Real Ones

Last Friday we went to a Real Ones gig at the Ancienne Belgique venue here in Brussels. I’d not even heard of them until about a month ago but my friend Laura had a ticket and forwarded me the link and after spending half an hour on their myspace page clicking through the songs, we bought tickets too.

It was a fun gig. The music is catchy (I woke up with one of their songs in my head which is why I am writing it up today!) And the guys in the band are really talented musicians. I had a good evening, not just coz I liked their music, but because they were so obviously enjoying themselves so much. They really had fun on the stage and it was contagious, you couldn’t not smile while they played.

So I know half of my readers are still impatiently waiting for wedding photos but sit back, relax, and listen to this music first. I promise not to make you wait too much longer… :)

minced meat marathon

Yes, probably the strangest blog title I have posted to date. Let me explain.

Three days after the wedding, we had driven back to Brussels and headed out to Cora – a huuuuuge supermarket – to do all the grocery shopping for the week and for the big Sunday brunch at our flat that we had invited all the out-of-towners to. Minced beef was on special offer, so we put two BIG packets into the trolley, telling ourselves we would seperate it into smaller portions and freeze it.

Well it never got seperated or frozen. And a week later after the fun chaos had subsided, we realised it needed to be cooked TODAY or it would be wasted. So, the fun began.

making meatloaf is serious business...

First Rasmus made meatloaf. If you are like me, the word meatloaf brings to mind some grey tasteless lump dripping in fat. So when he skimmed through his Danish cook book and declared that this was what he wanted to make, I was dubious to say the least.

But hello? It was delicious!! He stuffed it with all the other wedding brunch leftovers from the fridge – peppers, feta cheese, onions – and then covered it in bacon. Oh so very good.

He made me a meatloaf sandwich three days later when I came in late from England and had to rush straight out again to my Danish class. Meatloaf sandwiches are yummy.

The meatloaf completed, I set to work on a lasagne, in the new Le Creuset dish, which was a wedding gift from two awesome people and is definitely one of our most-used gifts to date. It also makes great hag ‘n’ mag (only my family will know what that is) and I used it last night for toad-in-the-hole (another dish likely to stump my American readers).

So this is the before picture of the lasagne. I froze it like this, half cooked, and we defrosted it a week later for dinner. Oh my I love lasagne. The comforting tomato-ey cheesey pasta-ey goodness of it.

Finally Rasmus used the rest of the mince meat to make a tart. Also not something I had ever eaten before but I guess my husband is broadening my eating horizons! And it was also yummy. We froze it in portions and have been regularly pulling it out for lunches and supper with salad (on healthy nights) and chips (on less healthy nights).

la manufacture

In all the chaos of getting married, travelling to Stockholm (yes I know, have to go into much more detail about BOTH of those events…) I missed the birthday of one of my best friends here in Brussels.

Marissa is probably my loudest friend. I could recognise her laugh anywhere, she rarely doesn’t have a big smile on her face AND she brought me us the awesome wedding gift of butterscotch cookie chips, bath&body works moisturiser and a candy thermometer… clearly she is a fun person to be around!

To make up for the belatedness, Rasmus and I treated her to dinner on Saturday. We dug out the Restopass we bought ages ago for only the second time (it already paid for itself in the first meal but we do need to get round to visiting the other 28 restaurants) and I chose our evening option based entirely on location… “where, on this cold wet night, is within a short walking distance of home?”

La Manufacture it was and after following my somewhat hastily scribbled map to a street rather off the beaten track, we arrived at this former leather workshop. The waitress politely refrained from rolling her eyes at us when we said we didn’t have a reservation, and luckily we were early enough that there was still lots of space for us to fit it. We were maybe only the third or fourth table filled (it opens at 7 and we got there at 7.15) but it quickly filled up and stayed full all evening.

We all three opted for the €35 three course menu. And then actually all ended up picking the same main course. Which wouldn’t have been the case if I hadn’t ordered first, because despite berating my Dad for doing it, I have the tendecy to change my order if someone else is ordering the same thing. Which inevitably leads to me helping myself to whatever is on my neighbours plate which is not always appreciated…

Anyway, the dinner. We started with two croquettes, one mushroom, one shrimp, which were really good. (I first typed croquants but that’s somethign very different obviously). Then we ALL had the pork medallions for main course which were served with gingerbread sauce (clearly this was what swung the menu choice for me) and sweet potato cakes. Very yummy. Especially the potatoe cakes which were coated in almonds – I could have eaten a whole course just of them.

