Some New Links and a Rant

I have been working on my photography skills since I bought my new camera and I’ve decided that one way to do that is to join Project 365. I’ve committed to taking at least one photo every day for a year. My year started on January 2, when I first read about this project over at Dine and Dish.

I’ve posted a link to my project photos in the column on the right -> ->, just under the list of followers. Here's today's photo:

Several people have also asked about my paintings recently. I’ve posted a link to my paintings as well. Maybe this will motivate me to update my website with some more recent paintings...

Meanwhile, here’s my friend Lori:

Now for the less pleasant stuff.

WARNING -- Rant follows:

Many years ago, when I was a brand new college professor, I assigned my class of seniors a term paper. This was before we had the internet and could buy term papers. Back when students actually had to write them. Well, in theory.

As I was spending a beautiful sunny Saturday grading these term papers, I came on one that simultaneously made me laugh out loud and made my blood run cold. Not an easy thing to do, if you think about it. It made my blood run cold because it was a paper that I had written when I was in grad school. (I am not making this up.) It made me laugh out loud because I wondered if the student who gave it to me was really that stupid or if they just thought I was.

Plagarism.

It’s an ugly word. It’s an ugly thing. Maybe it is my academic training, but I have to say that plagarism ranks right up there with shoplifting on my list of things I hate to see. Or to write about, to be honest. But both of them exist whether I want to see them or not. In fact, they’re remarkably similar things.

The Oxford English Dictionary (iPhone version) defines plagarism as ‘taking the work or idea of someone else and passing it off as one’s own’. The work can be a photograph, it can be a painting, it can be a paragraph. It’s all plagarism. It’s all stealing.

It’s a shock to see your work claimed by someone else, to see words you sweated over or a photo you worked on for hours or a painting you spent days on with someone else’s name on it. To see someone else take credit for your work.

My community of artists has discussions about this subject all the time. Plagarism and copyright violation. They’re important issues and the internet has made both of them easier to do. This is something that serious artists take seriously. Writers too.

I’m fairly new to blogging, having been at it not quite 6 months. One thing that that's clear to me, though, is that the bloggers I read and respect are scrupulous about citing their sources. Many even provide links to the original documents. It’s one of the things I appreciate about the bloggers I follow.

Recently I was reading a new blog I’d just discovered. It’s a lovely blog, with of lots of informative posts. I love learning new things, so I was happy to have found this blog. One post was so interesting that I wanted to know even more about the subject, so I went to Wikipedia. To my surprise, I read the exact same information that I had found on the blog I had been reading. Word for word. Some of the same photographs too. I went back to the blog to see if I had missed the citation. Nope. None there. I looked back at past posts and found the same thing.

Plagarism. Stealing. That’s one less blog I now read.

Rant over.

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Scallops and Chick Pea Puree

Luck.

You know, I’ve never thought of myself as a lucky person. I mean, I’ve never won any kind of prize. Never won even a small lottery prize, never won anything from Publisher’s clearing house. Never even won at bingo. Once in the Netherlands I held 20% of the tickets for a raffle that had 25 prizes, and I STILL didn’t win anything.

I don’t care. I may not have Lotto luck, but I have Life luck. I found my soul mate, I’ve always found work that interested me, and I have friends who I treasure. One of those, my friend Françoise, invited us to a large house party on New Years Day. The party was at a gite (a sort of large self-catering cottage) in the Ardennes near here. The other members of the party were about 20 friends of Françoise and her husband Jean-Claude. These friends-of-friends live in Brittany, and they normally meet Françoise and Jean-Claude twice a year: in the Loire valley where they meet to buy their wine, and over New Year’s. They came with food and wine and high spirits. They came in a van with a trailer attached to hold the food and the pots and pans. Maybe some clothes too (some of them were very chic). They’ve been doing this for 20 years. We were very pleased to have been invited.

The day began (for us) with lunch. In grand Belgian tradition, we ate sauerkraut with two kinds of sausages and ham. And mashed potatoes. And some strong mustard. And lots of wine, of course, for those who still had a head for it after the night before. We put coins underneath our plates to ensure prosperity in the new year.

It was a wonderful day. Lots of stories--the kind that only old friends can tell about each other, lots of jokes, lots of laughter. The Belgians told French jokes, the French told Belgian jokes, and Dan and I told English speaker jokes.

There was lots of wonderful conversation and wonderful food and we hated it when we had to leave. But leave we had to, and after all the good-byes and thanks were said we headed towards our car. WAIT! we heard, and when we looked around there was one of our new friends coming towards us with a bag of something. It turned out to be scallops. A lot of them. For us, since we wouldn’t be there for dinner. Life luck!

