Foody Friday Easy Pasta dish

A very easy and quick pasta dish.

I like these fresh tortellini filled with ricotta and spinach. One pack is just enough for us two.

Just cook the pasta in lots of salted water. These fresh pasta's are ready to eat after a few minutes of boiling.
In the mean time fry some bacon pieces in a pan and when they are almost cooked trow in a spoon full of flour and mix. Make a sauce by adding some milk or cream and a handful of grated emmenthal cheese or gruyére. Season with salt and pepper.
Put in some small pieces of un cooked zucchini and some froozen pea's. Sautee for a few minutes. I like my zucchine still to be with a bite. Trow in some fresh shredded basil .
Toss the tortellini's in the pan and mix and serve.
I had this on the table in about 20 minutes.

It was delish!

Want some dessert??

What about a slice of one of these cakes??
After the cupcakes came the cakes. Below is the cake I made for the birthday of my daughter in laws mother. There is 1 rose for every year of her live. I call it " The Rose Garden" cake.This one (did'nt I show you this before?), is just a try out to see if I could do this. I call it " The Briar Rose" cake.

I love making these sugerpaste flower decorations. Luckely in november we have a lot of birthdays coming up, so I will be able to bake cakes till I drop. Each cake takes at least 5 hours of work to make all the decorations and so. Every sugarpaste flower is handmade in a silicone mould and after hardening for a few hours, handpainted.

Three or more Tuesday favorite paintings

Since I was a child I had an interest in the arts. My father followed painting lessons in the local academy and saw him do his paintings in the evenings and in the weekends. I have one memory of me being a model for him. He took me on his bike to class on a cold february evening. I remember the hot burning coal stove and the fact that I was wearing my hair in a ponytail. That I had it in a ponytail was special since my mom always braided my hair . I hated that and it was very special for me that I could have it in a ponytail. Helas the portrait of me is gone missing in the last 15 years.
The painting above is one of my fathers paintings. He was not a great artist but this painting is double special to me. He made it when I was 9 and it depicts his hometown seen from the little mount there was. It's called "Bilzen seen from the Borreberg". It hangs in my hall and I love the cool winter theme and the understated colors.

This second painting I found in a fleamarket. It costed almost nothing. It's painted on a wood panel and the frame is black with handpainted tiny golden stars. I believe it is at least 100 years old. It only costed about 60 dollars but I am in love with it. It has such charm. I love paintings with black and white cows on it. A reminder of my father being a farmers son??

The third and last painting I found in a second hand shop. It's big, almost 27¨ square.

It stood there in the second hand shop with a very havy gold frame on it. I immediatly say its potential. The painting is very well done and I love the braekfast scene on it. The eggs, the bread and the herings, the jug of milk and the cup and the Sanseveria plant. This plant was once's in every household. I remember my mother having one too. It is very strong and if your lucky it blooms once a year with one big stem of Ammaryllis type flowers. The painted costed about 150 dollars but I think it is worth every cent. It is the perfect picture for our kitchen wall.

Foody Friday Belgian National dish

As you could read in my previous blog entry we where at the Belgian coast last weekend for the wedding of my niece. The whole of the Belgian coast is only about 40 miles long!!! It is very flat without rocks and with fine white sandy beaches.
We had beautiful fresh autumn weather with lots of sun.
And when you are there you need to buy some scrimp.
Not the scrimp you lot know but small brown scrimp.

In the olden day they where fished by fisherman on horseback like you see in the picture above. Now a day there are only a few fisherman left that honor this old traditional way of fishing .
As you can well see they use big farm horses for the job. These are " Brabantse Trekpaarden" a very strong enormously big horses but they are very gentle. They drag a net trough the water and go as deep as there belly into the sea. On each side of the horse, the fisherman has a basket to keep the scrimp in. Fresh uncooked scrimp are only 1 inch long and almost see through.
The scrimp are then cooked in seawater. Now a days small trawlers fish along the coastline to catch these valuable scrimp and every Belgian LOVES these small but delishous tasting beasts.

So when you are at the coast you buy them unpeeled. You sit down with a good glass of Stella Artois beer and start peeling. You wriggle the tail and pull it of en then you pull the head of.They are so yummie that hardly any are left to make a meal.I usely peel one to eat and one to keep! You need a lot before you can make a meal of them!

Here there are a few browny pink peelde scrimp.
When you have enough you mix them with a good mayonnaise, nothing else.
You scoop out the inside of a tomatoe , season that with white pepper and salt and fill with the scrimp mixture.
Give a salad with it and serve the tomatoes with some french fries or eat with some crusty bread.
It is truly the national dish. We simply call it ' Tomate crevettes'. This is the French expression for a tomatoe with scrimp. In Flemish we would say ' Tomaat garnaal'.

