Divinely Delicious

After a month of working, I have made one important discovery: I get cranky when I don’t get enough ME-time. The first two weeks were all jolly and good, but then the weather changed. We’ve had some snowfall and freezing temperatures, which meant getting stuck with my wheels in the muddy snow, not seeing a damn thing through my frozen windshield and trains arriving shamelessly late. Consequently, I had to get up even earlier and was home even later than normal. I have thoroughly enjoyed my long Christmas weekend because in the two weeks leading up to it, my exhausted mind/body wouldn’t let me do a thing. I have missed my cat, I have missed my books, I have kind of missed my TV shows (have to save them up for the weekend), I have missed my guitar game, and I have missed my cooking. Luckily, the start of my working life coincided with my discovery of The Two Fat Ladies and, more specifically, with their DELICIOUS onion soup, which is a real easy pick-me-up meal to finish off the week.

Typical for Clarissa and Jennifer, the soup is made with way too much butter to be good for a person. When the butter is melted, you have to add the chopped onions and after they get the desired colour and texture (that’s up to the cook in charge – either you make the onions caramelised and brown, or when you don’t have much time or patience, you can just leave them soft and yellow), you add stock mixed with some beer or wine to give your soup more “umphf!” (that’s just brilliant), some thyme, and salt & pepper. Let it simmer for fifteen minutes, add the ladies’ Secret Ingredient, Stilton Cheese, let it simmer for another fifteen minutes and enjoy the best soup you’ve ever eaten. I still haven’t had the opportunity to use real Stilton and have therefore experimented with various kinds of (blue) cheeses, but even then every try has been delicious.

On the show, Clarissa also made some home-made croutons to go with the soup. When it comes to making croutons, two things are important, she said:

1. One can never make too much croutons; however much you make, your guests will eat every single one.
2. Heat your oil through and through, or you’ll end up with soft cubes of bread soaked with oily fat instead of delicious crusty croutons.

Today, I added a small variation to my croutons: after I baked them in the oil, I smeared them with the blue Roquefort cheese I also used for my soup and popped them in the oven for five minutes or so, so that the cheese melted into the croutons. When these were done, I added some to my bowl of damping soup, grabbed a spoon, put one of these cheesy croutons floating in the Roquefort/onion soup into my mouth and thanked God I was alive – it was simply Divine. I can’t wait for my friend to return from the UK with some proper Stilton so I can finally try The Real Deal.

88

It may be old for some, but I have just discovered the BEST cooking show in the history of cooking shows: BBC’s Two Fat Ladies, starring Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright. It ran from 1994 to 1996 in the UK, so it’s quite old, but I had never heard of it until now. Unfortunately, the show ended because of Jennifer’s death.

In every episode, the two ladies drive across the UK with their old sidecar and cook lavish and mostly traditional English meals on location. They cook two dishes each, visit locals to get their ingredients fresh from the garden/sea/farm/whatever, and use LOTS of butter. Their small talk in between is hilarious and they often burst out singing while cooking. Especially Jennifer makes me laugh every time, with her rolling r. Oh, and the theme song is brilliant. I’m a fan!

RRRRRavishing!

Whining Works

It looks like last week’s whining paid off because I have got a job. Temporary, as a legal secretary, in Brussels, but still: a job. Starting Monday. That’s suddenly very soon, but that’s OK, I am ready for it. This is such a load off my shoulders, and I am SO relieved.

Now I can finally join in with the whining about traffic, the long daily commute, train strikes, working late, impossible deadlines and other such working-life nonsense. Oh, and instead of decorating a tree this year I can decorate my very own cubicle, how neat is that!

Other than that, I had a sudden surge of Christmas spirit this week, and wound up listening to dear old Sufjan singing carols with that angelic voice of his. Which, if memory serves me right, was one of the first posts I made when I started this blog. Which means that another year has passed, and it’s almost time again for Christmas parties, presents, end-of-year-thoughts, best-of-lists and New Year’s resolutions. Oh, and it may also be time to reassess the proportion grey hair/regular hair on my head – I’m afraid I’ll see a dramatic increase of the former. Last week, my sister went through it for five minutes or so and ended up with a handful of silver locks!

