merry christmas to you!

oh no! my blog disappeared! it was turned off by blogger.com due to "suspicous activity"! i only discovered this yesterday. I received no mail from them about this. poor deal!! I still do not know what happened. but at least we're back! did anyone else have this problem?

I am totally overwhelmed with work and family. but for both I am thankful. :o)

Merry Christmas to you and yours. Keep your family close and be thankful for all your blessings. No matter how small, they are blessings. poka! katrin.

ps - christmas cookies spend a moment in your mouth but months on your hips! :o)

advent baking time again

i can't believe it's christmas already - the christmas markets are going up and officially while we're celebrating thanksgiving with friends, outside people will be drinking glühwein and eating stollen just around the corner - when did the two holidays suddenly merge?? i feel really sad for those people who will be working this thanksgiving - it is a tragic way to remember those people crushed in last year's stampedes by opening even more stores ... Sears I am truly disappointed! well. What would Mum have said? This is the 7th year she will be missed during the holidays - but I have her butter tart recipe!

Hubby likes dripping chocolate over them, and the girls like them with some jam - but I like them just as I remember mum made them. I still can't get the pastry just like she did it. here's to you Mum! and here's to all of you my friends - probably my last blog before Christmas unless Nikolaus brings me some more hours to the day on the 6th. :o) poka! katrin

Butter Tarts
50 gram walnuts
75 gram golden raisins
50 gram corn syrup
100 gram brown sugar
100 gram melted butter
1 egg
splash of vailla
pinch salt
1 tsp brown vinegar

mix ingredients together and add to tart shells until 2/3 full.
170 C for 20 minutes or until golden brown

pastry shell - I will leave this up to your own family tradition.
That's the most important part about christmas. your family.

Krem de la Kremlin!

Let's keep it short and sweet. Moscow, shopping, eating. WoW! Pics today, words tomorrow. Vodka was an adventure and I can still taste the caviar. While this might be banal stereotyping I can only say it's my side of heaven. Pass the buttered toast! More later and Ваше здоровье! ;o) poka! katrin (click on the pix to enlarge them - they're really MUCH larger)

Vodka: www.brestvodka.com/products/vodka/Belorussia (I know, it's Belarussian but it's still the best!)
Caviar: caviar-market.com/beluga1.htm


ГУМ :: Главный Универсальный Магазин
Red Square, #3, metro Ploshchad Revolutsii. www.gum.ru
Like Harrods! Almost empty when we were there, but this was two days after Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger's visit. There is a GREAT place to eat, a mockup of a soviet style canteen in GUM: Столовая №57 www.gum.ru/shop/392



´









So these beautifully packaged chocolates cost a bit less than 200 dollars a box ... !



The most amazing food store is on the main boulevard of Moscow - the Ulitsa Tverskaya. You can buy your normal groceries in addition to all the yummy favourites you read about in the inflight magazine!
Yeliseyevsky Gastronom, Ulitsa Tverskaya Dom 14 Moscow www.trazzler.com/trips/yeliseyevsky-market-in-moscow









We walked past the McDonalds but not in. :O) We settled for a clubhouse sandwich and ceasar salad at our hotel instead. At the bottom right of the picture above is an FSB Mercedes - a regular sight parked on Moscow sidewalks.

Alsace Has Seen Better Days

It’s been 7 years since I was last in Alsace. This sounds like a long time but it was probably 7 years since I was last in Paris. It’s certainly been more than 7 years since I was last in Florence. What HAVE I been doing all this time? Well there were three girls to raise, and work, and, okay, we’ve been to Russia at least 7 times in as many years. I don’t know if this counts. I do know that Alsace is much different than I remember it. Or perhaps we always remember things differently to how they are.



The weather was hot and sunny and the girls were mostly in a good mood. Hubby drove the entire 1600 kilometers without complaint. However he balked at the chance to see Heidelberg on the way. We hit Strasbourg and got caught first in rush hour and then a 9 kilometer construction zone which added 2 hours to our trip to Basel. Switzerland btw, even at the corner of Germany and France, is green and clean and wonderful and you should drive to Basel whenever you can.

My French is rustier than my bike, and I found myself using English more than German for whatever reason. The girls have as little French as I but hubby is quite fluent which always came in handy. However it was in Russian that I exclaimed while toweling off after my shower in the hotel gym a large and very hirsute and naked young man came in through the door which did not have a lock!



