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Recipes

Souptember Day 7:Moroccan Carrot Soup with Dukkah and Yogurt

Souptember Day 6 – Lemony Chicken Vegetable Soup

Souptember Day 5: Cauliflower Hazelnut Soup

Souptember Day 4 – Crab Buttermilk Bisque

Souptember Day 3 – Lasagna Soup with Ricotta Dumplings

Souptember Day 2 – Pulled Pork Pozole

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More about Lydia

It is nice to meet you and thank you for visiting Gwin’s Tiny Kitchen, the place where we enter into an adventure every time we gather. As your tour guide to this adventure, let me introduce myself, my birth name is Lydia and the name I am most referred to as is Mom.

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✨ A Night at Mirror Bar – Bratislava’s Cockt ✨ A Night at Mirror Bar – Bratislava’s Cocktail Wonderland 
Step into Mirror Bar — ranked No. 25 in tworld by The World’s 50 Best Bars — and you’ll quickly see why it’s more than a bar: it’s an immersive sensory experience. 🍸🌿

The design feels like stepping into a modern Art Deco greenhouse: lush greenery hanging above the bar, velvet jewel-tone seating, mirrored floors that reflect the space like a dream, and an enchanted tree anchoring the room with a touch of whimsical elegance. ✨

We gave our bartender a challenge:
💬 “Surprise us… one sweet &  sour.”
And he rose to it brilliantly. The cocktail arrived like a mini performance — beautifully balanced, story-driven, and presented with nature-inspired artistry (yes, even served alongside a tiny living g

What I love most is their philosophy: cocktails here aren’t just mixed — they are crafted to spark emotion, curiosity, and memory. The artistry, the storytelling, the flavors… it all lingers long after the 2wlast sip.

If Bratislava is on your list, reserve an evening here. Trust the bartender, lean into the magic, and let the night unfold through flavor and imagination. 🥂✨

#MirrorBarBratislava #50BestBars #BratislavaNights #CocktailArt #
🇵🇹✨ Portuguese food isn’t just “Europe 🇵🇹✨ Portuguese food isn’t just “European” — it’s a beautiful blend of global influences that tell a story of exploration, trade, and migration.

Our first stop was a tiny café serving fresh-pressed sugar cane juice with a squeeze of lime — a sweet, refreshing nod to tropical roots. Alongside it, a pastel de vento, a flaky hand pie stuffed with meat and cheese, perfectly crispy and comforting.

And the piri piri sauce? Not the same one you find bottled in Europe — this version was bolder, spicier, and kissed with roasted garlic and Brazilian peppers, a reminder of Portugal’s deep culinary connection with its former colonies.

Later, we wandered through a local market filled with Brazilian groceries — vibrant spices, cassava flour, tropical fruit, and the irresistible aroma of pão de queijo (cheese bread) served with guava paste. 🍞🧀🍯

The sweetest connection of all? The Portuguese introduced sugar cultivation to Brazil, and the Brazilians turned it into an art form — proof that food always travels, evolves, and comes home transformed.

#GwinsTinyKitchen #GwinsTravelingKitchen #CulinaryTravel #PortugalEats #BrazilianFlavors #FoodIsCulture #TravelWithTaste #PiriPiri #PaodeQueijo #PasteldeVento #SugarCaneJuice
“In the folds of the Douro Valley, time runs as “In the folds of the Douro Valley, time runs as slow and rich as the wine itself.” 🍷

For over two millennia, these steep terraced hills have nurtured vines that would give birth to one of Portugal’s greatest gifts — Port wine.
From the deep ruby sweetness of a Vintage Port, to the nutty amber of an aged Tawny, and the floral elegance of a chilled White Port, each tells a story of patience, sun, and schist-carved soil.

The Douro Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is the oldest demarcated wine region in the world (since 1756) — a place where tradition still guides the hand that tends the vines, and the river carries their story to Porto’s cellars.

Port wine’s color tells the story of how it was aged — and for how long.

Ruby Port 💎
Bright red and youthful — aged mostly in large oak vats for a short time. This limits oxygen exposure, preserving those deep berry tones and fresh fruit flavors. Think cherries, raspberries, and chocolate.

Tawny Port 🍂
Aged for years — sometimes decades — in small oak barrels. The slow oxidation turns the color from ruby red to amber or golden brown. You’ll taste caramel, nuts, and dried fruits — warmth in a glass.