These scallops came from Brittany, fresh frozen and brought carefully in the van or the trailer (I’m not sure which), still frozen. They had been slowly thawed in the cold air outside, protected from marauding cats. And now they were on the way home with us.

Since they had been frozen, I had to use them quickly. There were a lot of them. So Saturday was scallop day at our house. I wanted to see how many ways I could prepare scallops in one day. So look for some scallop recipes coming your way.

Who needs Lotto luck, eh?

This recipe would make a nice appetizer. In fact, it DID make a nice appetizer. I used canned chickpeas, because for some reason the dried ones aren’t available in my supermarket right now. They were fine here.

This recipe might look familiar to you. It’s basically this soup with less liquid in it. The extra liquid then becomes a sauce to drizzle over it all at the end.

Scallops and Chickpea Puree

1 can chick peas

4-5 sage leaves

2 Tablespoons olive oil

4 bay leaves

1 small shallot, chopped fine

1 dried hot pepper

1 Tablespoon tomato paste

1/4 cup white wine or tart apple juice

4 large scallops

chopped parsley to serve

• Heat the chick peas with the sage leaves in a pan.
• In a small skillet, heat the oil and add the bay leaves and the shallot. Crumble the hot pepper over it. Cook over medium heat till the shallots are soft and translucent.
• Add the tomato paste and the white wine or apple juice and cook on high heat till the liquid is almost all gone.
• Remove the bay leaves and scrape the contents of the skillet into the beans, and cook for another 5 minutes or so.
• Pour the beans and the liquid into a tall, narrow container, then pour off about 1/2 cup of the liquid and some of the chickpeas. Liquify the rest of the chickpeas and the liquid. You want something with the consistency of thick mashed potatoes. Or hummus.
• Rinse and pat dry the scallops. They need to be dry or they won’t sear properly. Without cleaning the skillet (you want that skim of infused oil that’s still in there), put it back on the heat and turn the heat up high. When the pan is hothot, cook the scallops for about 2 minutes on each side. If you overcook them, you’ll have chewing gum.
• To serve, put some of the puree on a serving dish, add a scallop and a chick pea. Sprinkle with chopped parsley, spoon some of the reserved liquid over it, and serve while hot. Or you can take a lot of photos of it and eat it cold like we did. But I think hot is better.

Enough for 4.

Notes:

• This would also make a nice verrine.
• This puree also makes a nice spicy dip for chips or veggies.
• If you do as I do and crumble the hot pepper with your fingers into the hot oil, be sure that you don’t wipe your eyes afterwards. The oils from the pepper will be on your fingers. It’s no use trying to wash it off--it’s not water soluble. It’s oil soluble, so the easiest way to get it off your fingers is to pour a little oil over your fingers and rub the oil into them well. Then rinse, and pour some dish soap directly on your fingers and rub them again. Rinse well. Now you can rub your eyes.

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NIGEL'S FISH

When I don’t know what to cook, I usually turn to my trusty copy of Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries. Ok, by now you probably know I’m a real Nigel Slater fan. One reason that I always turn to this book is that whatever I find will be seasonal and prepared without too much fuss. It will also be delicious.

In October, Nigel prepared some haddock. It was simple, quick, and creatively done. I’ve used this recipe several times, with different fish and different herbs. It’s always good. This time I wanted something Japanese-y. I was craving the clean, distinct flavors of Japan, with its sticky rice and its crunchy fish and its tiny bits of sauces that pack a real WALLOP. I had a piece of cod that would be perfect if I could make it really crunchy and flavorful to go with the bland rice.

So I took Nigel’s idea and changed it (of course). I cut the fish into smaller pieces, I used a whole grain bread, I used parsley instead of tarragon. To be honest, if I’d had tarragon I’d have used it, but all I had in the soft fresh green category was flat leaf parsley. It worked perfectly! I served this with some sticky rice, some umiboshi paste, and some wasabi, because Dan loves wasabi. We also had some shredded cabbage for green crunch. YUM!

What makes this special is the anchovies in the bread crumb mixture. I know. Anchovies--ew. Trust me on this, they’re really good here. You don’t use enough to really taste them as anchovies, but they add a depth to the flavor that makes this simple dish very special. So go ahead, use them. Please.