You can also serve it in a tiny tomatoe as an appetiser. Eat them quickly since the scrimp don't keep long, certainly not when you have bought them fresh.

Don't trow away the heads and tails! Sautée these with some fresh vegetables, add some water and cook for a few minutes. Put trough a siff and press out all the juices after a few minutes of cooking. It will give you a delishous base for soups and sauces.

Three or more pictures of an autumn wedding...

Last weekend we where at the Belgian coast to celebrate the marriage of or goddaughter. It was a very joyful affaire with a very happy bride and groom.

It started with the priest being in the wrong church and the whole congregation waiting for more then 30 minutes. Time to make a jolly picture of the mother of the bride and her daughter.
At last, Dad could walk his daughter to the altar where her bridegroom was waiting....

Te vows

The happy young couple.

Coming out of the quaint old church (annoo 1641), there was a big gust of wind and rice and red paper hearts flew everywhere.

The wedding reception and meal took place in a very old barn. The young married couple listening to the speech of Dad. The oild barn was set up with very modern white tables, white calla lilies and red waterglasses. The theme of the wedding was inspired on New York where the groom asked his bride to marry him. Every table had a name inspired by the burroughs of New York.

Now it's up to La Reunion for the Honeymoon.
I wish them every happiness in the world.

Three or more Tuesday...Starlings

You will think, there she is again. It's birds again!!! I promise you this will be the last bird topic for a while.
It started almost a year agoo that I noticed that a small flock of birds settled for the night in the little wood across the street from our house.
We live at the border of a small community, a little village and at 300 feet from our door we have a very bizzy road that leads from one town to another.But across my door there is a little field with some pony's in and behind and beside that there is a very small patch of land that is wooded. In that stands a very big tree that is dead at the top. I noticed that the birds perched there for the night.

It gave a bit of life to the street since they chatter a lot. This summer I noticed that more birds have settled in our little wood across the street and it seams that every day there are more.

It started in the summer around 8, 8.30 in the evening that from the north west behind our house small flocks of birds apeared. First you see a few, maybe 20 and then there is another flock and another and another....

After a few weeks it seamed they came from everywhere. After a while the tree with the dead top was not big enough anymore and the birds settled in the surrounding trees.For about one hour the chatter and talk about the day gone by, fight for a place to sleep and then when the evening falls settle down for the night.

Arround 5 in the morning the chattering start again and around 7 they fly away to forrage for the day. Now, autumm is in the land they come home more early, around 7.30 in the evening and only leave around 6.30/ 7 o'clock. They always come from the same way, the northwest, fly to settle down to the southeast.
I am still not certain what birds they are. We think they are black starlings but we do not know for sure, it could also be a small sort of crow.

Once the evening falls you get great pictures like the one below.

Thanks for coming by. See you next week.

Foody Friday Mom's chicken cassarole

This picture is taken on the moment that my mother put her dish on the table and I happened to have my camera on hand and thought of you lot and said lets take a picture for Foody Friday.
It is a simple cassarole dish but you can prepare it in advance and freeze it if you want.
For 4 eaters you need 4 skinless chicken breasts cut in large pieces of a whole chicken devided in 10 pieces.
2 medium white onions
sweet paprika powder
pepper and salt
1 can of apricots
1 small bunch of white seedless grapes
1 big glass of dry white wine
some butter to fry the chicken in.
Take a large skillet and brown the chicken pieces. Breast meat will only take a few minutes a chicken on the bone will take lots more time.
When the meat is lightly browned and semi cooked add the onions.The onions are not sliced in rings but are cut from top to bottom in 8, so you have moon shapes.
Add them and lett them fry gently. Season with sweet paprika, salt and pepper and then add the wine.Let the chicken get olmost done and then add the apricots and grapes. You can ommit the grapes if you want.
Let cook for a few minutes more and taste. If the taste is not sweet enough you can add a little of the apricot juice or add a spoonful of dark sugar.
Bind the sauce slightly with some corn flower.
We eat it with some crusty french baguettes but this is also nice with some rice or some boiled patatoes.

Three or more Tuesday Vintage cake stands

That I like cooking and baking is well known to those who follow my blog or know me personally. I also like vintage glass and if you combine the two than you end with the vintage glass cake stands. As you can see I have rather more then three. All together I have 7 stands with foods and a few more without a food. Then they are more cake plates.Once in a while I invite my quiltladies to an afternoon of show and tell and then the cake stands are in full use. Don't the cakes look pretty presented like that?

Here you see a cake stand and a vintage cake plate combined together with a zinc crown on top. I also use them to put on the Christmas table.
This is a bad picture since it is a scan of a traditional picture but it gives you an idea.

The one below is a special one to. I collect Luxval glass of the famous Val saint Lambert Cristal factory here in Belgium and this is an Art Deco cake stand.
Today I made a cake, just because I fancied making one... What better way to present my last glass cake stand.....