A Grinding Halt

As much as my eleven-day road trip rejuvenated me, from the moment my bags were unpacked it was back to reality for both me and my travelling companion. While she had to go straight back to work and deal with all kinds of deadlines and meetings and appointments, all I went back to is the job market’s waiting room in which I write application letters and wait around for rejection letters. In other words, I just sank right back into the huge still lake that is my life.

I may sound ungrateful, but all around me, people are busy-beeing around, and I can’t even fathom what that must be like. I have all the time in the world to read the books I want to read, watch the television series I want to watch, play the games I want to play, visit the places I want to visit and yet I’m far from feeling satisfied. It just isn’t the right time for anything like that – I am NOT a retired person, I’m in the spring of my life and yet NOTHING IS HAPPENING, I have no control over anything. A year ago, nothing was happening either, but then at least I was in control over my thesis. I had the power and the responsibility to shape it as I saw fit, add a piece here, rewrite a piece there, I could even tear it all up and start over if I wanted to. Back then, however, I saw my thesis as an obstacle that paralyzed me and was standing in the way of the rest of my life. I was convinced that once I had overcome that obstacle, I would be able to move on. But now that that’s been dealt with, now that there are no more deadlines to meet, no more words to write, and no more library visits to make… what’s left? There is no huge gaping black hole like I feared there would be, there’s just nothing left to shape, nothing that can bring me any satisfaction. I’m standing still and the world has ran out of colour. As a result, I haven’t been feeling very creative or inspired, hence the utter silence on Books, etc. I couldn’t even bring myself to write the monthly wrap-ups of books I’ve been reading.

I know – jobs can be stressful, jobs can be boring, colleagues can be irritating, the pay can be lousy, bosses can be incompetent, your own free time can be compromised, but all that sounds like music to my ears right now. At least there would be something going on, I would be moving again, and maybe I would even be writing again.

On the Road (2)

Now maybe for a more detailed description. We were happy to arrive in Port Leucate: at last, the sea! It was a very quiet sea town so the beaches were as good as empty this time of year. The weather was great so we went for a quick swim in the morning. Then we decided to cross the country to the other side. We stopped in Carcassone, where we stayed maybe for half an hour. Too many tourists, too little authenticity, it wasn’t really our thing. Lourdes was on the way, so we wanted to see what that was all about. The way from Carcassone to Lourdes was very nice: with the Pyrenees constantly in view in the background, we drove on little roads with The Sound of Music-meadows on either side, up down left right, until we arrived at the city of Lourdes. Although there were many tourists here as well, at least there was something beautiful to see: the basilica was amazing! The grandeur of the whole thing and the mosaic paintings… incredible. We also washed our hands with holy water, visited the grotto and received a gift from an Italian bartender who had worked in Belgium: a little medallion of Mary and a prayer. He also wished us a good pilgrimage…

Strenghtened by all these blessings we drove on to Biarritz – surfer’s paradise and home of the hip, the trendy and the fashionable… we felt slightly out of place at first.

However, our discomfort soon evaporated when we noticed the unusually high concentration of hot men. Seriously, I have never seen so many gorgeous men in one place before. Young or old, short or tall, bearded or non-bearded, surfers, bar tenders and delivery boys alike, they were all tanned, muscled, had a body to die for and had nice faces. It was a real feast on the eye and we spent most of our time in Biarritz just sitting on the beach watching the surfers getting in and out of the water… I’m ashamed to admit it but that’s what you get when two single women visit a place like that.