For dessert Rasmus and I had pistachio tiramisu and chestnut mousse. Which was very good. But Marissa’s dessert definitely won. She got the chocolate trio which consisted of chcolate mousse, choclate melting pudding thing, and white chcolate creme brulee. I stole a bit of everything, despite its small proportions and can attest to it being very good.

The actual restaurant is very cool. Converted from a factory that was first a printers and then a leather workshop, all the waitors wear leather aprons over their shirts and bow ties, and the waitor actually poured some wine into his own glass to sniff before offering it to us (I insisted he had tasted it but Marissa and Rasmus both deny this!). It was a classy joint, but also very relaxed and warm, the kind of place you can laugh loudly without being frowned at. And there was a real mix of clientele in there too.

So I have no qualms about recommending La Manufacture for a nice meal out in Brussels! Although now we have used up our 30% food discount, you might need to pay if we go there again… :)

girliness

In beginning to update my blog again, it would seem to make sense to start at the beginning of what I missed. But that seems too hard. So I’m starting at the end.

Two days ago to be precise.

(you’ll just have to wait a little longer for those wedding photos!)

Tuesday I declared girls night in at my home*.

I have an amazing group of girlfriends from my church “expression” and we have developed something of a tradition of having regular dinner parties at each other’s houses. It started with that Belorussian meal at Larysa’s and so this week’s dinner was rather poignant because it was both a hello and a goodbye – hello amazing flat that is now half mine (well, the rent is), goodbye lovely friend Larysa who is moving to the Netherlands…

There is not a lot of things in life that I enjoy more than cooking for friends. So I spent the last half hour of my working day searching through all my recently bookmarked recipes for something good to serve up. Finally I spotted an email from my cousin Allie earlier this week when she sent me a recipe link for mushroom stuffed chicken with lemon thyme risotto that she had cooked last weekend and loved.

Well, a recommendation from Allie should be listened to (my dessert-reluctant husband is in love with her malteser tray bake) so I printed off the recipe and headed via the supermarket on the way home.

I had told the girls that dinner was on the table at 8pm but they could come anytime from 6pm, and turn up early they did! Which was good because I had also decided to make chocolate pudding and chocolate aztec cookies for dessert so it was all hands on deck to prepare it…

Sarah got given the cookies to make. Turns out she is a follow-the-recipe-exactly kinda girl, so didn’t like my “well I don’t have a tablespoon, just heap up a dessert spoon” approach. But she coped admirably well and they came out amazingly!

I had everyone else chopping, slicing, setting the table, and generally keeping me amused while I pretended that I stuff chicken every day and isn’t this easy… only one went wrong, and i just turned it upside down so you couldn’t see and made sure it ended up on my plate :)

In case you’re straining your eyes to see, my apron reads: “if it’s broon it’s cooked, an’ if it’s black it’s buggert” – and needs to be read in an appropriately thick Scottish accent. I persuaded my dad to buy it for me in the gift shop of a Scottish castle a few years ago

After about two hours of cooking and chatting and giggling, dinner was ready…

I know. Please excuse the terible bad quality of the photo, I realise the darkness and the blurring do not contribute to your immediately scrolling down to find the recipe and try it, but I swear this is GOOD chicken and risotto. Mmmm… *hopeful smiley face*

Also, spot one of Rasmus’ favourite wedding presents in the photo.

In the course of the evening, I was having so much fun that I completely forgot to take pictures of dessert. I even made the chocolate pudding in my dainty tea cups and saucers that used to be my Granny’s, which my Grandpa gave me a few years ago (apparently he doesn’t have much use for TWO dainty tea sets). And then we set the cookies on the saucer and used the loooong handled teaspoons to eat the pudding and also discovered that dipping the cookie in to the pudding was pretty much divine. So forgive me for being too distracted to take photos!

Instead I’ll leave you with a photo of Sarah and I looking so fetching in our aprons :)

Want the recipes?

• Mushroom stuffed chicken with lemon-thyme risotto, from BBC Good Food – I used lemon juice, not fresh, and didn’t have thyme, so decided to use boirson (sp?!) cheese instead of parmesan which has the garlic and herbs in and makes the risotto amazingly creamy. Oh, and also, I used their tip of substituting bacon for the porcini mushrooms.
• Chocolate Pudding from Smitten Kitchen – who else?! I am in love with everything she makes – this recipe was simplicity personified and so very delicious!
• Aztec Chocolate Cookies from Savour Fare – these are super yummy, chocolate with a kick! And the good news is there wasn’t room for them all on the baking sheet (Fancy, we used your wedding gift!) so I still have six I can bake whenever I get the urge… which may be very soon.

