Yesterday evening, I treated my guests to my first official all-veggie dinner. As it's summer, I decided to concentrate on salads and Mediterranean flavours. I made:

• a Caprese salad (tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar)
• a pasta salad (pasta, black olives, roasted peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, spring onions, basil)
• a roast courgette salad by Jamie Oliver (pictured; courgettes, chilli, garlic, lemon, mint)
• hoummous
• baba ganoush
• proja (traditional Serbian corn bread with sheep feta cheese and spinach)

I'm a big hoummous fan and I make it often. But sometimes I tend to squeeze in too much lemon juice and not enough garlic. A 700 g-can of cooked chickpeas requires 4 cloves of garlic and juice of half a lemon. Half a teaspoonful of cumin, salt, pepper, olive oil, you're ready to go.

Caprese salad is also a family favourite and you can't really go wrong with it. I used fleur de sel to give the mozzarella some flavour and some good balsamic vinegar (do yourself a favour and don't buy the cheapest stuff when it comes to vinegar and olive oil).

The pasta salad was good, but not spectacular. I just needed something a bit more substantial on the menu.

The Jamie Oliver courgette salad was a real looker, but the flavour didn't convince me. It was somehow bland in spite of the strong herbs. I think it needed more olive oil, but the guests loved it and it was gone within five minutes.

I hadn't made baba ganoush before, although my mother makes a similar aubergine preserve. The original recipe requires tahini, but I don't even use tahini for hoummous. I prefer to roast and blend my own sesame seeds. It was delicious and I am definitely going to make it again. I used two medium-sized aubergines, two cloves of garlic (I have problems digesting fresh garlic so I tend to fry it in hot olive oil for 30 seconds, before it starts to change colour), juice of 1/2 lemon, cumin, salt, pepper, roasted sesame and plenty of olive oil. I first baked the aubergines, let them cool off, peeled and cut them in cubes. I then fried them some more in a pan with olive oil; this makes the preserve last a couple of days longer. I added all spices and herbs and after 5-10 minutes, some finely chopped parsley. The lemon juice comes last. Voila!

I haven't written in ages, and for a good reason. I am so concentrated on my food blog that I don't really have time for anything else. The task I've set myself is very time-consuming - I need to prepare the dish (most often, an elaborate cake), photograph it, write about it, translate what I wrote to English and publish. So I realised that whatever I might write on this blog would amount to "Making of" the other blog and thought that would be boring and not very creative.

However, I've also realised that this is my life and my life at the moment is mostly about food. Apart from baking, I've been on a modified Hay diet since February. The purpose of the diet is to keep me from gaining weight rather than slimming down. My metabolism has changed with the pregnancy and now I gain weight from eating "normally" - that is, eating what I used to eat all my life. Food combining does me good. It's also a diet that is 20% meat and milk, 80% fruit and veg, so my meat consumption has been drastically reduced (I think it's fair to say there were rare days in my life when I wouldn't eat any meat; not that I'm a big meat lover, it's just that meat was / is all around. I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes).

As some of you know, I was toying with the idea of giving up meat before, but I wasn't really serious about it. So I've decided to gradually cut it out of my diet altogether. Right now I'm still eating fish, but in very moderate amounts and I haven't eaten any meat for the past two weeks. I feel better. I enjoy food more. I'm discovering wonderful vegetarian dishes, such as the above pictured Imam Bayildi, thanks to melrose.

So far, I haven't been missing meat. I still prepare it for Miki and Una, but I don't feel like it's necessary. The thing I'm renouncing is something I rarely enjoy. I don't feel smug about my decision, and unlike Morrissey, I'm not about to preach vegetarianism and convert people. But I feel it's the right thing for me right now and I'm going to be blogging about my veggie experience in the next few months. With recipes, of course. :)

... no write but my foodie blog is to be blamed for that. It's a lot of work. Cooking, taking picutres, editing pictures, writing, translating. But it's also very rewarding. I've made many new contacts, people read and enjoy it. I'm following many exciting foodie blogs and regret not having the time to try out some of the recipes. So many people blog about food with such passion, it's admirable.

Food is, however, not what I was going to write about. I was going to bitch about the weather. The following picture was taken about three weeks ago when spring made a short appearance in this part of the world.

Ever since, it's been nothing but rain and cold wind. I hope this photo will make you feel warmer if you're longing for real May like we are.

Not to be out of touch with the weather, both Una and I have caught a cold, although I suspect her cold is actually a bronchitis. Coughing and runny noses galore.

Miki and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary last week. What can I say. We're old. But we still love one another.

Una and I are flying to Belgrade next week. There are real strawberries waiting for us at the Kalenić market. And cherries too! And sunnier skies, hopefully.

Now that the kindergarten mess has been taken care of, our family life is slowly on the move towards its more relaxed state.

The best indicator that my inner balance must be just around the corner is the fact that I've started baking bread on the regular. If I'm any kind of cook in particular, I'm a baker. There's nothing more wonderful and fulfilling than baking your own loaf, and I even used to dream of having my own artisan bakery with a stone oven and the whole shebang. But when it comes to baking bread for the family - I suppose I was just too lazy. I thought it was too much hassle and that the result would be inferior to what's being offered at the corner bakery anyway. But I was wrong on both accounts.

First of all, once you get the hang of the routine, making a loaf of bread is quick. I haven't been experimenting much; first of all I'm trying to improve my skills with a standard mixed wheat loaf (picutred) and the cold leavening method. It takes me literally five minutes to mix the ingredients and another two to form the loaf and put it in the oven. Of course, the yeast needs time to do its magic, and with slow leavening you need to start the process one day in advance, but the results are sensational. The longer it takes for the dough to rise, the tastier the bread.

My cousin Mihaela from Berlin was over here for a visit last week and she inspired me to have a go with home-made butter as well. Unlike bread, it is more expensive to make your own butter than to buy the industrial product. The process is also nowhere near as soothing as the joy of baking - it involves a food processor buzzing at full throttle for ten minutes, but it's easy-peasy and it's a unique experience for those of us who have never tasted really fresh butter before (trust me, there's a difference). For learning how to do this, go to kiss my spatula, a lovely foodie blog discovered by Stephie.

I used the buttermilk left over from butter production to make Irish Soda Bread. I'm turning into a real earth mother. The next thing you know, I'll be knitting socks and going vegan.