Miscellaneous

Yesterday evening when I went to bed was the first evening in the last few weeks that I hoped the baby wouldn't announce himself that night. The reason being that my youngest son has his 2nd birthday today :) Luckily we were able to celebrate his birthday without his mum going into labour.
I made a simple cake that consisted of a simple pound cake filled and covered with whipped cream and strawberries, sides covered in hazelnut praline. The boys love strawberries (or pretty much any fruit for that matter) so they were happy :)
Three days after my due date now, he has 11 more days to come by himself, after that they will smoke him out ;) My other boys were late too so I'm still patient....

So now you know the reason for my lack of inspiration :) It has everything to do with the fact that this little 'parasite' (and I mean that in the most loving way) has been making me very nauseous. I can tell you, it's no fun to feel like you have to throw up all day. Even though I was very nauseous with my other pregnancies too somehow it's not something you get used to.
For someone who loves her food and drinks, not being able to enjoy them anymore is no fun, no fun at all. The smell of cookies is off putting enough not to bake. But enough whining....the last couple of days the nausea is improving a bit and I can eat a larger variety of things now. Hopefully it will be over soon and I can start baking on a serious level again :)

Talking about baking, a couple of weeks ago Vibi of La casserole carrée emailed me about a cupcake event she is organizing with Isabelle of Les gourmandises d'Isa. Last (and first) time round it was all about Spring cupcakes, this time around the theme is Christmas. And she asked me te be one of the judges :) only downside is I cannot participate ;( at least not to compete for a prize. But I already have some ideas for a 'dummy' entry ;)

Check out their blogs for all the details, deadline for entering is December 17th.

We're back! Managed to do the trip in 2 days both ways, tiring but in the end we thought it would be better than driving another day. The boys were pretty good about all that driving.
We had a wonderful 4 weeks vacation. I was very lazy all vacation and barely spent time in the kitchen...I know, shame on me ;) Well at least I did my duty and made last month's Daring Bakers challenge.
Hope I'll be up and running with posting recipes soon. Haven't dared look at my feed reader up till now....there must be 1000's of entries I missed....when I have the courage I'll start paging through them ;)

Just a little note to let you know that we'll be heading to Croatia tomorrow morning. This is the first time we're going by car since we have kids so we won't be rushing it. It will take us about 2.5 days to cover the nearly 1800 km drive.
I'll leave you with this picture of a cake that I was anxious to make but that disappointed me. Maybe you can guess what the main ingredients are. More about the cake next week.....

A few weeks ago Dorothy of Dessert Obsessed tagged me for the Six Random Things About Me meme. This reminded me of the other two meme's I was tagged for earlier this year. Why haven't I read any meme's you might wonder.... well I'm not very good with the meme thing because it doesn't involve any baking, only thinking ;) But I do love the concept of meme's because they give you a bit of insight in a blogger.
After getting this third meme I thought I'd indulge you (or not) and do all three meme's in this one post and get it over with.

Yes, that's is me in the picture (age 3 or 4 I think) and I think I'm holding a tin of Quality Street Chocolates. Not that there were any chocolates in there, my parents tried to raise my brother and myself without candy and sweets, no soda's, only cake for birthdays, and only chocolate for Easter....I know poor us ;) but we survived and I can tell you that I more than made up for the lack of sugar in my childhood ha ha!



Ok, ready for the meme marathon?
I'll start with the one I was tagged for ages ago in March by Mari of Mevrouw Cupcake.

What were you cooking 5 years ago?
I was living in Tel Aviv at that time so my cooking was influenced by the Middle East. Lots of tomato and cucumber salad, pita bread, hummus, baba ganoush etc. Also I started baking more, from once or twice a year to a couple of times a month. I think I got inspired by the wonderful desserts you can order at Tel Aviv's restaurant (much better than the desserts in the Netherlands).

What were you cooking 10 years ago?
Practically no sweet stuff, just savoury. I really was a savoury girl back then. Nearly no meat because I wanted it to be free range and that was not readily available close to my home at that time. My cooking was mostly Mediterranean influenced with some Asian (mostly Indonesian) dishes in between.

Five snacks you enjoy:
Potato chips/crips
Milk chocolate with whole hazelnuts and raisins
Good cheese and baguette
Dulce de Leche
Nutella

Five recipes you know by heart:
(I rarely use recipes when I'm cooking, only when I make sweet stuff I use them.)
2 different recipes for zandkoekjes (basic Dutch cookie recipe)
Griesmeelpudding (Dutch semolina pudding)
Jam
Pound cake
Ganache

Five foods you love to cook:
Cookies
Cakes
Tarts
Puddings
Jam

Five things you cannot/will not eat:
Offal
Raw egg straight up or a soft boiled egg
Black pudding
Bell pepers
Belgian endive (I dislike bitter a lot, grapefruit juice is about as much as I can handle)

Five favourite culinary toys:
Baking pans
Rolling pin
Food processor
Parmezan grater (mostly because it looks so good ;)
Digital thermometer



Ok, onto the meme of six random things that Dorothy of Dessert Obsessed tagged me for:

1. I'm a very messy cook/baker. My kitchen always looks like a bomb exploded when the meal or cake or whatever is ready or in the oven. I'm always amazed that anybody can have their kitchen in order WHILE they're cooking or baking. Every once in a while I will try but I think it just isn't in my genes ;)

2. I'm a very bad egg separator, the other day I needed 6 separated eggs and I had to crack 10 to get 6! Probably a case of Murphy's law ;)

3. long time readers may know this but I studied to be a dietician. Never worked as one though, and never intended too ;) I liked food so much that I wanted to study something that I actually liked and Food & Dietetics was the least scientific of food oriented studies in my area of the Netherlands at that time.

4. I don't like milk, the thought of drinking milk...yuk! Maybe for a 1000 euro's I would take a sip but I scares me to do it though. I do love milk based dessert though.

5. I'm not married to the father of my sons though we've been together for 9 years. In the Netherlands this is something very regular, but when I read eg US blogs, everybody seems to be married when they have children. Cultural differences...

6. For years I pretty much only wore black clothes, but not to fit in with a certain group though. None of my friends wore black. I think it was what I was used to because my mum wore and still wears mostly black. It's still one of my favourite colours in clothing but I wear different colours too.

And finally the most difficult meme (imo) that Susan of Foodblogga tagged me for in April: the Six Words Memoir (sum your life up in 6 words)....yeah I know, how on earth can one do that? I kept thinking about it but nothing really good came out of it, the best I could do was: 'enjoying my life as it happens'.

So there they are, the three meme's I was tagged for. Finally that burden is gone and I can enjoy life again ;)

btw I'm a obsessive-compulsive chain letter breaker. And meme's I feel are closely related to them so I hope you'll excuse me that I don't tag anybody else for these meme's ;) But feel free to do any of them anyway!