On our second day in Biarritz we decided drive over to Spain. Big disappointment. The moment we crossed the border there was total chaos on the roads. Lots of traffic, road works and bad signalisation. I wanted to turn back there and then but my companion wanted to drive on to the city we had planned to see: San Sebastian. It was even worse there – we kept driving around in circles, didn’t find a place to park the car and kept getting closer to the city when we actually wanted to get out of it. We had to eat our picnic in the car while standing in a traffic jam… I did buy a cheap little tent of my own there, so that was one good thing that day. That, and the fact that we went back to the beach in Biarritz in the evening after we had dinner. We wanted to catch a last glimpse of our surfers who kept at it until sunset.

Our hormones were going crazy by now so it was probably a good thing that it started to rain that night. It stormed all night and continued to rain all morning so we decided it would be better to pack up and leave, and look for more sun…

We drove on to the North and decided to visit “that little island over there,” which turned out to be Ile de Ré. As we drove over the bridge we had to trade our hip surfers for nature-loving fishermen and farmers – quite a culture shock. Oh well, at least they could provide us with delicious food from the sea. Apparently all the people on the camping took off in the morning with their buckets to search for oysters and clams on the shores. That looked like fun, so we did the same thing. After we spent an entire morning looking for clams (and became totally zen in the process), we still didn’t have enough to make a decent dinner so we also bought some other sea things at the local market. Then we started a fire for the BBQ, prepared Jamie Oliver’s seafood vinaigrette, roasted some bread, cooked our clams and ate our meal. Delicious! We were so stuffed we needed a siesta afterwards, so I finally started in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which was ideal for this kind of lazing around. Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, which I was reading before we left, proved to be too much of a strain to read when on holiday.

The next morning we did some souvenir shopping and off we went again. Destination: Saint Malo. The next stop was Cherbourg. On our way there we passed the famous Mont Saint Michel and noticed they were doing some kind of WWII re-enactment and were dropping paratroopers from a plane… amazing thing to see!

The only thing we did in Cherbourg was have dinner (I had the most delicious piece of meat I’ve ever eaten…) We arrived rather late and had to leave rather early because it was our last day and there were still so many things we wanted to see… Cap de la Hague, Honfleur, Etretat, the landing beaches, … And we also wanted to make a quick stop near Veurne to visit the village of Willem Vermandere (a Belgian singer) who had accompanied us musically on the entire trip. Nothing came of that though, Cap de la Hague was so beautiful and the weather was so nice in Honfleur that we didn’t get there in time… Maybe next time.

On the Road

What was meant to be a quiet camping holiday (staying on a camping in the South of France for ten days, reading books, enjoying the sunshine and taking the occasional swim) turned out to be quite the road trip. Both my travelling companion and I enjoyed the driving so much that we were actually a bit disappointed when we arrived at the planned destination after our two-day drive. Also, the camping site was in the mountains with lots of trees and we both felt a bit cramped – we craved for the sea and wide views. So despite the fact that the car was over-loaded and full of stuff that was useful for our initial plan but NOT for a road trip where we would have to pack and unpack every day, we decided to just drive on and see where we’d get. We just picked our destinations along the way, guided by impulse or by what we saw on the map. First we drove all the way to the South-East near the Spanish border, then we crossed the country to the Atlantic Ocean, with stops in Carcassone and Lourdes, then we slowly made our way back North along the coast. Total distanced travelled: around 4000 kilometres in eleven days… I’m normally not much of an improvisation person, but now it didn’t bother me at all. The driving cleared my head, all worries had been boiled down to the most basic needs (finding somewhere cheap to set up our little tents and finding something good to eat) and we were constantly standing in awe of the amazing surroundings we encountered. Great trip!

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lessons in Karma, and Explosions in the Sky

Time flies. It seems to be an eternity ago when I ordered my ticket for Explosions in the Sky and yet, all of a sudden tonight was the night. And it proved to be quite an eventful night too.

