Where to begin?? Shall I start talking about the wonderful food, the scenics we have seen, the people we have met or …. sooo much has happened since the last post that it is hard to give a short account of all that. There is very little internet access along the way and it is sort of a miracle that it is working at the moment, so it is unlikely that I will be able to post until I am back after this. But then again…. you never know.

We have already left Tuscany and are now in Emilia Romagna; in a little town called Gorzano di Maranello. Maranello is famous for the Ferrari cars, but as you might have guessed; that does not interest me in the least. Thankfully our travel compagnions feel the same way, so no ferrari trips necessary. It is however also the region of Parma and of Modena where they make the real Aceto Balsamico di Modena, which is like black liquid gold or so I hear. It is sold in bottles of 10ml only…! Imagine that! It is also the region of the real Parmesan and our plan is to visit at least a place where they make Parmesan and one where they make Balsamico. The problem is that we are only here until tuesday and we’re not sure which places will be open on sunday and monday. So if we’re unlikely we will not see much at all. The weather has also taken a turn for the worst and it has been pouring rain all afternoon and night. (and really really pouring… I am not kidding you) We are now in a lovely B&B called Ca’ Penelope which is an agriturismo and it’s a great place too. We had dinner here last night and since we were the only guests we got a lot of attention of the lovely chef, called Lorna. Which is also when we got the idea that it would be fantastic to get a cooking lesson from her. With this kind of weather, what better way to spend a day or afternoon being in a real Italian kitchen?? So after dinner I asked and she was surprised but thought it was fun too, so we are expected in the kitchen tomorrow at 11 am! I can’t wait!

The photos you are seeing here are all still from the first days in Tuscany as it is late at night at the moment and I don’t feel like searching and editing some of the other shots, so you’ll have to wait for more stories (and maybe even some recipes from Lorna) once I am back. Which is – unfortunately – not that far away.

I think I have fallen in love with this country, it’s people and it’s food (well, that was nothing new..!) and we will definitely be back! We’ve already bought way too much stuff to bring home (I mean; we DID go to the Chianti region, so wine and olive oil ofcourse) so I hope I can squeeze in some other things… For now ciao and talk to you soon!!

To everyone who celebrates Mothers Day and to all mothers; have a fun day!

And then as a reward I will give you a good recipe tomorrow… Promis!

Witje

Just this morning we had the usual routine of me getting out of bed and Witje trying to attract my attention by getting in front of my feet and making sure I will not forget to feed her. I was supposed to be gone for the day today, but the appointment got moved to another date, so I was working at home, when all of a sudden I heard the strangest sounds coming from upstairs. I went up to see what was going on, only to find Witje having a serious attaque of some sort where she was heavily convulsing and well… I just knew what it meant. I held her until she stopped shaking, laid her on her pillow and called the vet.

Thankfully Tom was not that far away so I could wait for him to arrive before we went to the vet together to say farewell to Witje… I knew it was gonna happen, but after last week when I wrote to you that she wasn’t doing so great, she sort of became a little bit better but in the end it was no surprise that she was about to be at the end of her life. Still another respectable age; 20 years is quite a high age for a cat.

Nevertheless; that doesn’t make it any easier to lose her… She was born in 1990 and I remember Peter (my boyfriend at the time) and I picked her up together with her little brother Casper. She used to be completely white, so that is why we picked the fabulous name of Witje (which means white…I know, I know…lack of fantasy at the time I think) and we took them both home.

From the very beginning she was always very close to me. Which is why -when Peter and I split up a couple of months later, she came with me and her brother stayed with Peter. I have always felt that Witje was somewhat mentally handicapped. Her mother died before they were two weeks old, meaning that she had some trouble with the regular stuff that mum-cats teach their kids, such as going to the ‘loo’. That has always been somewhat of an issue in that she kept missing the cat-toilet on regular occassions… Hmm… well, what can I say? But that was not the reason I thought she was mentally handicapped; it were other little things, like the way I think she sometimes thought she was a dog, or maybe even a rabbit… She could react very strange to certain things and in actual fact it was a blessing for her probably that she became deaf at about 15 years of age. Being deaf meant that she also became much more relaxed. Not hearing all the sounds anymore was a good thing for her!

