This Blog has moved!
Hey all! It’s been a great adventure BelleCatastrophe. But recently I’ve felt a little out of sorts with wordpress. Also I got a free TypePad account :)
From now on I will be blogging from www.mahface.com.
I’m really excited about this new blogging adventure as it is a joint project between my youngest sister, Chelsey and I.
So happy reading and see you over at MahFace :)
Hello, I'm me., Franglais, the skinny, adventures, Places, foodie diaries, books that I love | Comment (0)A way to spend a glamorous saturday night in Paris
CChip Zuc Bread:
Makes 2 loaves
You’ll need:
- 3 cups flour
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups grated zucchini
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- a treat wouldn’t be a treat without chocolat
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, shift flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder, salt and sugar together.
In a separate bowl whip eggs until foamy, add in oil and follow with zucchini and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into dry until well combined. Fold in cchips.
Divide batter equally in 2 standard greased loaf pans. Bake for 45 min - 1 hour or until a tester comes out clean. Alternatively, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes or 24 muffin tins for 20-25 minutes.
http://hookedinamsterdam.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/great-aunt-fridas-zucchini-bread/
Franglais, foodie diaries | Comment (0)Fresh Market Fun: gratin de courge
On Saturday morning we went to the market. We had great plans to buy some pumpkins and convince our German friends to make Jack-o-lanterns with us. But to our dismay, when we got to the market there wasn’t a decent carving pumpkin to be seen. They were all lopsided or two small or cut up into slices! So we decided to buy one anyways (we had our hearts set on it) and make our own gratin de courge!
I love gratin de courge. The mix of salty and sweet, the hint of nutmeg, the ooey-gooey gruyere, pretty much makes this a delicious dish a yummo. We grabbed some salad (dirt and sometimes bugs included), onions, brussel sprouts, and bread!
We put a salad (onions, carrots, cherry tomatoes) with our gratin to kind of limit the insane amount of dairy consumed and our friends brought over some garlicy green beans. Also we had some wonderful hard brown bread that we had bought at the market (the Germans were excited to get some proper brown bread). The Germans brought over some peculiar wine, a fizzy white one from Portugal and a red from Germany.
Roughly translated it goes like this:
Pumpkin au Gratin
800g (1.7lbs) of pumpkin
2 cups of milk
2 cups of Creme fleurette (whipping cream/heavy cream?)
80g (2.7 oz) butter
200g (7 oz) shredded gruyere
2 egg yolks
2-3 cloves garlic
salt, pepper, nutmeg
cinnamon (just a pinch :)
- Preheat the oven to 400F (200C)
- Step 1:Cut the pumpkin into pieces (much like you would potatoes ready for boiling for mashed potatoes) then put the pumpking pieces into water and bring to a boil. Once the pumpkin is soft enough for you to put a fork through. . . but not so soft that it breaks, you can drain the pumpkin in a colander. Set aside.
- Step 2: In a greased casserole dish, spread out your smashed garlic and then cover it with some of your pumpkin. After that put a layer of gruyere (use about 2/3 on this step) on top. Sprinkle on some salt and pepper. (Repeat 2-3 times)
- Step 3: Mix up the milk, cream, egg yolks, butter, nutmeg and about 1/3 of the gruyere
- Step 4: Pour this mixture over your layers of pumpkin and cheese.
- Step 5: Place in the oven for 20 minutes on the 2nd rack
- Step 6: Move the dish to a higher rack for the last 10 minutes (to brown the cheese!)
- Step 7: Enjoy!
Leaving the Bean and Embracing the South
I left Boston over a week ago and have been passing my time in Texas, specifically in Austin and San Antonio/Pleasanton. I arrived at the Austin airport around 3pm . . . the morning had been a bit hilarious because of the combination of too many bags and too many people at Logan’s terminal B. They called my name on the loudspeaker! That was pretty glorious. I make it my business to always arrive late to the airport because I hate sitting and waiting for things to get going. But this time I literally went through security and had to run to my gate. It was glorious. I slept most of the flights, I have to use most because my father booked me aisle seats based on his own preference and so I had to get up an average of 3 times per flight for the old biddies sitting next to me. I prefer a window seat. I hate getting up on planes. Typically because I’ve over packed and and am squished between my oversized carry-on and laptop.
It wasn’t too bad.
