melted smoosh

to borrow a phrase from one of my favourite podcasters, Kendra Adachi from the Lazy Genius Collective, here are some things that are saving my life right now! I'd absolutely love to hear yours. we can all use some more genius moments in our days!  1) the OXO grape cutter . this was a gift from Cecilia's godparents when Elizabeth was born, and it is such a game-changer for the one- to four-year-old crowd. not only does it quarter 2 grapes and cherry tomatoes in half the time it would take to quarter one using a knife, it's also actually quite fun and satisfying to see the perfect fourths shoot out onto the plate. 2) the Libby app . these days, I'm using my library card predominantly to borrow e-books and digital audiobooks. I used to go to the library website on my phone, search through the catalog, download what I wanted and then follow the links to download books to my Kindle app and audiobooks to Overdrive. now I can do everything directly through Libby, including l...

life is just beautifully, wonderfully, crazily crazy. two years ago i never would have dreamed that we would be contemplating moving to Rome for a year. and when we arrived in our own little apartment here in August 2018, my days were so filled with figuring out how to use the Italian dryer or how to ride the bus or how to communicate with the grocery store clerks that i didn't have the mental space to contemplate coming back for another year. and yet our expat friends all wisely assured us that the first year is the hardest and we should stay at least two (if not five!) years to make the most of the experience. well, at this point we are taking it one year at a time, but comparing this August to last August, i know it was the right decision to come back. we spent the last six weeks in the States, and it was so wonderful. Pittsburgh is home  home, and the Steel City welcomes us back with open arms every time we return. possibly my favorite picture of Kira, Auntie Extraordinai...

everybody talks about how delicious the food is in Italy. and it is! the creamy egg-washed carbonara with crispy guanciale. the Neapolitan pizza diavolo with its perfectly crispy crust immediately giving way to a chewy interior, topped with spicy sausage. the gelato. the wine! but after a while, the flavor profile of carbohydrate + tomato + mozzarella + basil gets a little stale. and honestly, for the eight years we've been married, we've never gone out to an Italian restaurant on date night. we love German and Thai and Polish and Chinese and Mexican and classic American food. so while i cook some traditional Italian dishes at home, i'm often looking for a little variety to round things out. (you may recall the gloriousness of the first enchiladas i made in Rome .) here are some of our recent favourites! i made these beef and cheese crunch wraps  for the first time a few weeks ago, and they were so delicious! of course Greta only wanted to eat the tortilla, but Nick...

at the ripe old age of thirty-three, i've got a respectable stash of tried-and-true classic recipes that never disappoint. they're foolproof, relatively easy, and delicious enough to serve to company. but in the last few months, i've experimented with new recipes for some of my old standbys, and wouldn't you know it? they just keep getting better! i've been making chicken parm for years, and in fact, that's what i served the very first time we had dinner guests over to our house in Altoona as a married couple (the Hoynes! we miss you!). but i just made this version last night, and it's bursting with flavor. full disclosure: there is no such thing as "Italian bread crumbs" in Italy. nor, in fact, are there Panko or regular or any other sort of bread crumbs. but there are delicious rosemary crackers, which i pulverize into crumbs myself, and get on with my life. (yes, i know i could toast bread or wait for it get stale and then pulverize it, b...

in the first edition of mangia mangia , i told the woeful tale of my fruitless search for enchilada sauce. when the craving for enchiladas struck again, i happened upon a new recipe for shredded chicken enchiladas that lauded the merits of homemade enchilada sauce. skeptical, i clicked the link to the sauce recipe, sure that it would call for two or three or fifteen exotic ingredients that would be just as difficult to find here in Rome as a can of Old El Paso itself. do you want to know what goes into enchilada sauce? olive oil. garlic. tomatoes. salt. pepper. chicken broth. (not exactly in short supply here.) and the rest of the spices? chili powder, cumin, onion powder, and oregano. ENCHILADA SAUCE IS A PANTRY DISH, Y'ALL. so i made it. and it was ridiculously delicious (and actually tasted like real enchilada sauce, not some DIY knockoff). and the enchiladas were excellent. to top it all off (har har), my cilantro is still surviving, although the colder temps have ce...

such a simple thing, having fresh herbs just happily waiting on the terrace, but it's made such a difference in our meals! i planted basil and cilantro last month, and (knock on wood) they are still growing ! i thought that once the nighttime temperatures dropped into the upper 50s, they might give up the ghost, but they're still reaching heavenward. and they taste so much better than the storebought herbs. i took this picture a few weeks ago when i thought for sure my luck wouldn't hold out and they'd all die.  now the planter is overflowing with stalwart plants!   i mean, fresh is always better, but sometimes you can't tell much of a difference. these flavors just explode in your mouth! and so i've been trying to incorporate them into our meals as much as possible. here's what we've been eating lately: first up, we have this chicken caprese sandwich. i stumbled across these ground chicken patties which actually contained only ground chi...