First days of 2014!

First days of a pretty new year! Hope you all had a wonderful time New Year's Eve. I was away from mom for years and this year I enjoyed being together with her, just like last year.
God bless her!
I think we ate too much that night :) A couple of sodas helped to feel better next day.

Best wishes to y'all for 2014!

My son is getting very good at catching beauty of nature! Another fantastic shot taken in November from Aria's Instagram collection :) Ohh..we appreciate new followers :) 
Thank you ladies!!

It has been a while since I made it. This recipe is for eggplant lovers!. Easy and tasty!

A quick and easy eggplant recipe!

Eggplant with Lemon

2 eggplants (I peel them in stripes that's how I learned from my mom and I love it:)
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 onion(crushed)
1 cup hot water
2 cloves garlic(minced)
2 tbsp crushed tomatoes 

  salt and pepper   

  fresh lemon juice

 I like taking food pictures as much as cooking!

Sometimes eggplant is bitter and should be soaked in salted water before cooking.
Let drain about 30 minutes.
 

Cut eggplants into slices as you want. Put olive oil, chopped onion into a deep saucepan and stir 2-3 minutes. Add chopped garlic and keep stiring 1-2 minutes more. Put eggplant slices and a few minutes later add crushed tomatoes. Cook stiring 3-4 minutes and add hot water, salt, pepper. Cover the lid, keep it on low heat till eggplant is very tender.
Sprinkle with lemon juice. Serve warm and enjoy taste of eggplant !
 

Also it is delicious with turkish famous garlic-yogurt sauce with mint :)

                  Life is delicious :)

A shot of a tangerine tree I took last week.(In front of my neighbour's house )
                
                 There are so many beauties in life!

Mom's Spinach Dish

It is 30 something degrees outside. Brrr, cold. It snowed today. We didn't get lots of snow this time. A quick and easy spinach recipe for a cold-weather food..Warm, tasty, healthy and easy! Lol, it is weekend. So I looked for an easy one and made my mom's spinach recipe today.



Spinach..spinach...spinach...

9 0z. fresh baby spinach(chopped)

1/4 pound ground beef

2 tbsp oil

3 tbsp tomato puree

1 onion(chopped)

2 tbsp rice

1 cup hot water, salt

Saute onion in oil in a large pot. Add ground beef and brown. Then stir in tomato puree and add spinach. I know it seems a lot of spinach:-) Not really. Combine, cover and simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then add rice and water(hot water) and cook until rice is soft(15-20 minutes). It depends on the type of rice chosen. I used- Uncle Ben's Enriched Parboiled Long Grain. You can add some black pepper to this dish if you want. I always had this spinach dish with plain yogurt. That 's how my mom used to serve it.
If you want to make this recipe easier, grab yourself one of those great little bags of thoroughly washed spinach from the store.
How are all your weekends going ???