How to be an awesome hostess | no big deal chocolate chip cookies

I absolutely love it when people drop by at my place for A Cup of Joe and a chat. 
As I live close by the city center and my love for a good cup of coffee is common knowledge among friends and family this luckily happens quite often.
When there is a coffee-related surprise visit there are some basics that need to be covered;

No big deal chocolate chip cookies

24 before turning 24 | semplice insalata di pasta italiana

Today is my fifth day as a temporary vegetarian {for more info click here or here}and I already ate some incredibly good stuff. Stuffed red onion, mushroom lasagna, pasta italiana, ... I'll try my best to put the adapted recipes on here asap.

vegetarian antipasto salad as a lunch on the train.

I could have called this salad: simple vegetarian antipastopasta salad. But seriously; why should you call it like that if you could easily use translate.google.com to spice this shit up?


Now on a completely different note! As I told you before I wrote a letter to myself to read one year from now, when I'll be turning 24. Old and shit. Life moves fast. One day you're crawling around with a diaper and the next second you're living alone doing grown-up stuff. Together with that letter I made a list with 24 things to do before I turn 24.

23 random joyful facts | Birthday

23 joyful facts on the first day of my life as a 23-year old

1. Yesterday I had the most amazing birthday ever.

2. The day {and night} was filled with love, laughter, pie and booze.

3. Right now, my kitchen table is filled with pie leftovers, empty botles of wine and roses.

4. Today, I wrote a letter to myself to read a year from now. I'll try to post it tomorrow on here. No promises.

5. I baked two pies yesterday. A chocolate-meringue pie and my no-fail apple pie. {recipes coming soon}

6. The chocolate meringue pie failed hard.

7. My dear friends baked some delicious goods themselves. There was a chocolate mousse pie, a frangipane-pearcake and home made cookies in different varieties. I felt very blessed.

8. My friends made me a crown. They've put a lot of work into it. I wore it ALL NIGHT. I was very proud to have such amazing friends.

9. Today we ate leftover birthdaycake as breakfast. It's my favorite! 

10. I loved to win every discussion with the argument: 'but it's my birthday, so I'm right...'

11. My little sister laughs at my poor English grammar. She's right. That sucks.

12. She became a fan anyway. Deep down (really deep though) she's a sweetheart.

13. My friends are AWESOME at picking out things I like.

14. I got 2 cookbooks: Vegalicious and a DonnaHaybook.

15. I got 4 beautiful, big, colorful, eclectic plates. I couldn't have chosen them better myselve.{pictures; soon} Mr boyfriend gave me a big white tappasplate. It's so simple and lovely. He's the best.

16. On her way to the party one of my friends dropped her present; so one superduperprettypink bowl was broken before it even got here. She felt terrible. Lucky enough the smaller one survived. It's so completely my style and I'm absolutely in love with it.

17. One of my best friends stayed over to sleep. I love it when she sleeps over; it always feels like a slumberparty that way. We giggle and eat pie in bed and talk shit about everything. We find ourselves incredibly funny. 

18. That's cause we are. Duh.

19. The 22d year of my life was a magical one. I don't like to talk all butterfly and rainbow with unicorn shizzle, but if I had to describe my past year it would be exactly like that.

20. Life right now is going bonkers; so I'm pretty sure next year has the power to beat the previous one in terms of awesomeness. 

21. Twenty three sounds really adult-ish. 

22. I didn't do shit today; except lying in bed and writing that letter {see 4.}

23. It was the best day after my birthday ever!

Picture taken in Budapest by my dear and extremely talented friend Alex.

My last days with meat | Parsnip and apple soup with bacon

So, this is it. My final days of eating meat before the Days without meat-challenge (DWM) starts. From the 22nd of fFbruary on I won't eat meat, nor fish, for 46 days. At least; that's the challenge.

For more information click here for a previous post or here for the {dutch} website with all the information and stuff...

So right now, I'm saying goodbye to bacon; goodbye lovely chicken; goodbye delicious salmon and goodbye steak sandwiches. I'm cleaning out my fridge while saluting all of these loved ones who didn't make it to the end.

But hey, let's take a look at the brighter side; Hello falafel! Good evening vegieburger! Welcome home marinated tofu! Nice to meat you, chickpea's!

For the ones that will ask thé question: No, I don't really talk to food! Ok, .. just sometimes maybe... Once in a while... quite often, actually. So what?

While cleaning out the fridge I found these little pieces of bacon. They fit in just perfect with this parsnip velouté.

1 recipe: 2 styles | Chocolate beet (cup)cake

Oh my beloved beets,

How I love the way you look at me -from the corner of the table; 

the way you dance around in my mouth; 

the way you touch my hands and make them be seen. 

I admire your dark purple color and your uniqueness.

You change not only the color of my hands, my clothes and my urine {fo real} but also the color of any food that crosses your road. 

And for that; I love you. 

You complete my salads, my burgers and more recently - 'my' chocolate cake.

