In Bermuda, it is customary to paint your apartment when you move out. In the US (or at least where I have lived) paint is covered under the “normal wear and tear” of an apartment, but not here. We got together some friends to help us paint and get everything out of the place. Food seemed appropriate for a nights work and we were going to order pizza, but decided to use what we had in the freezer. I am happy to post this recipe, because it was always a favorite appetizer my mom would bring to parties when I was growing up. Now I tell my friends to make this when they ask me what to make that’s easy to bring to someone’s party or when they are having people over for a sporting event.

Today I am pleased to present a guest post. This past weekend was 2 members of the TFIMB family's birthdays, the design team! since I was all the way across the ocean, I was unable to celebrate so I had to give posting dutys to someone who could. This post is all about kim, but rich, happy birthday to you as well. The rest of this post will be written by my good friend steph, but i may leave a comment in italics. Happy birthday guys! leave some love for them in the comments.

For those of you that may not know...I love Birthdays...in fact I love any reason to celebrate at all. Kim's Birthday this Saturday was perfect timing to get my baking skills back up to par. I'm a huge fan of cupcakes instead of cakes for birthday desserts for two reasons. One being that you have the opportunity to have various designs and colors without looking over done. Second, in my personal opinion I feel that people are more likely to grab a cupcake then to grab a piece of cake that has to be on a plate and ate with a fork. Cupcakes are low maintenance and fun to eat. That being said....I have been hearing lots about Amy Sedaris' cupcakes, and wanted to give them a shot. If you don't know who she is, I'd suggest watching some Strangers with Candy. I decided to stick with the vanilla cupcake recipe and add a special touch of stuffing them with some chocolate frosting.

We hadn’t made pasta in some time, and for some reason I was craving manicotti. As a kid, this was my favorite meal and I hadn’t had it in years! we decided to have a nice night in and watch the opening ceremonies and spend time making this meal great. We started with some drinks and apps as you can see here. Some would call this cannelloni, where manicotti would be pre formed tubes, but this is what I grew up knowing as manicotti.

Last Friday, Mandi, Amy, and I decided to forgo the usually Bermuda Friday night activities to stay in and cook and watch the opening ceremonies. The meal we were set on was going to take at least 3 hours, so we knew we would need plenty of drinks and an appetizer while we were waiting for the meal. Amy found some cool drinks we could try, and our tomatoes were bursting off the vine, so we decided on a simple bruschetta.

“If you could have any pasta in the world right now, what would it be?” Overtired and hungry, Mandi hoped that I could make a decision better than she could. We had just packed our lives into a big truck, and hauled it across the island. Our theory when it comes to moving is different from most; it is better to suffer greatly for one day, than to suffer mildly for 10. The whole evening was crazy, trying to get things done quickly since the moving truck charges per hour... but as the truck drove away, our minds drifted to our empty stomachs. We had planned to get take out from one of our new neighborhood restaurants, but at times like this when we have waited too long to eat, a decision sometimes can't be made. “If you could have any pasta in the world right now, what would it be?” There were only 2 options on the take out menu, a “sampling” of their full menu it said. Mandi hoped that whatever came out of my mouth at this moment, she would relay to the man on the other end of the phone, and they would miraculously serve it. “Orecchiette…..orecchiette with sausage…and cherry tomatoes, and maybe some arugula and mozzarella.” Maybe it was because we were standing in front of our new stove, or maybe because we knew that whatever we got from the restaurant wouldn't be exactly what we wanted anyway, but we decided that it was a pretty easy dish to make for ourselves. So we pulled our pans from our suitcases and headed to the grocery store. Click below to read more and see a few pictures.

When I see discussions of my website over the internet, I have noticed that one topic that often comes up is the smallness of my kitchen and the fact that I chop on my coffee table. It is true that I have an extremely small kitchen so I decided to make an interactive tour. People can use this as a guide if they have a small kitchen. I feel like we use the space well. Things do look a bit cluttered, but this is as clean as it gets really since we do not have much cabinet space. I am happy to be finally putting this post up, because I am moving to a new apartment tonight! This is a good way to say goodbye to the old place. DIRECTIONS: to navigate, click arrow buttons and objects on screen, if an object has green dots when the mouse is over it, you can click to inspect further. Move your mouse over things to read a description. Click and explore!! PS. if you see white spots, wait a bit, it hasn't fully loaded. Click below to start the tour after the jump.

