Food , Love , Fozzy Bear (??) and Pinning Madness

So many adventures, and I am so excited to tell you about them.
I had a great week with my man.

It all started with melting of the rest of the snow, a great sunset and purple sky to die for, I even managed to make a photo of it from my house

In the morning of Valentine's day , my man gave me a beautiful card, as I said in my previous post.

"Being Married to you is like sharing every day with my best friend"

... so true friend, I feel so too :) 

So, I told you guys I am taking my man for Sushi, and so was it. We went to a really great all you can eat Sushi Restaurant called SUMO in Rotterdam.
Boy was that good... I took some pictures for you guys to see

It works like this, there are 6 rounds, in every round you are allowed to have up to 10 dishes. The dishes are everything from Sushi till Udon thick noodles and Soups. They are relitavely small portions, but just enough to enjoy the oriental versatile tastes.

So we started with a list, and marked 10 dishes.
We started with Tamago and I ordered California Roll, and tried some mini egg-rolls

The Sushi was really good

My man was so happy, he loved his valentine's gift

We took some very blurry pictures together :) 

Did I mention my handsome husband was so happy?

Yeah, and so was yours truly

Then came some Teriyaki beef, with sweet potatoe fries, so nice :)

Then we were quite full, but there goes round 2 :

How about some Asparagus filled Beef, accompanied with some Japanese dumplings?

And we tried 2 soups: Beef soup and Chicken Soup, and  with that came a really tasty Udon (thick) Noodle stir-fry, which was delicious

 Then there was also some fried Calamari with Lemon Mayonnaise, and some curry triangles with hot chilli sauce... we were starting to get really full

And we were just in Round 2, so after we ordered some regular Maki Salmon on round 3, we understood that it's best to just stop now before it gets too heavy, so we stepped out, and here is how we looked after we left the restaurant :

Happy and extremely full. We are defiantly going to come back here

Ok. You are probably asking what is that nice scarf? well, I got that from my grandfather, as a winter gift, and I love it. Here is me wearing it after I got it

And a different angel. I love this scarf so much

So, going back to our valentine's day experience , since we were already in the city, we decided to check out some stores and enjoy what Rotterdam has to offer

Then I stepped in to craft Heaven

And we even saw the coolest hip hop chicken out there.... west side...

Then we checked out some cool lifestyle shops, and I entered baking heaven... so much inspiration

It was such a nice day.

In the evening I went to my weekly class by my friend Lisa. I forgot to tell you , but she is so nice that she saw me really enthusiastic over her doodle calender, that she got me one. How nice is that?

A doodle your day calender is a creative calender where you can doodle the rest of a picture, and there are nice questions attached, here is an example:

A naive question like , what do you want the robot to do?

Of course a cookie monster like me can only think of one thing

I love that calender, thanks Lisa :)

I am taking you a few days back to the time where I had to go to the Hague , or Den Haag in Dutch. it was still freezing and snowing , and so I took a lot of beautiful pictures from the road and the marvelous city which I can't wait to share


I met some Sesame street Cupcakes  

 And here are the beautiful pictures of the park in the center of Den Haag

Oh, there's us

There's us again, and I was so blinded by the sun :)

Two days before that, where I lost my briefcase :( , I as on my way to Sciphol ,and so such nice sites I had to take pictures

Holland is so beautiful I love this windmill

Back to a couple of days ago. I know that the timeline is messy, but that's how I am :)

The muppets sale in the supermarket is still ongoing, and I really wanted Fozzy bear, which I adore, since he reminds me of myself a bit.
The thing is I didn't have enough muppet points. I only had 2, and I needed 6.
As in a wonder, I saw a ribbon with 4 muppet points on the floor. I guess someone lost it, but no one claimed it, and so I was sooo happy to go to the cashier and ask for Fozzy. They didn't have him anymore :(

But, they had the display muppet , which was a bit dirty , but still fozzy, and so I got him, yay!

He was happy too as you can see in the picture. He already was telling the joke about the chicken who crossed the road :

And he has a bow tie. so cute , and a hat. just perfect.

Than he started modeling with us:

He was so happy that now he can join Kermit and Miss piggy. They were not.

Later that night I made nice dinner for my man: beefstakes with my israeli salad and smashed potatoes:

It's really easy:

Smashed Potatoes
3 potatoes with peal
1 onion
6 garlic cloves (in peal)
and some bacon


Preparation
1) Cut the potatoes into squares, put every thing in one tray.
2) Drizzle a little bit of olive oil, some sea salt and some pepper.
3) Pop in the oven for 40 minutes in 200 degrees Celsius.

Yum, and he loved it.

I collected some of the dishes I made for my man lately and I wanted to share with you

* Grilled Salmon with Green Beans and Majadra (Arabic rice with lentils)

* My Own version of Sweet potato quiche

My man made the most amazing Goulash with white rice, I have to get his recipe :)

And today in the afternoon we made some amazing (Fake) Calzone

It's so easy:

Mad Scientist's Fake Calzone


Ingredients
2 Dough Leafs (The frozen ones will also do it)
Bacon
Tomato Puree
Graded Ceese
Thyme and Provance Seasoning 

Preparation
1) Stick 2 leafs of Dough together , to create one long dough leaf.
2) Smeer it with tomato puree, using a spoon.
3) Add some graded cheese, and season with the herbs, salt and pepper.
4) roll the Calzone to close the ends. ( if you want you can roll it, and than slice the roll to create mini calzone rolls)
5) Pop in the oven for 20 minutes 175 degrees Celsius.

Btw, I am addicted, to Pinterest, It's an amazing website with lots of ideas.
What is it? Pinterest is a virtual Pin board. It lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.

You should check it out, I get a lot of inspiration of it.
Have a good weekend with lot of food and inspiration.
Yours Truly, the mad scientist

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 :)