Blanching and deseeding tomatoes may seem like a hassle considering big choice of canned already blanched and deseeded tomatoes in a nearby grocery shop.
However, I think no canned tomatoes or tomato paste can compare with the fresh tomatoes blanched and deseeded right before cooking.
Blanched and sometimes also deseeded tomatoes are used to cook soups and stews, as well as to prepare tomato juice, tomato paste, various dips and sauces.
There is no easiest way to cook potato than boiling. You get tasty and nutritious dish fast and with literally no hassle: just clean it, put to the cooking pot, bring to boil and wait.
Young potato boiled skin on tastes especially good when dressed with several spoons of sour cream, seasoned with chopped dill and minced garlic.
If you don’t have young small potatoes, use red skin ones, or any others. Clean potatoes before boiling, for young potatoes washing will be enough, old potato may need to be peeled.
This is my recipe in support of Faina’s with Cucee Sprouts cauliholic addiction. I hope you will like it 
Yet another vegetable pancakes recipe. These are usually healthier choice: they contain much less flour (comparing to usually flour-based pancakes) – batter mostly consist of vegetable goodness and, of course, a bit of eggs
I love cauliflower in any of its appearance, and I consider cauliflower pancakes to be one of the easiest and fun ways to cook it.
According to Wikipedia, cauliflower is low in fat, high in dietary fiber, folate and vitamin C. And I think that positions cauliflower as a nutritional vegetable and important part of the daily diet.
My mom boils florets first and then fries with flour and eggs. I like taste of cauliflower fried this way more than just boiled, it is less watery, also eggs and flour bring up a nice addition to taste.
By the way, flour can be replaced with finely ground breadcrumbs, tastes good this way as well. I prefer using bread breading I prepare myself, rather than breading mixtures.
I never tried fresh celery stems before we got to US. I was more familiar with celery root – it is largely used to prepare soups and stew or even salads of European cousines, but I can’t say eating stem parts of it is as popular in Europe as in US.
According to wikipedia, celery is a source of good low-calorie dietary fibre, which makes it not only tasty (btw I found taste of it fascinating) and also healthy.
Saying all of that, here comes the nice salad recipe for fresh celery stems and boiled white chicken meat; grapes give it a little kick in flavor, as well as almonds. Hope you will like it.
Several weekends ago, when I asked Yuriy what should we prepare for dinner, I got an answer – lasagna, and I was intimidated a bit – I never prepared lasagna before. So I spent some time in internet researching recipes and found several I liked. I’ve combined them, added some touch to my taste and prepared this lasagna.
This was my first attempt to make lasagna. And main challenge for me was to properly prepare noodles: according to the instructions on the pack they required boiling before using. I’ve added 2 tablespoons of oil to the boiling water and was boiling them layer by layer and it totally helped to prevent noodles from sticking while boiling.
This lasagna turned out perfectly: balanced combination of meat and vegetables (just how I like it), noodles were very tender, it was totally worth all the time I’ve spend boiling them, getting out of water and trying arrange them in the pan.
Summer is here and summer is a perfect time to enjoy vegetables it brings along.
Bell peppers, eggplants, potatoes roast together with olive oil based dressing with garlic and herbs can be a perfect dish on their own as well as a side dish to meats or poultry.
Once veggies are all sliced and mixed with dressing (can be prepared in advance), it takes about an hour to roast them in the oven.
Roasting doesn’t require much of attention, just stirring from time to time. So I consider this dish easy to prepare.
