This morning I was browsing some old pictures with L. and when we got to some gastronomic ones, we remembered that a couple of years ago, while my aunt was visiting, we prepared a poke bowl with smoked salmon. Today we tried to replicate the dish but using tuna instead — and the result was fantastic! The combination of sushi rice soaked in rice vinegar, tuna, coriander, mango, wakame, dried red onion, edamame and roasted seaweed, finished with a splash of soy sauce, came together beautifully. Even better than last time!

Today we decided to have a nice Christmas lunch with my colleagues at work. We’d been discussing this for a couple of days and agreed the plan was to go to this ramen place we had tried before and all liked.

But when we were about to make a reservation, it turned out it was closed. Arrgh :/. A classic Monday issue!

So, debating what to do next, a Moroccan colleague suggested a Moroccan place he knew near CHUV. I was very curious because I’d never tried tajine before and it sounded like a nice culinary exploration.

So we went there and all of us ordered this traditional dish. The tajine arrived in its classic cone-shaped clay pot, and when they lifted the lid, it smelled really nice! The slow-cooked chicken with preserved lemons, olives, and a blend of spices I couldn’t quite identify made the dish really appealing.

It was not surprising that the taste was even better, with a balance of sweet and salty flavors. Based on what my colleague described, I tried it with warm bread and couscous, and the combination was really good.

I can’t believe I’d never tried this dish before. Really nice!

All my life I have enjoyed coffee very much and I have no doubt that it is one of the beverages that keeps my engine running during the work days, but last night, after drinking this Colombian coffee I remembered that it is one thing to drink coffee and quite another to drink artisan Colombian coffee imported from local producers in the region of Manizalez. Absolutely delicious.

Data from the World Bank shows that the percentage. of arable land per person has been steadily decreasing since the 1960's until now.

Yesterday I finished the week with a couple of nice wine glasses from Portugal. This morning when I woke up and I was looking at the bottle, I started to ask myself what are the top countries in the world in terms of wine production. I thought about France? Italy? Spain?

Fortunately, Wikipedia has an article with data coming from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), sorting the countries by their volume of wine production for the year 2013 in metric tonnes.

There are no surprises in the Top 3 positions (they are indeed France, Italy and Spain), but it's interesting how China has climbed to the 6th position, above Argentina and Australia: