Incentives

Last week I bought something in a large department store called HEMA. At the checkout the girl asked me the following mind-boggling question: “Would you like bonkies?”

Now, that is not a question I’d been asked before. I didn’t have a clue what she meant. Would I like what? I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think bonkies is a word in the Dutch dictionary. It sounded like she was asking me if I would like her to hit me over the head. But she could not possibly mean that. Could she? My face must have expressed my thoughts, because she tried to clear things up. ”You get a bonkie with every 5 Euros you spend”, she explained. It didn’t help. But I’m curious (wanted to know what bonkies are) and Dutch (like to get things for ‘free’), so I said: “Yes, I would like bonkies”, and got ready to duck just in case… The girl took a dive behind the counter and surfaced with two small plastic wrappers, containing the illusive bonkies, and handed them to me.

When I got home I put the wrappers on the garden table and forgot about them. (I blame the Lyme. I keep forgetting things. It can’t be age-related. I’m far too young for that. I am!)

When hubs came home, he saw the wrappers and asked: “what’s that?” ”Those are bonkies.” ”What?” ”Bonkies.” ”Oh?” ”You get a bonkie with every 5 Euros you spend at the HEMA “ ”A bonkie?” ”A bonkie.” ”Oh. What’s a bonkie?” ”No idea.” ”Oh.”

Hubs was happy enough not knowing more about bonkies, but I wasn’t , so I opened the wrappers and discovered what a bonkie is.

It’s a marble. With a scary face. And a name. The left one is called Katy and the one on the right is Luv. She appears to have a big plaster on her head. Maybe she got hit over the head. When I Googled ‘bonkies’ I discovered that you also ‘have to’ collect little plastic bodies, called ‘skinnies’, for these faces. With every 15 Euros you spend, you get a skinnie. There are 15 different bonkies and 5 different skinnies. You do the sums. Invented by a marketing department as an incentive for people to buy more stuff at the HEMA, so that their children can 'collect them all!'. I hate that. But I always accept the ‘free gifts’ and give them to our neighbour’s children. And I hate that I do that. But the neighbour’s kids love it. And that is why I can still live with myself.

Anyway, that is not what this post is about.

It’s about the joy of Windows Live Writer. Why did I not know about this before? I’ve been struggling all this time with Blogger’s prehistoric lay-out possibilities, while I could have been enjoying Live Writer. I’m in heaven. In one of the comments made to this post of Jinksy, I first read about the existence of Windows Live (remind me to thank ‘Fletch’). And then she herself mentioned it in this post. And that was an incentive for me to check out the possibilities of Windows Live Writer. Did I mention I’m in heaven?

Are you still struggling with writing your posts in Blogger? Let this be an incentive to you to check out Windows Live Writer. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. Everything I managed to do is based on luck and coincidence. Ask Fletch. You can find him if you follow (one of) the links to Jinksy.

This is a test with windows live writer

I’m curious if windows live writer does a better job than blogger.

Shall we go?

Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging. In my case 'life' consist of Lyme, a manky internet connection (it took me two days to make this post) and a garden. You have to believe me on my word concerning the first two 'parts of life', but, By The Powers Of Canon, I can actually show you the third one.

Would you like to follow me on a tour through our garden? So you know where I am when I'm not here. Then I'm there. (We'll skip the parts where I haven't been much lately.)

Welcome to our garden.

Please close the gate behind you.

Yes, yes... I know the gate needs a lick of paint. Relax! It's on the 'things-to-do-but-not-now-list'. Now... we'll just follow this path, past the small and very sunny patio and around the corner you'll see...

...our fantastic and most experienced (well, oldest at least) guard dog Phoebe. "Phoebe! PHOEBE! Wake up! We have a visitor." That building in the back? The stables.

Our mostly unused sunloungers. If you click on this photo, you can perhaps just see the statue of the naked lady hiding in the hedge (I thought that might get your attention). And can you spot the chickens playing hide-and-seek?

We can choose which way we go now. One option is to take this small path, guarded by another naked lady, but that takes us to a very narrow path through the trees. Not very interesting and only for the more adventureous types who don't mind wrestling a couple of dead trees. But we will take the easier way, the 'hosta-path' that is behind us.

This path takes us to the 'side garden', which I will not show you because it hasn't had much attention lately. But if we turn right, we can follow a much wider path that leads all the way down to the back of the garden, where the small pasture for our horses is.

But first we turn around and look back down the 'hosta-path'.

Nice view eh?

