more time

i ve been busy the past few days. busy meaning, besides my day job as a receptionist, i ve finally been able to catch up a little on all my housework since my jewelry course ended two weeks ago.

this also means that i ve had quite a lot more time to concentrate on cooking and trying out new recipes. although, what i often do forget is to take photos of what i make. i notice a lot of foodie blogs contain incredibly beautiful pics... well, i always intend to take some, but before i know it, the food is placed on the table and eaten, no time to whip out the camera...

oh well, i hope this doesn t matter too much, as long as i get some recipes posted?

usually i only need to cook dinner... in our house, i m up first and leave between 7.30 and 8 am to go to work, Sam wakes about an hour later and is off to his atelier, and Ken, when he s with us every other week, keeps his own schedule with school and free time. this means that we only share breakfast together in the weekends (is this the case with others too i wonder).

anyway, that s how it is, and now that i do have some more time in the evenings, i try to make something special every day. Ken once told me that he d like something more traditional once in a while (meaning Belgian: meat and potatoes and some veg), because i always tend to veer towards Italian, French, Spanish, Thai, Chinese and Japanese... which doesn t mean i don t like traditional Belgian food... i just like to experiment, and i love trying out new things.

so, at the beginning of the week we went Moroccan: a merquez tagine with couscous, on tuesday we had Italian: spaghetti carbonara with a twist (i added some tiny meatballs), and yesterday we had a French-style puy lentil salad with smoked mackerel and pickled red onions (onion recipe was posted by my friend Yanghwa on her blog: GOT SOME VEG?)... i m still thinking about what i could make this evening... since we re having some real good weather here these days, i think it ll be aspargus a la flamande (that s white asparagus with a butter sauce and egg-mimosa) and some salad from the garden (since the asparagus season is almost at its end and the salad leaves have to be picked now before they go over)

tomorrow i ll be joining 3 other moms i know since our kids were together in kindergarten, to go out and have dinner together at Zaowang (a fusion Japanese-Thai-Chinese restaurant) in the old part of Antwerp...

must remember to take my camera along... for taking pictures of the food ofcourse ;-)

oh, and i will try to really get my act together and post more recipes (tagine, spaghetti and lentil salad ones coming up soon!)

ps. YangHwa, if you re reading this... the pickled red onions were amazingly moreish!