Roasted Eggplant with Tomatoes and Basil

Before I left for my trip, I made a few recipes for the holidays, which I mentioned here.  As promised, is recipe #1!


I decided to make the holiday an homage to Smitten Kitchen, which always has such beautiful dishes.  We ended up making four of her recipes!  Before this, I hadn't made a single one.  :(  Smitten Kitchen is actually the first blog that I ever followed, thanks to the friend that accompanied me to London & Paris.


For holidays, typically my mom cooks the proteins, my sister does the starchy sides or a non-protein entree, and I am in charge of the veggies and desserts.  After calculating how many people we would need to feed, I settled on three vegetable dishes and one dessert.


The first vegetable recipe that I chose was the Roasted Eggplant with Tomatoes and Mint.  It was so delicious and beautiful, I think everyone should definitely make it for their own holidays, or even a regular meal.

I made a few changes here and there to the original recipe.  I used a soft mozzarella instead of the ricotta salata, due to availability.  I lessened the amount of capers to cut out some sodium, for my dad's sake.  Instead of mint, we used the fresh basil from our garden.  All in all, minor changes but still a beautiful dish.  Here's my version!


Roasted Eggplant with Tomatoes and Basil
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Saturday Synopsis & Giveaway Winner!

Happy weekend!

Not much planned with my guy away for the weekend.  I'll probably end up getting some work done and maybe even get started on the Pencil Skirt Challenge!

Don't forget about the 10 - 15% discount to JSM Tailoring Tools (see details here on how to get the discount).  It will end in 2 weeks, so make sure to get your Chakoner and your other sewing supplies!

Lastly, the winner of the $50 to Shabby Apple is...

Help for Better Photographs?

This post is a combination of a question to all of you lovely readers and a great tip for you NYC readers out there.

Well, I started looking into taking better photographs a while ago, after stealing my guy's camera.  It would be really great for the blog and even better for real life!  I took waaay too many pictures on my trip, some of which I wish turned out better.  :(

The Cliffs of Moher look sooo much better in real life!

Over the weeks, I figured out that day lighting is so much better for photographs (duh!), even if I had to drag my dress form down the stairs and outside for every garment.

Then, I even figured out on my own a couple of quick fixes using Photoshop and wrote a post on it here.

Just this week, I was featured on Domesblissity for my post on organizing your fabric stash, and it was the worst picture ever!  Ugh, back to figuring out how to take better pictures!

I'm still not quite comfortable with knowing my way around a camera and I looked into some beginning photography classes in my area.  The few that I found didn't fit into my budget or schedule.

Then, I stumbled across this awesome website called Vimbly.  They listed several options for  photography classes with schedule and price comparisons.  Sooo simple!

Travel Crafting: Cozy Gloves!

The title is a bit misleading because there isn't going to be a second travel crafting post (at least not for this trip!).

Remember in London, at the end of the post I asked if anyone had any tips for layering because my poor hands were so freezing?  Well, in the next post I had a teaser for the solution to my problem!

And if for some reason you wanted to make your own, I'm even including a "tutorial."

Introducing my protection from frostbite, the polkadot thermal gloves!

Like I mentioned, we had been on Oxford Circus, looking around for gloves for me and a scarf for my friend, but there were only spring items in the stores.  Then, we went to Portobello Road where you can find just about anything!

They were selling gloves for 8 pounds, but I thought I could do better, especially when I saw Poundland (the UK version of the 99 Cent Only store!).

There were no gloves in stock (darn!), but I did walk out of there with a thank you gift for our host, lip balm in a lovely tin, and my glove materials...

Weekly Wrap-Up!

Honestly, I'm looking at these weekly wrap-ups, and they're definitely an homage to my stomach.  Oops!

Then again, one of the reasons I started the blog was to share my food adventures with one of my friends from home.  :)  Sorry to all of you out there who haven't eaten yet!

By the way, this article is funny!  I think of my food pictures like travel photographs.  Just a reminder of something fun and sometimes pretty!


Precap: Roots Gourmet, Phuket Thai, Naples Rib Company, Bouchon


Wednesday

First, I went to get a much needed haircut.  On the way there, I picked up some pastries from a nearby cafe called Roots Gourmet.  I couldn't turn down the raisin roll, like the ones I was addicted to in Paris.  For some real sustenance, I picked up a kale & spinach pocket with tzatziki.  Yum!

I was excited to try out chia pudding for the first time for a snack afterwards.  I saw an article ages ago in a food magazine, and I already love healthy ingredients.  I thought that it would be similar to quinoa, but I was sooo disappointed.  :(  Maybe I should have ordered their awesome skirt steak sandwich instead!

Thursday

I still hadn't cooked anything (lazy me!), so I accepted an invitation to have some dinner out at a Thai Restaurant (one of my favorite kinds of food!), called Phuket Thai.

We ordered the Beef Satay, Spring Rolls, and Mee Krob to start.  Once the food came, I forgot to take pictures.  Oops!  We did have some delish Pad Kee Mao and Green Curry.  Spicy!