Mojoblog

It’s not a secret, Mojo is a fan of tanning his belly.



But honestly, have you ever seen a cat as ridiculous as this?



But watch out, he doesn’t like to be made fun of!



And the view from our dining room in near-infrared.

We appreciate when visitors give us a hand with our house!



Ryan’s Mom Ilyse came for a week and painted a lot of walls and windows.

We focused on our new house all winter, and last weekend it was time to take a little break away from home. Off to Piccadilly circus!



We took the train to Brussels and then the Eurostar straight to the center of London.



My friend Richard had crafted a walking itinerary for us, so we could see the obvious sights and interesting neighborhoods.



So it won’t surprise you to find the house of parliament and its famous Big Ben:



Or a red and black guard with a furry hat watching the palace.



We took a nice stroll in Hyde Park, and that was most of the first day.



Despite this photo, we actually didn’t take the metro and walked about 50km over the weekend.



On day 2 we were up and running pretty early, and the streets were completely empty for a while.



Except for drunk people looking for their way home, after a night at the pub:



And of course, tourists as soon as we reached the neighborhood of St Paul’s Cathedral.



There is a very nice footbridge linking the Cathedral and the Tate Modern museum, called the Millenium Bridge. In the latest Harry Potter movie it gets destroyed by Death Eaters, but fortunately that was just special effects.



Along our walk by the river we stumbled on a wonderful little city market with fantastic produce and edible things of all kinds. We bought a bunch of lunch supplies and dried/canned things to bring back home.



Continuing along the river you can see some more famous sights.



Notice the very nice weather that we had at this point in time.



Just past the tower bridge on this side of the river there is a cute street called Shad Thames with funny little bridges between houses across the street.



And the last photo to show you what our cupboards look like, with jars of all kinds of beans, nuts, flours and so on.



We took advantage of being in a big English-speaking city to buy plenty of new cookbooks, and we’ve been making terrific food from them ever since we came back. Too bad that we’re so lazy with blogging about our food, because I’m sure some of you would enjoy our recipes!

Around the end of April the weather was perfect for a few weeks, and on a sunny Sunday we went to the forest with my coworker Kris, is girlfriend Lisa and their dog Scrubby. This forest had an eclectic collection of themes.



We took the path called the “Milky Way”, where there were models of planets along the way. The distance between planets was to scale, and after a few kilometers we reached the sun. In this representation of the sun, Scrubby found it logical to run in a circle around Kris as fast as she could, “her belly to the ground” as we say in French. She’s still young and she has A LOT of energy.



Very amusing. Around the corner from the sun there was this alignment of radio-telescopes listening to the stars.



And a bit further along that array we strolled through a transfer camp where an unbelievable number of Dutch people were deported to concentration camps during the war.

Well, it’s been a while... Everything is going well in Groningen, now that we live in our own little house and it’s all functional. I’ll try to give you some excerpts of the story.

We moved in our house on March 1st, then survived for 3 weeks without a shower while our bathroom was being renovated. Then I got very busy at work and barely had any brain cells left for home. Then the fam came to visit and help build storage. Then some relatives came for a couple days, which brings us to the photos of today, taken in a tiny fortified village called Bourtange right on the border with Germany.



This village is built in the shape of a star with canals all around, which looks awesome from aerial photos but obviously I don’t have any of my own as we stayed on the ground.



Just around Easter the spring poked its nose and all the trees and flowers in town have come back to life, what a pleasure.



Stay tuned for the next photos!

Vous avez de la chance, chers lecteurs, car grâce à notre nouveau projet photo on est forcés de prendre des photos tous les jours et du coup s’il en reste des potables c’est le blog qui en profite. Vendredi il faisait grand froid, et la campagne était toute gelée. Le brouillard était très épais, par moment sur l’autoroute on avait l’impression d’être tous seuls sur la route. La c’était plus clair:



En milieu de journée le brouillard s’est levé en laissant des petits cristaux de glace sur toutes les brindilles qui passaient:



Avec un grand ciel bleu, c’était vraiment magnifique.



Les brindilles avec des piquants avaient encore plus de cristaux, dommage que je n’avais pas d’objectif macro pour m’approcher plus près.

