I had a jar of hazelnut butter in my cupboard and a spare egg which needed using up. So, I made some cookies! Using 50% butter (well, it's not even proper butter!) and 50% hazelnut butter make the biscuits easier to digest and much healthier too! Less fat, more fibre and more proteins. I also used 50% millet flakes and 50% flour instead of just flour, and it makes the texture really nice.
I normally do not really like spinach, but we bought these baby spinach leaves recently and they were truly delicious. So much that I decided to make something else with baby leaf spinach/ This time, it was a curry. I bought a ready-made sauce I confess, but I have to spend time studying (Dutch, but also starting revisions for my management course exam which will take place in October). We also have 2 evenings a week spent on cycle rides which involve something quick to cook on these days.
1. Fry the diced paneer in groundnut oil until golden, then add the spinach leaves 2. Meanwhile, boil the basmati rice. 3. When the paneer and spinach are cooked, add the curry sauce 4. Serve in warm bowls.
I will make no mention of the depressing weather we are having this year. Despite of it all though, our plants are doing OK, even if the tomatoes are very late.
We have had our first courgettes last weekend, and there are some more to come. The wild rocket is doing well, shame there are no tomatoes ready to make a nice mixed salad! We enjoyed our first crop of French beans last week too, and they were delicious and very tender.
Check out these apples! There are six of them in our tiny apple tree. Let's hope we get to eat them.
Those who know Trave & I will know that we are getting married in September this year. In lieu of wedding list and honeymoon, we have decided to take part in a very special challenge called "Cycle Cuba". We first have to raise a minimum amount of £2,750 each (€4,060 / $5,590) before February 2008. The money I will raise will be donated to Africa Now, a charity helping local African enterprises to develop and become profitable. Africa Now has been awarded UK charity of the year for International Development.
If you care about African development and if you would like to help us to reach our goal for this challenge, please visit my fundraising page where you can make a fast and secure online donation: http://www.justgiving.com/melcyclescuba.
I will post regular updates here to keep you informed. Thank you very very much in advance for all your support.
We have had our kitten since Friday night and it is really cute! It is meouwing a lot. She probably misses her family. She is a tortoiseshell kitten, mostly brown with a lighter/white belly and dark paws. She is very furry and fluffy like her mother.
Assuming she is a girl, which should be confirmed by the vet next Saturday, we have named her CHATOUILLE. It is is French for "tickle". In France, names of pets born in one year start with the same letter and 2007 is the C year. And 'chat' the first syllable of CHATOUILLE, means 'cat' in French. So, Chatouille it is.
So here are a few pictures of our little fluffy ball.
Isn't she cute?
She loves doing acrobatics on the coffee table and the dining table. Both are very interesting tables for a kitten, as they don't have 'just 4 legs', but loads of bars on which she can climb and walk.
Too bad we have not had the opportunity to film her on the laminated floor, it is really entertaining!
Here is a video of her playing in her basket.
She is really good. She was very shy the first night (who would blame her?) but she got used to her new place and to us very quickly. She even already has a 'favourite' spot on the sofa! On Trave's side :(. Appart from one incident this morning on one of the doormats, she has been using the litter, has been eating, drinking, meouwing, purring. She scratched the rug and chair legs a bit on Saturday, but has learnt to use her scratching board since then! She is learning very fast.
And here is a picture of Chatouille inside the 'kangoroo pocket' of my jumper. (she did not like it too much as a means of travel!)
There are two movies we have seen recently which are worth mentioning: The Departed and Das Leben der Anderen. Both are purely genius, but in very different ways.
Although I usually don't like violent movies, The Departed is very well done and really hooked me. It took us two attempts to watch it thought, it was too much in one go (151 min), especially coming back from Glastonbury. To tell you the truth, I think it is the first movie by Martin Scorsese that I see. I might have seen Gangs of New York, but I don't remember, and although a 'classic' I have not to this date seen Taxi Driver.
