Toast with Fried Eggs

This one is fairly easy, to be honest. I saw it a few days ago on a food account I follow on Facebook and it looked so delicious that I had to tried it.

It basically consists of two loaves of sliced bread, the top one without the middle (only the edges), some shredded cheese at the bottom and an egg. (I like to add some spices, some oregano or basil, to add some flavor to it. I'm a big fan of spices, you see). It goes in the oven for about 5-10 minute, until the egg is done, and that's it!

I've tried this twice, so far, with two different kinds of sliced bread. This was my first try. This sliced bread is so good, so soft, and I thought that it'd taste so great with cheese and the fried egg but it was too thick and it didn't work out as well as I hoped, though it tasted pretty good.

And then, today I made my second try at this with a different kind of sliced bread. The only difference, I added more cheese than I did in the first try. I'm considering changing the cheese to one with a stronger flavor (parmesan, maybe) and adding more seasoning to it the next time I make this, I really want it to have a strong flavor. 

Visually, the first one looks prettier, in my opinion, even if there seems to be too many oregano in it. (Also, the egg broke when I was preparing the second one, ugh). Honestly, it's a good idea for breakfast, it's so quick to make and it tastes good. Usually, I only have a toast with butter for breakfast because I don't like coffee and I'm trying to avoid chocolate and sweets as much as I can, so it's nice to make this for a change. 

Banana Smoothie

Okay, this one's too easy but I don't even care.

It's quite hot in Barcelona already considering that we were still in winter a couple of weeks ago (25 ºC right now, 77 ºF for y'all Americans), so a cold banana smoothie sounded so appealing! 

Bananas are one of my favorite fruits, I basically eat at least one every day. (Also, Minions love bananas and I love Minions, so I've tried so many banana flavored stuff since the movie came out). I really love fruit, I actually feel bad when I can't eat a piece of fruit after a meal, it kinda makes up for the fact that I loathe vegetables. 

So, banana smoothies. I usually make them with a yogurt and a banana and then I add some regular sugar or some vanilla sugar if I want them super sweet. I only had lemon yogurt so that's what I made it with, this time. For future reference: don't. It's not bad, but it's a weird combination. I thought the banana would cover the lemon flavor but it didn't, so, if you don't have a normal yogurt, just don't do it.

PS: it was quite dense and the straw was basically useless. Next time I'll add some milk to make it lighter, because it's not the same if I have to 'eat' it with a spoon. 

Empanadillas

As I just found out, empanadas and empanadillas are originally from Spain and Portugal, so I won't blame you if you don't know what they are. They spread to other countries and they're now pretty common in Latin America and other countries, but still, the original empanadas are Spanish!

The typical Spanish empanadilla is made with a thin pastry and a filling usually made of tuna, a boiled egg, vegetables and tomato sauce. They are fried and can be eaten either hot or cold.

This is what empanadillas look like (this picture is actually from the store where we get them):

Empanadillas from the store

At home, we don't put pepper or onion in our filling, mostly because I don't like either of them, but they're usually in the filling of traditional empanadillas and in the ones you can buy at stores. 

So, the filling I prepared, for around 20 empanadillas, had two tuna cans, two boiled eggs, some cheese, everything chopped very into very small pieces, and tomato sauce. 

The empanadillas I prepared

My mom says that they were good, but they taste so different from the ones from the store that I don't quite like them. They look so different, too! Maybe I'm just too used to eat the ones we buy more than the ones we make. I don't know. I don't know what to do to improve them, either, because all of the main ingredients are there. I'm going to check several recipes to see what I can do, but I still prefer the empanadillas from the store better.

Anyway... overall, they're quite good, if I don't compare them! 

Baked Potato Rounds

Today I had roast chicken for lunch, my mom sometimes buys it on wednesdays in our town's farmers' market, and I decided to prepare roasted potato rounds as a side dish instead of fries, which is what I always have.

I made them in a griddle, with some olive oil, salt and pepper. I seasoned a few of them with different spices, one with oregano, another one with a mix with lemon and rosemary and the last one with fines herbes. However, I'm pretty sure all of them got mixed while I was preparing them, so at the end, they all had a mix of flavors that was a bit too intense. Especially, since I added some basil to them at the very end when I took them out of the griddle. Next time I'll definitely stick to only one spice.

Conclusion: they were good, a couple of them may have needed more time in the griddle but overall they were all pretty good. However, I kinda messed them up a bit with the spices. 

Lasagna

At home, we usually buy lasagna and sometimes we make our own, but I had never made lasagna all by myself and I was quite excited about it. We bought this pasta that goes directly to the oven that we had never tried before, and it made it all seem so easy that I just couldn't wait to give it a try!

So, my first try at lasagna went fairly well. I prepared the ground meat like I've seen my mom do a few times, with bacon, some seasoning and tomato sauce (without onion, though. I hate onion), and the direct-to-oven pasta worked just fine, so I was happy with the result! However, I still need to work on my béchamel suace. My dad prepares a delicious béchamel, but mine was too thick and not as tasty as I wanted it to be.

Overall, I think the lasagna tasted so good and I've got a couple of ideas on how to slightly improve it, but I'm happy to say, it was a success! 👍

Introducing Myself!

My name's Alicia, I'm 23 year old and I'm from Barcelona, Spain. I'm still living with my parents, I just graduated from university and I have no job. Also, I don't know a thing about cooking. So... this is gonna be fun!

I just recently decided to start making my own food instead of buying so many processed stuff, not only because I actually want to learn to cook, but also because it's healthier and I need to start taking care of myself. Since I have so much free time, it's nice to actually experiment in the kitchen and see what comes out.

 I'm gonna post a picture of everything I do and some comment on how good or how bad it turned out. It's gonna be more of a registry for myself than a blog, really!

PS: Just for the record, my favorite type of food to make is pasta and desserts!