Now we turn back again and go to our right. This leads us past the pond...

and if we turn right here, we'll get to the stables. But we will walk further down this path, past the manege....

and then we take the next sort of path to our right that leads to 'Villa Piggysty', where my little vegetable garden is. To the left is the meadow where the horses are grazing.

We'll walk all the way down this grass path and go into the woods....

...and there is Biggles...

we can follow him...

...until we get to the bench and the weird structure that we've inherited from the former owners of our house and we still haven't decided if we should remove it. Or not. We could lead some climbers over it. If we decide to leave it. But it has taken us about 10 years to not make our minds up and it will probably be here for another 10 years.

We can take a seat here and enjoy the view of the horses...

with the manege and the stables at the far end there.

Ahh, it's nice here. But onwards and upwards we go...

.....and at the end of this small path we return to the wider path again...

....where we keep our tiny tractor. It's under that temporary structure that needs replacing, but we are not sure by what. Another one of those things-to-do-but-not-now. The metal thing in the foreground is a 'weidesleep', something that we can attach to the tractor and drag over the grass in the meadow. It opens up the ground a little and tickles the little grass-roots, which apparently encourages the grass to grow. We also use it to drag over the sand in the manege to even the surface.

Does anyone know what the English word for 'weidesleep' is? Pasture drag perhaps?

Shall we go back to the house, take a seat on the patio and have a nice cool drink? Or would you rather have a coffee? Tea?

Stamppot Postelein but This Is Not A Cooking Blog

This blog is fast becoming everything it wasn't set out to be. First I felt the need to explain that it isn't about our animals, but about ME (that was in this post - you know, the one about Naloma having colic) and now it seems to have become a cooking blog. But it isn't. It is purely a coincidence that two sequential posts are about food. Now, I am able to prepare a reasonably tasty meal. At least people always say yes when we invite them to come over for dinner, which is a good sign. Or they like living on the edge. Or they just like us. We also have friends who will either phone to ask if they are welcome to join us for dinner, or just drop by around the time we usually eat. Therefore I'm inclined to think that I'm not the world's worst cook. And certainly not the best. But sort of agreeable with outliers at both ends. From utterly disgusting (doesn't happen too often) to very delicious (ditto). Anyhoo, tonight I cooked 'Stamppot Postelein'. I honestly haven't a clue what Postelein is called in English. Or even if you, dear blogfriends who take the time to read this post, know Postelein at all in your country. So I've put up some photos of the delicious little stalks with little leaves. Can we call them vegetables? Why not! They are. QUESTION: if you recognise this Postelein (this sounds like they are wanted and you can get a reward if you turn them in, but I'll have to disappoint you; no reward) will you please let me know in the comments-section what they are called in your country? Hubs and I thought the stamppot Postelein I made tonight tasted really, really good, so I shall give you the recipe. Sort of, in 'about' measurements. Just in case you recognise the little culprits that are making me feel rather uncomfortable now because I ate far too much, and want to make this culinary delight yourself. For 4 people you need about: 1 kilogram (2 lbs) potatoes 400 gr (0,8 lbs) postelein bacon cubed (I use the vegetarian bacon cubes from Albert Heijn), as much as you want 100 gr (0,2 lbs) grated cheese 250 ml (1 cup) milk (it should be warm, but I often ignore the rules and use cold milk) salt (but not too much of course) pepper (lots of) Peel, slice and cook the potatoes in salted water until soft. Meanwhile wash the Postelein, remove the ends of the stalks and cut the rest up into smaller pieces (about 1-2 centimeters). Fry the cubes of bacon until crispy. Make a mash of the cooked and drained potatoes, using as much milk as you need to make it smooth, add the grated cheese and lots of pepper (if you like that), stir well, place the pan with the mash back on the stove on a very low heat and stir the postelein through the mash. You now have stamppot (you can use all sorts of different vegetables, raw or cooked, to make stamppot, but the base is always mashed potatoes). Stir the crispy bacon cubes through the stamppot, remove from the heat and serve immediately. For this occasion (I would do that if we have guests and since you áre my guests...) I have used one of those fancy metal rings to make a nice tower. If hubs and I are on our own, we just dump a blob of stamppot on our plates. Notice the delicately draped grated cheese on top. I know! It's almost Art ;-) If you want, you could have this with meat. Pork chops (we won't tell Nufnuf and Tumtum) or a 'Gehaktbal' (you háve to follow this link, because I wanted to give you the recipe for 'Gehaktballen', but was too lazy, so I Googled for a recipe and found this actual cooking blog with a great recipe for Dutch meatballs. Isn't that just wonderful?).