For starters, it started to rain when I left home, which was a problem seeing that the concert took place in open air in the middle of a park. On top of that, it takes some fifteen minutes on foot to get from the entrance of the park to the venue. My car was parked another five minutes or so from the entrance, so I had a bit of walking ahead of me to get to my destination. When I was almost there, I realised I had forgotten to turn off the headlights of my car. I considered a moment, but decided to head back there to turn them off, so as not to run the risk to have a dead battery after the concert. So, I went all the way back, turned off the lights, and headed for the concert once again. At the ticket control, another unfortunate event occurred: I couldn’t find my ticket. I had put it in the inside pocket of my jacket – which I normally never use, but I stupidly thought it would be safer in there. Unfortunately, the pocket appeared to have a hole in it, so the ticket had probably fallen straight through the damn thing… Can you believe it?! I didn’t see any other option but to retrace my steps back to the car, hoping to find my ticket. So there I went again… my hopes were high, I tried to stay positive and kept saying to myself I will find it, all the while visualising the ticket on the ground somewhere – maybe with a footprint on it, but even so, visibly there, right where my eye would catch it. But no luck: I arrived at my car as empty-handed as I was when I began my search. By now, all my hope was gone and I started to inwardly curse everything and everyone. After some rest (I had been walking for almost an hour by now), I decided to go back to the ticket control and tell them what had happened and ask if I could enter anyway, pretty please? It was a long shot, and I didn’t feel like going back there for nothing, but I went anyway. I wanted to try every possible solution and not give up too easily for once. On the way back (fifth time), the inward cursing continued and I also figured that my inconveniences might have had something to do with bad karma. So just in case, I started to work on a karma list. But when I came to the ticket control and started to explain my problem, the guy interrupted me and asked for my name. After I told him what it was, he just said Here’s your ticket. Some nice people found it on the ground and brought it here. Wow, so nice people aren’t extinct just yet, thank you so much anonymous, honest finder! And with that, out went my karma list. No need for lists, karma had merely given me a little scare to teach me a valuable lesson: it pays off to think positive, it pays off not to give up easily, it pays off to explore every option, every possibility. Best of all, despite the delay (I arrived at seven thirty and was finally seated at a quarter past nine), I was right on time to see the Texas quartet enter the stage.

When they started off with the wonderful First Breath After Coma, I smiled: OK, my feet were tired, but here I was at a great venue, for what promised to be a great gig, the rain had stopped and was replaced by a soft, end-of-summer breeze and somewhere out there was a Very Nice Person. The band played non-stop for over an hour and ended with the awesome The Only Moment We Were Alone. They had no breaks, no talking in between songs, no encores, and despite the meandering and at times maybe slightly boring middle part, it was a nice enough concert. All’s well that ends well!

August Reading

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society has made it to the top-five of paperback fiction at the New York Times, but since I won’t be able to attend this month’s Book Club, I still haven’t read it myself. From what I’ve heard, it’s a gentle and easy read, ideal for lazy summer reading, so I’m still curious and will read it some day. It may have to wait until next summer though. The days are getting shorter with every blink of an eye, September is already looming around the corner, we’ve had rather windy weather here as of late, and all of this causes my mind, which is highly sensitive to Autumnal signs, to already get set on this next phase in the cycle of life. Aah Autumn, it is my favourite time of year: beautiful colours, new beginnings, and the moment in which you can retreat to the safety of your home, with your tea and your books, while storms rage outside. It is also the only moment in which I want to buy entire clothing shops, just because they are filled with long sleeves and polonecks and woollen scarves and mittens and long wintry coats and nice boots and warm, soft sweaters and oh! I love this season for the comfort clothes alone. I also have my birthday in Autumn, that may have something to do with it too. Anyway, this is what I’ve been reading in August:

• Haruki Murakami – Kafka on the Shore: I started with another Murakami, more specifically the one that most people regard as his absolute masterpiece. Maybe it was because my expectations were too high because of this, but for me, it didn’t immediately become my favourite Murakami. It’s a very close tie between this one and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle though.
• Willem Elsschot: next, I went back to the oeuvre of my recently-favourited but long-dead Flemish writer, with Kaas (Cheese), Villa des Roses, Een Ontgoocheling, and Dwaallicht (Will o’ the Wisp). I liked them all and am cursing myself for never having showed much of an interest before.
• Audrey Niffenegger – The Time Traveller’s Wife: a novel which had been lying on my unread-shelf for a while already, recommended to me by some of my Book Club buddies. I finally decided to read it because of the movie that will come out here next month. In short, it’s a brilliant mix of love story and science fiction, involving soul mates and time travel and all that. The plotline seems complicated if you try to explain it so I won’t go into any details, but it’s all very well done, the opening pages sucked me right into the story and the time travel never confused me. I stayed up until two in the morning after an exhausting day just because it was almost finished and I couldn’t put it away…
• DBC Pierre – Vernon God Little: with 2003’s booker prize winner I went back to the booker prize list. This one was a bit weird: I was slightly annoyed with Vernon’s character until halfway through, but in the end I had to decide that I had quite enjoyed the read and DBC Pierre’s treatment of the subject (which is a Columbine-like shooting, the power of the media, etc.). I also liked Vernon’s observations of all those little truths of life that make you exclaim that’s SO true! (Damn, I wish I could think of an example right now but my mind is a sieve – I cannot for the life of me remember good jokes and little truths of life.)
• Anna Enright – The Gathering: booker prize winner of 2007; a trip down (the VERY subjective and hazy) memory-lane of Veronica Hegarty, one of the twelve siblings of the Irish Hegarty family, after one of her brothers commits suicide. I enjoyed reading this jumbled tale about a lost brother and a messed-up family but admittedly, it is rather dark and sad, which appears to have put off many readers.

Take The Blue Pill

It’s old news already, but I only just learned: it turns out that blue M&Ms are good for you… Can you believe that? The blue ones of all M&M’s… If there’s one colour I always ignore in a packet of M&Ms it’s blue. It just looks so… blue – I don’t want to eat blue. In a perfect world, M&M packets would only contain brown ones, but unfortunately we’re not living in a perfect world. Anyway, researchers have found that the blue dye used in M&Ms can reduce damage after spinal injuries and blah blah blah… – I don’t feel like giving so much attention to the blue guys, so just read it here.

Jumping The Train

A mosquito sucks blood from a hairy arm. A hand slaps the mosquito leaving a stain of blood. A man grins with satisfaction upon seeing the bloody stain. Bloody letters read DEXTER. The man cuts himself shaving, a drop falls in the sink – red on white. A tissue is used to stop the blood from flowing, it sucks up the blood and turns red in a matter of seconds. The man cuts bacon with a sharp knife, cooks it, eats it. He breaks an egg in the pan, it hisses as it cooks. The egg is seasoned with Tabasco, cut in pieces, then eaten. Freshly ground coffee beans make the perfect coffee. An orange is cut in two, drops of juice fly around. The pieces are squeezed to make some delicious orange juice. The man flosses his teeth, his fingertips turn red where the plastic cuts off his blood. Same scenario when he ties his shoe laces. The man puts on a pristine white shirt, then looks at himself in the mirror, knowingly. He locks his door, walks off and smiles one his charming smiles at his neighbour…

Guess who’s back? Uhuh, it’s Dex! I remember being very very reluctant about Season 4 after the third season had ended, but when I saw that the pre-air for S4 was going to be broadcast, I didn’t think twice and immediately jumped the train. Although I have tons of unwatched material still lying around, I was looking forward to something I could watch every week, and nothing better to fill that void than my favourite serial killer.

Luckily, at first glance it seems that the doubts I had about S4 were uncalled for. Sure, there is yet another serial killer on the loose in Miami, but there were good things as well: Dex is still Dex; the plotline seems promising; Esther has hit puberty, which means that at least one member of that irritatingly nice family has become more bad-ass; and, most importantly, Lundy is back! Yay Lundy!!