White Port 🌼
Made from white grape varieties and aged in oak, it ranges from pale gold to honeyed amber depending on time spent aging. Often enjoyed chilled as an aperitif or in a tonic cocktail.

Rosé Port 🌸
A newer creation, lightly fermented like rosé wine, keeping its blush pink color and notes of strawberry and vanilla.

Color in Port is all about contact with the grape skins and exposure to oxygen — nature’s slow artistry transforming deep red into gold over time.

✨ Raise a glass to heritage, to craft, and to the magic that happens when time, terroir, and human hands meet.
#GwinsTravelingKitchen #TravelWithTaste #GwinsTinyKitchen #DouroValley #PortWine #PortugalWine #UNESCOHeritage #TravelThroughTaste
🎶🇵🇹 A Meal Wrapped in Music — Fado, Cal 🎶🇵🇹 A Meal Wrapped in Music — Fado, Caldo Verde & Port

There are meals that fill you… and then there are meals that move you.
Dinner in a Fado house is both.

The evening began with caldo verde, that humble bowl of comfort found on every Portuguese table — creamy potatoes, ribbons of kale, and smoky chouriço. Simple, earthy, and full of soul — just like the music about to follow.

Then came a glass of Port wine, deep and ruby, sweetened by the warmth of the room and the anticipation of the first notes.
The lights dimmed, conversation faded, and a hush fell over the space.

Two guitars began to play — one bright and metallic, the other steady and soft — before a voice rose, rich with longing and love. That’s Fado: Portugal’s song of saudade, the ache of memory and the beauty of presence.  No spotlight, no center stage, lights lower, silence surrounding you making each vibrato and strum of guitar felt and not heard.  Your senses become alive. 

As the music lingered, so did the flavors — the salt of the soup, the sweetness of the Port, and the feeling that for one small moment, everything was connected.

🖤 To taste, to listen, to feel — that is Portugal.

#GwinsTinyKitchen #TravelWithTaste #Fado #PortugueseCuisine #CaldoVerde #PortWine #LisbonNights #Saudade #FoodAndMusic #CulturalTravel
🇵🇹 Tinned Treasures of Portugal 🐙🐟 In 🇵🇹 Tinned Treasures of Portugal 🐙🐟

In Portugal, canned fish isn’t a shortcut — it’s an art form.
Each tin tells a story of sea, salt, and time. Sardines, squid, octopus, mackerel… preserved at their peak, bathed in olive oil or a delicate sauce, ready to open and savor.

Sadly, most people’s exposure to canned fish begins and ends with tuna — mixed with mayo, hidden beneath condiments. But here, it’s something else entirely. Pure. Honest. Celebrated.

Walk into any Portuguese market and you’ll find entire walls glimmering with vibrant tins — vintage labels, proud heritage, and the quiet rhythm of tradition. It’s not “processed food.” It’s craftsmanship in a can.

Serve it simply: on toast, with lemon, maybe a drizzle of good olive oil. That’s it. Let the ocean speak for itself. 🌊

#travelwithtaste #gwinstravelingkitchen #portugalfoodculture #tinnedfish #conservasportuguesas #seafoodstories #culinaryheritage
📸 Sheri Doe
🌊✨ Viva Gomes – The Invincible Vines of Col 🌊✨ Viva Gomes – The Invincible Vines of Colares ✨🌊
Here’s to those wild, windswept sands and the vines that refused to bow.
Deep in the westernmost edge of mainland Portugal, in Colares, the grapes don’t grow tall. They grow low — snaking across beach-sand dunes, hugged by the Atlantic’s fog and breeze, planted in ancient clay and limestone beneath metres of golden sand. 

🌿 Why so unique? Because when the dreaded pest Phylloxera vastatrix ravaged Europe’s vineyards a century ago, most of the continent’s vines fell. But Colares? The sand was their armour. The root-sucking bug simply couldn’t thrive in those pure sandy terraces — and so the vines stayed ungrafted, true to their own roots. 

🍇 The vineyard tradition here is like no other:

Vines trained low, trunk nearly ground-level, clusters barely off the sand, warmed by the reflected sun, cooled by the sea breeze. 

Deep trenches are dug to the clay-limestone substrate, vines planted there, then the sand pulled back over them. A desert-coast miracle. 

