Brussels and around

Grand Place, Brussels

What, exactly, is Belgium famous for, apart from unelected bureaucrats and Brussels sprouts (which are not featured that much in Belgian cuisine)? OK, beer. Fine, chocolate. French fries. Mussels. More beer. But, apart from the bureaucrats, sprouts, beer, chocs, fries and mussels, what have the Belgians ever gave us? Here's my short list.

big fish and good shopping

Today we walked to the tourist information to find out if there was anything interesting planned for the Sant Joan. There wasn't, or they didn't know about it, which is always a possibility with our tourist information. Anyway. There is a restaurant nearby, which has a fish cleaning table outside, right by the water. Today they had a bahamut being cleaned there. The table was surrounded by people taking pictures, kids staring as only kids could, and seagulls waiting for scraps.

Invisible fish and the Flag Beach again

Yesterday there was quite a few of those invisible fishes around at the Flag Beach. If you are wondering why I call them invisible, look closely. What you can see very clearly is their shadows, not the fish themselves. Small semi-transparent bodies hovers just above the dark outline.

Isla de Lobos walk

Both me and Kirill are attending Spanish classes two times a week, arranged by a local "adult education" organization. As the end of the year approaches, they arrange a few events for the students. First of them was a trip to Lobos (small island between Fuerteventura and Lanzarote) yesterday.
We've been to Lobos before, once in my case, twice in Kirill's, but both times we didn't really explore, just went to a small shallow cove and stayed there. This time, since we were with somebody who knew where to go, we decided we'll join the walk.

Fuerteventura snowflakes and noodle soup

There is very little chance of real snow here, although you never know of course.  We made this  garland before Christmas and it was hanging for a while over TV. Today I decided to take it off and throw it away, but first we went to the roof to photograph. Presence of one unwalkable shoe in the picture is explainable, but it will take too long, so let's say it's just holding the garland in place.

Gnomes, pimientos de padron and sparkler tornado

On Christmas eve, gnomes bought for Yuri in Stokholm found their way on our patio table :)

baking, knitting, eating and making cairns

Those chocolate cookies work with local ingredients just as well as they did with others :) Baked a batch today and want to do another one tomorrow  

assorted Sunday

This cat, although different in color, in attitude and expression is a spitting image of Muta from "The Cat Returns". From his position of perfect safety he was observing the street, mostly right in front of him, that is, not bothering to even turn his head.

El Cotillo - La Vaca Azul and our container's moving (apparently)

In El Cotillo, we ate in the restaurant called La Vaca Azul (The Blue Cow). I am not entirely sure what's the origin of the name, and they specialize in fish, really,  but they do have a blue cow on the terrace upstairs as a visual support.

flowers, coffee and haircut

Delonix regia, flametree. They are now in bloom everywhere

market at Puerto del Rosario and plants

Today we finally went to the "La Biosfera" market at Puerto del Rosario. It's on Saturdays, an the first floor of their enormous bus station. I don't know what was the original plan for the station, but normally it feels very empty and causes you to think about whether humankind is lonely in the universe and things of that nature. On Saturdays it's somewhat busier, but only somewhat. Truth to be told, we overslept, and came there by almost midday. Maybe the market was a lot busier before, but not at that point. There were vegetables, cheese and ham, bread, and one stall with plants. Guess what I bought then :)
Plants were surprisingly cheap, I paid just a euro for this little crassula plant. We also were looking at a cactus with absolutely huge thorns, but decided against it, as our intention was to shop some more. The stall holder handed us the plant, said "mil de euro" and giggled at his own joke. I tried to ask in a very shaky spanish if he's there every saturday (we really set our hearts on that cactus), to which he cheerfully replied at machine-gun type of speed. Hm, thought I, I take it as a yes.

morning coffee (and yet another lens report)

Pictures are just to demonstrate our morning coffee progress and test an explanation that I found yesterday for the my lens problem. In this helpful page Martin Pot from Australia describes what he's going to do about his old lens with the same problem. While I am not brave enough to go inside an L-series lens with a screwdriver (which is what he ultimatly did), an advice that I extracted from his post was that the lens would still work if the aperture was open. So I tried and it does work, as you can see in those picture. 4 is not the best aperture for this lens, at least for my copy of it (veeery soft and a lot of color leaking), but it is a great relief to see that something still can be done with this lens before I either break it completely with my own fixing effort of decide to go for an expensive option and fix it at official Canon place.

first and last

My last week was full of "last" things - last zumba lesson with Luisa, last salsa with Nunchi and Udoka, last casual lunch in Saffron Walden, even last trip to its Library and recycling center, etc. Granted, apart from possibly last two items, the other things can still occur if I come over for a visit, but it felt sad all the same. I will miss all that, even the recycling center

Today it is a different story altogether - day of "firsts"

First litrona bottle shared in the patio

weekend

There was an international market in Saffron Walden over the weekend. We only got there on Sunday afternoon, when it was pretty much over (*), so it was bit empty

pea plants — tendrils

I guess I’d better give them something to cling to before they suffocate each other

More pea tendril pics at Shutterstock

trio of onions

No reason for this picture, except they look nice. I don't know how is it around here, but my granny would always put an onion that has started to sprout into a jar of water to get the green "plume" of spring onion eventually.

Onions that we buy here hardly ever sprout, or maybe it takes them so much longer that we eat them before it happens. But this trio did eventually, and was placed in water, and made water brown overnight.

Today Yuri came from school, looked at them and went "mum, why do you have onions standing in what looks like beer?"

And that brought another memory - of coloring Easter eggs (real chicken eggs, hard-boiled) with outer layer of onion skin, the thin papery stuff. You put a lot of onion skins in water, add eggs and booil. They go lovely rich brown.

Of course, it involves saving a lot of onion peel, first eating a lot of onions.

Puck's Valley and smoked salmon

morning cuppa

I really liked the way steam was caught in paella picture, so we repeated the setup today with my morning cup of coffee. I am pleased with the steam, not so pleased with the burned-out area in upper left corner. Have to think of a quick setup where all the background, apart from the area immediately under the cup will be black. I know one, but it won't be very fast to set. Hm.

coffee images on shutterstock

paella

well, ok, maybe not quite. The pan's not right, there's no saffron in there and I added way too much liquid, but - it was delicious. Proof of the paella.

It's the first time we gave this cast-iron pan a try. It is a flattish wok, very nice looking (the reason for buying it in the first place). I think it worked beautifully

food images at shutterstock

The terms sardine and pilchard are not precise, and the usual meanings vary by region. Britain's Sea Fish Industry Authority for example classifies sardines as young pilchards

Yesterday I bought those and fried them.

Today Universe is grey and smells of sardines

fishy (but not smelly) pics at shutterstock