Loved up
January 12, 2007 at 12:49 PM
by Ashleigh
Wow, I feel loved up! Thank you all for the birthday wishes. You sure know how to make a girl feel special.
Now that I'm 33 and 1 day old life has returned to normal. Which means?
That I have one child home sick with a high fever, another who refused to go to school if his brother wasn't going (we are just not going to talk about this issue), a pile of laundry up to the ceiling, an ironing basket cascading onto the floor, and no possibility of my usual while-away-the-ironing-blues cure of watching Sex & the City.
I'm currently two thirds of the way through the second season and I have all the DVDs except Season 5. A friend passed them onto me. I can't recommend enough that you get tv series on dvd to watch while ironing (or doing any repetitive chore).
My ironing takes me between 2 and 4 episodes of Sex & the City twice a week. They're the perfect length too.
Any recommendations for the next series to watch? I like the idea of Frasier, but I wish I could get Northern Exposure on DVD. I loved that series. We have Sopranos on DVD but I can't watch anything too distracting while I iron - might burn myself!
My refrigerator is trying to make sense of the backup of vegetable subscriptions. Any ideas on what to do with two red cabbages, one bundle of black salsify, half a pumpkin, one sugarloaf cabbage, one savoy cabbage, some unidentified greens (I think they're meant for stamppot) and a bundle of topinambours? Don't say soup. I already made that.
A while ago I saw my acupuncturist and he asked whether I had an Dutch ancestors. So I told him yes, Dutch and Scottish. So he said, 'oh, I guess that's why you have this puritanical streak?' I suppose he's right - I can't bring myself to throw any vegetables away until they've disintegrated into a puddle in the bottom of the fridge. Regardless of how much I dislike them. I suppose I could make an emergency trip to Barbara to deliver myself of the red cabbages because she says she actually LIKES them!
Someone asked what the romanesco that I wrote about before tastes like. Well, it's difficult to say, but imagine a softer cauliflower. Or a baby cauliflower really, then make the taste sweeter and milder and you have a romanesco taste. I prefer it to broccoli and it's so pretty!
Someone else asked what makes the pancakes 'American'. I guess it would be because they're American style pancakes? Over on this side of the world we make what Americans would call crepes, I suppose. Big pan sized pancakes. The batter is thinner, and you tilt the pan to let it run into the edges. A Dutch pancake is somewhat thicker than a crepe, yet contains no raising agent, like an American pancake.
Someday I'll do a pancake step-by-step photo thing like I did for the omelette, and then you can see the difference. Wikipedia explains the whole pancake thing much better than I could. Click the link, it has pictures and all sorts.
I've discovered a couple of new-to-me blogs based in the Netherlands, so I'll share. Notitie van Lien isn't a new blog to me, but Lien has started translating her recipes into English, and about time too - she cooks the most beautiful Italian dishes, interspersed here and there with Dutch cooking. Mevrouw Cupcake is a new discovery found by reading comments on Bake My Day. If you haven't visited Breigh's Canadutch, you're missing out. Stuart Invades Holland in a peculiar 28 year old guy kind of way. Nina writes Milla on the Milky Way. Then there's Blonde but Bright, who gets to travel to all kinds of interesting places from her base here in Holland.
And yes, I made cheesecake and yes it is divine and very Nigella'y, even though it doesn't seem to have made me develop Nigella's bosoms, and no I'm not sharing. Well, maybe a picture tomorrow. I just need to eat a bit more of it to ... you know... test it...
Comments
Topinambour is just lovely when you deep fry it in thin slices. Just like potato chips, but they taste better!
I kind of thought Nigella was scary. If I were a guy, I'd definately be scared off by her. I'd be such a wimp if I were a guy.
We should schedule a get-together before your red cabbage goes off. I'd gladly adopt it into our little home of people who eat weird veggies because they don't know any better. LOL.
I could even bring you some ironing to do while watching some great DVD series... ;>
Im so happy to have found your blog and the links to other great blogs from Holland! How I long to be there with my Oma and all the other relatives. I love Holland! If you want a good series, I recomend Grey's Anatomy. It is wonderful. I also really love Buffy but I may be the only thirty something to love it so much. Anyway, I look forward to visiting Often and getting a fix of the country I would have grown up in if my parents hadnt migrated to Australia.
I don't know what you could make with all those vegetables, however if I had some pumpkin I would make my mother's "pumpkin bread" which is really a pumpkin Bundt cake with chopped nuts in it. That is a Christmas tradition for our family, although we usually use canned pumpkin. :(
I so love the fact that you iron and watch TV! I used to go to my favorite video store in A'dam and tell whoever was working, "I need a movie to iron to, that means no subtitles, preferably light and fluffy."
Let me know if it helps? I'll eat cheesecake for days I promise!
Ash -- for the vegetables, go to allrecipes.com and look up the ingredients. If that doesn't work, I have some cabbage casserole dishes I will copy and send you -- once you add cream and cheese and ham it is hard to tell what you are eating (you would have to convert all the measurements though). You can alwas cook greens with potatoes and cream and serve with irish soda bread or cook cabbage, onions, beer and kielbasa together.
Happy Birthday! We're the same age, you and I. And it's a good age.
But, ironing? What's ironing?
Thanks for introducing me to your blog!
(i just found this blog through a link to a former post on simplifying. good stuff)
a dvd recomendation: Freaks and Geeks. it's frankly awesome. like so many good shows, it only lasted one season, but it was terribly good, and the whole series is available on dvd!
Ironing is made all that easier when you have something good to watch on the TV.
Can't help you with the any Veg ideas though - sorry.
January 12, 2007 6:19 PM