Time for Guo Lin

The first thing we used to do, when we got back to Beijing, was have lunch or dinner at Guo Lin. Old habits are hard to break.



We had some of our favorites: fish head...



... Beijing duck...



... and some duck liver.



We had missed you, Guo Lin!

Wonderful Offal

A Week in Foodz

Just being back from cold Japan in freezing Germany, meant a craving for good hearty food.



So this week started with Spätzle, Brussel sprouts and hutspot.



Of course we also had our chicken livers...



... and some Chinese food: fish with rice vinegar.



And after shopping in France, we had these amazing boudins.

Home cooked foodz are not a punishment.

Time for Another Random Restaurant

We felt lazy, and just wanted to have some food whilst biking back to the hotel. This restaurant looked nice from the outside.



We enjoyed many small dishes: some salad with fish...



... some barbecued peppers and meatz...



...shiitake on a stick...



...almost raw chicken liver...



...eggplant two ways...



...chicken (I think)...



...and tsukune (according to a Flickr commenter).

What This Week Ate We?

Time for another episode of What This Week Ate We? More tahinli piliç.



Another pumpkin risotto.

Proof of it being sunny in November in Saarbrücken!



A healthy portion of cheese and potatoes in the form of reblochonade.



And, finally, some veal liver.

Foodz We Did the Eating of

Winter foodz.



Turkish foodz.



More Turkish foodz.



Pastaz.



Chicken liverz.

Foodz in Qatar

As promised some pictures of the foodz we had in Qatar. Basically it was an extension of the food at Ellen's birthday party. The first day we ate Moroccan at Tajine in the Souq Waqif. We had appetizers (pictured above), baby chicken tajine with stuffed dates:



... and baby camel:



Baby camel meat turns out to be very fatty, more fatty than either of us liked.

We were then taken out to dinner two days in a row, where I did not want to embarrass A by taking pictures. Therefore sadly no pictures of the really good Lebanese food we had (in great quantities) the second day.

The fourth day we were on our own again, and went for more Middle Eastern foodz. We ended up in Al Majalis with pretty good food (not as good as the amazing food we had the second day, but still very good --- especially the red hummus-like thing pictured below, which contained a lot of harissa).

Miscellaneous

Lemons

Frans has been trying to buy some lemons so that we can make our own preserved lemons again.
But WTF is this?They put so much junk on the peel that it becomes "nicht zum Verzehr geeignet"?

Fortunately, the Intermarche in Sarreguemines (France) had preserved lemons for sale, and hence we were able to have another offal day with chicken livers and preserved lemon.

Apartment

We have also received some questions about our new place:

• It will be available November 1.
  
• It has a balcony which A believes is large enough for two lounge chairs, or a table and four chairs, but not both at the same time. (F is not sure it is that large.) The balcony faces south and toward the Kaninchenberg.

View Larger Map

• It is 4.7 kilometers to the university, and 2.6 kilometers to downtown.

View Larger Map

• Nobody asked us this yet, but, yes, it does have a guest room of 17.16 square meters. It also has a guest toilet, but no guest bathroom, so unfortunately, you will not be able to shower while visiting us.

• We now have to supply the owners of the apartment with all sorts of information we don't have such as contracts, salary information and pay slips from the last three years, so let's see if they will really rent to us. On the other hand, we received a phone call from the realtor for the house we saw on Tuesday/Wednesday (see previous post), saying that the owners really liked us, and would we please rent their house.

No More Ms. Holiday Gal

Getting rid of the back log, and getting ready for research of the cutting edge kind.



Apologies for the rather awful picture quality, but these amuses-bouche were too good to not post them. We had an amazing 4 course meal at De Moerbei in Warmond with Liesbeth. Excellent food! Even though Liesbeth treated us, we had a peak at the bill, and I think it will be very hard to find a better deal than this in the Netherlands. Highly recommended!



We then went to Amsterdam, where we stayed in Wim & Rietje's house. They actually weren't there for most of the time we were there, so we had the opportunity to see whether we were still able to cook. We made this Normandy Chicken for Willem.



And the next day we had veal liver with potatoes and spinach. Mission "Cooking with the Oars that We Have" accomplished.



Next up: saying "Auf Wiedersehen" to Ellen and Christiaan by preparing this lime marinated chicken with Mediterranean bread for them (third Cordon Bleu recipes in a row!). I think they did not really expect our bread to rise, so it was a pleasant surprise that this did not come out too badly.



And then the moment was really there: we said goodbye to the Netherlands, picked up our rental car and drove to our new homeland, Germany. As soon as we entered Belgium we stopped to have a local specialty: patatje stoofvlees (fries with stew). The "frietkot" that we visited turned out to be a little on the raunchy side (smelly, the stew had way too much cloves and the serving lady was a little bitchy --- but that is kind of normal in Belgium for Dutch people I think), so we were happy to drive on to Germany.

Huaiyangchun

Another fabulous dinner with Amanda, this time in a famous restaurant: Huaiyangchun. There were eight "Chun" restaurants that were very famous, before Mao's liberation. This is one of the only two that still exist.

We had this wonderful pork liver...



some eel...



the famous lion's head meatballs (meatballs with crab roe)...



healthy fava beans...



squirrel fish, which is usually translated as mandarin fish...



and an extra large soup dumpling.



On a completely unrelated note: this week is our "connect to our European roots"-week: the Eurovision Song Contest is held this week! We would like to congratulate Emmanuel in advance with his home country's winning entry ---I can't see her not winning--- Lena. In the following link she is aptly described as "A Swedish Speech Therapist Imitating Ali G.".