On the minus side: Where did all the roundabouts in the roads come from? And when did the food become so tourist class? I couldn’t eat another frozen tarte flambee if my life depended on it and I was completely disappointed by tasteless choucroute which last visit I so enjoyed. I ate raw duck and overdone deer. The wines were insipid and I felt so completely uncomfortable and unhappy I didn’t steal ONE bunch of grapes from the miles of vineyards that spread in all directions.

On the plus side: Walking in the early morning sunrise through hilltop vineyards. Our wine merchant was still in Eguisheim, and the butchers who make quiche you can sit outside and eat at the edge of the fountain, and the hotel in Riquewhir was still there - though the swimming pool seemed much smaller – perhaps we were simply more people? Or larger? :o)

Poka! Katrin

A Muffin a Day Keeps the Munchies Away

Ingredients:
100 gram rolled oats
100 gram flour
tsp baking powder
1 egg
1 cup whole milk
100 gram sugar
100 gram butter
2 bananas
shaved almonds
brown sugar
nutmeg and cinnamon to taste

Info:
175 celsius oven 30 minutes.
makes 12 muffins.

Method:
fit dry ingredients together.
beat butter, sugar together, add egg, then milk.
add to dry ingredients until just mixed.

fit muffin papers into muffin pan
sprinkle some shaved almonds into the bottom of each muffin paper.
ice cream scoop into muffin pans - don't use all the batter
lay two slices of banana on top of each muffin, cover with one spoon of batter.
sprinkle with shave almonds and some brown sugar.
bake. cool. enjoy! :o) katrin

Dark Chocolate Puddings with Anis

This dessert is alot better in your mouth than on your hands ... Now the weather is getting cooler, this is a great warmer-upper! HINT- if you flour the bowls, you can let these cool and turn them out. Then you have an interesting snack! Just be sure you watch for the chocolate when you bite in. :o) katrin

whole anis seeds - a teaspoon of
300 gram dark chocolate
250 gram butter
1 espresso coffee / strong

300 gram sugar
6 eggs
150 gram walnuts
200 gram flour

if you have a nut allergy then leave out the nuts, as they supply interesting texture but without you can simply enjoy the chocolate on its own ...

crush anis, add to espresso.
melt chocolate and butter, let cool.
whip eggs and sugar together until fluffy.
sieve in flour, add nuts to chocolate and butter.
pour into 6 small oven proof ramekins.
bake for 15 minutes at 180 degrees celsius.
serve warm with creme fraiche or ... orange sorbet?

** BE CAREFUL - THE PUDDING SHOULD BE RUNNY INSIDE - THIS MAY BE V HOT WHEN YOU BITE IN **

enjoy! :o) katrin

Friday Night is Pizza Night (but of course)

Opening rant:
This crazy blog just lost my entire post and I have spent the last 5 minutes staring crazily at the screen debating whether I should retype it. At the same time cursing myself for not typing it in text beforehand and pasting it here like I and any intelligent person always do. If that's corrrect grammar but it sounds good. SAVE. I recall the time of internet dialup with AOL when you always typed your emails in word or a text file and then pasted them into the email to save dialup time. But this was a long time ago. Ten years of interent time is like 50 years used to be I find. Technology is simply speeding everything up. In the rush to eat well I find that I'm missing the good old days! And we do eat well. The entire family is in good shape, we walk, we go to the gym, and only hubby and I can pinch an inch. We both think the other is beautiful and ourselves fat pigs, but still. Can't have everything.

The Problem:
I remember a day when the fridge was where you kept leftovers, which could be lovelingly perused at leisure and interesting snacks enjoyed like having your own private buffet. That was yesterday. Now any time I open the fridge all I find is white wine, yoghurt, the odd chocolate bar, milk rice, jello, cold cuts and cheeses (but never any bread in the basket), berries and juice, kefir and quark. Not a single slice of leftover quiche, never a half chicken or a slice of roast. Not a pickle! Well, yes there are pickles but it's just an expression ... :o) I stalk into the living room and knock on the wall. "Family! The fridge is empty. Why don't we have any leftovers? We must be eating wierd. We need to get organised. NO more cooking on the fly." Everyone looks at me. "But I thought we had decided to cook light, eat light, leftovers were the work of the devil?" "True, but if I have to eat just one more yoghurt at 2 AM instead of the chicken leg I crave I might just pop." Everyone turns back to the television. See, we are prety normal after all. I fetch a block of paper and a pen. "We'll vote." I look at the clock. "Just as soon as we finish dinner."