She was never a real outdoors cat, but she could sit for hours in her little patch of garden and enjoy the sunshine. Literally she loved sunbathing and could sit like the way she is sitting in the photo on the left for hours. Lately she didn’t come downstairs anymore, except to eat. She slept in the attick, came to the first floor for food and went back up again to sleep some more. Over the last couple of weeks she started screaming at night (so not very good for our night rest) which is something that Joepie used to do as well. I am not sure why, as – according to the vet – it wasn’t because she was in pain; it is just something that older cats can do. To me it was a form of dementia as other things in her character changed as well. Her daily routine changed and she became less social. Sleeping more and more, which I guess is natural when you’re that old.

Her and Gizmo always used to be really close (as you can see below) which started from when we got Gizmo. Witje was two years at the time and has acted as a mother to Gizmo from the beginning, with it going as far as she nursing the little kitten Gizmo was at the time. Obviously no milk, but apparently they both felt good by the action itself and they remained close until Witje started changing about one or two years ago. No more curling up together but they have always been very friendly towards eachother which cannot be said of all our cats!

I don’t actually think that Gizmo will even notice that Witje is no longer there. It was the same when Joepie was no longer there; they didn’t even notice. Cats can be cruel like that or maybe it is just mother nature.

Whatever the case; we will dearly miss her!!

Gizmo and Witje

How happy can a person be simply because the sun is shining and the temperatures are rising slowly but steadily to a lovely temperature? In fact; it was quite warm today and in the garden there was hardly any wind, so it was almost too warm to sit. Well… not really but I did say almost, right?

Initially I had planned to make blinis today but then since it was such a lovely day I figured I would rather spend the day outdoors then indoors, so instead I made a lovely salad with pinenuts, rocket and gorgonzola. Just the thing you need for a spring day.

Now…. don’t you think those little baby chicks above look absolutely adorable? About three years ago I had a photoshoot with babychicks very close to where I live and the lady who runs the chickenfarm Sabrahof send me an email a week ago that she had more babies in and if I wanted to come and have a look and take some photos again. These are used for stockphotography but it is so much fun to shoot these little darlings. Don’t you think they behave rather well (apart from the pooping they keep doing on my backgrounds…tsss… chickens!)?

And in case you were wondering; these are not meant for consumption. They are ooo, a breed I keep forgetting… and are mainly being held as pets by people who like to have one or two chickens. I will show you the grown up version in a bit as I think they are quite good looking for a chicken… I only know the Dutch name which is Sabelpoot… They are small and – as mentioned – very pretty. The little babies at the top are only two weeks old, the one you see all the one at the bottom of the post is three months old. They do grow rather fast!

In addition to these little ones they also have one of the largest chicken breeds which is a Brahma chicken. I really know nothing about chickens so don’t shoot me if it is NOT the biggest chicken race. I just thought it was. It’s really just a regular house these people live in but they have their shed completely filled with chicken and an outside area where a few of them walk around. But the majority is bred to be sold to other people who want to have a chicken.

But that was tuesday, also a lovely day, but today was really the highlight in terms of temperature. It was so warm in fact that I ended up cutting all the bushes in the garden. Last year, when we were completely cutting down most of the (overgrown) garden fence there was a bird with egg in the nest and ofcourse I could not possibly disturb them. So we sort of cut around the bird to leave enough foliage so they would feel safe, but that looked entirely ridiculous in the garden. So I finally got rid of the remaining part of that! It will grow back soon enough. I can tell that all the forget-me-nots are eager to get up and flowering; they are growing fast in this kind of weather. If you ever want a very cheap plant that will come back every year then choose forget-me-nots. I once bought a 1 euro pot of them and well, they are totally everywhere now. It only flowers for a year but then seeds abundantly. I don’t mind that they are everywhere as they are very easy to remove and they will come back the next year, no matter what you do, so couldn’t be easier. And in a few weeks time I will have a see of lovely light blue forget-me-nots everywhere. I am already looking forward to that!

Now on to my salad; as I said I should have made blinis but felt more like a salad in the end. It’s really a throw-whatever-you-have-together salad, but if you want to know what is in it here are the ingredients:

rocket or arugula

carrots, cucumber or any other veg you have left, slice thinly

cherry tomatoes

pinenuts

gorgonzola

Toss it all together and finish with a dressing of your choice. I used something resembling thousand island dressing. Lovely taste! I wanted to add bits of apple in there too as I think that would work really well in this salad, but I ended up forgetting to put it in and then eating the apple as it is. You gotta have your vitamins right? It’s a crazy week in terms of not eating home at all almost. Tonight I will be having dinner with a friend, tomorrow we’re having our cooking club Kort Lontje, then on saturday it is cooking course and then out for dinner again with friends and then finally sunday we will be home and possibly cooking too.

