The First Time Without You: Happy Birthday, Mother!

For years, June was one of my favorite months. June was like Friday for the working people, marking the beginning of a long-awaited break. Linden trees lining the streets in the neighborhood blossomed and their sweet smell offered the promises of long, summer days filled with adventure and hope, as another school year ended. June [...]

Do You Want to Cook in Italy? Introducing Vamoos Travel

If I ever win lottery, I will spend the rest of my life traveling. That is, after I donate a large sum to juvenile diabetes research, fight against cancer, eradication of hunger, and education. And after I help some of my family and friends better their existence. And after I secure a substantial amount for [...]

Sweet, Crispy Puffs of Air: Basic Meringues

  When I look back in time of my childhood, I have to be in awe of Mother and Njanja for all the baking they did, almost on daily basis. I cannot remember a single day that we did not have something sweet to round up our meal and to snack on. I definitely took [...]

Lentil and Bulgur Pilaf with Caramelized Onions: An Edible Mosaic Cookbook Tour

  New year literally brought a new beginning into our lives. I erased our presence from the beloved apartment with a gallon of Clorox, turned my keys in, and hugged the managers whose eyes mirrored mine and sparkled with tears.  A new family was moving in, and I had to smile at the three girls [...]

Wet Your Whistle: Do You Know Your Water?

  “Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water.” ~~Noah Cross… Chinatown While the east of the country gets pummeled by Hurricane Sandy and whole towns are devoured by tons of dirty, churning water, I cannot recall if we even had a few days of rain here in southern [...]

Oct 302012
RIce: A True Story

In the days preceding my trip north to Sacramento Valley with California Farm Water Coalition and the visit to Lundberg Family Farms, I invoked my inner romanticist and historian and conjured up the images of people in wide-brimmed straw hats hip-deep in rice fields, with water buffalo lounging in the muddy shallows of the Mekong [...]

May 262012
Verbal Essences

It has been two years since those two ubiquitous words “Hello, world!” appeared on the first page of my newly-hatched blog. You would think that I should have been a blogging pro, having spent several years reading various blogs from their inception to  celebrity status. But no, my blog started out on an impulse and [...]

May 112012
Low-Cost Poaching

When the times get tough financially, my instincts kick in and the survival mode becomes default. But I don’t really change my modus operandi, as frugality is somehow ingrained in me, and I just keep on doing what I do best: digging through my pantry and my freezer and putting healthy, nutritious, appetizing food in [...]

The Pudding is Sometimes in the Proof

There was no kindergarten when I was growing up in Yugoslavia, and my first attempts at socializing started at the ripe age of five in preschool. While most of my classmates in senior grade were veterans, jaded and resilient, skillful at banter and repartee, as well as avoiding elbow nudges in the lunch line, I [...]

Jan 062012
A Pinch of Salt

I am sitting at our card table that’s pretending to be a desk surrounded by a pile of CDs waiting to be downloaded into the music library and liberated from their covers in order to make room. My black yoga pants are folded up three or four times and reach just beyond my knees. They [...]

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