Ce dimanche nous étions invités pour prendre le thé chez ma collègue Vanja à Assen. Une vue très Groningen en se dirigeant vers la gare:



Elle emmène sa petite famille tous les dimanches faire une promenade dans la campagne, et comme la météo était incroyable (grand ciel bleu le lendemain d’une grosse chute de neige), nous avons profité d’une promenade magnifique.



Comme toujours et partout, il y avait des petits rigolos en vélos sur les pistes enneigées.



On est tombés par hasard sur un troupeau de vaches poilues, qu’elles étaient mignonnes!



Enfin ce n’étaient pas que des demoiselles, mais grâce à son anneau doré dans le nez ce taureau était très sage.



Meeeeuuuuuh!



La campagne était vraiment ravissante, on a eu une chance inouïe d’aller se promener le bon jour.



Et dire que les vacances sont finies...



Rien que d’y penser ça fait pleurer.....

Mojoblog ne devient pas (encore) un blog culinaire, mais mes petits biscuits du jour sont tellement bons que je ne peux m’empêcher de vous en dévoiler la recette inspirée de How to Cook Everything Vegetarian par Mark Bittman. J’ai aussi fait la version au chocolat et cannelle aujourd’hui, mais ce sont ceux au citron qui sont mes préférés. Comme d’habitude pas de beurre chez nous, mais une recette à l’huile d’olive. D’autres parfums sont possibles en variant les huiles, les noix et les liquides, par exemple la version cardamome/pistache que j’aime beaucoup aussi.



Pour une trentaine de petits biscuits
Préparation: 40 minutes

- 1 tasse de farine (moi j’utilise de la complète)
- 1/4 de tasse d’amandes concassées
- 1/4 de cuillère à café de levure
- une pincée de sel
- 1/4 de tasse de sucre (j’utilise du sucre brun tout le temps)
- 1/4 de tasse d’huile d’olive
- 1 oeuf
- le zeste et jus d’un gros citron

Si l’on veut faire un glaçage:
- 3 cuillères à soupe de sucre glace

1. Préchauffer le four à 180°C. Mélanger la farine, les amandes, la levure et le sel dans un bol.

2. Fouetter quelques minutes le sucre, l’huile et l’oeuf, jusqu’à ce que ça mousse et s’allège. Ajouter le zeste et jus du citron. Si on veut faire un glaçage, réserver quelques gouttes de jus de citron pour la fin. Mélanger délicatement le mélange de farine aux ingrédients liquides pour juste incorporer sans trop mélanger.

3. Faire de petits tas de pâte sur une feuille de papier cuisson ou une feuille en silicone. Enfourner pour 10 minutes tout rond, ou jusqu’à ce qu’ils commencent à prendre de la couleur sur les bords. Après quelques minutes de refroidissement, transférer sur une assiette pour finir de refroidir.

4. Pendant la cuisson, préparer le glaçage: mélanger le sucre glace et quelques gouttes de jus de citron pour former une crème de la consistance de chocolat fondu. Placer cette crème dans un sac congélation. Quand les biscuits sont un peu refroidis, couper un tout petit coin (environ 1mm) du sac à congélation, et faire de jolis dessins avec le glaçage sur les biscuits.

Mon fond d’écran du jour m’a rappelé de vous informer de notre petit projet photo pour 2010:



Prendre au moins une photo par jour et la poster sur le nouveau photoblog Mojo 365. On se partage la tâche, donc ce sera une photo de l’un ou l’autre, en principe tous les jours.

Et pour ceux qui se demandaient, la photo ci-dessus vient du pied d’un glacier en Islande.

As everything is closed on Ryan’s birthday here, I prepared his birthday dinner at home this year. We’re spending the day in the train tomorrow so I decided to do it last night so we could enjoy the leftovers today, his real birth day. He’s always looking for new photographic opportunities, so he spent a good chunk of the afternoon taking photos while I was spreading flour all over the house. You would never guess how technical food photography is, and he tried a lot of settings to get to these photos.

The main dish: spinach and ricotta ravioli, all from scratch.



All the ingredients and the preparation are pretty classic, but every step takes a certain time, so along with the rest of the meal I spent most of the day in the kitchen (there are worst ways to spend Christmas day though, I would say).