The solution:
After a dinner of couscous with salmon, tuna and cod served wtih a fresh tomato compote and white wine, I push my plate to the side and put pen to paper. There is some couscous on my finger and I draw it to everyone's attention. "What am I to do with couscous leftovers? Why don't we have potatoes more often? What is this family's fascination with grains?" No one mentions the fact that I cooked dinner and also forgot to buy potatoes from the market. Hubby pours me another glass of wine. After only three rounds of voting we manage to create our family's first weekly dinner menu. Every other day should offer precious opportunites for leftovers too. Does anyone else do this or is it just me?? :o) katrin

Monday: schnitzel (turkey or pork)
Tuesday: pasta and two sauces
Wednesday: chicken (preferably whole and roasted)
Thursday: fish
Friday: pizza night (3-2 vote by the girls) with salad (mum and dad amendment)
Saturday: a roasted meat with all the trimming and dessert
Sunday: quiche or blini/crepes

Taking the Plunge

I've been working so much lately and everything, including my blog, has completely fallen to the wayside. I will be in Munich the second week of August to meet with three of my favourite catering clients to help them plan upcoming Fall events. While I'm there I am going to take the plunge and indulge in a very expensive treat. Something I have always wanted to put my mouth around and simply let it fill me up. I'm always producing the goods and for the last ten years I have been wanting to let myself be REALLY treated. Money is no object this time. Once we move back across the pond it will be a very long time before I can enjoy this Munich treasure. So it's salads and white wine until then! More about this paradise for my senses when I return. :o) poka! katrin

Cajun Fish Fry Up

Luuuuuuuuuuuuurve fish. Sadly also love fried food, to which my widening hips attest. But I love my hips. What a mess I am! :o) Breading. I like to bread in all sorts of things, and why not. Keep it moist and flavourful - and so polenta is one of my favourite ways to bread.

Salt and pepper on the salmon, then in flour, then egg, then in the polenta. I added fine chopped green pepper and red onion to the polenta and pressed that in. Gently but firmly fry. It was crispy and moist and wonderful! The sole is pressed on one side into chili pepper, and after it has been turned topped with tomatoe concasse with mint.

We enjoyed this with a cold Fielding wineries Gewürtztraminer (2008 from our last trip across the pond) and ceasar salad - and yes! you must make your own ceasar dressing! :O) poka! katrin

"Uncorked" the new wine/foodie tv series

Hubby commented on http://www.facebook.com/#!/sarahjgim Sarah J Gim's facebook post this morning. Her suggestion to come up with a tv series or book based on Ben Anderson's pic "Wine Tasting" http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?pid=31216014&id=1291378334. It's a great set of images! Makes me wish it weren't 7 in the morning ... I don't think the 2009 tv movie did that well, so what about a remake?!

"Uncorked". Season 2 - Ben and Alex's wine making classes are suddenly placed in jeopardy when Sarah arrives in town to open an upscale wine chic tasty bar with her old room mate Suzanne. Wil sparks fly between these four or just tasting glasses? Meanwhile Pilar's catering company has received an offer from Jacques Torres to open multiple floating pastry bars in Manhattan, which leaves her mulling a move to the East Coast and leaving her friends ...

But Darling you didn't do it right ... here is my take:

"Uncorked". Premiere! - Gardenville's Ben and Alex's wine making classes are suddenly placed in jeopardy when big citty LA hotties Sarah and Suzanne arrive in town to open a swanky wine chic tasty bar, and the office crowd flock like pigeons to a popcorn bag. Will sparks fly between these four or just tasting glasses? Meanwhile Pilar's catering company has received an offer from Jacques Torres to open multiple floating pastry bars in Manhattan, which leaves her mulling a move to the East Coast and leaving her friends ...

poka! :o) katrin

Missing Old Friends

I love the movie Sideways - and I love wine. Virginia Madsen (Maya) has the best line in this movie and I agree with her 100% ... you open a bottle of wine and you wonder what was the weather like on the day it was bottled, who bottled it, what are all those stories you are unleashing when you uncork that bottle - and once uncorked, its done. you can't go back. the anticipation is like the first time you sleep with someone ... forget food porn - wine erotica is even better. it is a physical tingling .... Virgina Madseon always has great lines - Gotham (1988) she plays Rachel, a ghost who haunts her husband, and meets the man who is hired to track her down (Tommy Lee Jones). They meet on a darkened street and she says ... you ask the girl for her number but you won't call - becasue it's not about that - it's about how she looked when you saw her, how she made you feel - and you had the best of her - the very best of her. And wine is the same way.

