Sometimes pictures tell hidden messages like treasure maps. Have you ever been in a situation where a good friend showed you a holiday snap, a picture full of friends and family, or of a landscape near their home? Your friend’s face lit up and she smiled as she recounted happy memories. You smile back because you understand that the picture in front of you, full of unfamiliar faces with red eyes and deer-in-the-headlight look, is a clue. A clue for your friend to recount wonderful times in her mind and the happiness she felt at that moment.
I won’t show you a bunch of smiling people that you don’t know, but the badly taken picture below (damn, that 10 sec timer!) is not just of me watering a bunch of plants… with dirty feet (sorry!).
Every object reminds me of happy moments: the watercolor painting from a tiny gallery near Wanchai market, the old chest of drawers from Shanghai, subtropical creepers winding their way up into lush canopies, watering plants in the garden, wearing a sarong, not wearing a sarong…
To see other sarong wearers with happy memories visit Lecram’s site and of course Os’s (just discovered that your site is blocked in Dubai, Os).
This post is best read at home an hour before lunch time.
The human mind is at its best when limited to a few ingredients. We don’t cope with infinity that well (I at least). The items available at 11 am were a hungry stomach and green beans (cheap and looking good at the supermarket yesterday), a can of chopped tomatoes (something that I always have in my cupboard), and three beef sausages (from a package of six of which three were wolfed down by little man yesterday).
So I chopped up two small onions and four cloves of garlic to get going. Then my eyes fell upon the blue cast iron casserole I bought at Ikea a few months ago and had never used. It looks exactly like the fancy French casseroles on offer for an insane amount of money, because they are called “Le Creuset”… mine was way cheaper (and I am always drawn to kitchenware that is so heavy that is can double as a defense weapon). What do you cook in a casserole you have never used before? A leftover-stew of course.
I don’t have pictures, but you don’t need them because you have leftovers in your kitchen too, and your tummy is hungry and your mind is racing already. What could I cook for lunch today?
I prepared the green beans for cooking. Fired up the gas stove, heated oil, threw in the onions and garlic, waited until their aroma wafted through the kitchen, then added the can of chopped tomatoes and the beans. Then I added a glass of water, some salt, two dried chilies (because hot is always better), and two bay leaves.
There was not enough fluid in the dish, but an open bottle of red wine in the fridge. In went some wine. You can never go wrong with some wine, especially if you are cooking with a fake “Le Creuset” casserole.
So leftover-stew a la Ikea was well underway, when I thought of the five miniature potatoes that were leftover from a bag of full-sized ones. When I got them out of the fridge, my eyes feel upon the glass jar of foie gras house guest had bought at her stopover in Paris. The proper foie gras is long gone, but the jar still held some leftover goose fat that your doctor tells you to throw away, but is far to fragrant not to use.
I cooked the potatoes in salt water. Chopped up the beef sausages and fried them in goose fat (yeah, I know… cholesterol… heart attack…bla… bla), then added them to the casserole.
When the beans were cooked but not mushy and the sauce had reduced to a yummy goo, the potatoes were ready as well.
There was still fat in the skillet from the goose fat and beef sausage bonanza. If a heart attack, then a proper one. So I fried the potatoes in the leftover fat to yummy crispness.
Lunch was crispy, fragrant potatoes and bean-tomato-sausage stew with a glass of red wine, and it tasted especially good because it was half-hazardly thrown together.
… it’s getting cooler… winter is coming… almost sweater weather.
104 Fahrenheit sounds so much more “real feel” than 40 Celsius. I made the mistake to step outside around noon today. Boy, what a mistake. My “real feel” temperature was close to boiling. What’s the use to report the temperature in the shade if no shade is to be had?
I cought the resident beast of prey (M. the cat) in the last stages of hunting a bird today. I wonder where he hid his catch, or whether he ate it. He only ate 2 small cans of “Fancy Feast” (“Tender Beef Bits” and “Chicken in Gravy”) today, which suggests the later.
M concentrating in the shade before the hunt. In the distance: papaya and kumquat tree waiting for the lazy gardener to get a move on to plant them in the ground.
Since I mentioned my Ficus Elastica earlier, I thought I show it to you.
Thanks to the house guest who is a professed non-green-thumb and screams when seeing a single ant, but nevertheless did a wonderful job of watering the garden during the desert summer, it has grown quite a lot since I freed it from its plastic pot and planted it in the ground.
I am also very proud of my lemongrass (raised from three sickly and dry looking stalks from the supermarket).
Tastes great in chicken soup or everywhere else you want lemon scent without tartness. Today, I made iced lemon grass, ginger and jasmin tea…yummy!
Baby succulents in self-made compost, which I will plant out in two to three weeks to slowly replace the water-hungry lawn in the front yard. (written by novice desert gardener swelling with pride)
Above the wonderful corner hill in my walled garden. The stray cats of the neighborhood used to sleep there during hot noon until M. hissed and showed them who’s territory it is.
Just around the corner is the wonder of nature: my two compost piles. I first bought the green plastic beast for an inappropriate amount of money, because it hid rotting kitchen waste and gardening waste from the phobic house guest and neighbor who is also my landlord (you never know). It soon was too small, and I built a second compost next to it (chicken wire and wood sticks from Ace Hardware). I can recommend it to whoever has a little space in his/her backyard. You feel great because you reduce waste, get fertile compost, and don’t have to run to the waste containers so often.
Today. little man and I aerated (fancy term for mixing with a gardening fork) the two piles. We found lots of ants, termites, and other insects which will help to turn our kitchen and gardening waste into fertile soil. It was fun to guess “what was it?”, mixed with a little excited “yuck! I don’t want to know”.
Asia and the Mediterranean Sea next to each other. The small Frangipani tree I planted half a year ago along with the Aloe Vera(?) plant in the blue planter from Croatia (smuggled in in a wet kitchen towel and a plastic bag).
After little man and I worked hard in the garden we had fun in the pool. I know it sounds very luxurious to have your own pool, but if you knew the trouble (why is it so green? again? what the hell? yuck, I don’t want to remove the bloated, smelly mouse/gecko/beetle out of the filter) you would gladly recline. So we deserved it… double time.
Our house with pool is rented. If I would own my own house, I would never built a chlorine pool (you can’t imagine the chemicals and work going into that diabolical thing, not to mention the dead wildlife in the filter), if you want to swim in your backyard this makes much more sense.
These guys have 66 videos of their cover versions uploaded on youtube, and there isn’t a single stinker among them. Just spent a happy morning listening to them sing and play in their bedroom.
I had one on my balcony in Hong Kong. When we moved in it stood there in a dirty gray pot, desperately hanging on to life. The family that had lived in our flat before us had left it behind. I hope it is still there. I couldn’t take it to Dubai.
I also planted one in my garden here. I figured that what had survived minimal care on my Hong Kong balcony also survives the desert summer. And so far it does. It’s not as fashionable a plant as an orchid, but whatever survives under my thumb has my respect.
