market

 

This was my first morning back in Austria. I bought some tea, I bought a Striezl.

reunited with my scanner (part 1)

I'm reunited with my scanner which is a blessing. During the past year I've mostly taken pictures with my analogue cameras and it's nice to be able to share them at last. So many memories. Here are four of the many nice things I've eaten:  1) The best breakfast on a lovely September morning at Peter's Yard in Edinburgh: nice café, the best company and a mystery fruit in my yoghurt. Perfect. (Plus a rather unfortunate light leak.)  2) A summer dinner. Onion tarte with spinach and potatoes.  3) Ice cream!  4) A cardamom chocolate cake I ate by myself when I visited Edinburgh back in May.

peaceful

Cafés, cooking, beetroot juice, buying bread in the morning and that moment in the woods:
'Listen', I said.
'What is that? Cars?'
'No', I said. 'Bees.'

I thought of you again

Yesterday I saw A Dangerous Method. Not a good film, but I had to agree with the lady who I overheard talking to her friend in the bathroom. "I really want to go to Vienna now." It made me think of last summer.
I haven't changed my mind since I wrote this, but my eyes get so bored. They never used to get bored in Vienna even though I spent 75% of my time in places I had seen a thousand times before. I guess I'm starting to realise that I can only really appreciate the aesthetics that I grew up with. Everything else is interesting, but not on an emotional level.

Norwich

I spent the weekend in Norwich. My friend Meriel and I walked around, went to various bars/cafés, bookshops, a library, the cathedrals and of course to the UEA and its art gallery. It was an excellent weekend, good to be in a city again. My favourite things: the fat cat that we met in a bar; excellent afternoon tea in a particularly twee café; beautiful, beautiful houses.
If only Durham had nice bars and cafés where you get lovely raspberry coconut cake... I like living here, but it gets very, very boring after a while. As long as you have nice friends it's alright, but what if you just want to spend a day on your own because you feel a bit grumpy? That's when I want to go to a café or a gallery.

Friday night, Saturday morning

Part one of a good weekend. A day that begins with a cardamom bun is a good one.
We had a soup and bread party. This might well be my favourite Friday night activity: non-pretentious homemade dinner (that can be eaten with spoons) and nice people. On Saturday morning I got an early train to Norwich. The sun rose over snowy fields, it was beautiful.

yes, mum and dad, I've been eating

I've been eating...
1) a Dutch breakfast: toasted bread with chocoladehagel
2) (faux) Italian lunch: a toasted sandwich with bree and cranberry sauce from the Mediterranean bakery
3) lots and lots of vegetables from the greengrocer's close to my house - today I bought three apples, an aubergine, spinach, six eggs, a bunch of flowers and a rosemary plant for four pounds. Success!

That being said, I'd kill for some carrot bread with butter and honey.

breakfast

What I'm going to miss:

Breakfast at the kitchen table. Every night when I go to sleep I'm looking forward to eating breakfast in the morning.
I like tea a lot, I like the ceremonial aspect of putting tea leaves into the little sieve and waiting four minutes. Sometimes I forget about it, then my tea is especially black - or, as my uncle said the other day, "This can't be tea, that's coffee!" Obviously weak black tea and tea bags are my idea of culinary torture.
Just as important as tea is bread, however. You can buy good tea almost everywhere. Bread, however, is different. Carrot bread, or walnut bread, or anything with lots of seeds and various cereals in it, is my favourite food. It's damn hard to make yourself which means that I'll be saying goodbye to this most simple of pleasures when I move north.
Then there's the luxury of fresh fruit, something that I'm going to miss during the winter. Technically it's possible to buy anything at any time throughout the year, but do I want to eat strawberries when they're not really in season? No, of course I don't.

food for hot summer days

Dinner, dessert and a drink.
Do share yours. (Nothing fancy, I'm not patient enough for fancy stuff.)

1. My favourite kind of food can be eaten with a spoon, looks slightly disgusting and is basically a combination of vegetables. Right now, I make a kind of zucchini-tomato stir fry at least once a week. I fry the zucchini, add the tomatoes until it looks like a mess, and add haloumi to make the whole thing even more messy. If you mash potatoes into the whole thing (which is what I like best), you get a glorious reddish mountain of vegetables. Or you can eat it with pasta. My brothers gave the ultimate sign of approval when they told me reluctantly, "You know, we hate to tell you this, but this is both healthy and tastes great!"
2. Lemon yoghurt blueberry cake. I'm so glad it's blueberry season again!
3. Basil lemonade (something like this) + white wine + strawberries = heaven. I have to think of a name for this drink. Hmm.