I really do love the cooler weather.  I enjoy snuggly sweaters and scarves and pants that cover my chubba-chubby thighs.   I like boots and hats and the shorter days, snuggling up with the kiddies and the kitties, and warm blankets.  And I really like soup.

I like to cook but a lot of what I cook goes unappreciated by the picky little boy that lives in my house and demands to be fed chips and waffles.  Anja will eat most of what I cook, as long as it doesn’t involve a lot of meat, but doesn’t really get excited about anything I make.  But there is one thing that always gets very literal jumps for joy:  chicken noodle soup.

One of the first really cool days here, I made some chicken noodle soup and boy, did it hit the spot.  I made it from scratch, simmering chicken, celery, onions, carrots, fresh parsley all day in my lovely Lodge pot.  As I stirred in my favorite egg noodles, and it made me reminisce about my own mother’s homemade chicken soup, and I started to think about another meal I had looked forward to in my own childhood: chicken and dumplings.

I had never made chicken and dumplings as an adult and when I looked for a recipe, I was surprised to see it was basically just chicken soup with biscuits cooked into it instead of noodles.  So I thought I’d attempt it and see how it all turned out.

In an effort to save time - there is always a shortage of time at home when it comes to making dinner - I decided to try some store-bought broth instead of making it allll the way from scratch.  I was surprised how nicely everything turned out, and it really was easy and quick to make this way.

The ingredients were simple and - score! - cheap:

2 boxes of chicken broth
1 bag of frozen boneless/skinless chicken breasts
3 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1 medium onion
a 4-pack of Pilsbury buttermilk biscuits (the kind that come in a can - they were the cheapest kind)
Milk - or, if you’ve recently passed a physical fitness test, heavy cream

This chicken soup-making phase has made me appreciate my large knife - it’s usually crappy but for chopping carrots and onions and chicken, it’s great!  Please, do not use a small kitchen knife even if it is a great small kitchen knife - your hands will fatigue very quickly.  And use a nice, heavy pot.  I don’t know why it makes such a difference, but it really does.

Boil the chicken until cooked and then drain it and chop it up.
Chop up the carrots, celery and onion.
Bring the broth to a simmer and add the carrots, celery and onion.  Let simmer for about 15 minutes.  Add in the chicken.  Bring the soup to a full boil.

Next comes the fun part: Pinch the biscuits apart into three pieces each.  Drop them into the boiling soup.  Cover your heavy pot with the heavy pot lid and let it boil away for about 5-7 minutes.  When you open the lid, magic!  The biscuits will be all big and poofy.  Start stirring it; the now-dumplings are firmed up enough that you can stir it without everything getting mushy and nasty.

Turn down the heat and let it simmer for another 10 minutes or so, and then stir in some milk.  I don’t know how much - I added probably about 1/2 cup.

The starch from the biscuits helps thicken up the broth a little bit and the cream makes it a really nice texture.  Keep some tongs handy to snip at the little fingers trying to fish extra dumplings out of the pot, and enjoy!

We are such suckers.

You have to click on it and see it bigger to really appreciate it but…isn’t it beautiful??

And I just had to share my jewelry wall…I don’t have enough space to hang all my fun/cheapy jewelry, and I didn’t have enough stuff up on my walls, so I killed two birds with one stone and made this:

Yummy!  Oooh, the self-restraint it took to take the pictures…

I wasn’t sure how these were going to go over - we don’t make a lot of fish because I’m pretty picky about it.  Having a fisherman husband from Iceland spoils you.  Between the char he’d catch in the ice-cold Þingvallavatn to the unbeliveably fresh halibut we ate for 6 months after he went to Alaska, I’m just picky.  And I’m OK with that.  You would be picky, too.

At any rate, I recently bought some frozen fish filets - flounder, I think? I laid them across wire racks and then sprinkled on chipotle pepper and garlic powder on them and let them thaw while the rub settled in.

Meanwhile, I made a simple pico de gallo from 4 red tomatoes, 2 yellow tomatoes, an onion, a bunch of garlic, some cilantro, kosher salt, and some lime juice.  I love lime.