Nigel’s Fish

adapted from Kitchen Diaries

450 g / 1 lb cod or any white flaky fish fillets

115 g / 1/4 lb bread

5 anchovy fillets

A good handful of flat leaf parsley

about a teacup of flour

1 egg

Salt and pepper

3-4 Tablespoons of a neutral-flavored oil

• Rinse the anchovies and pat them dry. In a food processor, blitz the bread with the anchovy fillets and the parsley. You don’t really want the bread crumbs to be finefine--leave them a little coarse. But you DO want the anchovy fillets really blitzed in there, so go to town with it!
• Put the flour in a dish big enough to hold the fish fillets, and add a little salt and a lot of pepper to it. Remember that the anchovies are salty, so you don’t want too much in this mixture.
• Break the egg into another dish big enough to hold the fish fillets, and beat it lightly.
• Heat the oil in a non-stick pan. Dip the fillets in the flour, then the egg, then the bread crumbs. You really want a good coating of them, so if they don’t stick well, pat them on there with your hands.
• When the oil is sizzling hot, add the fish fillets and cook gently until they’re golden--about 3-4 minutes, depending on the thickness.
• Turn carefully and cook another 2-3 minutes on the second side. Remover from the pan veryvery carefully and drain on paper towels. Serve immediately.

Serves 4 if they like it and 10 if they don’t

NOTES:

• I’ve made this with haddock and cod. It would also work with sea bass or any other meaty white fish.
• Nigel uses tarragon in the bread crumbs. Use whatever fresh herb you have. I think it needs to be fresh, though. It’s really good with rosemary, with parsley, with sage. But it’s AMAZING with tarragon.
• Normally I use olive oil whenever I can. I just like the flavor. Here, though, you really need an oil with no flavor. I used colza / canola / rapeseed oil.
• If you’re not feeling Japanese, these are very good with mashed potatoes and a salad.
• I used a 6-grain bread for this. The bread had a nice complex flavor all its own, and added a lot to the flavor, I think.

Thanks for the compliments on the new bannerhead. That photo was really serendipitous - we went to Aachen so that I could take some photos of the Christmas market, and it was closed! There was a holiday that I didn't know about, so all the booths were locked up tight and I only got two photos: the red star that I used for my Christmas bannerhead, and this one. This one was taken in a restaurant while we were waiting for our dinner. There were herb plants on the table with spots directly above. This rosemary plant was just BEGGING to have it's picture taken! I wanted to practice getting a shallow depth of field, so I snapped away. VOILA! Serendipity.

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CONIGLIO IN UMIDO: Rabbit Stew

It’s the season for gibier, or wild game here in Belgium. In the supermarket at this time, we have an amazing choice: wild boar, doe, wild buck, pheasant, pigeon, duck, guinea fowl, reebock, marcassin (baby boar), hare, and rabbit. During the holidays, game is on everyone’s menu. I will admit that I haven’t yet tackled boar or venison. Rabbit, though, is something that we eat from time to time.

In truth, we don’t eat that much meat. When we do, it’s usually something lighter, like poultry or pork. Rabbit fits nicely into that category. It’s a light meat, with more flavor than chicken. Slow cooked like it is here, it turns into a lovely stew. Perfect for a winter night.

This is another recipe that I have from my cooking class in Siena. In Italy they eat rabbit often, and have many ways of preparing it. This is probably one of the simplest. As usual with Italian recipes, the quantities here are suggestions, as are the ingredients. Feel free to substitute what herbs that you have for those used here.

In the course of a normal Italian meal, the sauce from this would be served over pasta for a first course. The meat would then be served as a second course with some vegetables. We just serve it as a stew.

Coniglio in Umido

1 rabbit, cut into pieces

100 g / 4 oz dried tomatoes, chopped

100 g / 3/4 cup sliced olives

40 g / 1/4 cup seasoned flour

2 Tablespoons olive oil, approx.

1 onion chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped

1 sprig rosemary, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon thyme

125 ml / 1/2 cup white wine

1 can chopped tomatoes

• Soak tomato pieces in boiling water to soften. Soak olives in cold water to remove some of the salt.
• Heat the olive oil in a deep stew pot.
• Dip the rabbit pieces in flour, brown in oil over med high heat. You’ll probably have to do them in batches.
• When the rabbit pieces are brown, remove them and add the onion and garlic to the oil, (add a little more oil if you need to) and cook over medium heat till translucent. Add the celery, the rosemary and the thyme and cook for a few more minutes.
• Add the wine, and cook till the wine is almost evaporated. Stir continually while this is happening.
• Add the rabbit back to the pan, pour over the can of tomatoes, the olives, and the dried tomatoes with their liquid. Add enough water to half cover the rabbit.
• Cover and cook over medium heat for about an hour. Stir from time to time to ensure that the rabbit doesn’t stick. Check the liquid and add more water if necessary. At the end of an hour, it there’s too much water left, leave the cover off and let it reduce.

