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About Me

Hello and welcome to my adventures in the kitchen!

I am not a chef, I do not have any training, I am not even that good of a cook, but I like cooking. I have a foodie instagram where I post what I cook (when I remember to do so).

I love trying out new recipes and challenging myself. I am a disaster in the kitchen and I often end up with my fingers bleeding or an entire pumpkin cream soup on the kitchen floor, yet nothing seems to keeps me away from the room where it happens! You might think "of course you cannot stay away, you have to eat", and it's true, but that doesn't mean I have to cook especially since I married a wonderful cook - most of the things I know, I learnt from him. So there is no need per se, just a desire that I cannot control - not even after I almost fainted when I sliced my finger in a mandoline; but I learnt my lesson and haven't used one ever since, I feel like there was probably another lesson I should've learnt - like using the safety thing that came with the mandoline, in which you stick the vegetable so your fingers are nowhere near the blades, but I like to live life dangerously!

As you can see, I ramble a lot! But I will keep it to a minimum when sharing recipes because I hate it when I look for a recipes online and I have to go through hundreds of paragraphs about God knows out to get to the damn recipe (apparently there is a copyright reason why food blogs talk a lot before giving you the recipe, no shade, no shade)! And I have another blog where I ramble, called Andreea's Nonsense because that's pretty much what it is - plus a lot of posts about books.

So that's it, dear reader. I am Andreea, a clumsy cook, with a passion for collecting cookbooks and learning new things. Cooking is the only thing that stresses me (A LOT), yet I still do it day after day. And this blog will be the place where I share my adventures in the form of recipes - and maybe more, who knows. I am not creating these recipes. I learn them from friends and family and cookbooks and I will always share the original links (or page number in a cookbook/magazine). Why am I reposting recipes that are available in a form of the other, you ask? Because I am treating this blog as my own recipe binder - which makes it easier for me to find a certain recipe or see what exactly I changed if a certain ingredient was not available to me. If I repost your recipe and you want it taken down, please email me at apandreeap@gmail.com.

Thank you!

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Restaurant Review: Ciao New York

The plan was to write this post in December, since this restaurant is one of my favourite places to go to around the holidays - it has a very homely vibe and the nicest winter decor. Plus the dim lights, the brick walls, the wine racks, and the sparkling glasses just add an extra something to the festive atmosphere. Ciao New York is an Italian bistro, perfectly pairing the delicious Italian nonna food with an exquisite rich-bitch attitude (obviously rich-bitch is not the word I am looking for, but it's exactly how my friends would describe my taste). I prefer it in winter because it's tiny, cosy, doesn't have outdoor seating anyway, and because I've never been here in the summer  months. I dined here with my husband and our neighbours. It was our neighbours' first time in this restaurant and it's now officially their favourite restaurant in town. Without further ado, let's discuss food. As it is my habit, I start with coffee no matter the hour I have dinner.

Root Veggie Mash

Mashed potatoes is one of my favourite foods in the world - when I was a child it was my absolute favourite, especially with a sunny side-up egg with a runny yolk on top. But now I am a responsible adult and sometimes - but only sometimes - I want my mashed potatoes to have a higher nutritional value, which is when I add a lot of carrots and whatever other root veggies I have in the house. Ingredients: 4 potatoes 2 parsnips 2 carrots a bit of butter salt & pepper Quantities and root veggies can be adapted depending of what's in the fridge. Method: Peel, wash, chop veggies.  Put in a pot with cold water and salt, bring to boil, simmer until veggies are tender. If the parsnips get done faster just fish them out (they float anyway so it won't be hard). Mash the veggies with a potato masher. Add a bit of butter and adjust the seasoning. Mash them as much as you want it. Usually I make mine somewhat clumpy.  I especially like the root veggie mash with heartier dishes like coq

Mucenici

Unless you are Romanian, chances are you have no idea what mucenici are . And it's not even something all Romanians know and/or eat!  Basically, every March 9th, we are celebrating the Forty Martyrs , and the way we do it is by eating 8-shaped pasta in a sugary soup with crushed walnuts on top. Oh, and the men drink 40 glasses of țuică (traditional Romanian spirit) . In the Moldova region of the country (not the country Moldova, although they celebrate this too as far as I know) they have a dough pastry shaped like an 8, brushed with honey and topped with walnuts. But in Muntenia (the region where I am originally from), we make this sweet soup. The other regions of the country may or may not celebrate - actually, most people I asked in my current city, Cluj-Napoca (located in Transylvania as region), are not familiar with any of the mucenici . I was not a big fan of mucenici growing up. But for some reason this year I decided to try to make them - and surprise, surprise, I love t