Salad

From left;Brahma chicken, sabelpoot 3 months and below little brahma chicks

Blueberry apple cake with lemon icing

I was wondering what to name this post and then I thought ‘O, what the heck…’ Anyone can know I became 25 today (and a bit..) lol… Ok truth be told it is my 47th birthday today… Jeeezzz, don’t you agree that that is dangerously close to 50? I don’t feel 50 or 47 for that matter, but then again, I have no idea how I am supposed to feel at this age!! Don’t we all have that? I mean; when you’re young the only thing you want to do is become ‘old’ and mature to be able to do the things you want to do and then all of a sudden you find yourself well… old….

I always thought – when I was around 16 or 18 years – that life would be over when you got to around 30 (!). You would have a house, kids and an utterly boring life. I am quite happy to report that nothing could be further from the truth!! Ok, I do have a house, but that is the only thing that is how I pictured it. No kids (not because we didn’t want to) and certainly not a boring life! Tom and I have been together for 18 years (our anniversary was on february 1st!) and we’re still very happy together, so nothing boring there either. I don’t want to go as far as to say that my life is perfect (far from!!) but it’s a pretty good life most of the time. And we wouldn’t appreciate the highs if there weren’t any lows, right? (or so I have been told)

I never celebrate my birthday. I just don’t like it. Nothing to do with getting older either, as I haven’t celebrated any birthdays since I was in my twenties. Probably something to do with the birthdays we used to have at my parents house. Big family, boring birthday… Instead we tend to spend it together Tom and I. Sometimes we go away on a trip (we’ve been to the UK, to Barcelona and to more exotic locations during my birthdays) and sometimes we go out for dinner and sometimes we just stay indoors and have a nice piece of cake. Today might be one of the last. We haven’t actually decided yet, but it is freezing cold outside so it is tempting to snuggle up in the warmth indoors and watch a movie (or two)

Instead I am just gonna celebrate my birthday with you all and I baked a cake for everyone to enjoy! Wouldn’t it be seriously fun if I could actually extend somehow that cake and give you each a slice? It’s nothing special but tastes very good. Regular cake that I filled with apple and blueberries and topped with a lemon icing. I love lemon… and I love this cake!

What on earth is in that soup??

I haven’t had a lot of time to shoot our dinner this week, so instead I thought I share a fun photoshoot with you that is – sort of – food related. I do a lot of stockphotography so I had this idea in my head to shoot in a nice kitchen with a lovely young couple. The couple are people who have modelled for me before and whom I met through my previous job (sort of in my other life, long time ago..lol) and we were lucky enough to be able to use the cooking space of cookingstudio K-O-K-S in Amsterdam. One of the guys that runs the place is a kitchenarchitect so the kitchen they have in their store are mostly fully operational as they also do workshops. Yes, it’s the same cookingstudio we go to with Kort Lontje!

Anyway, the idea was to have them cook something for real and take photos in the process. We had a lot of fun during the shoot and we basically threw all the leftovers from the vegetables we cut and the fish that was filleted (is that the right word??) into one large pan, which is what the girl is holding up on the first photo above.

While the photos kind of look like a proper kitchen you would not believe the re-arranging that had to be done to turn a store into an actual kitchen area. All the real cooking is normally done in the back, but this kitchen is in the front of the store, so when you look through the window this is what you see. I had bought loads of fresh veggies, fish and clams (which I ended up eating for dinner that same day, except the clams which I gave to the Albert and Pieter, who own the store) but it does look like a real kitchen does it not?

I think the series turned out rather well, despite some of the things that went wrong and Wouter even managed to make some sort of edible dish out of all the cutting and breaking of eggs that he did (we had to break four eggs, before I had the photo correctly… )

Anyway, just so you know that I have not disappeared from the face of the earth, but that I am still alive and kicking..

Will post some lovely recipes soon I hope.

Doesn't look all that bad, now does it??

Have a fantastic New Year everyone and a lovely and healthy 2010!

One of my favorite blogs of all time is Jamie’s LifesaFeast. Vote for my dear friend here for the Home Award!!

I’ll be back soon!

In case you have been wondering why I have been so quiet… I was gone for a couple of days with a friend to Spain. She and her husband bought a little villa at the Costa Blanca and I spend a couple of days there enjoying the sunshine. Imagine how hard it is to be back in rainy Holland!