I am marking this vegetarian, even though we used pancetta. The pancetta isn’t necessary, but it added a nice flavor. You could just use olive oil instead, and maybe a dash of red wine or balsamic vinegar. This idea came to Mandi in our usual 3pm what do you want for dinner email discussion. She said she wanted to make vegetable lasagna, but use the veggies as the pasta and even as the sauce. We brainstormed for a bit and this is what we came up with. I love giving you guy’s original recipes, so PLEASE let me know if you like this and if you ever cook it!

Secret beach is not so secret anymore. Mandi and I are moving across the island, so we decided to let all our friends know exactly where secret beach was since we wouldn’t be going as much anymore! We did this by having a party there and inviting everyone. I sent out a treasure map with an X on secret beach, and anyone who could find it was welcome to come and party. As usual, the grill was fired up and people brought things to cook.

Nooshin was up this past weekend so we decided to cook Persian food again for her. For one, cause we liked it last time but weren’t 100% satisfied with the outcome, and two, because Mandi never ended up cooking it when she went out to visit Noosh in LA. This meal was awesome despite the fact that we did not have 2 major Persian ingredients; dried limes, and fenugreek. If you have access to these things, you should use them to make this dish even more authentic! Another great thing about this meal is that it is easy. It does take a bit of time, but it isn’t hard and you are greatly rewarded for your time.

As the tomatoes turn red on the plant with each passing day, I wonder what ways I can purely taste the tomato flavor. Aside from just popping a tomato in my mouth, how can I get the utmost taste of the fruits of my labor? Salsa is a pretty obvious choice, but at the moment I could probably make enough salsa for only 3 chips or half a taco. I came up with this idea randomly and made them after work today.

I sent this article from the New York Times to Mandi and Amy on a Monday at work. Minutes later they were planning on getting together that night and making them. The blaags have been a buzz with avocado recipes and also avocado drinks, so I thought I would join in the fun and post one today. I should also note that posts in the coming weeks will become a bit sporadic. I have tomorrow and Friday off work for Bermuda’s cup match, a 2 day cricket game that is a holiday here. Then after that I will be moving into a new apartment so my stuff will be all over the place. The kitchen is a huge upgrade though so that will be nice when all this is over.

Broke account so I broke a sweat
I've bought some things that I sort of regret about now – Modest Mouse

I’m not really that broke, but a few things happened that caused me to have to be creative for a few days last week with my food. Last Tuesday, Mandi and I ate really well all day without spending a dollar! Luckily, because I cook all the time there were ingredients lying around my house, but even if there weren’t, these would still be really cheap meals to make.

SIDE RANT - we have been watching the next food network star and enjoying the show somewhat. I take it for what it is and realize that no one on this show could ever touch anyone on top chef. But it is a different show and they are looking for something different then Tom and Padma. Last night I was completely disappointed with the winner and I can’t imagine that anyone liked Aaron. He sucked the last 2 weeks and I didn’t even think he could possibly win. I was trying to decide if it would be Lisa or Adam the whole episode, they both had way better pilots and are way better in general. I wanted Lisa to win from day one and I am going to be making it my personal goal to contact her and interview her or post one of her recipes. I don’t care if it is a year from now and no one even remembers her! YEA LISA GARZA! Mandi and I have sworn off food network before, once when they stopped playing Molto Mario, the first time we saw ultimate recipe showdown or down home with the Neely’s, and who could forget the holiday dessert iron chef debacle. This time we really mean it food network! Its over! Well maybe after Jamie and Anne this weekend, THEN it is over.

I was planning on posting a post I've been waiting a while to do today, but it requires a clean house. Every night this week I had planned to take the pictures, but my house was never clean enough, so today I present to you, a post I like to call “what I ate for dinner last night.”

I was craving cauliflower all last week and was excited to see that Jamie would be focusing on it on his upcoming episode. We decided to make the cannelloni dish with a few changes. For one, we just watched the molecular episode of diary of a foodie and wanted to try making the tomato powder. Another was the strange fact that Jamie used canned tomato puree instead of making a sauce for this dish. We had some leftover sauce we had made and decided to mix that with puree so we would have enough. I also thought it odd that Jamie did not pre cook the pasta before stuffing it, I was doubtful it would cook properly in the casserole but wanted to try it anyways.

I make breakfast every day that I don’t go to work. This means Saturday and Sunday most weeks, and random days sprinkled in here and there. When on a diet, the usual bacon and eggs doesn’t really cut it for both weekend days. Neither does the leftover taco ingredient omelet, the breakfast pile, the McDonalds steak egg and cheese clone, or the sausage sandwich with pancakes as bread smothered in high fructose corn syrup also known as fake maple syrup (Figure 1, After click-through) I decided this week to go light for breakfast and make some blueberry buckwheat pancakes. There is a recipe with yeast right on the bag of buckwheat, but I decided to go with an Ellie Krieger recipe I saw her make a few weeks back. Another quick pancake anecdote – I used to hate pancakes all my life until about a year ago when I first made them without using a box, then I realized its pancake mix that I hate, and not actual pancakes.

