniards turn and they took it to the full extend and created two rounds of wonderful paella on campfire.paella is a valencian dish and apparently more common on the east coast of spain. i have really good memories of having wonderful paellas in barcelona as well. but our friends are from madrid but still they made wonderful paellas. since i was not the chef i share chef henar and chef ernestos recipes that you may enjoy it next time you go camping. i always thought making paella is so complicated that you can't make it on a camping trip but these guys totally changed my mind.they first cooked pieces of chicken with some olive oil in the pan on the fire and stirred that it doesn't burn on one side. then added some onions, and rice. as soon as the rice is in you should add some liquid that it doesn't get burned and it gets the flavor. so they added some beer. to give the paella some delicious flavor they added saffron, paprika powder, salt and pepper. they they covered the pan with an aluminum foil that the rice cooks. then added seafood to the mix, some shrimps, clams, and calamari pieces. already looked so yummy. then decorated it with some colorful bell pepper and served it camping style. it was so delicious and enjoyable to have such a great meal at the campsite. also to make it more enjoyable they made a fresh sangria to go with it. ¡Que aproveche!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

yosemite part II and artichoke stew

 

a friend of mine had a spontaneous idea to get a couple of days off in the middle of the week and go to yosemite when no one else is there. the three of us girls decided and the next day left the bay area to go to that direction. first day we stopped at hetch hetchy reservoir where the drink water of san francisco comes from. it was a great hike around the reservoir with several water falls on the way. it was such a hot day that we didn't mind getting soaked under the water falls although the water was freezing cold.

the next day we hiked more inside yosemite national park. comparing to two weeks ago that i was there, it has changed totally. there was not as much snow any more and water falls had tons more water with a lot more pressure in them. since we hiked along side vernal falls we totally got soaked head to toe  again which kept us fresh for the other hikes we did for the rest of the day. i can't wait to go back to yosemite but this time hopefully all roads are open and i can hike up to high country where there are beautiful lakes as well. on the way back to the city the shikamoo(means some one who loves eating in persian) me had to stop at farms on the way near mantecca and got some fresh vegetables and fruits. i got fresh artichokes and onions. the onions still had their stems which makes them more delicious. it's like having red onion and green onion both in one. i came back home and my husband was sick. so i decided to make a stew with those vegetables i bought on the way. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ingredients:

- butter

-  two artichockes

- two onions

- four heirloom tomatoes

- four more tomatoes or diced tomatoes

- one bell pepper

- fresh mint

- dried or fresh tarragon

- salt and pepper

- two limes 

wash and chop all vegetables except the artichokes and saute them for ten minutes with butter. add diced tomatoes and let them cook another ten minutes with the lid of the dutch oven on. then add two cups of water and put the artichokes in the stew that it cooks with the steam of the stew for half hour. turn them around after twenty minutes and let them cook more. saute the chopped fresh mint in some butter and mix it with some fresh pressed lime juice and add it on top of the artichokes before serving the stew. nousheh jahn!