When I am craving for something creamy and filling, I make au gratin potatoes! Perfect with a huge slab of steak, or alone as is! Got this recipe from allrecipes.com…

Ingredients:
4 russet potatoes, sliced into 1/4 inch slices
1 onion, sliced into rings
salt and pepper to taste
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Butter a 1 quart casserole dish.

In a medium-size saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Mix in the flour and salt, and stir constantly with a whisk for one minute. Stir in milk. Cook until mixture has thickened. Stir in cheese all at once, and continue stirring until melted, about 30 to 60 seconds. Pour cheese over the potatoes

Layer 1/2 of the potatoes into bottom of the prepared casserole dish. Top with the onion slices and layer with cheese sauce…

…add the remaining potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

…repeat process with another layer of cheese sauce…

Now I tweaked this recipe by adding onion slices, more cheese gratings and butter (yummy but not healthy! heehee!)…

I also added bread crumbs for that little but of crunchiness…

Here’s how it looked after I took it out of the oven after 1.5 hours!

But I put it back again because I thought it needed some more “crunch” to it and baked it some more. Of course, i couldn’t resist getting a chunk out for my “taste test” before putting it back in the oven hahaha!

Fashion fanatics and art enthusiasts, do I have something for you! I checked out the Stephen Sprouse retrospective in SoHo and wrote about it On the Radar! Read all about it here!

Now that I am older, and living abroad, I tend to look for food that I grew up with. My dad says that once you reach a certain age, you really start craving for the food that you had when you were young.

My mom makes a simple sliced cucumber salad to go with some of her favorite fried fish or arroz a la cubana. The other day, I made some arroz a la cubana, and a cucumber salad to go with it. But I took it a step further by adding tomatoes and cilantro, and using red wine vinegar instead of Datu Puti! Hehehe! As usual I added some sugar, salt and ground pepper to the vinegar to give it a little more kick!

Yummy and refreshing!!! And it really makes a great side dish, as the vinegar and coolness of the cucumber provides a nice contrast to a meaty dish!

Here’s a simple salad that is a mix of crunchy, sweet, sour and cool!

On a bed of spring greens, I added thinly sliced apples and baby cucumbers (I prefer this since they have smaller or barely no seeds!)

For the dressing, I just mixed on the fly some extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard and honey…and drizzled a generous amount into a plateful of greens…

Yes, I finished the whole plate!

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