I'm looking back over my cellar notes - yes, hubby bought me a cellar book in the 90's when we were both so into wine - we were buying 12 bottles a month to lay down. Before we moved we had .. 176 bottles in the cellar according to my records. :o) Now we have 2 cases and we're drinking them up before our next big move. Every time I get a bottle it's a horrible experience. I know that once it is open it will be gone for ever. It's almost like I'm killing the poor darlings. They have been with me for over a decade now ... like favourite pets.

Last weekend we opened a 98 Pessac Leognan which was brilliant the second day. The first day the nose was full of tobacco and raspberries but the mouth was nothing to get excited about, but the second day it had settled down and the initial nose was gentler but the taste fuller. and now, it is gone. :o(

some of my favourite lost friends?

fitou '99 "very berry then dryyyyyyyyyyyy..."
corbiere '97 "speechless"
los vascos '98 " very disappointing after the '86! why did we buy a case?"
bailey's block shiraz '97 "like a mouth full of curant jam ..."
equisheim muscat '98 "what a souvenir! goosberries and honey"
tocornal cab sauv '86 and a BC okanagan ehrenfelser '87 both of which we were drinking almost daily ... oh my ...

I love wine. I miss many of them dearly. They bring you back, not only to the possibilities of what you will encounter when the cork is removed and the wine hits your lips, but it seals the memories of those moments - like you are corking them back inside yourself. Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris -- READ IT!

:o) poka katrin

Rouxbe Cooking School

Graduating from chef school when it was still hands on but now loving some of the amazing video tutorials now online, I would really suggest you look at the new online cooking school I was directed to by a friend. Rouxbe Cooking School.

I am now a Rouxbe Cooking School affiliate partner. Rouxbe is the world's first-ever online cooking school. I partnered with Rouxbe to help you improve you cooking skills. As part of their affiliate program, I have the power to give you a free, full-access, no-videos-barred, 14-day pass to their site. All you have to do is go to the Rouxbe Cooking School and redeem the 14-day Gift Membership. After the trial, you can join for as little as $15 per month; however, there is no obligation. It's awesome! Check it out! Katrin.

Rouxbe Online Cooking School & Video Recipes

It's 4 am - Why is the Cookie jar made from Glass?

The telltale *ping* of glass against glass as I raid the cookie jar here at 4 am echoes through the house like a hand grenade. I am convinced I can hear the girls turning in their beds and hubby's snoring breaking its stride. *sigh*
... biscotti crumbs rain down across my breasts as I pad through the darkened kitchen in bare feet and go into the living room, flick on the light and boot up the laptop ... my stocks are up today! yay! but only 3% ... how come all the other stocks I'm tracking are up 14%?
now there are biscotti crumbs over my thighs ... it's probably better wearing pyjamas if only to act as a bib, but I simply cannot sleep in anything.
i can't answer all my emails and they are stacking up - if things can stack up in the digital world, not actually existing I mean ... so I'm clicking through the internet ... what is a "lesbian Dad"? or an "authentic lesbian woman"? I love the Dove ads - http://slate.msn.com/id/2123659 featuring normal women -
all the while i know there are leftovers in the fridge - chicken burgers from sunday night, schnitzel from saturday, milk rice from this morning ... my stomach is growling but I will wait until 7 for coffee and breakfast. it's going to be another long day.
oh great! now the internet connection has gone --- then I'm to continue this on the desktop. what a pain.

