Kindle Cover!

I got my Kindle cover today!

Abrupt End of Pasta Week

We were planning to do soup and pasta, but we ate too much bread with this pumpkin soup.

Spaghetti Bolognese

Day two of pasta week.

Healthy Lunch

Lunch time is not part of pasta week.

Pasta Week

Squash and pasta. Yum.

Hamburguesa

With blue cheese and arugula. And sweet and normal potato fries. And mayonnaise. Yum.

Souffle

By posting all these pictures on Flickr, I have acquired quite a few Flickr contacts that do the same, and even have food blogs. One of these, What Should I Eat For Breakfast Today?, specializes in breakfasts and posts photos as well as recipes (her photos are awesome, you should take a look). This weekend we decided to try one of her recipes, a goat cheese souffle, which we paired with this festive cremant.

BBQ Chicken

After a long day of biking we were still fit enough to cook! We improvised, using Ghillie's recipes as a basis. We made chicken with lemons and olives, and couscous with vegetables, but using the BBQ instead of pots and pans and ovens.



We were a bit surprised that the whole chicken cost only 70 cents more than the handful of olives, but when we got the poor little thing out of its plastic we saw why. It was bruised all over. So sad...

Perhaps fortunately, you could also taste that this chicken had not had a very nice life/death, because even the awesome preparation did not take away the fact that the meat was tough. Next time we'll look for a more expensive chicken that has been lovingly killed.

No Cooking!

After a long drive, and going grocery shopping, we decided no to cook. We enjoyed a meal of cheeses (brie and bleu d'auvergne, and camembert with apple juice from the oven), pâté en croûte, and a salad with fresh walnuts from poppamomma's walnut tree.

It has been cold...

... so it is time for hutspot.

Rijstebrij aka Milchreis aka Rice Pudding

I am really getting used to our weekly breakfasts. This weekend we had rice pudding with a hint of cardamom. We also tried it together with Ellen's pear and fig jam. Good stuff.

Curry

We took James' eggplant curry recipe and ran with it.

Tourte

When we were in France last July with Ellen and Christiaan, we had tourte for lunch. Christiaan told us then that Ellen's tourte is actually better, so we asked for the recipe. He was right.



If I hadn't put in a little too much thyme it would have been perfect. Now it was just very good.



A paired the tourte with a Pinot Noir, which was another excellent choice. A is becoming quite the sommelier.

Char Keuy Teow

Another Day, Another Pasta

Yesterday we made another pasta, this time one that we had not made for quite a while, from a cookbook from the Culinary Instute of America that we had not used in ages. We had to make our own Eye-talian sausage, and it was worth it.



A decided to go all out Eye-talian for the wine which was a good choice. I am not sure whether it was the fennel seeds, tomato or rosemary that made this pairing work, but it worked really well.

Melon and feta salad

Another winner by Ghillie Basan -- melon and feta salad with olives, mint and basil. We also had exploded barbecued sausages (not pictured) .

We paired it with this Rose, which was somewhat too sweet for our tastes on its own, but really worked with the salad. We are so much better at this than 4 years ago! I'll attribute this to all the wonderful wines we tasted in China.

Geef mij maar de vinger...

We pissed away our Sunday by watching stupid Dutch tv shows online. Our favorite show is "Ik vertrek" ("I am leaving"). (For some obsure reason, its title morphed into "Geef mij maar de vinger" ("Just flip me the bird") in our household...)

Whatever it is called, it is wonderful feel-good television, if by feel-good you mean "feel like we are really not doing so badly in life". We just finished the episode in which a Dutch family of 3 move to Alanya to start a travel company, specializing in "the real Turkey" and hiking trips. Too bad the family don't know Turkey or Turkish, and have never been hiking themselves. Since the guy's job in the Netherlands was cleaning cat litter boxes, it is not hard to see the logic in their plan, though.

Anyways, let's get back on topic. We ate fish with an orange-tomato-olive sauce today. We are planning (after a break of 4 years) to pay some more attention to our food-wine pairing from now on.

Today's pairing was a good one: we paired the fish with a Pinot Blanc Barrique from Domaine de l'Oriel. According to my book, a successful match either "compares" or "contrasts" the tastes of the food and wine.

In my opinion, today's pairing "compared" flavors; both the wine and the sauce had a lot of citrus, and the oak and black olives made each a bit more interesting than being just citrus-y.
In Frans's opinion, the pairing was a typical case of "contrasting" flavors: really good wine, bad food.

Confitures d'Ellen

Breakfast today consisted of bread and jam. That may sound boring, but it surely was not, thanks to Ellen's amazing homemade jams: we had mirabelle plum and apple jam, pear and fig jam, and strawberry jam with basil.

Risotto and Pasta

Not only is it moules season, it's also Kürbis season. Above, a variant of our usual risotto with squash: lemon zest and juice instead of pancetta. Almost feels like it is summer again!



We also ate the butternut squash with courgette in a pasta with orange juice (very good but somehow not pictured). In between we ate wonderfully juicy pieces of bacon in this pasta carbonara.

Saarland

We had a full day of good weather this week.

B'Elanna's Grandmother's Pancakes

Moules Frites

We realized that it's Septemberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr already.

Flammkuchen and More Pizza

This Flammkuchen came out extremely well. Maybe because I used rapeseed oil to make the dough.



It also worked really well for making pizza. One side of the pizza contained anchovy, onion, pepper, capers and mozzarella, the other side onion, smoked ham, mozzarella and arugula.



We also made Ghillie's mango and carrot dish.



And from recipes we got from Ellen, we chose this pasta with fennel and arugula.

Almost up to Date

A quick post of some foodz we ate in the last weeks, but that I hardly remember. Pictured above is James Oseland's amazing laksa, where we again used barbecued chicken for extra smokiness.

This is the mayonnaise we bought in Belgium, thanks to Ellen's great advice. We wonder whether it will last more than a month.



Some potatoes to eat with the mayo.

Some eggs and bread to eat with the mayo.



Disgusting delivered pizza.

Frans is a winner!

Not a first prize winner though (or even a second or a third prize winner, for that matter). Behold the photo that won first prize.


Although our disappointment at not landing the first prize was great, we were still able to enjoy the ceremony.


The first prize did not only go to a photo that was baldly framed, the first prize was a 100 euro gift certificate for a hair salon.


Here, we finally arrive at the moment when the presenter points at Frans's fourth prize winning photo -- lovingly printed, put into a plastic folder, and tacked onto a bulletin board.



What can I say, except that this was a wholly different type of culture shock from the last time when Frans won in a local photography competition...

Strickbombe!

My yoga teacher's Strickbomben are getting better and better.

Well, hello!

The husband has been doing all the blogging recently, so he thinks it is time he gets a break, and I take over.

So here you go, I am typing words to go with his beautiful photos of a bug that blended in really nicely with our table cloth. You're welcome!