After I baked the fish, I shredded it in a bowl and added a little more lime juice, and then assembled the tacos.  I softened the tortillas with the cheese on them to melt it, and then stuffed them nice and full of the fish, a little sour cream, pico de gallo, and some Boston lettuce.

The pico de gallo was so pretty and so tasty! I loved what the yellow tomatoes did to the appearance.

I will preface this by saying I am decidedly NOT a food photographer.  While I would like to be one, I cannot take the time to take a photo because if it looks good enough to take a picture, I can’t wait long enough to stage a good one.  So I snap and eat and upload and share and here you have tonight’s dinner: Egg and chorizo tacos!

This is so easy, relatively quick, and did I mention it is goooood?

The ingredients: 2 chorizo sausages, 3 eggs scrambled with some milk, and some frozen pepper and onion stir-fry blend.  Corn tortillas to facilitate getting the inside into your mouth, and cheese and sour cream to rocket this from “yummy” to “even-this-is-better-with-all-this-cheese-and-sour-cream-even-though-it-kicked-ass-before.”

I took the casings off the chorizo and chopped it and browned it in a hot pan.  Add the eggs and scramble into the chorizo.  Add some of the pepper and onion mix - I added about 2/3 of a cup, but I don’t do measuring unless I’m baking.

Next, fry your tortillas - CORN tortillas!  Heat up some oil in a small pan until it’s really hot.  I don’t know how to tell you how to tell if it’s hot enough, but I wait until it looks really hot and then wait another minute.  Then put the tortilla into the hot oil.  I press down lightly in the middle or else it bubbles up and doesn’t cook crispy enough.

Flip over when it starts feeling just a little bit firm.  It should be lightly brown at the edges.

Once both sides are done, drain the oil as much as you can, and then place on a paper towel and fold over.  I put the tongs on it to make it keep its shape.

Once it’s cooled enough just so that you can handle it, start stuffing it full of the chorizoey goodness and top generously with shredded cheese and sour cream.  It’s light sour cream, because that makes everything all better.

This photo does not do my dinner justice.  I know.  And I just don’t care.  Because it was goooood.  As you can tell, I had already eaten one before I got around to taking the picture, and still I couldn’t take the time to put together a nice picture because I needed to get it in my mouth.  Now.

Please don’t ask me how South Beach is going.

I was very excited for our trip this weekend - after nearly 3 years here, we still had not made it over to Portugal. This weekend being a long weekend - Columbus day, celebrating the Portuguese guy who sailed from Spain to re-re-discover America that had already been re-discovered by an Icelander.  (How do you like that?!)

Now before I go into my plans for Portugal, you should know that I’m generally not much of a planner - I like to make loose plans and just do whatever, but knowing we were on limited time and had a few things we wanted to do, our itinerary was as follows:

Leave around 1:00pm Friday afternoon for the Algarve coast and get to Portimão around 4pm and hang out doing whatever for the rest of the afternoon. Saturday morning, the plan was to leave in the morning for shopping for pottery in Porches, and then off to Lagos (la-GOOSH!) for a boating excursion that would take us to the beautiful grottos along the Algarve coast.  Then we’d head up to Lisbon in the early evening, staying in our hotel in the city overnight.  On Sunday, we’d venture up to Sintra in the morning and spend the late afternoon and evening exploring Lisbon, and then on Monday we’d hit the road early, stopping in Evora to admire a chapel of bones and some Roman ruins.

In reality, though, this is our how our trip went:

Got off work late, finally out of the house about 4pm.  Got to Portimão late Friday night, got lost finding our hotel, missed dinner.  We were so tired by the time we got in, plus it being late and dark and hard to navigate under such circumstances, we just hit the sack as soon as we got in.  Well, not as soon as we got in - first was dealing with the fact that I’d made the wrong reservations for our hotel in Lisbon, something I’d rather not discuss right now.  At any rate…

Saturday, woke up delightfully early and hit Porches for our pottery shopping.  We walked around town a bit, admiring the quaintness, the fun doors and decayed walls, and eventually made our way to a pottery shop.