anyway - we made lovely chicken burgers sunday -
fresh chicken breasts, grind them first with a mallet then with your knife, on the cutting board just like grandma used to.
for one full chicken breast add the following:
1 tbl dijon, one white roll (crumbs of), 1 tbl olive oil, salt and pepper (fresh ground), 1 tbl balsamic vinegar, 1 small red onion and 1 clove of garlic very finely chopped, 1 tbl fresh tarragon leaves also finely chopped.
make a small ball of goat cheese in your hand and form the meat around this - flatten to make a small patty. smaller patties are best.
fry and serve in a small bun. less bun, more meat. and a nice soft bun. we get them from a german baker - "milch brötchen" are about half the size of a normal roll and very very soft.

poka! :o) katrin

Italy ... Mi sei mancato molto!!!

cut the crusts from thick sliced white bread. fry gently in olive oil in which fresh basil and oregano has been added. very gently.

we like penne. penne is our daily ... bread? pasta.

the sauce is a salsa in disguise - a tapenade ... you can heap it on bread or on pasta or in soup ...

1 eggplant. 1 red pepper. 2 tomatoes. 1 small onion. 1 garlic clove. 2 celery stalks. a handful of capers and black olives. sweat the eggplant first with salt. but this you know ...
slice all small. quarter inch. as small as you can go. but a nice cut. always show a nice cut. toast a handful of pinenuts to garnish btw.
sautee garlic and onion. then celery, then eggplant, then pepper, then capers and olives, and finally the tomato just before you turn off the heat. ground salt and pepper to taste. basta.

I'm eating the crostini so fast the pasta will all go to my hips now as my stomach is full - I have a love affair with my hips. sort of a love hate relationship. since i was a girl i've liked having broad hips (but it took me a lot longer to accept my big feet) - but then summer comes and they seem to get in the way - yes my feet and my hips! but i love them, none the less ... Is it summer or Italy I miss ... I don't know. The warmth of olive oil on toasted bread, the fragrance of pinenuts long after they have been eaten ... making pasta at the end of the day almost tripping over the girls in the kitchen and hubby opening the wine - we only had a chilled bottle of white and sadly NO red ... which I would have loved - stirring the celery, tomatoes, onion and garlic into a pasta sauce (my girlfriend Gina told me pasta sauce should be made in the 9 minutes it takes to boil the pasta) slower and slower as I recalled summers in Sienna at a little house we rented. oh I do hope summer comes soon! ciao! katrin

You leave the house at 5 in the morning so you won’t hit any traffic jams on the way back through Italy but you needn’t have bothered because you hit them anyway. A long hot cruel 40 kilometer traffic jam just before Bologna because some semi has decided to kick it and rests now in a ditch at the side of the road. A truck stop. A rest stop. The truck was tired and just decided to heave it over to the side but tripped. So now you all have to have a look and the line crawls slowly but resolutely towards the big city. This is Bologna. It certainly is.

Now sitting here in front of the small house under the stone awning. Across the walls dart lizards who wait until you take their picture and then move on into the rafters with unlucky little bugs caught in their mouths. There is no way you have yet found to the lock the doors. So you leave them open. You need a coffee, want a coffee, there is an espresso machine in the kitchen which sounds like an old tractor when you turn on the ignition. Much more silent is the iron you drove with through three countries to iron the clothes you threw into the suitcase the night before, the night of leaving. This is a much more satisfactory way of packing one which you will remember for the future. Besides the espresso machine you have found, in the bathroom, an iron. Sometimes it is a problem finding an iron in a hotel. Especially on a Sunday. Here in the northwest of Tuscany in an old stone farmhouse an iron is as accessible as towels and toilet paper. Toilet paper you also brought. In front of you are peach trees and apple trees, a long dirt lane that winds through the rolling hills, past the lake, juniper and blackberry bushes and off into the distance where a herd of goats graze. Beside you a smaller lake surrounded with bulrushes, filled with warm water and water lilies, populated with dragon flies and frogs who watch you as you swim in the morning. Just a bit further are zucchini and tomato plants, beans and sunflowers. And grapes. Lots and lots of grapes for wine and then lots and lots of olive trees for olive oil. Wine and olive oil sit on the table just inside, a gift from the landlord. Between the lake and the main gate are fields of purple and white wild flowers and trees full of obscenely large pinecones. Beneath lay hundreds of pinenuts still in their shells. 24 bucks a kilo. After shelling 5 you see why they are 24 bucks a kilo … Behind you the big house and the gate, the lane to the old church and further on over a hill Milan. Looking much smaller than you remember it or perhaps you were smaller.

In the Cathedral there you go for the holy water as soon as you enter. People, they dip their fingers in like they’ll burn themselves. Who are these Vampires anyway? Its not perfume for God’s sake. You’d think they’re anointing themselves with myrrh the way they graze the end of their finger along the surface. You are much more generous, much more confident of your status with Him, you practically have your whole hand in the font and generously splash yourself with repentance. For some reason there are a few coins lying there at the bottom of the font. Can you still buy plenary indulgences? Is it so casual now? “Bob, grabbing a few indulgences for Kathy and me, can I get you one? Betty? Indulgences? Well I’ll toss in a couple of bucks anyway…”

There is no sound here except the birds and the dogs. Occasionally a shot rings out in the distance. At night the air is full of crickets and frogs. The sounds of them not literally crickets and frogs filling the air. Yes a shot or two shots actually about 15 minutes apart. Shotgun. 12 gauge I would say. I don’t know this is Tuscany not Sicily so it wouldn’t have been anything very nasty, no sawed offs or pump guns. Look, this isn’t going to work very well if I have to continually qualify what I’m saying here… you have paid much more than you are paying for this place for a grotty little hotel room in many many cities. The town on the other side of the hill is called Grotti as a matter of fact. There is a small bar on the sunny main street in front of which sit men in t-shirts playing cards and generally acting out the stereotype. Grotty little men. One of the landlords dogs lurks just behind the lavender bushes. Watching me. Waiting for left over bits of Veal. Sit BooBoo sit. Good dog. You find the door keys on the third day hanging above the porch light. The porch light you discover on the second day looking for the interior light. Can’t be bothered to lock doors anyway and so leave them open.

In Milan just before a really big rain and you’re making your way through the uniformed huddled masses of t-shirts and shorts, open sandals and knapsacks, cameras and sunglasses. They are lining up to pay homage to the gods of uniformity. The gods of the armchair traveller. They are lining up for pizza. In Italy. You wouldn’t think pizza was so big in Italy being such a junk food staple back home. It must be big in Milan because there are four pizza counters and not one is empty. So you duck into the back alley and find someplace that is empty. A glass of local white wine, some warm goats cheese and ham on a garlic smeared crust of toasted bread and afterwards fig gelati stuffed back into the hollowed out shell of the fruit. Oh and an espresso so thick you could dance on it served with a spoon made out of chocolate that slowly melts as you stir the sugar into the deep, oily blackness. You should eat the local fare when you are abroad but somehow you just can’t bring yourself to eat pizza in Italy.

The hills in the area are full of decaying and collapsing houses, old farms and villas. The Swiss are buying them up for a few dollars, renovating, and sticking price tags on them more reminiscent of those back home. Someone has bought an entire hilltop town and surrounded it with chain link fence. The leaves of the trees are brown with the dust kicked up from the unpaved roads as I travel from public road to private road. Raised dust so they can see you coming, so you can’t sneak up on them. Deformed roads, “Deformata di strada”, where you play dodge’em with the flocks of pheasants sneaking across for another try at the fields of sunflowers. The night air is warm but moving, spreading over the hills like a hand wiping away the flies. When you finish the climb and make your way back down into the dell, past the church, the air changes both temperature and thickness. Suddenly the air is cooler, thinner and it smells of salt and grass. It’s like dipping into a pool on a hot day, breaking the warm surface and finding the cooler waters below. The air splashes you in the face. There are no signs here on this road, no house numbers. They are the anonymous homeowners. They are the Swiss in Tuscany.

