It’s a good thing Laurens comes from an Italian mother and has absolutely nothing against his heritage, because I’ve been on an Italian streak this year. I’ve always cooked a lot of Italian, or Italian-inspired foods, but lately it’s been Italian all the way. As I challenged myself to 4 new restaurants this year and 4 dinner parties, I should’ve possibly specified 4 new cuisines, because so far all the new restaurants have been Italian and every dinner party I’ve thrown has seen pasta or risotto.
Regarding the restaurants, first there was ‘Hot Meeting’,. Admittedly that doesn’t necessarily sound very Italian, but when you hear that it’s located in the university district just outside the center of Milan, you get the idea.
Then there was Il Paradiso, which I completely forgot to blog about. It’s an Italian eatery close to our house in the suburbs, which served wonderful food, but had awful awful staff. We were happy to find out they
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My life would be vastly different without social media. In fact, I can hardly imagine my life without it anymore. This blog, facebook, twitter and now Google+ have and are making a tremendous impact on my life. Without social media, my life would be different, emptier even. Without social media I wouldn’t have interacted with, heck, I wouldn’t have known a whole bunch of people I now consider friends.
Group photo @ Food Blogger Connect (c) Sarka Babicka of cookyourdream.com
Last weekend was spent in London, at Food Blogger Connect ’11. An annual, international Food Bloggers conference/get together/party which lasts three days and leaves you with experiences and friends worth a lifetime. At FBC, people get together from different cities, countries and even continents. People with completely different backgrounds, but one common denominator. We share a (in other peoples eyes possibly unhealthy or strange) hobby, or profession that brings us together. We’re all food bloggers.
My beautiful, gorgeous tomato bushes are gone. It’s sad really. It makes me wonder if I’m cut out to garden my own veggies. Never mind the neverending, wonderful crop of zucchini that has been filling our table so often that I started sharing many. Never mind the spring onions that are there, abundantly, waiting to become salad. My tomatoes failed and I am a crappy farmer gardener.
In all honestly, I don’t think I can and should blame myself. The only one to blame is the weather. The immense amount of rain, rain and more rain that have graced spoilt our Dutch summer are the cause of my tomato misery.
Last week I posted about how large the tomatoes were, just waiting for a little sun. Last week I had a week off and tended the plants continuously. I removed the dying, rotting leaves that had started to come in. I knew the leaves would likely keep on dying on me, but who knew if the tomatoes would just have enough time to redden up. To ripen, to meet their destiny of salads and sauce.
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Once in a while, when we’re in a hurry, or busy, or working late, I’ll be lazy and prepare a store bought meal. The one I usually have laying around is a bag of frozen pasta/meat/veggie mix with sauce cubes. Sounds appetizing, no? They’re actually not even all that bad, as far as store bought meals go that is.
This is not that.
I had some spinach that needed to be finished, 2 chicken breasts, and some cream that was nearing it’s due date. I had thought to make a salad, but the weather turned on me and I figured I wanted something warm.
It looks like I’ve neglected this blog lately. Nothing is less true though. I looked at it at least daily, only to find out that I still couldn’t upload anything. Fortunately last night, as I got cranky about it and was researching other webhosts, Laurens found a way to fix it. Gotta love having your own IT-helpdesk at home!
While I couldn’t post I did cook, and wen’t out to dinner, and did things in the garden. This summer has been exceptionally crappy though, so my usual summer meals have not been all that present, unfortunately.
On one particularly crappy-weahtered late afternoon I decided I wanted soup. And not a nice, cold, summery soup either. I wanted full bodied, warm wintery soup, or at least fall soup if such a thing exists. Not having had onion soup for quite a while I decided to go for that.
Networks
