de'light'ful

We just got home yesterday from a short getaway in Mexico, where we enjoyed beautiful sunsets, wonderful food and precious days with family. We drove for hours, fought traffic and experienced long wait at the border, but all that seems a small price to pay -if just for one thing - for a lovely dinner by the fire watching the sunset with the people we love. Of course, there was more than that,  there was golf, an afternoon at the spa, and plenty of mexican food, but as I look back, it was that dinner that comes to memory as the highlight of our trip, it was so simple and so delightful, we talked and laugh as we watched the sun go down. It was a perfect combination of good food, beautiful settings and family love.

Sunset over the Pacific Ocean

Unwinding by the soft light

and a simple surf and turf dinner to go with it.

how the blogger got her groove back

It's been such a long time since I last posted here that I had to have my password reset because I could not remember the old one. Wasn't this the purpose of the blog in the first place? To "register life" before I forget it? Well, embarrassingly enough, it was. While my lapse did not have a specific reason,  I know how it started. Flashback to January, I had been eagerly expecting my mom's visit from Brazil and when she came, she was sick for her entire visit. Disappointed and worried, I quit blogging in what I thought was just temporarily, but temporarily ended up being skipping almost two whole  seasons, never finding a way back, until today.

It is not that life has been uneventful, not at all! We went to Brazil for three weeks, my niece came to visit, we've tried some new foods and have seen/experienced many awesome things. I have lots of catching up to do, it would be a shame to leave all that unregistered.

To restart, something delicious: Salted Cod Croquettes! They are Portuguese by origin and very popular in Brazil, in fact Mark had them for the first time on our trip to Rio de Janeiro, from a kiosk at the famous sidewalk of Copacabana Beach. Today when I made them, he took a bite and smiled, then with a sigh he said "Copacabana!". We remembered how we walked a long distance and even got rained on just to have some croquettes and how we laughed our way back to the hotel, tired and wet, but incredibly happy to be in one of the most beautiful cities in the planet.

And as we reminisced, I felt the itch to blog again!

Salted Cod Croquettes (or Bolinho de Bacalhau in Portuguese) are very easy to make. Equal portions of cooked potatoes and salted cod, parsley,  ground pepper, salt and egg just to bind it together,
then fried in hot vegetable oil.

Mark at Copacabana Beach - April 2011

love + desert landscapes





We are celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary in Utah and Colorado.
Today we visited Arches National Park.