The soil: pure sand (virtually no clay) at the surface, which means no phylloxera, and a terroir that yields saline, crisp, mineral wines with real character. 

🍷 So when you raise a glass of the iconic red Ramisco or the white Malvasia de Colares from the historic Adega Viúva Gomes (or simply tip your hat to “Viva Gomes” in gratitude), know you’re tasting resilience, history, and the sheer poetry of nature and human hands.

Here’s to roots that run deep, sand that shields, vines that endure. Raise your glass to the coast. 🍾🌾
🐟✨ From the ruins of the Roman Empire to the 🐟✨ From the ruins of the Roman Empire to the tables of modern Portugal — this is the story of garum, the world’s first global condiment.

Our Culinary Backstreets tour took us on a flavorful journey through time. We began at Selo de Mar in Setúbal, where chefs and researchers are reviving the ancient process of making garum — a fermented fish sauce created by layering fish and sea salt, then letting the sun and time do their work. The result? A clear, amber liquid bursting with umami, salt, and the essence of the sea.

In Roman times, garum was liquid gold — traded across the empire and poured over nearly everything. It wasn’t just a condiment; it was a symbol of wealth, trade, and culinary sophistication, connecting port cities from Lusitania (modern Portugal) to Pompeii and beyond.

After tasting modern garum — rich, briny, and surprisingly elegant — we crossed the Sado River to Tróia, home to the largest Roman garum production site ever discovered. For 500 years, these stone vats supplied the empire with flavor. Standing among them, surrounded by the scent of salt and sea air, we could almost hear the echoes of Roman workers stirring fish and salt under the sun.

A taste that survived two millennia — and still tells the story of sea, salt, and time. 🌊

#GwinsTravelingKitchen #TravelWithTaste #CulinaryBackstreets #Setubal #Troia #Garum #RomanHistory #PortugalCulinaryTour #FoodHeritage #SeaToTable #Umami #AncientFlavors #GwinsTinyKitchen
🦪✨ A taste of history and the sea — all in 🦪✨ A taste of history and the sea — all in one unforgettable afternoon.

Today we enjoyed an oyster picnic inside ancient Roman ruins, with oysters straight from one of Lisbon’s finest oyster farms.
Our host, Célia, shared her passion for the craft — from nurturing oysters in the clean Atlantic waters to the perfect way to enjoy them.

No hot sauce. No mignonette. Just a squeeze of lemon and the pure, sweet, briny flavor that speaks of the ocean itself. 🌊

Set against the stones of time, each bite felt like a connection between ancient Rome and modern Portugal.

@culinarybackstreets

#GwinsTravelingKitchen #TravelWithTaste #LisbonAdventures #CulinaryTravel #OysterLovers #RomanRuins #FoodandHistory #PortugueseFlavors #SeaToTable #CulinaryExperience
✨ Cheffing a Chateau Dinner Party ✨ When frie ✨ Cheffing a Chateau Dinner Party ✨

When friends from different paths of life come together to celebrate milestone birthdays, you go big—or you go home. 🥂 So we rented a château, threw an epic dinner party, and filled the night with flowing wine, full bellies, and brand-new memories.

Walking in blind, I built the menu straight from what I could find in the local markets. I learned how to use a European oven on the fly, made do with just two pots, and even used a wine bottle as a rolling pin 🍷😂. What made it all work? An incredible crew of helpers who rolled up their sleeves and brought the feast to life.

Special thanks 💫
• @ddmattison – for the most delicious crust
• The Mikes + Chris – for quick prep magic
• Katie – cocktail queen + ultimate sous chef
• The dishwasher crew – sorry for the mountain of plates 😉

The result? A night that proves food, laughter, and a little creativity can turn any gathering into something unforgettable.
At Au Pétrin Moissagais, 51 Rue des Faures, Borde At Au Pétrin Moissagais, 51 Rue des Faures, Bordeaux, history has been rising since 1765. 🥖

Step inside and you’ll see black soot still clinging above the original wood-fired oven—built in the reign of Louis XV and still in use today. A wooden cart rolls loaves into deep troughs, filling the room with the scent of centuries.

The best part? A long communal table where locals and travelers gather, each pausing to indulge in bread made with the same 18th-century recipes that have fed Bordeaux for generations.

✨ Would you pull up a chair here and share bread with strangers who soon feel like friends?

#BreadCulture #Bordeaux #FoodStories

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