Happy new year!

Hello everyone, and a happy new year! I'm back from the break, 4 kilos heavier. I went home for the holidays, but unfortunately I didn't cook at all there, so no new cooking posts yet. I started with all the good intentions, planning to cook a lot and post a lot of recipes, but I hadn't counted on one factor: proximity to mothers' food. So, instead of cooking a lot, I was just eating a lot, for almost two weeks.

I'm back for almost a week, and believe it or not, I haven't cooked yet, still eating the food I brought with me from home... So, I'll try to do the next best thing, and list some of the things I had during the break, that I'm going to try and replicate in the future:

1. Stuffed pumpkin with chestnuts, pinenuts, rice, minced meat, pulled chicken, raisins, various herbs and spices (I couln't tell all of them), melted cheese, dried plums and probably other stuff that I've forgotten now. It was unbelievable.
2. Lamb fricassée with wild bitter greens.
3. Grandma's leek-pita (of course with home-made fyllo).
4. Slow-roasted beef with dried plums, cooked for a few hours in a cast iron pot in a wood-oven (and other roasts in the wood-oven).
5. Eggplant and tomato-wrapped pork "bites" with melted cheese on top.
6. Soufflé with cheeses.
7. Stuffed turkey.

No wonder I gained weight... I still feel like I won't be hungry for some time.