You understand me.

Once again I used one recipe to bake 2 seperate dishes. One {special} version contains a pie with cinnamon-honey frosting; the {more simple} other version are cupcakes with vanilla whipped cream.

Days without meat; introduction | The easiest flippin' aussie-burger ever

Let me start off on a more serious note:
From the 22nd of february on I will eat no more meat for the following 46 days. Or at least, that's the challenge.


'Days Without Meat (DWM) is an action for and by non-vegetarians. It's sort of a challenge to raise awareness, that teaches us about how much little things can do, but to also reduce our ecological impact in the longer term
The game takes place in the fasting period: from 22/2 to 7/4. Each vegetarian day saves 11m2 on your carbon footprint.'

Left: me. Right: mr boyfriend. Just saying.

I will keep you posted on my experiences as a newbe and temporarily vegetarian but most of all
I will share with you my vegetarian recipes, straight from the kitchen.


If you want to have some inspiration in advance:
Mashes chickpeas with dill and garlic
Greek salad
Greek tomato-rice soup 


So from the 22nd of february, this blog will be all vegetarian shizzle. 
Woopwoop!

Until that day, I still have some delicious recipes with meat to share with all of you.

This, for example; is the easiest juiciest aussie-burger you've seen in your whole damn life. 

My favorite's favorite: guest post | Mashed chickpeas with dill and garlic

{Goodmorning, y'all!
From NOW on every few weeks I will ask some of my favorite friends/ bloggers/ artists/... to post their very favorite recipe. 
So it's a favorite's favorite sorta thing. 
Incredible idea right?! 
Can someone buy me new socks, please? 
...
Cause mine just blew off!
I'm happy to start this series of guest posts off with the delicious food from the vegetarian table of The Bitchetarian. 
If you didn't fall in love with her just yet... 
Beware!
You will! 
Fo sure!}

::drum roll please::

It's a guest post!  My first one, to be specific. I'm wayyyy excited to be posting here on Not Your Mama's Dinner, as Eva is a kindred spirit - snarky, hungry, and easily distracted. Plus her audience is mostly Dutch-speaking, which means I won't be able to understand disapproving comments. Instead I will assume they are all glowing and continually congratulate myself on a job well-done.

  

How to cope with the cold | Greek tomato soup with rice

In my opinion, there are 2 ways to cope with the cold weather that is currently torturing europe.

The first option includes eating salad {this greek salad; for example}, putting your heating way up high while putting on a bathing suit. I also recommend at this point to pretend your boyfriend {mother, sister, whatev'} is a lama and you're doing a trip trough the mountains. Just because.

Music to pair this mood with: Bob marley- Sun is shining

Warning: if you're currently trying to ignore the cold and singing along with Mr. Marley;

stop reading.

I'm serious.

It's going to be snowy down here.

At the risk of sounding like a smart-ass

Today this blog celebrates its first month(!) anniversary.
And this, we do in glory.
Let's have a party with our new title/header!

They grow up so fast, don't they...

During this first month I've already learned a lot.
Of course I'll share my 'phenomenol wisdom' with you, guys. Of course!

1. Photoshop is a bitch.
2. Taking pretty pictures of food is difficult as hell.
3. Surfing around the (blogging) web can be kinda addictive.
4. My knowledge of the English language sucks monkey balls. 
5. When you google 'how to seduce mother-in-law' you find my blog. Next to really disgusting porn and gross guys who literally want to seduce their mother-in-law. To... you know ... give her a good time ... in the bedroom...  For real!
6. Keep your friends close; your talented friends even closer. The wonderful Marmushka made the awesome header/title/banner you see on top! Be sure to check out her drawings at her blog. She's amazing. I'm such a lucky bastard to know her.
7. Don't fool around with the follow-button. He doesn't like to be played with. He will erase all of your followers when he gets angry. So if you once followed me, as you can see, you don't anymore. So go ahead and click the follow-button. It won't bite you. I hope. If this is your first visit; feel free to join the madness.
   {Tomorrow I'll make a facebookpage which you can join to keep regularly and freshly updated}
8. 
   

source: via pinterest - madebykaylie.com

Tomorrow: how to cope with the cold; a greek and tasty soup!

music to pair this lovely day with: The asteroid galaxy tour - The golden age

One step behind | 3 pop tarts

I'm not a trendsetter.

I never was one... 

{The soulja boy socks I tried to set as a trend -strangely enough- didn't make it }

I'm afraid I never will be.

I'm just always ONE step behind.

It's a shame, really.

Last week, for example, I bought the cutest little pair of shoes {picture is comming up}.
Only to find out that everybody {and with that, I mean all of my friends} seemed to have the same ones already in their closet.

So most of my conversations now tend to go like this:

Fainting | 1grilled feta greek salad - 2 styles

I fainted two times in my life.
For some reason I can relate both stories to food.
But then again, I could probably relate almost every story to food.

styling A - In a jar!