Roasted Fish, Potato, Asparagus with Dill Butter and the cats had a field day

The recipe for the roasted fish, potato, asparagus with dill butter was posted by Pam on Sidewalk Shoes last Thursday (today she posted something about Strawberry Muffins, oh yum, that I haven't even read yet, because the photo only was enough to make me hungry and I was afraid that reading the actual recipe would just be too much of a good thing) and if you want to make it yourself (I can highly recommend it) you have to follow the link. It looked utterly delicious and seemed easy enough to make. Therefore (I'm using too many 'so's', so -see?- I'm trying alternatives) I decided to cook this for hubs and me today. First and most important: it was easy to make and tasted delicious indeed! Now, if you go over to Pam's and see the photo she has put up with her recipe, you'll see the fish prominently featuring. "Where is your fish?", I hear you ask. Although I don't eat meat, I will now and again eat fish, thus me being a vegetarian isn't the reason for it's absence. We even bought fish. To be honest I'm not even sure what kind of fish it was, because hubs bought it while I was pretending to be interested, meanwhile trying not to look at those poor dead creatures or what was left of them. And when it was almost time to add the fish to the dish, I discovered it had lots and lots of tiny little bones still stuck in it, alongside of where the backbone had been. I'm sorry, but that was just too much. I'm a hypocrite and do not want to be reminded that the poor fish had a backbone once.

Hubs suggested I'd better cook the fish and feed it to the cats.

Hence the title.

But the potatoes and the asparagus and the dill butter, with some Maldon seasalt flakes... delicious!

A happy horse

These photos of Willem enjoying his daily roll are especially for

Mr. Rhymeswithplague and his lovely wife

(who were slightly worried when they saw a horse rolling in a field and wondered if it is a normal thing to do for a horse)

you can click on the photo for a bigger version

See the stupid and slightly scary grin on Willem's face? Pure enjoyment!

"SOAP ON THE ROOF!

AND CLOSE THE WINDOWS!", my father would have yelled if he had been here this morning.

Because when hubs went outside to collect the paper, he saw this:

Fortunately it landed on the roof of our neighbours house. Who are both well over 60.

So there will be no need to panic we think. The stork looked quite relaxed too. Perhaps it was having a day off.

An eventful morning

First of all I'd like to mention that this is NOT A HORSE-OR-ANY-OTHER-ANIMAL-BLOG. The only animal this blog is about is ME! However, rules are there to be broken, and since we have a lot of animals that feature heavily in our lives, it is almost inevitable they will pop up now and again in this blog. Lately they have been here a lot! Sorry about that if you are only interested in little old moi. I assure you that interesting things about me will get a mention if they manifest. This post is again *sigh* about the horses. Or to be specific, about Naloma. You see, this morning I brought them all outside to the paddock and started to muck out their stables. Just when I had almost finished the mucking out, I heard galloping noises and looked outside. Naloma and Evie were running around, while Willem was just happily standing in the sunshine, thinking about life in general. Eventually Evie calmed down, but Naloma kept running around. So I thought that perhaps a nasty flying insect was pursuing her and decided to return them to their stables again to mislead the nasty insect. But when I brought Naloma to her stable she just didn't seem alright to me. Nothing definite showing, but she wasn't her usual self. And she started to walk around in her stable too. NOT a good sign. Colic, I thought. For the non-horsey-people: colic is a tummy ache and can be fatal for horses. They have highly sensitive tummies. So I called the vet. I had planned to call him anyway, because he has a mare that was due to have her baby and he also borrowed a car from us a couple of weeks ago to bring another mare to a studfarm to be inseminated with frozen sperm from a stallion in Spain. And I was wondering how both mares were doing. (Vet's heavily pregnant mare brought a lovely palomino coloured girl into this world just last night.) I told vet that I was worried about Naloma. I was using my mobile and watched her while talking to the vet. At that point she looked at her belly. "Okay, now I'm sure she has a colic", I said. "I'll be there as soon as possible", he said." "Until then I will put them outside again. Please be quick." (Not that I was panicking in any way -cough-.) So I took the horses to the paddock again and Naloma started walking around. Then she stopped and dropped her head. She wasn't feeling too good. I mean, if someone who doesn't know her had been there, they would not have noticed anything wrong. She could also be having a little nap. She wasn't breathing heavily or sweating, but she just wasn't herself. Then I noticed that the right side of her belly was showing signs of an alien trying to get out. It moved and twitched and looked like it was leading a life of its own. I couldn't see any of this happening on the left side of her belly. I called vet again. "Hi, sorry, it's me again." I described the alien thing to him. "And I have a bottle of Colosan somewhere. Shall I give her some?" "Great", he said. "Give her that and I'll be there in half an hour." So (and this is the point where I feel really sorry that I don't allow ads at my blogspace, because the Colosan manufacturers will be delighted with what I'm going to tell you now) I gave her 10ml of Colosan. Í don't know if it is a known product outside the Netherlands, but if you own a horse, you should also own a bottle of Colosan! Within 5 minutes the alien gave up his attempts to get out of Naloma's belly. Things calmed down and she started looking like her normal self again; bright eyed and bushy tailed. The vet came and gave her an injection to calm down her belly even more. "Keep a good eye on her", he said. "She'll be alright for the next couple of hours, but when she shows signs of colic again, we'll have to take a more drastic approach." Without boring you with the details of that, I hope it will not come to more extreme measures, I'll be leaving you now to check up on her again. Send positive thoughts her way if you like. Or keep your fingers crossed. Back with more, hopefully good, news soon ;-) Update 14.38 hrs. local time: Naloma seems to be doing fine. You have never seen someone so delighted with seeing a fresh pile of horse droppings. At least her intestines are working. I'll be watching her closely the rest of this day. Will be back... Update 18.03 hrs. local time: Still no sign of colic. We will assume this crisis is over and will resume normal activities.