For some reason soup was the topic of the day. Our normal email group was emailing about soup for like an hour. Didn’t anyone realize it is the middle of the summer? It’s hot and humid. I don’t want soup! But Mandi did. So we compromised on one chilled soup and one hot soup. We had a cayenne ripening in the garden so I thought we could spice up a gazpacho. This made me laugh… hot cold soup. That’s when I thought, how can I make the hot soup cold? Mint is a “cool” flavor and I had heard of people using mint with lamb and peas in ravioli/wontons. That’s how I came to the finalized dinner of the night. Duo of soups: Hot cold (spicy gazpacho), and cold hot (mint lamb wontons in chicken broth). Food sounds classy if you say “duo”.

Summertime. This is my first summer with the blog and it is kind of an interesting situation. On one hand, it’s great. I’m making new things all the time and enjoying them with a variety of people who are also sharing awesome food with me. I am being creative about what I cook with regards to how well it can travel and where the actual cooking will take place. And im having a lot of fun! All things that should translate to great blog posts right? Well here is the problem. Going straight from work to a mid week BBQ? whoops! Forgot my camera. Trying to prep a pasta salad in a half hour with guests on my couch? Those pics aren’t getting taken. Blogging a friends artichoke fritters? No one likes someone hanging over them taking pictures while they are trying to cook. I’ve found that I have to be satisfied with what I can get. Most blogs don’t take pictures of the whole process, but I do because I love it. I think the food looks great during all stages and I think it is helpful to people to see the different steps. But I have to accept that some days, the pics wont be top quality, or the whole process wont be there. I can still show some great shots and explain the recipe for people. And I can always write some cheesy paragraph explaining why.

In my never ending quest to prove to Mandi that she likes burgers, I came up with the idea of a thai curry burger yesterday. Then Mandi said: “don’t you realize that by making taco burgers and curry burgers, you are not proving to me that I like burgers, you are just reminding me that I like tacos and curry.” Click below for more pictures and the recipes.

I have always been interested in the scientific elements of modern cooking, what many people would call “molecular gastronomy”, but I never thought I would do any of it myself. Recently after cheering for Richard in the latest top chef, and reading playing with fire and water a lot, I have had the itch. It was actually Mandi who pushed me over the edge to finally buy some of the stuff. One day she was bored at work and kept sending me cool pictures of different plates people had made. It was her who originally found playing with fire and water and she really wanted to start trying some stuff. Finally the packages came in the mail, methylcellulose, sodium alginate, and calcium chloride. A few new salts and a syringe. The first thing we were going to try was sphereification. This is kind of old news and sometimes considered a gimmick these days, but it is one of the easiest methods in this modern cooking world so I thought it would be a fun place to start. Also, even if it isn’t quite as cool in the food world anymore, I feel that it still has a place in the emerging “molecular mixology”.

This past weekend we had a fun BBQ at a pool. Amy is housesitting, and had a few people over to take advantage of the sweet pool area at the house. It has a cool bar and refrigerator and an outside bathroom so you don’t mess up the house! Unfortunately, I don’t have a ton of pictures of the prep that went on at the house. We were having too much fun, I forgot to take them! But there are links/explanations of all the recipes we used.

As many of my loyal readers know, it was Mandi’s birthday yesterday. Since she has made me some crazy cakes in the past, I decided to try my hand at making one for her. Luckily, I had the design team there to help me decorate it. The cake recipe is from Ina Garten, and can be seen here. The idea for the teddy grams came from a pool cake I had seen online.

At Mandi’s office, it is the tradition to bring in breakfast for everyone on your birthday. This seems backwards to me and that someone else should bring YOU breakfast, but that’s another story. Unsatisfied with the standard donuts and pastries that most people bring in, Mandi needs eggs to have a proper breakfast. So in addition to the massive amounts of planning for the crazy weekend we are about to have, shopping at multiple stores to get all the right ingredients, making cheesesteak filling and buffalo chicken for her pizza / birthday party tonight, me making her a cake, standing on the south east coast trying to literally blow the hurricane off course, and cleaning the apartment for the arrival of the design team(they are somewhere over the Atlantic at this moment), Mandi has to make quiche! Today, (just a few hours ago) Mandi woke at the crack of dawn to begin cooking. It isn’t an inconvenience for her, because she loves birthdays and wants to be awake for every hour of hers. This is based on a Paula Deen recipe you can get here. Click below for more!