The hardest step was to close the little pockets of filling without leaving air bubbles and avoiding that the little piles conglomerate.



The first try (below) wasn’t very pretty, but I got the hang of it quickly.



Some precision operating the cutting wheel:



And I let the army of little ravioli dry while I was taking care of the other dishes.



For example, to prepare the wild mushrooms before sticking them in the oven with thyme and olive oil as an antipasti.



And was it good? Oh yes! The ravioli, served with a simple tomato sauce, were the best spinach raviolis I had ever had. The foccacia with sun-dried tomatoes was also fabulous. The roasted peppers with basil-flavored oil are always a success. All this was served with an arugula and pine nut salad, and finished with a grapefruit sorbet, not completely sorbeted but very refreshing. Can’t wait until next year for the next birthday dinner!

My desk at work is next to a wall of windows oriented to the south, so I see the sun rise every day until about 10° above the horizon and then go back down. As soon as it pokes through the clouds we often get beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

Yesterday night on the way back from work it started snowing a tiny little bit, and I even fell off my bike on a thin layer of snow on cobblestones. But we’re not in Boston anymore, so I didn’t expect anything very serious with snow in our new country. Imagine my surprise when I opened the curtains this morning...



That’s right, not an optical illusion but actually 10-15cm of snow on the city!



I got ready quicker than usual to walk to the carpooling place and take photos along the way. Looks like the snow plow hasn’t come yet...



A lot of bikes are buried, when they are not in use with not-so-prudent-bicyclists who still try to bike in a loose and not-melted snow...



I walk in front of the hospital, it’s really coming down. Not easy to take photos in a snow fall (not a blizzard though, just a heavy snow fall).



Notice the sunk houseboat on the foreground. Poor thing.



Yes, you read the correct time, it is quarter to eight and it’s still pitch black except for the snow that won’t stop falling.



It seems that everybody thought the same thing when leaving their house this morning: there can’t be that much snow, I should be able to go to work... But there is more snow than one may imagine while looking out the window, and without plows all morning it’s not that easy to get around. Here is the fishmarket without the market:



Almost eight o’clock, I arrive to the meeting point of my carpool as the sky is starting to lighten.



Kris is clearing his car. He promises to pick up a colleague about 2km away from his house, then to drop me off at home with the car. After a half-hour spent driving for about 1km towards the pick-up place, we turn around and he goes back to his place, on the other side of the city from our house. I walk home, after 2.5 hours to cover just a few kilometers slower that I could have walked. Sweet, my first snow day!

Beautiful weather on Sunday when we woke up, but we weren’t brave enough to catch the morning light so we went out around 3PM to catch the decreasing light instead.



All the other photographers in the city were also out.



Our future house just above the parking sign:



The Saint Joseph church (we call it San Jose of course):



An interesting reflection spotted by Ryan but also possible as a self-portrait:



Our street is decorated with statues at each intersection, which is a lot of statues:



This shows that we still get some sun sometimes:



You need to catch it before is disappears though.



A cute little store that I had never noticed before:



The sun is set, bars wake up.



We enjoy for a few short moments the sky still blue in the beginning of the night.



The university:



The official city hall for weddings and other events where photos are taken (the city hall where we go for administrative purposes is all concrete and shapeless):



And finally a classic Dutch view, a vending machine of hot burgers and croquettes at any time.

It had been too long since the last time we took photos, it was time for an excursion. Today we went to Bremen in Germany for the Christmas Market that just started. Actually quite a good reason to be excited about the upcoming holiday season!



While we were enjoying some tasty hot wine, a witch convention was singing Christmas carols, perfectly in tune.



The fun team, Jelle and Kris, driver and car owner.



All these cabins were selling very intriguing things, such as these decorated gingerbread hearts and other candy.



The symbolic statue of Bremen:



Still in the candy aisle:



But there are also puppets:



Bird houses:



And guess who we ran into... The red and white chubby-cheeked old man himself, together with Miss Freimarkt 2009 who was making little kids sing.



Then we went in the ferris wheel of the main plazza, to enjoy the view.



Along with a pretzel, fried cheese and mushrooms and hot chocolate tasting, it was a wonderful day!