Siena is the place to go if you want to pay 8 bucks for a beer and 15 for a hamburger and chips. You can pay 16 for a burger and chips but this is served open faced with silver cutlery and a cloth napkin. This is at the edge of the cathedral in Cologne. Come to think of it this 15 buck hamburger joint is at the edge of a cathedral too. And a bottle of water at the edge of the cathedral in Siena is the price of a six-pack at the Coop in the village. There is something about the prices at the foot of God. God has high overhead. High property prices. There is something about the ticket prices near the stage that defy imagination. What price the wages of sin? You know, in comparison, it’s a damn fire sale the price of sin. They’re damn near giving it away. Ever check out the price of a hamburger near the train stations of this world? Near the all night electronic stores and cheap watch and postcard boutiques, the sex stores and streets full of stagnant water even during the summer? Near all that sin? This is dirty, messy, complicated. It is bedlam. But a hamburger will cost you a couple of bucks from a McDonalds or a Burger King there and the foot of God, even though he is omnipresent, seems far out of sight. You don’t even know which way to look. Sin is far cheaper, far more accessible, without hassle and without pride. You don’t feel so nervous or cheated when you sit in the cheap seats, when you’re sinning at a fast food joint. You know you are paying for what you get. You can’t sin this way at home. It’s too streamlined, too global, too packaged. But you always feel you could have done better somehow. In the front rows, at the hamburger stands of the righteous you always marvel at the buying power of the hamburger, the beer, the silly portion of pasta or the poorly turned out salad. Shit, you think, could have done this salad for a buck and still had it looking edible. And this pasta? Hell the kids could do that up better and the peas would have still been green. For this hamburger, you could have bought groceries for a week at home you know? You think you’ve been cheated somehow. Like after working this hard, paying so much and giving up other pleasures you would have been rewarded with a hamburger that brings tears to your eyes; a hamburger that you wouldn’t want to eat because it radiates “hamburgerness”. But you are mostly disappointed. And feel somehow guilty. The wages of sin? Forget the wages of sin; the wages of piety are taxed to the teeth. You get to sit in the front row but damn it’s expensive.

Dinner with the Gurlz

Hubby is away in Berlin looking at some drawings leaving me alone for the evening - and the girls are at their Grandma's and so I think this might have been a ploy to give me time to myself. Happy Women's Day! :o) So it is now or never for a quick bite with "The Gurlz". I do NOT want to cook. I feel lazy and simply want to crawl into a pair of sweats and a ponytail ... make the calls. Rachel, Liz, Babs. They have all been cast adrift for the night.

There are at least 128 Chinese restaurants in the tri-lakes area, or that’s when I stopped counting through the telephone book while I waited 17 minutes for a bottle of champagne to be brought down in temparature in my freezer. And don’t talk to me about going out - if I have to drive an hour into downtown just to have an idiot sitting behind me with a handy stuck up his ear for half and hour talking about beach volley ball promotion and I mean maybe there was no one other than his dog on the other end so he could impress the stuck up brunette number sitting across from him I think I will relieve the pressure from his ear and stick it up his ***. But I am saved by the bell - the Gurlz are here!!

The second bottle of pop exhausted we lounge about eating ice cream waiting for the Chinese food to arrive. We’ve all tried the food in four different parts of the city in the last days and come to the conclusion most everyone must be taste dead - like we’re living in this huge taste dead swath that cuts in front of us and could explain the discoloured vegetables and overcooked fish of so many restaurants. McDonalds anyone?? See you soon! So now I know the fizz is going to me head. There IS good food out there - but let's be honest - sometimes it just isn't on the plate in front of us. I like to go out to relax, not criticise ...

Setting my fear of flying to the side I'm able to pull my eyes off Liz and her exquisitly expanding midrif - far too many calories poor dear and ... but I still can't get my summer moment flirting across the restaurant out of my mind - just as the doorbell rang. Am worried about exactly how cold this food might be as it took an hour to arrive and there is a group of Chinese - tourists? - standing there in my hallway with bags of food. I fold my arms against me to keep myself warm and ward off icy blasts of air coming from the takeout containers. I tip big - because I feel guilty?

"Gulrz! Turn on the oven, this stuff is cold!"

if i said i was working 12 hours a day ...

would you forgive me for not updating my blog? then there's children, and relationships, and friends and ... shopping?? :o) spring resolution - less work, more writing! :O) love, katrin.

Шоколад «Идеал» Chocolate from White Russia with Love!

Конфеты «Милая моя» and Шоколад горький с миндалем и цукатами апельсина

http://ideal.by/konfetyi-milaya-moya.html

http://ideal.by/gorkiy-shokolad.html

The candy line Milaja Moya and the bitter sweet orange in dark chocolate. Wonderful!

The Ideal chocolate company in Brest, Belaruß is getting stiff competition from the likes of German, British and American brands who have all set up production in Russia and are now exporting. The Ideal chocolate line, while not perfect, offers some amazing selection. Definetly a case of "you should eat home grown"! I hope the people in Belaruß grasp this before they lose a wonderful product.