Caprese salad is a simple and delicious summertime treat.  Traditionally it has only tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, salt, pepper and olive oil.  The key to this salad is having fresh tomatoes which is why I cant wait until mine jump off the vine into something awesome like this.  Over the years, we have changed the way we make it.  We first would do the traditional tomato and mozzarella, with a little red onion, cut them into rounds and line them up in a spiral like you sometimes get at restaurants.  I came to the conclusion that this looks kinda cool at first, but it is cheesy, annoying to do, and harder to eat!  Mandi also found that cucumber adds a great freshness to this salad and makes it even better for summer.  Here is what I like to call Mandi’s version of a Caprese salad.

Today’s post is an extremely exciting, scientific experiment. At Christmas this year we were lucky enough to receive my grandmother's gnocchi recipe. I have the fondest of memories growing up eating these little pillows of heaven. So you can imagine my surprise when we saw that her recipe calls for potato buds instead of normal potatoes! This really got us wondering and Mandi and I decided that it would be a good idea to put them in a head to head competition to see which tasted better, potato buds or the spud itself.  We had made Heidi's recipe before, so we planned to use that as a base recipe.  It started to get crazy when on the morning of the experiment we saw Tyler Florence make gnocchi. We wanted to try his recipe too! That got Mandi's brain going and she decided she wanted to make some colored versions of each recipe to see how that affected the flavor and texture. When it came down to it we couldn’t agree on a sauce. I prefer tomato sauce on my gnocchi, but she likes cream... well the whole thing really just continued to snowball and in the end we ended up making four types of gnocchi with two flavors and three sauces...

For all the different gnocchi's, we kept the flour / egg / potato ratio as similar as possible so that we could really judge the potato method. The comparison involved baked potatoes, steamed potatoes, boiled potatoes, and potato buds. Then we colored some of each kind with some spinach and roasted red peppers.  The three sauces were tomato, gorgonzola cream, and thyme butter. This made for a total of 36 possible combinations.  Our impressions on which were best and worst are at the bottom of the post.

This drink was inspired by a drink Mandi got at KO prime.  From the menu:

Grapes of Wrath
Grey Goose Poire Vodka, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, muddled cucumber & pineapple.

She continually said that this was the best part of her meal.  She wasn’t the biggest fan of her bone marrow app (I was), and she has had better pork belly.  We didn’t look up the actual drink last night when we attempted to re create it, but what we made was delicious and very similar.  On a side note, I hate muddling and did not muddle this drink.  I think you can get all the flavor from the fruits and mint without bruising and smashing them into a big mess.  This is a great article on mixing drinks and it totally captures my opinions on cocktails.  Be sure to watch the video too! Click below for the recipe for this drink.

When you last saw my plants, the situation was dismal. The tomatoes had leaf miners and were extremely infected. The cayenne pepper plant had holes in many of the leaves, clearly being eaten by some pest who doesn’t mind spicy food. After doing much research online, I decided my best bet was to strip all the leaves from the tomato plants and just hope they survived. I was heading out on vacation to Boston and I didn’t tell anyone to water them when I was gone. This was because I did not think they were going to survive anyways and was kind of upset about the whole situation. Just as I was getting into the cab to the airport, I looked over my plants and saw a new leaf on one of the tomatoes! I was shocked and kind of disappointed that they would be left to nature for water purposes for the next week and a half. Well when I got back, I was stunned to see large, green, leafy, and thriving plants in my walkway! My landlord had taken it upon himself to nurse my poor plants back to life! Before I had 4 tomato plants and 2 pepper plants, and now I have 2 tomatos and 1 pepper, so it wasn’t a 100% recovery, but it was still really great because I thought they all were goners. Click below for pictures and more.

I have always wanted to make cheese at home. But you know how those things go... it's just something that I talk about but keep putting off. Yesterday when I saw ricotta in our recipe I decided to stop putting it off and give it a try! Ricotta is a great intro to home cheesemaking because it is fairly simple. Now that we've tried it, I have the feeling we will start making it all the time because it was easy and so delicious! I have seen Mario make this before and planned to use his recipe, but we ended up using one from my new favorite food site - playing with fire and water. The only ingredients were milk, buttermilk, and salt! The main difference is the acid used to help the milk separate into curds and whey. In Mario’s recipe, lemon juice is the acid but in this recipe it is buttermilk.