Serves 4 if they like it and 10 if they don’t.

NOTES:

• You can do this in the oven if you have a big enough baking pan. Just put it all in the pan at the point where it says “cover and cook” above.
• Chicken can always be substituted for the rabbit, of course.
• Chopped fennel is a nice addition--it can go in with the celery. Or instead of the celery.
• We served this with some good crusty bread and a fresh green salad.
• I have also served this with boiled potatoes.

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NUTS! A tale of two bloggers

Several months ago I was lamenting the fact that I couldn’t find good pecans here in Belgium. Shortly thereafter I got an email from Mardi at Eat, Live, Travel, Write, offering to send me pecans in exchange for a certain type of Belgian Chocolate--Manons by Neuhaus. A good deal, I think!

At the time, I was traveling a lot, and when I got home Mardi was traveling. Last week, though, she was in Paris, a couple of hours from us by train. Now, some people might say that it was nuts to go to Paris just for some pecans. HA! I say they have never had really good pecans.

Last week the day finally arrived to make the grand exchange.

We arranged to meet at Angelina’s, on the Rue de Rivoli, at 3 pm. Dan and I bought tickets for the train which would get us to Paris in time to also do a little shopping and maybe have lunch with some friends.

Normally, it's an easy thing to do: train from our town at 7:30 am, Thalys (fast train) from Liege at 8:40, arrive in Paris at 11. Return by 6 pm train to Liege, home by 9 pm. But the day we had arranged to go there was snow and ice. The Thalys left Liege an hour late, and arrived in Paris TWO hours late! We missed lunch.

Did we care? Nope. Paris at Christmas is wonderful. The City of Lights puts on her special party clothes for Christmas. We walked around the Louvre and all the way up the Rue de Rivoli. We got to Angelina’s in time for hot chocolate with Mardi and her husband Neil and her friend Alicia. We weren't sure we'd be able to get home that night, but HECK - we were in Paris! Spending the night in Paris isn't too awful. Except for the no clean underwear thing. But we didn't care. We knew it would be ok whatever happened. A lot of people might say it was nuts to make a trip like that in that kind of weather. I say they must not be pecan lovers.

Over some pretty wicked hot chocolate, we made the big exchange: I brought Mardi her beloved Manons, along with some double truffles and a few pralines from La Maison Saive. For Neil and Alicia there were more chocolates, and cookie towers too!

I love Christmas!

Left to right: Mardi, Neil, Alicia, and Dan.

Mardi brought me my beloved pecans, as well as some maple syrup and some totally wicked vinegar. PLUS some lavender caramels. The only problem with those is that Dan knows about them--I have to share.

Isn’t it a blast to meet someone IRL that you know from the internet? This day was no exception. We had a great time with Mardi and Neil and Alicia, and before we knew it, it was time to go. Why, you’re wondering? Did we think our train would be on time? A lot of people might say that it was nuts to think our train might be on time. Hmm. I’d have to agree with them on that.

On our way back to the Metro we passed by Louvre, took some more photos, and made it back to the Gare du Nord in plenty of time for our train. Even if it had been on time we’d have been there in plenty of time. We’ll pass blessedly over the return trip by saying that the only good part was that by the time we got to our town that night the station was closed, so we didn’t have to pay for parking!

A lot of people might say that this day was too difficult, that the trains should have been on time, that the weather was no excuse. A lot of people on our trains WERE saying that, and a good deal more. To them I say:

Thank you, Mardi!

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UV FILTER: A cautionary tale

When I bought my new camera, the first thing that I did was to buy a UV filter for it. Yeah, I know that it makes the skies bluer and the clouds whiter, but let’s face it, I don’t really take that many photos of skies. Or clouds. No, I bought it to protect my lens.

I know that it may seem like a waste of 30 €, but for me it’s worth it. Here’s why: if your new fancy-pants camera falls off the tripod because you didn’t secure it properly, it will surely fall right on its heavy zoom lens. If you have a UV filter on it and if you’re veryvery lucky, the 30 € UV filter will be broken instead of the much-more-expensive zoom lens.

A word to the wise...

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BEST WISHES

In

this

season

of star light

and candle light

when hope lights up

all our lives, we gather to

decorate

a tree

Each ornament is a shining reminder that happiness comes one thought, one action, one day at a time.

Best wishes for happiness from our house to yours.

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