Recent Food Creations

Well, I've been busy at work in the kitchen. Here are some of my works from the last month:

1. Salmon and Steamed Broccoli over Penne Pasta (with tomatoes, spinach, feta, lots of lemon, spices, and splotches of pesto).

 2. We found this fish at Albert Heijn on actie (sale). It was half-off. It wasn't a reclame or going bad type of thing, that was just their special that week. So I made this panguis filet with a lime-cilantro-cream sauce with white rice and peas on the side. Delicious.

 The meal was so good, I made the exact same thing the next day too!

3. This third creation is my specialty that I have developed over the years. It is my garbanzo stew with pieces of bacon, onions, garlic, spinach, red bell peppers, stewed tomatoes, crushed red cayenne pepper, other seasonings and parsley on top.

 We served it over rice this time.

4. Once a month, every 19th of the month, for our "anniversary" we make home-made pizza with whatever we want on it. Typically this involves a whole lot of cheese, as well as artichoke hearts, bell peppers, mushrooms, zucchini (courgette) cooked with lemon, pepper, salt, basil, oregano, and red wine vinegar. Laura also makes her special pizza sauce with lots of garlic and crushed red cayenne pepper.

Preparation:

Fresh, tasty ingredients!

  We had our friends Jessica and Stijn over for our monthly pizza night this time. It was a great time. We were so nervous about what to make after inviting them over, until we realized that it was on the 19th of the month, so we had to just make pizza! Lekker.

All hail shredded cheese!

Unfortunately, we were so hungry and the pizza looked so good, that we didn't take any pictures when it came out of the oven, and just dug in instead. :-) Sorry (eh, not really).

In the end, we each customized our own pizza from the following ingredients: artichoke hearts, bell peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, green olives, chorizo (closest to American pepperoni that one can get here), pineapple, shredded Dutch Gouda cheese, and crumbled d'Ambert cheese (ancient, French, mild bleu cheese).

I made great cocktails as well. I made Wild Night Outs, which have tequila, cranberry juice, and a splash of lime.
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Later, Laura's family (mom Sonja, sister Bonnie, and sister Kristen) came to Utrecht. We drank lots of coffee and ate cookies here at our apartment, and als walked around town. It was a saturday so there were plenty of choices at the flower markets. We bought 40 roses for €5! We shared them between us and her family. Thus, here are our twenty or so roses:

    

5. Oh, and my final meal required some very special preparation tactics. First we had to acquire the meat... 

Just kidding. :-) This is just some of my friends at our nearby zoo / running path.