Wow… if you are reading this, that actually means that it worked! You might have wondered where I went to the last couple of days but I have been very busy behind the scenes with changing over all my websites (and there are six in total) from one host to the next.

My friend and  Dutch blogger Kay from Kayotic Kitchen first alerted me to the fact that maybe I was paying just a bit too much on my hosting package and then when I went to Germany Meeta told me pretty much the same thing. Time for me to start looking at other options.

While I have been really happy with my hosting company the fact of the matter is that I am now going from something like 1200 euro per year to a total of 90 dollar a year… That is too big of a difference to dismiss!

I’ll spare you all the nerve wrecking details, but as I said; if you’re reading this.. it is working!!

What else is going on here; I had my second meatcourse which I will tell you all about later. I had a couple of really fun cupcake shoots and in the meantime I am starting to think about Christmas menu’s.

It’s been difficult getting my head into cooking mode with all that is going on. On top of that I am also worried what January 1^st is going to bring. With Tom still looking for a new job and the change over to the studio it’s quite a bit of changing around here lately but that’s ok. Change is what makes the world go round right?

So to give you a lovely and very tasty recipe I am bringing you this creamy goatcheese with pomegranate which is fabulous as a quick lunch spread but would also be ideal for any party. Try it you’ll love it!

 

 

 

 

Only a few more days before I’m off to London for Foodblogger Connect and I’m not sure if it is me, but what is all that chaos in London right now… ?? I mean seriously; first I was supposed to go to Japan and we all know what happened there, then I was supposed to have a wedding in Italy and that got cancelled due to whatever reason and now I’m gonna go to London and all hell breaks loose there too… Am I jinxed or what? I hope everyone I know in London is allright, because by the looks of the news this evening it’s been pretty bad in certain neighborhoods. What is wrong with the world? Seriously… I get depressed looking at the news these days. If it’s not one natural disaster after the other, then it’s crashing economics or people killing eachother… Not good. Not good at all. I find that it disturbs me more lately. Up to the point where I seriously start to wonder what will become of the world. Will we all be blown away by some major crashing natural disaster or will we “simply” ruin ourselves by war, viruses or the like? I’m normally a fairly optimistic person but it starts to become hard to see the light of day with all that is going on at the moment.

In light of all of the above my quest to loose weight is a simple one, but still one that can occupy my thoughts for a large part of the day. Well, let’s face it; my thoughts are already occupied with food for a big part and now there is just the added complexity of making good dishes a little leaner. One case in point was my lunch of today. I came home after working in the studio and felt like cooking something simple and quick. I had no idea what to make so I just went to the store and then saw one of their recipe cards with a recipe for gnocchi with bacon and garden peas. I liked the look of it and figured I could make that dish but then in a leaner version. And so I did! And it was delicious!

The original version had bacon, creme fraiche and a lot more cheese but my version made me feel better… I’m normally not a big fan of store bought gnocchi and I’m still not but whipping up freshly made gnocchi for this afternoons lunch felt like a little bit too much hard work, so I did opt for the store bought and with all the other ingredients added it was good. But I’m sure will be much better if you do decide to make your own gnocchi. And why not go for it?

O and I have to tell you too that I had THE best salmon hamburger tonight for dinner too!! I didn’t take any photos but I will definitely be making this again and share! Soooo good!

 

I can’t believe we are looking at July already.. Where did the time go? Is it me or does time seem to move faster the older we get? When I was young (ooo, so long ago) and still in school I remember that time used to drag on forever from one schoolyear to the next. You would sit in a classroom staring out the window and daydreaming about better days while your teacher was busy reciting math formulaes or something similar. I would daydream about anything other then school (because… would there be anyone who daydreams about school??) I hated school. I really did. Strict rules and strict times don’t really work very well with me. Ofcourse I managed to adapt to working from 9 to 5 during the times that I had a regular job, but I’ve always hated it. I also didn’t like school because I was painfully shy at the time. I started blushing as soon as I had the misfortune to have to read something aloud or answer a question in class. I was tall for my age; I think I was about the same height I am today when I was 12 years old. And because I had grown so fast I was tall and skinny. (if only I would be tall and skinny now! lol)  Not a good thing! On top of that I had glasses which were thick and unattractive so I was shy.