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) is such a beautiful movie. So human. I thought it would show things in black and white: honest citizens vs. nasty Stasi spies and officials. There is so much more to it. It is brilliant and I really, really recommend it.
I have just finished reading Die Kinder von Eden (The Hammer of Eden in English). I really enjoyed reading it. My first Ken Follet. I think I will read more of his books. Trave could not find The Hammer of Eden in the library (and cannot read in German) so he borrowed The Pillars of the Earth and started reading it yesterday. Looks like a very big and long book to read!
I have just started Le Loup des Steppes (English Steppenwolf), by Hermann Hesse. I had a bookmark left on page 50 so I guess I intended to read it some time ago and gave up. I will try again.
You may have noticed how illogical it is to read an English language book in German and a German language book in French. I would prefer reading the original versions but feel that Hermann Hesse would be too much effort to read in his mother tongue. I find thriller type books easy to read in a foreign language and feel that in order to maintain/improve the knowledge I have in a particular language, it pays better to read regularly something easy than struggling to understand something complicated. This is why I keep the complicated things to read in my mother tongue French or my day-to-day language, English. And I find easier things to read about in German and Spanish.
My Dutch is coming along OK. I have just gone back to it after allowing myself 2 weeks off Dutch learning. I have been through a revision programme tonight and although I have not forgotten everything, I have a bit of work to do before I go any further! I am learning through a "teach yourself Dutch in 12 weeks" book & CDs. I am halfway through. My target is to be able to have a short conversation with customers and partners in September, when I will be attended an exhibition in the Flemish part of Belgium.
I knew the taste of buckwheat from buckwheat flour (see galettes), but had never actually eaten the grain whole. I was amazed by its shape: a kind of tetrahedron, quite unusual for a grain I thought! So, it tastes just like buckwheat flour but has a texture similar to that of bulghur or whole wheat.
So I wanted to try out of pure curiosity and I will use it again in the future because it is really nice. Another advantage on rice for instance is that it cooks in just over 5 minutes, thus saving energy.
1. Boil the buckwheat for 5-6 minutes until tender 2. Fry the veg in olive oil, add the herbs of your choice 3. Roast the cashews under the grill and pre-heat the plates at the same time. 4. Serve immediately and enjoy!
1. heat the oil in a deep pan and fry the celery and fennel until tender then set aside.
2. melt the butter in a big non-stick frying-pan, pour the rice and coat with the melted butter until transculent. Add the vodka at once while stiring.
3. Gradually add the veg stock until the rice is cooked.
4. Add the Parmesand, herb of your choice (I used marjoram this time) and freshly cracked black pepper. Serve in warm bowls and sprinkle with parsley (and this one was coming straight from the garden, directly from the producer to the consumer, within a minute!).
I have never been a great fan of omelettes. They need to be extra well cooked and full of other stuff so that they don't taste too eggy. Not keen on Spanish tortilla or anything like it.
BUT we had eggs to use up in the fridge, so I decided to make one (this is very rare). And guess what? It was absolutely fantastic! I am now seriously prepared to make omelettes on a regular basis, who would have guessed?
The following will feed 4 people:
1 courgette, cut in quarters in the length then thinly sliced 1 broccoli, cut in tiny florets 6 baby sweetcorn cobs, sliced
3 eggs ~ 200ml milk 100g grated cheddar
1. Fry all the vegetables with olive oil until tender and set aside.
2. Mix the eggs and milk together. Pour onto a with olive oil pre-heated frying pan. Add some of the cheese then the vegetables, then the rest of the cheese.
3. Cook until completely set and golden. Serve with a green salad and some crusty bread.
I love all the ingredients so this salad is like heaven. I am just looking forward to my own wild rocket to have grown enough: I bet it will taste even nicer! Rocket is my favourite green salad.
So for this dish I used some rocket salad, basil (and other mixed green leaves I have forgotten the name of), cherry tomatoes, halved, thin slices of vegetarian Parmesan, freshly cracked black pepper and unrefined, mechanically pressed extra virgin olive oil.
