ABC Wednesday, K is for Keep off the grass

ABC Wednesday is hosted by the lovely Mrs. Nesbitt.

Monochrome Monday, New College Oxford

While literally running through Oxford, from one college to the other, I just had to take photos, such a beautiful place, but I had to take them very quickly. No time to stop and ponder over nice framing etc. or I would have lost my fellow 'students' who were all running in front of me, following our lecturers to where ever we were going. I really had to take snapshots. And actually I'm reasonably happy with the outcome. Perhaps it would have been even nicer if the top of the windowframe had been in the picture, but now I'm nitpicking.

Monochrome Monday is hosted by Monochrome Maniac, Aileni.

Dutch food

A couple of you lovely fellow bloggers asked if I could provide them with some recipes for Dutch food. If I'm honest, I don't really like it myself. Well, I do like some Dutch food (like stamppot boerenkool, rode kool and stoofpeertjes), but I am a vegetarian, so delicious bacon, saucages, meatballs and stewed meat are not on my menu (although I like it, my conscience doesn't) but they feature a lot in real Dutch food.

Another problem is that we use grammes and kilos and a lot of you use cups or pounds. The mere thought of having to convert the measurements gave me a headache, so....... Internet to the rescue:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Dutch-Stpot-With-Rookworst-124192 for a stamppot recipe with root vegetables (according to the comments on the site it tastes delicious)

http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=202341 a recipe for stamppot boerenkool the way my mother cooks it

http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/verona/190/eten.htm is a site with a lot of recipes for Dutch food (the Indonesian kitchen has had a big influence on the Dutch kitchen so you'll find peanutsauce, nasi and sateh recipes here too). And even I like Stoofpeertjes. We use Gieser Wildeman pears for this recipe, which are small pears and you really can't eat them without cooking them first. I don't know if they are available in other countries. But you could use other cooking pears that are probably larger, so you could cut them into big chunky pieces. It's yummy. I love to eat them while they are still a little bit warm. Great with hangop (line a colander/strainer with a clean tea towel, put one liter full fat yoghurt in it and let it drain (over a bowl or the sink) for about 2-3 hours. The thick yoghurt that is left in the tea towel is called 'hangop' and tastes really good). http://www.recipezaar.com/Dutch-Stewed-Cinnamon-Pears-Stoofpeertjes-18474 If you try one or even more of these recipes, please let me know what you thought of it. And as we say in the Netherlands: smakelijk eten!