Going away parties are always bittersweet events. You go and have a great time, but in the morning you have fewer friends. Todd and Joy are heading home to Canada tomorrow and had a beach party last night to say goodbye. I decided to take some pics to post here for 4 reasons. First, nothing I have on the site is simple, so sometimes people think I can’t eat normal food. Like I have to spend 2 hours cooking dinner or I won’t enjoy it. I think no matter how immersed you are in the food world, if you cant eat a hot dog, you’ve crossed the line into snob territory. Second reason, Mandi loves s’mores. So do I, but not as much as her. Last summer every time we lit the grill she would have a s’more appetizer. In my opinion, it is the best desert flavor combo. Whenever I ever see a s’more dessert at a restaurant I have to try it (and I usually don’t get dessert). We even tried to make a s’more ice-cream cake once and bought a mini blowtorch for it but it didn’t turn out that good. The third reason for me posting these pics is to say goodbye to Todd and Joy. I have worked with Todd, and Mandi has worked with Joy, for over a year and they will be missed in the office, at the work events, and of course, at the parties and bars. The final reason for this post is I’m wicked behind on cooking since our return and I had nothing else to put up! Click below to see the rest of the pics.

One of the many highlights of my trip home was the last day. Steph hosted a BBQ so I could see a bunch of people from the area that afternoon. Fun times were had by all. We ate cous cous salad, corn on the cob, jalepeno poppers, pancetta wrapped peaches, scallops, and of course, ribs! Recipes / links are at the bottom of the post.

Were back!  And what a great vacation it was!   Wanna hear about it?  Here goes.  Ribs 4 times, potato salad, peaches wrapped in bacon, pasta salad, scallops, taco dip, chicken wings, cheesesteaks, qdoba burrito, cheese fries, cheese fries, mcdonalds 4 times, steak egg and cheese bagel from there, sausage egg and cheese from dunks, finagled another bagel, 2x taco bell, (once drunk at 1:30 am with my family?) clam chowder, clam chowder, chili, fried fish sandwich, beef burros, boneless wings from petes (still good), soft pretzel, pizza, pizza, pizza, pizza, spicy basil pad Thai, spring rolls, kobe flat iron, tuna tartare, sweetbreads, bone marrow, and about 400 or so beers.  I’m sure I missed stuff; we had about 4 meals a day.  And NOW it is time for a diet!  Starting off my diet today I have an iceberg wedge salad with a blue cheese dressing.  Blue cheese dressing!?!  You can’t have that if you are trying to be healthy!!!!!   Relax folks, we only used 4 oz. of blue cheese (<200 calories each) and made the dressing with low fat yogurt and buttermilk.  It was delicious!

Hello loyal readers of TFIMB.  I wanted to let everyone know that there will be a week and a half hiatus of posts because Mandi and I are off to Boston and Springfield for a week’s vacation that includes my cousin’s wedding.  I am sorry because I know you all will miss my daily musings on food and life in Bermuda, but I am really excited to get off the island for a bit!  Here is a list of restaurants and other food related places I am hoping to hit.  Some are old favorites from living and working in the city, others are new places I am pumped to try out.  If I hit most of these, I will come back a happy man.  Check out some of my old yelp reviews of the ones I’ve been to, and the websites of the ones I haven’t.

Strega
Otherside Café
Border Café
La Verdad
Qdoba / Flamers at the Pru food court.
KO Prime
Petes – old college wing place.  Is it still good?
Presto – Greasy Pizza like we cant get in Bermy

Then of course, there is my sisters apartment for one of her infamous NBA Finals grubfests.  A TFIMB sponsored BBQ in Springfield, and a dinner party with the design team.

If you are in Boston next week, CALL ME!   Or click that mail icon thing on the upper left and send me an email with your number and I will call you.  You know you're gonna eat well at least.

Last weekend was the 7^th annual Mexican party hosted by Amy and Cheryl.  Mandi and I were lucky enough to go last year, and this year TFIMB was the corporate sponsor (without actually giving any money).  A great time was had by all and I took some pictures of the festivities.  There will be no recipes today except for one vague one for the pork that everyone requested.

Dan:  hey you think i could get the pork recipe for the post today?   im not going to put up any recipes except that one cause it was such a big hit.

Amy: There wasn't a recipe actually.  I put a Mexican dry rub on it that I bought at Target (Archer Farms).  In the bottom of the pots, I put a mixture of orange juice, lime juice, garlic and oregano.  Roasted at 425 for about a half hour to brown a bit, then took it down to 300 for about 5 hours.  Each Boston Butt was about 5-6 lbs.  Oh my god, I'm hungry!