Meksički krastavac pečen na gril tavi - Grilled Mexican cucumber - Cetriolo Messicano grigliato

“Is this a vegetable or a fruit?”

This was my first question after observing for a while this tubby form.

Its intense light green collour is shiny and its surface is spiny.

The taste is very neutral and aqueous! I'm not sure if it has some nutritious value, for sure the visual effect is certain. Imagine a kind of big horse-chestnut with very tense and thin peel. This is its outlook!

When I first saw it, I thought that it was another growing experiment donated to my parents by a farmer-friend and arrived from who knows where. In that garden - my parent's garden, you can find any kind of vegetable-wonders. Edible, or not, it doesn't matter. The important thing is that it grows, sometime it even surprises us with its bloom, but most of the time it produces some kind of food. Food means vegetables or fruits. Until the unknown "food" doesn't show its products, we never know if it should be called fruits or vegetables. Well, we know how to call it, of course, but it is the product that has never been experimented in my family and no matter if, botanicaly speaking, it has been classified as fruits, or as vegetables, the moment it get tasted is the crucial one for us to decide how to specify the new grown baby!

Slane kiflice od lažnog lisnatog tijesta - Salty croissants made of fake puff pastry - Brioche salate di pasta sfoglia veloce

Nowadays searching for new recipes in the web is so natural as once was so obvious exchanging handwritten recipes. Once these handwritten recipes were adjusted, corrected, changed and occasionally even lost among plenty of identical handwritten papers with the recipe of some buns or cakes we have had tasted somewhere during a bithday party or a dinner with friends and neighbours. Once even neighbouts were our friends, sometimes our best friends. And it was so natural to share a piece of cake with our neighbours. They were happy to receive such a treat, they admired its look with their eyes and they enjoyed its last, but most of all they appreciated our kindness. The reputation of a good pastry chef and baker was verbally announced first to the family, then to the condominium, to the town, while going to work to bus passengers, to colleagues at works...and so the rumour slowly driffted from person to person.

Babka s čokoladom i liešnjacima - Babka with chocolate and hazelnuts filling - Babka con il cioccolato e nocciole

I will start this year writings very late and with one of my last year recipes that I have never finished. This is even not one of last recipes I have had in my mind last year. Not at all, I have prepared this one back in May. How annoying it is to leave unfinished thing around, right?! I dislike it (but I continue doing it!) like I hate even numbers.

What is the connection here? It happens that this is the year with even number and there is a lot of unfinished stuff in my PC. It is not the best start!

Something changed in my last years, I don't have fixed plans or "to-do lists" and I'm always kinda afraid to finish what I'm doing so I leave plenty of undone things behind and I start new ones again and again...whitout plans, with no order, because I always have to do something new and different...it's crazy,isn't it?