X-mas meals

And here is most of my meals for X-mas eve and day, I thought I'd share them because even for me, it was a different kind of X-mas meal than I'm used to at my home town. In Portugal there are variations of what should go to the table according to the region: some cook turkey, some lamb, salted codfish, cow meat marinated in whine and garlic, and so on... This was my grandparents' version:

There were some home-made olives, salad, cooked shrimp, whine and the seafood soup at the center

- For x-mas eve, we had seafood soup, salted codfish cooked and then baked with mashed potatoes and a few more treats on an extra table (because the dinner table was just too small (or full?:D)

The seafood soup

I forgot to take a picture at the codfish and mashed potatoes at the beggining, but I still wanted to show you (If I could I'd get you to taste a bit, it was really good) This is what was left when I remembered:

And this was the worse part, or the best:

"The extra table"

Back row: a sweet my grandma made out of almonds and sweet potato, dark dry figs, almonds and raisins, white figs.

Bottles: 2 different home-made liquors, one out of goat milk and the other one out of figs.

Front row: 2 types of olives, bolo-rei and pumpkin puffs. I couldn't find a better translation for the puffs but in portuguese it's called "filhoses".

By X-mas morning the puffs were gone and for lunch we had roasted chicken with potatoes:

We could only eat one for lunch (5 people)

I took this one just for reminding myself how I should roast mine:

This next week I'll have soups and very little or preferably no sugar and minimum amounts of food so I can burn the weekend's.

Portuguese dish

What we had for lunch today with some visitors:

This is something my grandparents used to eat on their childhood, after going to church on Saturday morning, for lunch. They're usually served with cabbage leaves and some potatoes, carrots or just bread (due to the lack of resources back then) topped with olive oil. It's not very common to see people eating these blood and rice sausages because they're very high on calories and have a lot of fat content. I personally love them but it's something I eat once a year or less.

This is how it looks on the inside:

We also got fresh olive oil, homemade, and I love it when it still hasn't settled so I thought I' show you how it looks like.

Even with the flash, you can clearly see it's not clear and in cold weather it tends to coagulate and look really bad. If i can make it freeze I'll make sure to take a picture.

This year my family got 40kg of olives: 12kg to eat and the rest to make the olive oil. Here's a little sample of the olives already sliced, cooked in garlic, salt and bay leaf. They're stored in the cooking water with all the other ingredients in.

The sausage with potatoes and cabbage is a very heavy dish. We ate about 3/4 of one of these sausages and refused to dine anything other than a light salad and an (smaller) egg. Sometimes the egg I use is smaller than most eggs. It's not a quail egg. There's a variety of small chicken that lay eggs half the size of normal chicken eggs, but they're nearly double the size of quail eggs. I got some fresh ones yesterday so we used them as they're from family members.

I might show you some more Portuguese cuisine tomorrow so stay close ^^

Farinheira with scrambled eggs

Hi everyone, it's finally starting to rain! I really love the rain and it's started to cool too. I don't usually buy farinheira but my grandparents offered me some and they were calling for me from the freezer so I used them up.

This is a VERY high caloric dish, traditional from my country Portugal. I usually do it when I need something done quickly but only when someone brings the farinheiras for me, or else I just don't do it (last time i did this was on Spring). Farinheira with scrambled eggs is usually an appetizer and people don't make meals out of it (at least not traditionally, I know a couple of people who cook this for meals).

You can see in the picture that the balance is completely off: I made too much protein and too little vegetables. Well, the veggies shrank as I sauté'd them and the couscous was put in there in a hurry. So from left to right we have:

- Sauté'd vegetable mix;

- Couscous with 2 olives on top;

- Farinheira with scrambled eggs.

I was satisfied with how fast I could assemble this and how much I enjoyed multi-tasking in the kitchen while the bf washed the dishes. I have to start thinking of next week's dishes >.<

Codfish with eggs and potatoes

A traditional portuguese dish that is quite fast to made but very high caloric. I hadn't made it in months and since I've been running short on ideas, I had to cook something.

 

In the end, it came up quite funny. I cut the tomato and blanched the greenies there. For more color I cut some carrot and started making a little garden. I know it's autumn, it was something spontaneous.

Octopus rice

Good morning!

Today's cooking wasn't that much of a great choice but it was done already, so I used it.

I added some carrots and green peas on the side, and an apple for dessert (usually the whole apple goes in the bag along with the tupperware so it doesn't darken. The octopus on the rice shrank a LOT so it's mostly rice and no octopus