So school for me was not a nice place to hang out and I couldn’t wait to get my diploma and to start working. It always surprises me when I hear people talking about their schoolyears with fond memories. O well, I am in no way traumatized by my school experience so I guess that’s a plus…. But I got here while talking about time moving so fast these days. We’re halfway down in 2011. Another futuristic number really… When I was in school the years 2011 sounded like a number out of a science fiction book. Hell, even 1984 WAS a science fiction book! No one had a cellphone or even a computer. Administration was done with cards and people went to meet one another instead of chatting over skype or facebook. The world has changed beyond belief in all those years and I like the fact that I’ve been part of most of it. Part of witnessing the first cd, going from videotapes to dvd, the invention of computers, mobile phones, blueray and the list goes on and on. Funny too when you talk with someone half your age and they think I’m from the middle ages when you say that you witnessed the arrival of the first mobile phones..lol.

Not all inventions have been good and I am sure that there are people that think that facebook and twitter are the evil twins of tomorrow, but after my initial hesitation I love social media. It keeps me in touch with my friends around the world in ways that would have been impossible in the eighties. Let’s say you would manage to read something in a magazine about a workshop in Germany called Plate to Page (which would never have been organized as there were no blogs or computers!). I wouldn’t have been a foodblogger (cause that didn’t exist in those days) and I wouldn’t have known all my friends around the world who are also foodbloggers, so I would have never signed up. And even if I had – for some reason decided to go – it would have been impossible to keep in touch with all those new friends once you got home. A letter took forever to arrive, but twitter and facebook are instant. You can share so much that you wouldn’t have shared otherwise. God, life would be so boring without all that.. I wouldn’t have been able to share this delicious recipe featuring baby carrots and melty goatcheese with you either. And trust me, you don’t want to miss this as it is delicious! Simple, tasty and fairly quick to put together.

 

 

“The moisture on the walls slowly dripped down, leaving a glistening trail behind. Every now and then a drop hit the floor, making a soft noise in otherwise silent and dark hallways. Throughout the underground vaults there was a weird kind of mist. A mist that seemed to radiate a faint smell of decay. Despite being so deep underground there was a noticeable draft and she shiffered involuntarily. The beam of the flashlight she brought down with her had seemed so bright when she was still above ground but here, most of the light seemed to be absorbed by that same strange mist and the surrounding darkness. The small lightbundel that remained was barely enough to see where she could plant her feet.

Large cobwebs were everywhere and every now and then a sticky thread would get lodged on her face or hair. Absentmindedly she wondered how those spiders would survive so deep below ground. There seemed to be no other life form and even the webs were hanging there empty and useless. Far of in the distance there was a faint light shimmering and she used that as a beaken to guide her. She had no idea if she would find her target there or if it would even be here but the light, at least, gave her the idea that something should be. The further she proceeded the colder the flow of air became and she was glad she had put on a thick sweater. Despite the cold draft and despite the damp mist she started sweating….”

No don’t worry I have not lost my mind… That is the beginning of ‘Rainbow House’ a horror story I wrote somewhere in my twenties or maybe I even started before that. I thought I had lost the entire story or at least the digital version, but because of the writing we did in Plate2Page I started searching and I found it! It was somewhere on one of the harddrives. Safely tucked away in a document folder I hadn’t looked at for ages. I even decided I would be printing this in hardcopy as it’s a fun reminder of what I used to do.. When I wrote this (still on a DOS computer with Wordperfect!! Yes, I am THAT old! lol…) there was no such thing as selfpublishing like Blurb or Lulu and apart from printing out all the pages there was no way you could ever print your own book. But yesterday I quickly changed the format from A4 to A5, made it into a PDF, uploaded the thing to Lulu and ordered the book. Yes, all 568 pages of Rainbow House will be in my bookshelf… It’s in Dutch by the way, so this is translated but it would not seriously interested anyone other then myself. It’s a shaky narrative at best as the story is written in a time period of about 10 to 15 years and changed so many times in between I honestly don’t know what it’s about anymore. Well vaguely; it’s about 3 girls living in this old house (Rainbow House) in the South of England and they find large vaults under the house and guess what…? Something else lives there too… Whoohoo… Haha… Anyway, just thought it was fun to mention. But now on to more pressing matters and this delicious recipe I wanted to share with you today…

The original recipe is from Donna Hay’s magazine but it’s slightly changed..