I am not a food blogger

However, I do frequently make meals and occasionally I bake. I read food blogs but I am personally not dedicated enough to photograph the messes I make in the kitchen and the final meal. Occasionally I may blog about things I make in the kitchen, especially when they are as time consuming and delicious as falafel!



Falafel (pronounced /fəˈlɑːfəl/; is a fried ball or patty made from ground chickpeas and/or fava beans.
Falafel is usually served in a pita, which acts as a pocket, or wrapped in a flat bread known as lafa. The falafel balls are topped with salads, pickled vegetables and hot sauce, and drizzled with tahini-based sauces. Falafel balls may also be eaten alone as a snack or served as part of a mezze.

It is easy to make if you posses a food processor and you are a patient person. It is a simple meal but it is not a quick one.
I like to serve my falafel in warm pita bread, with boston butter lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and two kinds of sauce-tahini sauce and tzatziki



Tzatziki recipe here

The tahini was improvised a little, but here is a basic recipe. The base of Tahini is a ground sesame paste that I think is a little too acrid. There are varying degrees of quality when it comes to this stuff.

I prefer the Krinos brand over the Joyva brand. It is a little harder to find but it is much less bitter and I think it makes a huge difference. This is a basic recipe for it

Tahini Sauce Recipe

I halved the ingredients for both sauces because I only cook for 2 people. Both can be adjusted to taste. I usually take the recipes as a guide for measurements but I don't always follow them. It is rare that two of the same meals I make will taste the same.

A photo of my very lazy sous chef, Osa.



Note her loaf-like shape and golden brown hue. She is sometimes referred to as "Loafsa" for this reason.


Lastly, Here is the falafel recipe. I use the same recipe every time. It has never failed me.

Falafel recipe





That mash of stuff on the plates is grilled eggplant. I brush my eggplant with olive oil, honey, balsamic vinegar, and crushed hot peppers before I grill it.

There you have it. A blog dedicated to food. I have a new appreciation for my friends that post pictures of all the ingredients together and pictures of cups pouring sugar into mixing bowls and detail all of the ingredients step by step. I am very loose in my interpretations of recipes so this is as good as it gets!

Less than three

Out with the old

2 years ago I signed my name 100+ times and got the keys to my first house. It was a foreclosure that needed a lot of work, but it was better than apartment living. The house has evolved a lot in the past 2 years. It feels like all of the work has happened at a snails pace but looking at all the pictures gives me a real sense of accomplishment. The first improvement was the bathroom in the front of the house..


The second larger renovation was the wood flooring on the main level of the house.








A few weeks ago the front of the house was completed.







It feels like so much has been done and there is still so much to do. Work is never done!

Close call

On Sunday little o and I went for a walk in the woods behind the neighborhood. I love walking in the woods. There is a trail for mountain biking and streams and a lot of cliffs with steep drops. I don't normally venture off the trail but I did on Sunday because I had hoped we'd find some morels on our outing.

No morels were found, but we did encounter a bunch of wild life starting with a little toad. Right off the trail we saw an eastern box turtle. I took a picture with my phone but kept my distance. I don't mess with wildlife.

Otto paid no attention to him, he probably thought the turtle was a rock


We continued walking and started to go off the trail. While we were walking along the edge of a hill we walked until we got to the end and then went right. I was scanning the bottoms of the trees and checking out all the dead ones around, not really watching what was directly under my feet. Otto stopped abruptly and started pulling to the right. Just then I notice a snake laying out in the open less than a foot from where I was standing. My heart jumped because I didn't expect him to be there. When I was growing up on the Eastern Shore snakes were an everyday occurance. We had one big black snake that lived in the attic and would crawl out of the house to sun himself on the fence post in the summers. He was a welcome guest.

I was taught when I was younger how to identify good snakes and bad snakes. Bad=diamond shaped head, colored cat like eyes. Good=round heads and black eyes.

I started slowly moving forward to get away from it and within 4 feet I was at the edge of a drop. To the left was another drop, back in his direction was the trail, and to the right was a very big and very steep dirt pile. It was the only way we could go. I had to get on my hands and knees to crawl up this thing because it was so steep and I didn't want to fall. We made it back to the trail and our walk was very much OVER for the day.



When I got home I started researching snakes in Maryland because I wanted to know what I had just met. I initially thought he was a hognose but the eyes did not match the description. This snake had orange eyes. I found my match this morning. It was a Northern Copperhead. Good thing I didn't run. If Otto hadn't distracted me I never would have seen the poisonous snake that I almost stepped on. He would have bitten me for sure and it's unlikely that I'd be dead but I'd definitely be in a lot of pain and not at work today.

Lesson learned, stay on the trail.

Here is a Northern Copperhead: