Market Loot , Gourmet Witloof Success, Fresh lemon mint juice and lots of fun

I had a splendid and wonderful day with my man. We wanted to go to do some market shopping.  We started the day at walking to the tram and this sweet wet rainy view appeared in front of our eyes:

As gray as it may seem to be, we had a very colorful morning.
Although it is end of January, here in Holland you can already see the valentines day themes, and surprisingly enough, also the Easter ones, this is why I met some chickens in the stores. I love how colorful it always is...

Me and my man have our own special chicken. This chicken has seen almost everything. It's a world travelling chicken. It saw so many places: Kfar Saba and Rishon Le Zion in Israel, It saw Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerpen and Turnhout in Belgium. It moved with us everywhere in about 7 houses, and now, it finally found it's home. Now it can rest.

Chicken is very special to me and my man, it symbolizes us, moving, surviving and fighting for our home. These days our chicken has a few scratches and cracks, but it's still standing, proud in our kitchen.
Oh, well, this is probably the time to show you how we make a very good impression of our chicken:

Since it was all alone, I decided to give my chicken a friend, actually a very nice one.

It's also a chicken, but of course, as a dutch chicken it is blonde. On top it is a chic chicken and it has a bag, a stupid hat and of course , a flower in it's hand... seems like it fits perfectly in our housy (everything silly is always welcome)

With one chicken in our winkelwagen (shopping wagon), and lots of expectations, we hit the market of Rotterdam.

Well, actually we were a bit late, since we stopped with the metro in the city and visited some wonderful 1 Euros shops...  it was great, since it always reminds me of a bargain hunt. Now, what did we find?

* 2 shirts for my man, in less than 3 Euros each.
* A Sweet turquoise Mixing bowl, for my ultimate love of pie making.
* A beautiful white straw heart, which we will hand on our bedroom window
* Wonderful fruity chocolate for 50 cents (and it is really good)
* 2 new tea flavors for our tea box (green tea and rooibos cinnamon, which is typical
  dutch tea) which were 50 cents a piece.
* 1 package of dark roasted Coffee pads (Since my man is dutch indeed), which was
   only 1 euro.
* Some memo's in a shape of a cool dog , also 50 cents.
* A new notebook for me, since I am studying for my clinical research training
   diploma now... ( I will tell you about it in my next blogs) which was 50 cents
* I found a magnificent hobby magazine in the Euro shop for 1 euro. I was so happy
   with this one... I love crafting and hobby magazines. If you ever wish to send me
   one, please do, it will make me the happiest in the world , especially if it's in
   English, which is kinda hard to get here in Holland.

All together , under 10 euros.

Than with our shopping loot we really did go to the Rotterdam Market. It was great, since we were fashionably late, we arrived there when the fruit and vegetables stalls were just closing, so guess what... they were extremely cheap) and so we ended up with this for just 10 Euros:

Well isn't this a lot ?
What we got for our money:
* 3 Packets of mushroom
* 1 kilo of red grapes
* 4 Raisin buns
* 3 avocados
* 500 grams sweet orange peppers.
* a huge amount of parsley
* 3 whole celery
* 7 lemons
* 1 kilo of mandarins
* 2 Zukinies
* 1 green pepper
* A lot of mint
* 1.5 kilo bananas

I think we just hit a great bargain, don't you?

No wonder we were so happy on the way back. I actually thought that our "forest looking" metro was beautiful, and so was my man, so I took some pictures:

Sometimes I am just overwhelmed of how beautiful Holland is, it's just breathtaking sometimes. Here is how our neighborhood looked when we got back from the market.

Isn't that just lovely how a naked tree is just overwhelming?

With all this amazing ingredients, a lot of inspiration for watching the cooking channel for the last couple of days. We started to cook.

We decided we are going to make Witloof (Chicory, or Belgian Endive) with grind meat parsley kebabs wrapped with bacon.
How is that for Market Gourmet?

I was quite curious about Witloof , since it is very common here in Holland. Well, it is indeed a very interesting vegetables. It is grown completely underground or indoors in the absence of sunlight in order to prevent the leaves from turning green and opening up.

It has quite a bitter heart, but can be very interesting if you take that out , and so we did:


And here it is, the recipe for delicious self made Kebab Witloof Surprise

Kebab Witloof Surprise A la Mad Scientist
Ingredients
* 1 chopped onion
* Olive Oil
* 500 grams Witloof
* Half a cup chopped Parsley.
* 1 Large Egg.
* 100 gram bacon
* 500 grams beef minced meat.


Preparation
1. Cut the Witloof in halves and take out the bitter heart of the vegetable with a knife, so you form a sort of a cup for the minced meat.

2. In a big bowl , mix together: the minced meat, the egg, the chopped parsley and the chopped onion. add salt and pepper.

3. Form Small Kebabs in an elongated shape to fir your witloof Cup.

4. Heat some olive oil in a pan, then fry the Kebabs until they are golden brown on the outside.

5. Pre heat your oven to 200 Degrees Celsius.

6. Put the kebabs in their cup beds you made in the witloof, and to tuck them in to sleep, use the bacon to wrap the witloof completely. That way those witloof's wouldn't open while in the oven.

7. Put the wrapped witloofs in the oven, in 220 Degrees Celsius for 20 minutes.

8. Prepare for heaven. Serve Warm .

Now just Enjoy... Eet Smaakelijk :)

How can we have such a lovely meal with no drinks?
We have bought some lemons and mint in the market, so we decided to make some fresh Lemon - Mint Juice.
This is a very typical Israeli drink that I brought with me from my homeland. And we just love it.  Here is the recipe for this heavenly drink:



Lemon Minty Drink (Limonana)
Ingredients
* 4 stalks of fresh Mint (Nana)
* 5 Lemons
* 1 Litter of warm water.
* 10 Sugar cubes.
* Empty 1 litter bottle.

Preparation
1) Squeeze the juice of 5 lemons and put that in a bowl, save 2 lemon slices for later
2) Add the zest of 1 lemon (only the yellow part, not the bitter white part) to the bowl.
3) Put the whole Stalks (Leaves, Stems and everything) in the empty bottle.
4) Add the sugar cubes to the bottle.
5) Add the lemon juice, lemon zest and 2 slices to the bottle.
6) Feel the bottle with warm water (not boiling)
7) Cool the drink for 3 hours in the fridge before drinking (we couldn't wait...)

This is a very refreshing, lemony, helathy drink, which you'll want to drink more and more so...Drink away , signing off , after a very long hectic day, the mad scientist :)