Living the Life

Florida Pie was this weeks recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie and was picked by Dianne of Dianne's Dishes , thanks for picking one of my favorite American desserts! I've been to Florida quite a few times, the first time was about 25 years ago and that was when I first ate Key lime Pie. Whenever I see it on the menu I have to try it and I made it a few times here at home too. I never did the meringue on top though, so that was the new thing for me. I left the coconut out because I couldn't find any sweetened coconut flakes here in the village and didn't feel like driving 10 miles for just the one ingredient. The pie was very easy to make, I used digestive biscuits instead of graham crackers which aren't for sale in this part of the world but taste almost the same as a base for the pie. Dorie uses more crumbs for the base than my old recipe but it was way better, so this one is a keeper. The filling is pretty straight forward too. For the meringue I made sure there was a...

This weeks recipe, peanut butter torte, was picked by Elizabeth of Ugg Smell Food . Here in the Netherlands we really like peanut butter, we don't put jelly on it, but just put it on a slice of bread with some butter. The major brand is Calve which is made less than 20 km from my home, they have been making peanut butter for almost 125 years now. This is the stuff I grew up on! So instead of buying a jar of Jif at the import section of the supermarket I used my favorite local brand, which tastes better also of course ;-) I didn't have enough oreo crumbs to get up the full 2 inch, but the result was that you get a nice layering if you see it from the side. It was my niece's 12th birthday last week so I made this torte to go with the coffee. Everybody liked it, but we all thought that it was very rich, which makes a lot of sense if you look at the ingredients. (I cut a slice of torte for the picture when the chocolate ganache wasn't fully set, that's why it isn't ...

So you are back from a great trip through Mexico and it's starting to look like summer, what do you make to make you stay in the garden a little more pleasurable than it already is? A frozen strawberry margarita! Ingredients: 1 shotglass Tequilla Silver 1/2 shotglass Cointreau 1 shotglass Rose's Lime Cordial/Juice 1 shotglass lime juice 9-10 frozen strawberries enough ice to fill your margarita glass three quarters sugar to coat the rim of the glass Preparation: Put your sugar on a plate, moisten the rim of your glass with lime and put the rim in the sugar. In a blender or food processor blend the remaining ingredients until a you get a thick slush. Pour into your glass and serve.

When I read the recipe I really wanted to make this cake. But with the 4 days and 1 hour delay on the way back home from Mexico and the things that come with that I just didn't have the time. I will be back next week though with the Peanut Butter Torte (page 282-283) picked by Elizabeth of Ugg Smell Food . You can find out what the other bakers made of this week's recipe by checking out the blogroll on Tuesday with Dorie .

After a six hour bus trip over the Sierra Madre mountains we were back in Mexico City again. We had three days to look around some more before we would fly home, at least that's what we thought.... When we tried to check in, which we can do 30 hours in advance with KLM, there was no sign of our reservation, when I checked further, our flights were moved up a day. We called Amsterdam and were told that our group of three was split up, one had to fly via Paris to Amsterdam on the original date, the other two a day later on the direct flight. That was of course not acceptable for us and it took a few more phone calls, one more than 45 minutes to set things straight, now we are flying back on Saturday, FOUR days later than planned! Reason? Boeing is doing a maintenance check on their 747's and flights get cancelled all over the world, our flight was one of those. I'm so glad that I brought my laptop on this trip and that I have skype up and running to make all those calls, oth...

The main attraction in Papantla are the El Tajin ruins but for a foodie this area is also interesting because this is where vanilla was used for the first time and from here it was spread by the Spaniards over the globe. You can find lots of places here where they sell vanilla pods, liquor, extract but also vanilla art, like scorpions, crucifixes, rosaries made out of vanilla beans. I stocked up on half a liter of extract and 20 fat juicy beans. Vanilla Art The next day we visited El Tajin, it was a nice gray day, not to hot and it was very quiet at the ruins which gave it a special atmosphere. Last year it was almost to hot to walk around. J. loved it and due to the weather we were able to enjoy it a lot more! Of all the sites I've visited so far in Mexico this is one of my favorite.

We spend our time in Costa Esmeralda relaxing, J. and I tried line fishing which was harder than it looked, I did manage to catch a crab though. Omid, the owner of Tobago , our hotel here, was nice enough to take me to the local fishing store. I bought 2 rods and some lures which made fishing easier. Not that we caught anything... The first thing my brother said that that was justice, since he couldn't join us :-) We also couldn't stand to long out in the water without the risk of getting serious sun burns, but at least we tried. One day we took a boat tour through the mangroves which was very interesting, our guide, a local fisherman, caught one of the red mangrove crabs to show us, picked local waterflowers, pointed out the different birds and other wildlife. At the end of the tour he took us to the end of the river and almost in to the Gulf of Mexico. After the tour we went to the reason we stopped here this time, barbecue restaurants. Along this stretch of beach are little ...