Middelburg and Zeeland, NL

What to do when it's warm and sunny on the weekend?  We get up early and go to Middelburg.  It is only 2h30 drive from the North of France. We have been there so many times that we have developped habits :
-Sipping a cassis cola "en terrasse", in the centre of the city
-going to the garden centre for plants, where you can get orchids for less than 5 euros
-stock up on dutch food
- lazying on the beach
-and sometimes renting bikes and enjoy a nice ride by the sea

The Zeeland province is bordered by the sea and it is a quiet place to rest and get away from a french stressful life.

We rarely travel in France nowadays.  Especially during the holiday periods.  Highways (with expensive tolls) are jamp-packed with French, Dutch and Belgians heading down South of France.  We avoid all of this and enjoy Zeeland.

Veggie Burger from scratch

Yesterday I made bread rolls, nothing fancy, but I have finally reached the desired result after may fails in the past.  I used dry yeast.  I used to mix everything in the food processor but sometimes the bread won't rise, because the yeast didn't "come alive".  The best way to see if the yeast is "alive" is to mix the dry yeast in a glass with warm water with a table spoon of sugar.  Once it will start to thicken, you will know that the yeast is alive and ready to be used.

I won't give the recipe, because I just don't know the exact quantity of ingredients, but I only used 250g of flour, 8g of dry yeast, water (50 ml or less?) and a little bit of oil.

 

Veggie patties: a block of tofu, 1 eggplant, onions, and 1 small can of bean, and 3 table spoons of flour, and 50g of mix nuts. You can use any vegetable you like.  I used what was left in the fridge.

Sauté the vegetables for 5-10 minutes, leave out the tofu.  Mix all the rest the ingredients in a food processor with the flour.  The tricky part is to form patties with the mixture.  Then cook in a pan until brown.

Voilà, guilt-free veggie burger! 

A Meal for One

The weather is finally warming up here in North of France, but only for today.  We had 30°C and expecting thunder storm. I hope my vegetables won't be destroyed.  I don't think I will get a return on investment this year on gardening, with all the spending on the plastic containers, bamboo sticks and spade and so on.  I have spent on courgettes plants, melons and eggplants and they were all eaten up by a mysterious insect (snail?) or animal.  So I have not been successful with the "ground garden".  I have put a net a couple of days ago because all my pumkins plants were eaten except for the big one, that sprouted in my compost.

My garden looks ghetto with the net

However, my vegetables grown in containers did great and no snails can climb in.  I have harvested Roquettes (arugula) twice.  I hope I won't have to buy lettuce and roquettes this summer.

Some of the roquette seeds were given to me a long time ago.  I'm hoping to collect the seeds as well so I don't have to buy any.  This kind is the round-leaf variety.  Not really peppery tasting like the "wild variety", with the serrated leaves.

Yesterday, when using the roquettes in the salad, my husband said : make sure to wash them well.  I replied : There's not even an once of chemical on them! 

He also said that I didn't post any recipe for a while.  But I'm not going to, photos speak for themselves. Since he's away for a training in Paris for one more day, it's going to be a meal for one.

 Sorrel, chives, dills and roquettes

  Pasta, ham and roquettes, and some other herbs from  my "mini-garden".

On a totally different subject, we found a kitten on June 7th in our warehouse, in the afternoon.  A visitor was there to inspect the solar installation on the warehouse, and the kitten won't stop screaming while he was there. It is unlikely that the inspector brought the cat with him.  So we just don't know how she landed in the farm.  She is too small to escape from her home.  The only thing I can think of is that some woman rang at my door during that afternoon, asking if she can buy me some pork (not me, the neighbour!).  Maybe she dropped the cat in the warehouse while we weren't looking.  The kitten is 2 months and a half, and is too friendly to be a farm cat.  It's a shame that people would just throw out animals like that.  Looks like she will stay on the farm with the rest of the cats here.

She enjoys to be on our desks, next to the screen and distracts us.

She wants to blog too.

Watching a tennis match

I was watching the Roland Garros on France 2, and didn't really understand why the match was interrupted.  Guess who disturbed Nadal and Ferer? 2 people who were against gay marriage.  France 2 choose not to film this but other media did.  Take a look:

http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2013/06/09/mariage-gay-roland-garros-finale-perturbee_n_3411709.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

This is not the place to protest and people would kill to have a ticket, this is showing lack of respect. 

Updates on the garden

I really enjoy gardening but I haven't been successful with courgettes and other vegetables.  The little plants have been eaten by snails so it's back to square one.  I've planted radishes, salad from seeds, in plastic containers.  Can't wait for them to grow, at least the snails can't go in them.  I've given up on gardening a couple years ago because the cats were digging the dirt.  So I've taken extreme mesures, plastic wrap. I realize that trying to grow organic is not easy.  I've put coffee grounds to keep away to snails.  Let's hope it will work.

I made compost with peels and vegetable wastes, and pumpkin seeds sprouted. Today I have transplanted it in the garden. A couple of hours later, the the leaves are wilted.  I'm not sure it will survive.