Archive for August, 2010

It will take ages to post something decent in the beginning but I have figured out how to put new posts in my blog from my   new toy. An HTC Wildfire no less but with ittybitty touch type keys which are a pain to use with my xxl hands to say the least
:P
I already sacrificed my nails but I can’t trim my thumbpads. I’m going to grow special tiny calluses

on the side of my thumbs I think and carry an extra spare fully loaded battery  ;)   Whew this will do for the moment…

Then I would be able to make you all drool again (except for my vegetarian friends, I’m afraid ;) ).  Still feeling the dent in my pocket after the Japanese Splurge, I opted to take a look in my deepfreezer instead today.  Lo and behold, there still was a piece of rabbit lurking behind all the chips, pizzas en fishfingers!  Leftover that didn’t make it to the ‘neighbour dinner’ we had quite some time ago, I remember now.  Well, there’s only that much rabbit 2 women can eat under the disapproving stare of their offspring :P

As there’s still no offspring here (*sniff* I miss them, especially as it’s Mother’s Day here in Antwerp – yep, only here, we’re special :D ), there won’t be any disapproving looks either.

I made it in my tajin (best buy ever, seriously!) with a surrounding of carrots, onions, prunes, bayleaves and potatoes.  No defrosting, just bunged it in with the carrots and onions first, with a generous splash of olive oil.  Let it brown, covered on high heat for about 5 minutes, add prunes, bayleaves and the main ingredient, a bottle of brown beer.  Grimbergen this time.  Heh, to be honest, I use that most of the time, it’s one of my favourite ‘stew’ beers :)   Add some ground pepper, salt and the roughly chopped potatoes.  Let it come up to boiling again and then turn down to half, so it just keeps on simmering.  No need to look after, the tajin drips on the meat and keeps it just right.

Three quarters of an hour afterwards you will be presented with this:

rabbit stew

Rabbit stew

As you can see I pricked the potatoes and they’re just right ;)   As they’re usually the last to be ready, the rest will be good too.

I know it’s a weird time to eat ‘dinner’ (it’s 15:41 here now) but during the holidays (and certainly when I’m on my own) we eat when the mood gets us, be it once or five times a day – my body just has to put up with it :P

I’ll let you know if anything was left ;)

_______________

Report (21:27): it’s all gone now (just had the last bit as a nibble before bed :D ) and boy, was it good!  Sometimes I amaze myself with my culinairy concoctions 8)   Uh-oh, I just realised that that also means I had about 15 prunes…  I bet no-one wants reports on that, do they? :D

In just a few days the grapes have begun to ripen, or well, change colour. My brother has told me I should be watering far more to get bigger grapes, but there are so many bunches that I will have an overload already. I will try to prune properly next year, so there will be fewer, but better proportioned bunches next year. I’m already trying to figure out what to do with this year’s harvest – maybe try grape jelly?  I haven’t got the space to put up a still anyway :P

and some brown leaves

Loads of grapes - and some brown leaves

That’s what most of my daily life revolves around: “What are we having for dinner tonight?”  Sad, really, but well, you have to eat to live :D

Yesterday I was so totally out of ideas for dinner, that I went to the local Japanese and told them “Just give me a taste of everything!”, which resulted in ‘dinner for 1′, which costed (ouchie!) 30 euros…  I will only buy this once I think >_<

It could have fed 2, even taking my big appetite into account, but I managed to finish it.  I don’t think Japanese the next day is as good as Chinese the next day, anyway…

Could have fed 2

Japanese dinner for 1 - could have fed 2, really

In this photo going around the clock, starting top left: ‘ordinary’ inside-out rolls – crunchy but very nice rolls with a dot of sauce (cocktail???) – enormous cone, had to use hands for that – 2 more ‘ordinary’ rolls, but right side out – also crunchy, tasted a bit different from the other one but couldn’t define difference (egg?) – 3 sushi rice balls, one with salmon, one with white fish, one with prawn – I think tuna in a tangy dressing/marinade – carrot spaghetti I wonder how they got those very long threads – pink ginger flower – green wasabi, nosewatering strong – tuna – salmon – flattened squid tentacle slices, chewy, not much taste .

On the menu this box was called: Sushi, Sashimi, Maki, Temaki combo, 25 pieces, for 1 person.  They also added a little container with soja sauce, a pair of chopsticks and a little bag of kroepoek (prawn crackers).  Those I ate later in front of the tv :D

It was a very nice dinner, but very pricey, come to think of it :? …  30 euros doesn’t sound a lot, but when you ‘translate’ it back to the old money, it’s 1200 Belgian Francs – wowee, 20 years ago that paid for the foodbill of a whole week!  Is life getting that expensive, or are we just not paying attention any more to what we spend our money on?  This will be only repeated on very special days I think and even then we will be taking something a bit cheaper :P

Sayonara!

It’s that time of the year again – where my daughters go abroad for a few weeks to visit their dad and I’m left at home with the cat, feeling empty-nested…
This time I have had instructions on how to fill my days constructively though, so no wasting time behind the pc playing games of facebooking or any such trivia ;) Only allowed to check mails and chat with them when they’re online – and knowing their dad it will be far, far less then what they’re used to :D

So what’s on the agenda today?  Making a start with my bedroom – that’s the main project of these weeks and well overdue, really, I hope I will be able to finish it :P – putting the fish tank back in order, even if we’ve only got the one clown fish now (Ziggy has been returned to the shop as he had outgrown the tank and kept jumping up out of the water and bumping his head on the light O.o) and baking bread.  For a Sunday that will be plenty.

So girls, enjoy your holidays and we will see each other on the web ;)