Roasted Broccoli Tuna Salad

I think we food bloggers could all stand to be a little more transparent on the truth of what our lives are actually like (I mean, we don’t actually eat sweet potato fries out of newspaper cones or take a bite from a cookie and put it back on the cookie sheet like the photos say). I don’t actually eat small portions of salad on fancy rectangular restaurant plates like you see here. That’s just for good blogging decorum. I wouldn’t want you to see the actual tupperware I ate this HUGE salad out of. This little confession is coming from an e-mail exchange I had with another food blogger this week (Little Red Bird Kitchen, check her out!) about food photography. I told her I take 80% of my pictures on the floor because it makes it easier to get even lighting, block out background “noise” and get better shots from high up, and even though no one openly says it, I can’t be the only one to do that. Let’s be honest, you can see the wooden floorboards in more than half of the pictures on foodgawker 🙂 And since I’m in a truth-telling moment, I might as well say it flat out, my meals are not nearly as exciting as this blog might have you thinking. I’m a very routine person when it comes to food. On most days, I will eat exactly the same thing for lunch (omelet, avocado and salad), cook dinner twice or three times a week and eat leftovers on the other days. Most of the recipes you see here are recipes that I’ve tested and made for friends or family, for specific occasions, when I’m on vacation and don’t have much going on, almost always when there are other people around to try the food. You can be sure, if you see a muffin recipe on the blog, it’s because other people ate it and approved it. Recipe testing method.

Matbucha: Morrocan Roasted Pepper and Tomato Salad

When I was little, there were two things that I loved more than anything compared to most other children and that I could probably eat without ever getting tired of: olives and roasted peppers (can you tell I grew up in a Mediterranean family?). I also liked to eat spoonfuls of plain butter, so yes, if you were wondering, I was probably not like most children in the food department. For one, I was never full, but let’s not get into that. If you get my parents started on this topic, they’ll tell you that I would eat just about anything at the age of 2, including foie gras, snails and other odd delicacies that us French people like to indulge in. Indeed, not a picky eater at all, just give me some foie gras and champagne and I will be on my way now.

Crunchy, Tangy Slaw with an Orange-Balsamic Vinaigrette

 

My roommate and I have this ritual when we’re deciding on something we want to eat, which consists in enumerating all the adjectives we can think of that best describe what we’re in the mood for, each new one outbidding the previous one. Generally these adjectives, which in the spirit of fun often border on saucy, speak for themselves : when we’re talking about making a mouth-watering, juicy, squeezy (“wait what?? that’s not even a food word!”. I know, but this one is our favorites…), plump, marinated, chicken, we’re already mentally tasting it. Kind of like a food foreplay if you will: instead of an appetizer, we like to create salivating mental images.