The weather was lovely and we had a great and relaxing time but if you want to know my opinion of the Costa Brava…. terribly touristic! We were staying in Calpe which is very close to Benidorm and Alicante, so you can probably imagine the extend of the tourism over there. It’s december so a lot of the restaurants were already closed for the season. although a lot of older people stay there during the winter months. Which was pretty obvious if you walked around Benidorm. As you can imagine not a lot of authentic Spanish food around plus my friend is not really a foodie (really not) so that makes it hard to enjoy the better Spanish kitchen (which must be somewhere I am sure). We did go to the market on saturday in Calpe, but I always struggle to find a balance between wanting to spend ages taking photos and not pissing of my friend…

We did go to Valencia one day and managed to walk around for hours not finding the centre of town… until we were ready to go back and ofcourse, that was when we found out that we went in the wrong direction!! The center was sort of… well… next to our parking garage… Tsss… Don’t tell anyone! We reached Valencia around 2 pm which is when all the shops close. Not very clever of us, I agree, but what can you do? So all in all I think Valencia is probably a beautiful city, but you just have to visit it at the right time and not walk in the wrong direction.

The region of Valencia is ofcourse famous for it’s oranges and that was pretty obvious when going through the mountains the next day as there was rows and rows of endless orange-trees, mandarins and lemons. I even brought home a bottle of orange wine. Not sure how that is gonna taste, as I think it is probably more a dessert wine, but I thought it was funny so will let you know once I have tasted it.

And now I am back in good old (and wet) Holland and I am so ready to get cooking! It’s been too busy but as far as I can tell right now it is going to be a quiet december so be prepared for me visiting all of you much more often!

Lots of catching up to do!

Healthy lunchpita

I know I’ve talked about health and weight and more of those boring subjects more often, but I keep wanting to be a better person, so … yes, it’s time again to eat healthy and (a little) fatfree. (but not too much mind you) And this week while I was busy running around this perfect little healthy and filling lunch was all that I needed to get me through the day.

It was very quick to throw together and I saw the idea in a book of which I unfortunately cannot remember the name (cookbook overdose??) but I will write it down if I find the book again. To make this pita you ideally use wholewheat pita if you can find it (I could not) and then roughly add some of the below:

yogurt (use fulfat or greek yogurt as that has more flavor then the skinny yogurt)

canned tuna on water

cherry tomatoes

dried apricots, sliced

lamb’s lettuce or another kind of salad you like

red onion, very finely sliced

Add together in a bowl the yogurt, tuna, onion and the apricots and season with salt and pepper to your liking. Warm the pita’s and fill them with lettuce, add the tunasalad and some pieces of cherry tomatoes and enjoy! I mean, how fast is that for a good and healthy lunch!

I also received an award from the lovely Trissa, at Trissalicious, who was kind enough to give me the ‘Over the top” award. Trissa and I have only recently met but I fell in love with her blog and beautiful photos right away. She is a lovely person and writes amazingly witty stories, so if you haven’t checked out her blog, be sure to do so soon!

For this award I have the daunting task to answer 35 (!) questions with a one word answer…. Yeeezzz… that is hard, but I’ll give it a go!

1. Where is your cell phone? Here
2. Your hair? Blond
3. Your mother? Sweet
4. Your father? Handsome
5. Your favorite food? Pasta
6. Your dream last night? Cooking
7. Your favorite drink? Water
8. Your dream/goal? culinary photographer
9. What room are you in? Office
10. Your hobby? Cooking
11. Your fear? Failure
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Famous….
13. Where were you last night? The Hague
14. Something that you aren’t? Tidy
15. Muffins? Yes
16. Wish list item? Too much
17. Where did you grow up? Netherlands
18. Last thing you did? TV
19. What are you wearing? Jeans
20. Your TV? Ugly
21. Your pets? Cats
22. Friends? Yes
23. Your life? Wonderful
24. Your mood? Tired
25. Missing someone? No
26. Vehicle? Volkswagen Lupo
27. Something you’re not wearing? watch
28. Your favorite store? Duikelman
29. Your favorite color? Blue
30. When was the last time you laughed? Hour ago
31. Last time you cried? Almost this afternoon
32. Your best friend? Jacqueline
33. One place that I go to over and over? supermarket…
34. One person who emails me regularly? Mary
35. Favorite place to eat? Home

Pheww… Ok, I sort of cheated on a couple and have more then one word, but that’s ok right? Now for the hard part, I have to pass this on to 6 favorite bloggers, but I have so many that it is hard to pick and choose, but here are some of my favorites!

Valerie of The Chocolate Bunny

Ben on What’s Cooking

Sophie on Sophie’s foodiefiles

Jamie on Life’s a Feast

Lisa on Lisa is Cooking

Reeni on Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice