The reason for my long hiatus...the vegetables.

One of our early harvests from the summer included crunchy kohlrabi, yellow peppers, juicy tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini.  The kohlrabi is finished now, but we are still getting a few tomatoes, cukes from the greenhouse, zucchini and peppers like you wouldn’t believe.  Yellow peppers, bell peppers and chilis, habaneros, jalapenos and more. 

 

Here you can see our lovely, colorful potatoes.  They are small, so they are a pain in the neck to peel, but they are pretty and delicious!  These are truly a feast for the eyes.

 

Kale is another thing we have a whole lot of.  When this delicious green started growing like gangbusters, I became a little concerned because I had no idea what to do with it.  The only form in which I’d ever seen it in was in the supermarket as “Kohl King”:  a kind of TV dinner type product with pureed kale and slices of wiener or some other sausage that doesn’t interest me in the least.  I consulted my good friend Google, and found out that whatever you can do with spinach, you can do with kale.  So I unleashed my powers of blanching, pureeing and creaming, and voila!  We had tons of delicious kale dishes, from lasagna to casserole to just plain old kale.  It’s good stuff, and very healthy.

Here you can see a fraction of our hot peppers, we have more hot peppers than we know what to do with.  These are either adojemas or habaneros, I don't know which.  They are supposedly among the hottest peppers out there, but this weekend, I devoured that big yellow one in the middle in some dipping sauce for grilled zucchini without any trouble.  It was funny, it didn't burn my mouth, but for whatever reason, my nostrils felt like they were on fire--I felt like a dragon after eating that thing!

 We don't just have edibles in the garden, but also nice flowers.  These plants were given to  us by our neighbors when they were just a wee few inches tall, now they are 2 or more feet tall. 

Mmmmm, squash

I'm turning one of our precious butternut squash into soup and pudding right now!  The soup is basically the same recipe that I use for zucchini soup: squash, a pear, vegetable broth, curry, salt and pepper, garlic and cream.  Here's the pudding recipe I'm trying:

Pumpkin pudding

Ingredients:

• 1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 3/4 cups half-and-half or light cream

Preparation:

Butter a 1 1/2-quart casserole. Heat oven to 350°.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and whisk or beat on low speed until blended. Pour into the prepared casserole and bake for 55 to 65 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. If desired, serve with sweetened whipped cream and cinnamon sugar for sprinkling.
In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and whisk or beat on low speed until blended. Pour into the prepared casserole and bake for 55 to 65 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. If desired, serve with sweetened whipped cream and cinnamon sugar for sprinkling.

This recipe is from here:  http://southernfood.about.com/od/pumpkins/r/pumpkin-pudding.htm

The Bike Rack’s Maiden Voyage

After getting an old bike rack from our neighbors’ yard sale last year, we finally strapped it on the car’s roof rack, heaved the bike into position and took her for a spin. The test trip around the block seemed promising, so we took it for a longer ride. Racing along the Autobahn, performing the slalom maneuvers that my esteemed driver usually does, all seemed well. Until we neared Chemnitz. There was a VW that my esteemed driver was just burning to pass, and as he attempted the pass, there was a crash. The bike went down. Fortunately, it was hanging by a thread on our roof, and we had to work our way from the left across 3 lanes of traffic to the right shoulder. We were lucky there was a sort of a turnout leading to a field close by our incident, so we didn’t have to drive the next 5 kilometers to the next gas station with my precious bike teetering from the roof hanging only by its' lock. Everything was fine, I unlocked the bike, we lifted it down and checked all its parts, no damage but a little scrape had been done. The car got a new dent, but with all the other dents from its' various accidents, you won’t notice one more. The thing that suffered the most was the roof rack, or more precisely, the bike rack part of the roof rack. The track the bike stands on was bent all to heck, but fortunately for us, it is of such low quality that we could simply bend it back to a position vaguely similar to its original position. The only thing that hasn’t yet been repaired are my nerves, but that’ll go away soon enough.

More Prague Pictures

Here are some more sights from Prague. First, the fantastic peeing men statue. Below you can see some details of my favorite architectural style: Art Nouveau!

Sunday Lunch in Prague

A few weeks ago we had visitors from North America, and I was lucky enough to accompany them to Prague. Because I had to work on Monday, I couldn’t stay overnight in Prague with them, but did go for the day on Sunday. Despite the poor weather, we still had a colourful time. Some pictures:

We didn’t have lunch at Hooters, though I would have felt at home there! We wanted to have some Czech food, not delicious fries. I’ve been to Hooters before in Michigan, and the food isn’t exactly gourmet, but at least the service is friendly. My son was enthused!

Admittedly, my lunch (tortellini with spinach filling) wasn’t that Czech after all, but the appetizer was: battered, deep fried cheese! A delectable treat, and quite filling. I didn’t even have Czech beer as you can see in the picture, I had water. But at least my guests had something traditional: goulash!