*Rasmus wisely chose to disappear and watch the champions league football game at a bar with some friends :)

November

The shouts of complaint at my blogging silence are becoming louder and louder. This week is the first in about a month that I have had not been travelling somewhere… back to the UK for the wedding, to Stockholm for the European Development Days, to the UK again for the general assembly of the NGO I work for…

It has been so so wonderful to be HOME this week, enjoying being married, cooking and baking, catching up with all the friends I temporarily abandoned during the month of craziness that was October.

Oh November, you are so very very welcome, despite the cold wet days you have brought with you!

I have been meaning to post here all week and have a camera full of photos to show you. But my brain has apparently turned to cotton wool and I never seem to have all the electrical cords and inspiration I need to put my photos up and then write something.

But tonight I have no plans all evening except possibly curling up under the beautiful crocheted blanket my wonderful friend Ellie made for us as a wedding gift, with a glass of wine and the last of the chocolate aztec cookies I made on Tuesday. I can take my computer with me and my wine though, so look forward to much more activity here. (now that I’ve written that here I have to follow through!)

In the meantime, this crossed my path this morning and I am in love. Rasmus already has a black leather beanbag by the couch – this would be the perfect “hers” to sit next to “his”, oui? (click on the picture to go to the shop website)

I said yes.

it happened. and it was so very wonderful and joyful and special.

back in brussels now in our home, spending time with family and getting ready for the big invasion of friends and family from UK and Denmark in time for the big PARTY on Saturday…

so forgive me for not writing more right now, but I’ll leave you with a wee teaser of the day we joined our lives together…

(This photo by my cousin Claire, lifted off facebook ;) See more of her photos here)

clearly we have good taste

After we get married in church on Sunday, we have a small reception for family and friends (the big party is back in Brussels a week later!) and then in the evening we are having dinner with just our immediate families.

When we were considering places to have this dinner, my mum suggested the pub that they had their office Christmas dinner at last Christmas. The Trout at Tadpole Bridge has a small private dining room that we could have to ourselves, is traditional style, good food and good drinks, right next to the River Thames. It sounded lovely, so we agreed to book it on my parents’ recommendation. And I did see it a couple of weeks ago when I was home for the day and mum and I stopped by for a cider.

But now I have the recommendation of all recommendations…

The Trout at Tadpole Bridge just won the AA English Pub of the Year award. That’s pretty impressive. I’m glad we got our booking in early!

I’ll let you know what I think of the food soon ;)

Photo Source

up for grabs

I love giving things away!

Since Rasmus and I are combining homes there are a few things I won’t need to take with me and some things that he doesn’t want anymore.I guess that is often the case when you get married after living independently for years. No longer do people move straight from their parents’ home to their married home and need a whole list of things to make life liveable.

A truth firmly supported by our gift list, which includes a lot of completely random but fun things rather than vital household items. Mini-muffin tray? Champagne bucket? Clearly life essentials!

That said, moving house has been a great opportunity for me to go through everything I own and realise that some of it I haven’t used/worn in the last two years. Which means it should go.

So last night I sent out an email to a big group of friends in Brussels detailing the things I was trying to get rid of. And already…

The flatmate of a friend is taking my bed.

A student friend from church gets the printer.

A random friend of a friend wants the desk.

I so love giving things away and seeing them be useful all over again :)

single digits

It’s only NINE days until we get married.

Just saying :)

nothing to see

I didn’t do the daring bakers challenge this month. This is normally our reveal date so sorry if you were hoping for another extravagant something. But since I get married TWO WEEKS TODAY I have a few other things higher up my to-do list… :)

In case you were wondering, this months challenge was puff pastry, or vol-au-vonts more precisely, which I would love to have tried, because they are a very traditional Belgian dish, usually served with chicken in a creamy white wine sauce. Delicious! Oh well, another recipe on to my “must try this one day” list.

Did you catch that part about it being just two weeks until I get married?

Two weeks. I will be a wife. Wife. If you say it over and over long enough to starts not to sound like a real word.

But oh. I am so ready. So very ready.

I don’t mean I have it all figured out and I probably have no idea on many levels what we are about to commit ourselves to. This is huge. But I am ready to jump in together and face whatever life brings us. Together.

Two weeks. Wow.