Horse issues and some owws and ahhs

Naloma and I currently have some issues that need to be resolved. She can be rather explosive, but I've gotten used to that over the years and we had worked out an agreement. She'd see scary things that weren't there, I'd tell her not to worry and to relax and she would believe me. However, now that I haven't been really fit and healthy and the population of ghosts- and bears-behind-trees apparently has increased dramatically, I can no longer convince her that she will not be attacked and eaten by non-existent creatures. So when I'm riding her she turns around and runs away at the most unexpected moments. And she's QUICK!

Now, I'm not the worlds worst rider, and I haven't lost my balance on any of these occasions (yet), but it doesn't do wonders for my confidence and it takes the fun out of riding. Over the last couple of weeks this problem got worse, so I called friend/riding instructor for help. He is the best riding instructor I've ever had. He used to be a really good show jumper, loves horses and understands them. His conclusion was that Naloma has become really disobedient (oops, my mistake, I spoil her rotten). So we are now busy to get her mind back to work and off the spooky things again. He is the one who helped Evie into this world last year while his own mare was on the brink of having her foal too (if you don't know that story, you can read this). He and his wife are priceless friends to us. Their mare does have a beautiful foal this year too (see photo below).

never mind horse whispering, horse kissing is thé thing to do these days

Yesterday we went to see them at the stables where their mare and foal are. "Oh you have to see the Shetlandponies and their foals that are in a field close to the stables", he said. "Bring your camera. They are so cute, I'm sure you'll want to take them home. I've been tempted to kidnap a couple myself. I bet they fit in the boot of my car."

So first we went to the stables to see their mare and foal and some other horses that belong to the owners of the stables. Like this stallion that does this neat pretending-I-have-a-large-steel-pole-going-through-my-head-trick:

One trick pony?

Hubs will now demonstrate some different horse-sizes:

And now, for the piece-the-resistance, prepare to say OWW and AHH, the little shetlandfoals we seriously wanted to take home (but didn't):

No more steroids...

Can you believe how much difference a year and a month can make?

April 10, 2009

In the above picture Evie is two days old.

May 11, 2010.

I promise you these are the same horses. The one in front is Evie. Honest.

We have to stop feeding her steroids.

Just an ordinary day at the Brinkbeest household...

Yesterday a friend was here with his little dog Ruby. Ruby loves chasing a ball and can play that game for hours on end. So friend threw the ball into the paddock where the horses were. Willem and Evie were very interested in the ball too. Willem is sniffing the ball while Ruby is on her way to fetch it... ...oops... ...Willem is not going to give up the ball without a good chase first. Run Ruby! Run! Meanwhile Nufnuf has made a new friend. It's a crow that I've noticed in our garden before. He (or she, but I'm sticking with 'he') is easily recognizable because he has one manky foot and can't walk properly.

Perhaps you can see that his left foot isn't quite as it's supposed to be. He observed Nufnuf attentively...

...while our chickens kept a close eye on Tumtum's behind. Our chickens are very interested in recycling and they know that what goes into a pig at the front... ...comes out at the other end and is a culinary feast for a chicken, not to be missed. But Tumtum's intestines were still busy processing, so they eventually lost interest and gave up the pursuit. Tumtum and Willem had a very intersting conversation about... ...oh I don't know what about. It was a private conversation.