I loved this shop, where the owner was painting in the back and selling his wares in the front.  He graciously allowed me to take pictures, and I walked out with a beautiful vase and a great, polka-dotted coffee mug.

Next we headed to Lagos where we were going to take our boat tour out to the grottoes.  Of course “the seas were angry,” and our very anticipated boat trip turned into sitting in a restaurant on the pier trying to figure out what to do next.  It was still early, so we didn’t eat but rather decided on a detour to Sagres; more specifically, to Cape St. Vincent, which was once believed to be the end of the world.  A great place to visit on Columbus Day weekend, the scenery was impressive and my mood improved from my earlier grumpiness about missing the boat trip I’d been looking forward to for weeks.

We explored an old fort and a castle in the area and admired the beautiful coastline before making our way back to Sagres for lunch - except that we missed lunch and everything was closed.  Still no Portuguese food, and by now I was really starting to want some Chicken Piri Piri that I kept seeing signs for.

We made our way up to Lisbon Saturday evening and attempted to un-cluster-f*#*) the very expensive cluster-f*#*)$@ I got myself into. The expensive part didn’t change much, but we were fortunate to be able to stay at the same hotel as our friends instead of all the way across town in a who-knows-what kind of neighborhood.  We set out for some Portuguese food but found only a seafood restaurant where I had bass, presented to me head and all.  It was…not what I expected in Portuguese food.  I’d been told how fabulous the food in Portugal was, especially coming from Spain where there isn’t a whole lot of flavor involved in cooking where we live.  The bass was simple, what I’d expect from any restaurant anywhere when it comes to a whole fish being made for my dinner.  The kids were unimpressed, as were our friends who got “vegetable” soup that looked like grass in a bowl of semi-creamy broth, but hey, at least the wine was good.

Sunday morning, another bright and early start to our day.  I was going to get my Piri Piri today, I was sure of it!  We decided to go up first thing to Sintra by train, which was, along with our plan to visit the grottoes along the Algarve coast, the other big to-do item on our list.  I have to say: Sintra did not disappoint.  At all.  In fact, I fell in love with it.  I wish I could move there and live in one of the old, beautiful homes nestled in the hills. Particularly, this one - the one turning colors:

Hiking and bussing our way up to one of the palaces, I was constantly in awe of this incredible town.

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant where I hoped to order my long awaited Piri-Piri, but instead had some unimpressive bacalhau.  While the food was not so great, the location was more eye candy:

This building, like many others, was decorated with ceramic tile.

A further bus ride up a very narrow, twisting road led us to the Palácio Nacional da Pena, where there is no way to describe how majestic and surreal this palace - this castle - really was.

After a very long time spent admiring both the outside and the inside (sorry, no pictures allowed!), we made our way down through the surrounding gardens.

By the time we were done, it was already 5pm.  We decided to forfeit the expensive already-paid-for tour of another palace (are you sensing yet how expensive this trip got for us?) and instead head back to Lisbon so we could get that nice, elusive Portuguese dinner.

But alas, it was not meant to be.  Due to some issues beyond our control, we ended up eating dinner at. a. mall.  Not quite how I expected our last dinner to be, but hey, at least now our kids could find something they liked.  With several restaurants to choose from, the kids had no problem finding what they wanted: pasta.  Boy, do our kids have adventurous taste buds.  (Note to self: next trip, Italy.) For me, piri piri?  No - no piri piri.  None to be found.  Instead, it was Israeli food cooked in Portugal by a Nepalese immigrant.  *sigh*.  At least there was still one more chance, Monday’s lunch.

Isak wolfed down his food - after all, he didn’t eat lunch because he wasn’t very pleased with the food he ordered in Sintra - but Anja just picked at hers, eating only a couple of bites.  After attempting dinner negotiations for quite some time, I finally conceded that she wasn’t going to take one more bite, as she was now complaining of a tummy ache.  I thought it was her way of avoiding eating something she regretted ordering, but an hour later when her bed was covered with puke, I realized her body was telling her that this food just wasn’t right.

