Smoothie

I just wanted to quickly tell you about this delicious smoothie I just made.

It's so easy. Ready in 2 minutes and almost no cleanup needed afterwards.

• 150gr of frozen fruit (I used a mix of red berries)
• 300ml of Fruit Juice (I used a very basic orange juice, the cheapest I could find in the store)
• 1 banana broken in smaller pieces
• optional: some coconut flakes

Put the fruit, orange juice and the banana in a blender (or in a big cup in which a mixer fits)

Mix or blend it all together

Pour your drink into a cocktail glass to make it even more fancy

I added the coconut flakes as a nice 'finishing touch' decoration.

DONE

Now enjoy your drink. Nice and cold, delicious and healthy, what do you want more?

Some pics:

Risotto with wild mushrooms and bacon

I tried to make a risotto for the first time today and it turned out really great!

Thanks to all of the tips I found on the internet, and received via facebook.

I made it with wild mushrooms and bacon.

Here's some pictures but I'm not sure if it looks as good on camera, as it looked 'in reality'.

 

Breakfast smoothie

On Sunday the 2nd of January (after all the eating and drinking), I made me and Ken a great, healthy but simple breakfast smoothie to start the day.
The recipe was really easy.
for 1 smoothie:

1 banana
1 hand of cereals/muesli of your choice
1 cup of strawberry yogurt
half a glass of milk (you can add more or less to have a more or less liquid smoothie)
put it all together in the blender and voila, ready!

You can also add some fresh fruit if you'd like. Some fresh strawberries would taste great in t his smoothie!
I didn't take a picture but it looked something like this picture I found on the internet:

b-day cupcakes

Here are the pics from the cupcakes as promised

Sushi

A different cooking thing that is keeping me busy these days is sushi. I like it a lot as it is so easy, tastes great, and looks nice.
Here’s an example of a meal I made a while ago when Ken wasn’t at home (he does like it, but not for a full diner)

Soon, I’m going to make something for Christmas that will be looking something like this:

On Christmas day, we’re having a family party where everyone needs to bring something to eat, so that our grandmother doesn’t need to prepare the whole meal for the whole family. There’s even a little competition included as that is ‘hot’ these days where everyone’s food will be assessed on taste and presentation ;o)


Last Sunday we also had a family gathering for my parents and aunt and uncle’s 35th anniversary. Here also everyone was asked not to bring a present, but to bring something to eat. I really like that as you get to taste lots of different stuff, and the people organizing the party don’t end up with unusable presents and lots of work to prepare a meal for so many people.


Sushi again seemed a great thing to do as it’s not that much work and lots of different combinations can be made.


I prepared 3 kinds of sushi on Sunday morning. One roll with omelet, carrots and zucchini, one roll with smoked salmon, carrots and zucchini, and 2 rolls with fresh salmon, carrots and zucchini.


They looked great on a big plate and I enjoyed tasting some other things that other guests prepared.

Cupcakes

Making cupcakes from scratch is quite hard with a temporary kitchen like mine, especially as I don’t have an oven. Decorating cupcakes on the other hand IS something I can do. From the ‘Cake-fairy’ (a shop with baking stuff) I also got some advice to by it in a specific store (Hema, it’s Dutch I believe). They are a bit bigger but flat on top, so you can decorate them easier.



I did a first attempt a while ago. I tried with sugar-icing. Easy to make (just mix some powder-sugar with a couple of drops of water) and you can colour it as well with the liquid food colouring you can buy at the supermarket. Made a couple of different colours, put it on the cupcakes, decorated it with little pearls, nuts, ... and done!

As a second attempt, I wanted to take it a step further. We took all the materials and supplies on our trip to France, at the end of October, to be able to have something to do on a rainy afternoon. It was so much fun. I had bought some sugar paste in different colours, some cut-out shapes and a couple of different toppings. After baking the cupcakes ourselves, we were surprised about the very nice results.

For birthdays, it’s always the habit to bring some food to the office, and to the Red Cross meetings as well. I couldn’t just buy something, so I made cupcakes for a 3rd attempt. Bought 36 cupcakes from Hema, bought some colouring gel and some white sugar paste. (you can’t use the regular colouring liquids to colour sugar past, it needs to be a colouring gel) After a full night of decorating cupcakes (thanks to the internet for some inspiration), I was really pleased with the result.


(I’ll put some pics on soon, but haven’t loaded them from my camera yet)


Soon I will again be decorating cupcakes, but that’s something that needs to stay a secret for now!