Calvinistic cooking

I made roasted garlic mashed potatoes two days ago and while I was working the whole (dutch) stick of butter, the whole package of cream cheese and a big splash of cream through the mash I was wondering what my grandma would say of the huge amount of fat that was slowly giving the mash its soft and velvety yummyness.

She probably would say something like "ja zo kan ik een drol ook wel lekker maken", which roughly translated into "with THOSE ingredients I can make a turd tast nice". I hated it when she would say that.
There is this big taboo here in the Netherlands when it comes to good food. Especially if it takes a bit of fat to make it good food. And even worse: at the same time they stuff themselves full of stuff that has loads of hidden fat in it.


So please, stop the hypocrisy and cook real food. With real ingredients. And if that means a bit of fat here and then, than by all means have a balance day or two. I bet that throwing away the artificial sweetened, transfat-laden snacks and instantsaucepowder will do more for you than banishing the butter and cheese will!

Now go and make that mash, you know you want to!

Kiind.nl

A new dutch online magazine about parenting is born.

kiind.nl

Doesn't it look lovely? The articles are really nice too, focussing on those aspects of parenting that are never mentioned in the heavenly sponsored paper magazines.

And even better: they are giving away a free meitai.
See their blog for more info about the contest :)

scallopini

Sometimes when children do this:

parents can do this:



(notice the weird way I cut out the photo? that's because there was no way to get our haphazardly served chicken scallopini NOT to look nice like barf on the photo. But it tasted great and it didn't look anything like barf in real life. I swear!)

DO RE MI

How come that stuff like this brings tears to my eyes?

DIBS

Look at what this lovely lady loaned me:
An Ellevill Zara red white! Crappy photo, I know, but such a nice norse design. I'can only say one word:

DIBS!

Facts of the day

Sun

The ducklings, pardon me as I borrow the name OfficeMan gave them, got new necklaces. Amber is supposed to help with the pain of teething but even if that doesn't work (and in the case of the big duckling it is not really an issue anymore), I think they look absolutely stunning on little children.
And on big children, and grownups and old people and dogs and cats and on about everyone.
Amber is just reeaaalllyy pretty. It's distilled sunlight, that's what it is. It makes me feel all warm and happy and seeing my children wear it makes me even warmer and happier.

For those of you who are easily worried (hi Officeman!): the necklaces the ducklings wear are especially made for childrens. They break easily in case of an emergency and all the beads are seperated by individual knots so there will never be more than one stray bead in case the necklace breaks. It is also too tight for them to get their hands caught.

We had a blast just sitting in the first real rays of sunlight of this year, reading a book, making pictures and tickling the little duckling while she tried to nurse, laugh and roll at the same time.