After a very late trip to the pharmacy to talk to the Portuguese pharmacist that didn’t speak a lick of English followed by waking with her at midnight, 1:30am, 3am, and 5am while her body fiercely rejected every ounce of food, stomach acid and bile, and finding out that our friends’ son was going through the same thing 3 floors below us, we changed our plans to avoid Evora, preferring the fast route down the freeway and back into Spain where they could puke in the familiarity of home instead.

Despite the many changes of plans (and the lack of piri piri), we had a great time, took many pictures, and are already planning on going back another weekend soon, next time armed with Immodium AD and a restaurant guide that will guarantee me my elusive chicken piri piri.

To continue Part I of my Blogroll, I thought I would share a different side of my taste, one that’s less trashy and more tasteful. I know I said it’d be the food blogs but because of the current state of my house, I’ve been digging decor blogs lately in a big way.  I have this side of me that wishes I was creative and artistic in more ways than just relating to photography.  I really wish I had an eye for interior decorating.  I can spot what I like from afar but when it comes to decorating my own spaces, it’s not as easy for me.

I have, as you can tell shortly, an decorating identity crisis.

One blue wall to match the lovely curtains from Iceland as well as the fantastic painting that’s been in B’s family for years.  One wall with earthy tones, a line of beautiful tealight candle holders in shades of dark orange, green and brown, with an apple container and a handmade framed mirror made by Spanish nuns.  Dark wood coffee and end tables (that double as bookshelves as we don’t have space for a real bookshelf, plus books weigh a lot which we have to keep in mind when we move every few years) mixed with lighter wood entertainment center and secretary and even lighter computer desk.  Hideously stuffy dining room set with eclectic red and green paisleyish tablecloth - and thank goodness you can’t see the awful painting over the table.  Fortunately for everyone, said awful painting is soon to be replaced with very cool new art that will, in its very own way, not match anything else in my entire living room.

So we’ve established that in my decorating style, I suck.  I do have one place in my house that I like, and that’s my entranceway:

While the cat scratcher is admittedly out of place, I really like everytihng else.  The orange is shocking and yet it works, because it’s an awesome backdrop for the incredible painting that B bought for $20 at a thrift store - a total steal!  I also love the chest, a memento from B’s father’s days as a sailor.  It’s good for storage (which is at a premium in our little house) and makes a good surface for the lamp I picked up in Morocco, the elephant and the camel from the middle east, and a dark wooden basket filled with yummy smelling potpourri.  This is the one and only place in my house where I feel like it all matches itself, cat scratcher aside, but that’s because it’s one very small wall that has nothing else around it to display my inability to commit to one style.

I’ve been hoping that one of these decor blogs will inspire me to somehow get it together and be able to come up with something that makes sense.  It hasn’t happened so far, but hopefully when we move I’ll have a little more space to separate the things I like into their own spaces.  With that, I give you my blogs:

housemartin: I love her floral arrangements, her new brick & mortar store, and what she finds and posts from other places.  She’ll take you into a store and share great vignettes that make me envy everyone who lives near these kinds of places.

renovation voyeur: It’s not updated as often as I’d like, but who am I to talk, right?  At any rate, this site showcases renovation projects that take old, ugly rooms into wonderful spaces.  Inspires me to do some renovations myself, except for that whole bit about how I CAN’T.

Vintage Vavoom: Ignore the most recent post if it has anything to do with buttons, but please, do scroll down and see some of the projects that refinish old, or sometimes just ugly, items into pieces that fit into her style.  While a lot of her stuff isn’t exactly MY style, her blog reminds me that things can always be changed to fit individual tastes.  A dated brass lamp can be refinished into a custom lamp that fits perfectly into your mismatched living room.

small space style: Completely unattainable but really beautiful rooms in limited - though I wouldn’t go so far as to say “small” space.

haus maus: While Holly is better known for her other blog, decor8, I really like this one because it’s real decorating ideas that she’s putting together in her own renovated German apartment.  She’s got a lovely style that’s bright and charming, welcoming, and best of all, she has a very limited amount of space in which she can do this.  I can relate, except that I suck at decorating my small space.