Rein's Cookumentaries and other Stuff

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

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

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 ), 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:

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

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 ) and boy, was it good!  Sometimes I amaze myself with my culinairy concoctions   Uh-oh, I just realised that that also means I had about 15 prunes…  I bet no-one wants reports on that, do they?

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

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…

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

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

Sayonara!

Found a load of old christmas tags for presents. As we’re still suffering from the paperbug, I saw how I could recycle them (and ‘prettify’ them in the process) for this year’s presents. Christmas family dinner will be at our place this year, so I need to get ready
This paper malarky is quite good fun – friends and family will not get a store bought card in the near future, I think. Also a good reason to justify my hamster tendencies and keep all ‘interesting’ scraps of any material trailing around in the house. Now I only need to make a space in my room to store it all, as the kids are starting to grumble about my take-over of the family dining room table

Yep, this is just one card! I saw this kind of card a while ago on a ‘hobby expo’ and wanted them too to decorate, but not a single shop had heard about it. In the end I had to opt for making them myself. Via, via I found out how. It’s quite easy actually, just extremely labour intensive But when it’s finished it’s quite fun folding, folding and folding again. The only problem now is finding enough ideas to decorate them

That’s why I’m no good at the Nintendo or the Wii, but I do like the Sims.  Got most of them and the expansion packs, but like I said, I don’t play them how they’re supposed to be played.  I use them to build and create instead   I’m also a member of TSR.  That’s a never ending source of member-made CC (or custom content to the non-initiated ) and overall cheaper than buying the stuff in the online shop of The Sims itself

It’s only since I have the Sims3 I know of the existence of TSR – also because I was so used to all the additional stuff of the Sims2 that I asked around online.  A Facebook friend (yes, the network works ) pointed me to the custom sites and the rest is history…

Now I’m starting to learn to create my own custom content – I’ve already mastered patterns and paintings, but meshing is still beyond me.  I should start on those tutorials for real one of these days   Today I submitted the latest – a so-called child’s painting of Knijn.  It always takes some time before it actually appears on the site, but I’m going to give you guys a sneak preview   In the game you can even change the frames, to suit it to the room of your house.

I learned a new word today: Favicon.  Wiki tells you all about it.  In short, it’s just a “Look at me, I’m your favourite website!” thingie that appears in front of the url in the web adress bar.  Of course I had to have one.

But what?  It being only 16 by 16 pixels, you can’t expect to put part of the Sistine Chapel on it   So I opted for my old time favourite, the little rabbit I’ve been drawing everywhere since I was a (very small) kid.  Yep, I was a tagger avant la lettre   Can’t see it properly you say?  Well, here it is, ten times bigger.  So when you see ‘Knijn’ popping up, you know I’m around too

The blog that is   It has been a few stressful days, but I finally managed it – moved my blog from the WordPress.com site to my own zelck.org one.  Now we need to put all the trimmings around.  That will take several more weeks I bet

But we’ll get there, no worries!  See you ’round!

Too many things to do, not enough time to do them – or wasting the time I have with things I shouldn’t be doing anyway – so the advent calendar wasn’t lasting for a long time now, did it?

That’s also why I’m definitely not making any new year resolutions this year. I could be making so many – saving more, spending less, eating less, dieting, do more housework, going to bed earlier, spending less time behind the pc,… naaaahh… why bother? I could make one and only one: I’m now officially a grumpy old lady as I’m over 50, so I can use that as an excuse to do whatever I like to do – yeah, that’s what I’m going to do!

There are those ladies in the US (or is the UK?) who wear red hats and purple coats (or is it purple hats and red coats?) and just do whatever they like to do. I’m going to join their ranks. I bought myself a red coat and red shoes when I was in London last week – the shoes in the sales, the coat not (and both were approved by my teenage daughters – success!) – so I’m almost there. You won’t see me wearing a hat in a hurry, I do have a black woolen ‘egg cosy’ (well, that’s what we call them in our family) and an orange one with earflaps, the peruvian style one which is again all the rage now, but I just don’t seem to have a ‘hat head’, my ears are the wrong shape and don’t like to conform to a hat brim As it is snowing today and temperatures are still dropping – they said it could get as low as minus 10 Celsius on Wednesday – maybe I should find one of them to wear later when I’m going to have a look at the sales here. Although I probably won’t be buying a lot, I filled a whole suitcase with books and dvds when we were in London, as the pound had dropped so dramatically compared tot he euro, so I’m good for a few months

Well, the only thing left to say now is “Have a happy new year and that all your wishes may come true!” Just be careful what you wish for though

Or so they say

I’ve been busy playing around, creating a new blog, one I will be sharing with a good friend, what do I say, almost family

But as we both want to be sure everything is to both our liking – and as she’s in the US and I’m in Europe we have to coordinate time zones to find some overlapping – usually when she’s having breakfast, I’m already thinking about dinner, or when she’s ready to go to bed, I’m just drinking my first cup of coffee

So you guys and girls will have to wait a while to see what we’ve come up with – probably somewhere beginning next year