Austin was wonderful as always. I spent most of it riding on Segways and zooming around the 6th street area on my little self-balancing machine. Well it isn’t mine, but my sister is the managing partner of SegCity, a pretty bombass tour company. I mean you get to ride around Austin on Segways. . . it’s hilarious. We went and watched Flutag one night and rode out to Towne Lake on Segways. It was a good thing we did. There were so many people there that it was great to be on a machine that elevated us 6 inches off the ground. Badass.
One great restaurant we went to was Casa Del Luz, a vegan and macrobiotic restaurant that has a delicious lunch. We were there on enchilada day and everything was tasty. Except the beets. . . I hate beets*. Other great places we ate. . .East Side Cafe, a wicked yuppie place that has amazing cheese grits and great migas for breakfast. The food is amazingly fresh and they even gave us some jalapeño/cheese biscuit things that were primo. We also went to Vespaios one of the top three restaurants in Austin if I’m not mistaken. It was Italian and delicious. Though the wait was bad on a Monday. Ridiculous. I had an eggplant thing. Oh Chelsey and I made a sickeningly fantastic daily stop at Quacks, a great bakery - an AMAZING bakery- in the swanky Hyde Park area. We ate so many delicious sweets there and they have a great ice coffee.
I went to the Alamo Drafthouse twice and it was amazing. Both times I got their veggie burger both times it was great. We saw The Ten and also Ten Mph a movie about Segways that we went to as a promotion thing for SegCity. The Drafthouse is great and my favorite part are the “Be Quiet or We’ll Tear Your Leg Off” clips. It was amazing, a great change from the eagle or the skier thing that some other theaters do.
I spent a wonderful week in Austin where I managed to get lost running around Towne Lake, helped Chelsey decorate her room, and had a photo shoot with a monkey.
I’m now in San Antonio and Pleasanton. . . more on that later.
Oh and less than a week till France :)
*note: everyone else said the beets were delicious
Hello, I'm me., foodie diaries | Comment (1)Addis Red Sea
Monday night, I went to one of my favorite restaurants in Boston, Addis Red Sea. ARS is an Ethiopian restaurant located in the South End. I love the South End. But what I love more is eating with my hands and laughing with my friends. From the moment you walk down those steps underneath the glow of red, green, and yellow, you are transported into a totally different world in the midst of Boston. Ethiopian food is utterly delicious. I got my favorite item on the menu, Yemeser Wot (a lentil dish cooked in a spicy berbere sauce). When I first started going to ARS, I would order their vegetarian platter which lets you taste four of their veggie dishes for about 15 dollars. After getting that a couple of times (and realizing that it is kind of too much for one person) I started just ordering my favorite of the 4. Though if you are new to Ethiopian food, I would totally recommend getting one of the combination plates.
Also, if you are going to Addis Red Sea beg them for their baklava. It is absolutely divine. Like nothing I’ve ever tasted. The way the honey glaze mingles with the filo dough. . . Mmmm. So good.
I think one of my favorite parts of taking new people to ARS is having them enjoy the ambiance. You get to eat at a low sitting Mesob (handwoven table), your food is brought out on a platter, and you eat with your hands. Ethiopian bread is also a huge focus of the meal. It’s called injera and it is part bread, part utensil. You use the injera to pick up your food (most of the food is heavily sauced and so you need to scoop it up) and soap it up. The injera is a spongy flatbread that your food is dumped on. Each dish is brought out in a tiny bowl and then turned upside down on the bread/plate. This makes sharing hilarious and fun. It also makes being the only vegetarian very interesting, but no worries the sauces are typically thick enough to not run around and the bread keeps it in place.
The wine at ARS is also pretty good and they serve a honey wine that is somewhat interesting. I’ve also been told that their beer selection isn’t too shabby, but haven’t really tried any.
foodie diaries | Comment (0)The foodie diaries: Brittany’s Unofficial Guide to Restaurants in the Boston Area
We are going to Magnolia on Tuesday. This makes me happy and has also prompted me to add a new category to this blog. I have a ridiculous obsession with food in Boston. . . well umm. . . pretty much food anywhere. I will start to document the places I go and my take on what is good and where I want to go in the future. Be warned I’m a vegetarian and so most things will involve meat-less entrees.
foodie diaries | Comment (0)