Fish & Potato Salad

I found this recipe on the internet. Apparently they eat their fish like it that in the City of Hamburg.

(for four)

You need:

enough fish filet for four
3 eggs
150 ml beer
some flour
2 teaspoons mustard
some oil
3 tablespoons olive oil
potatoes for four
150 ml vegetable broth
2 tablespoons white vinegar
some parsley
some lemon juice

Here's how it's done:

Roll the fish in flour. Mix the eggs with the beer, then add flour until the mixture is nice and thick but still liquid. Heat oil in a skillet, dunk fish into the egg-beer-mixture and fry until it's nice golden-brown. Sprinkle with lemon juice before eating.
Boil potatoes, peel them, cut in slices. Mix hot broth, vinegar and mustard and let the potatoes sit in that for 10 minutes. (If you end up with too much dressing in the salad, just pour it out.) Then add olive oil. Decorate with parsley.

That's it.

I cooked this today and it tasted awesome. I was wondering why there's no salt or pepper mentioned, but we've found it's not necessary. The meal is super delicious just like that. We had some cauliflower and carrots on the side. No picture, though. We had eaten half of it already before I remembered that a photo might be nice.

Cinnamon Rolls

I made cinnamon rolls today.

I also got word from the computer people. They say next week or shortly after. How disappointing.

3 Weeks

Today it's been three weeks since I've ordered the laptop. Apparently they are assembling it right now (I hope), but there's a chance they're still waiting on some exotic parts (me and my extra-sausages). Well, well. But I got a 22 buck refund (7 is cheaper than Vista). I'll wait some more.

By the way, my chess playing hasn't much improved since yesterday. It's like: Mh... won't go here, shouldn't go there, could do this, definetely won't do that, but this looks good... - CLICK - or does it? Argh, shit! Fuck! Shit!

Pawn to H1N1

Alright. I am now officially H1N1 vaccinized. The epidemic can come.

But: I've lost another chess game to a certain friend. It's the 3rd one already (and one draw), and that is quite unacceptable. I remember the times when we played over beer in scarcely lit bars. It was quite balanced. He won, I won, I won, he won. But now? Either my brain's degrading, or I just happen to play better over beer in scarcely lit bars.
So I must take refuge to a The Byrds quotation: To everything, there is a season. Turn, turn, turn.
*sigh*

Another Day, Another Cake

We ate the last piece of pound cake today, so it was time for a new cake. This time with cherries on top. It'd be better with fresh recently-picked-from-the-tree-sour-cherries, but the ones out of a jar are okay (well, they're the only ones I could find, so they kind of have to be okay). Rating: Mhhh, good cake, honey.

Simulated Bacon Books

Simulated bacon bits have a tendency to loose their color, and if you put them in a meal, they will also gradually lose their flavour (unlike real bacon, which gives its flavor to the meal). Related to that: I made green bean soup yesterday for today (no cooking today because of switched off water). And can you believe it, for some reason I forgot to add broth. And there I sit wondering why the soup has such a plain and sober taste... unbelievable. Forgetting the broth. I've added it now, but I'm afraid now it's too much.
I've read some books in the last few weeks. First I read through the whole Harry Potter series once again. That's always fun. Then the latest Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol. Well, what can I say, it's like The Da Vinci Code all over again, only in Washington, quite unsurprising, yet entertaining. At one point I was really impressed with the author, thinking that he has brought up the courage to SLIGHT SPOILER AHEAD kill off a very important person, only to discover that he hasn't. Quite disappointing that, just like the revealment in the end of what the Lost Symbol really is. Apart from that it's a nice book for some light reading.
After that I read a way better book: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson. Swedish guy with a talent to create interesting and believable characters. The book is basically a mystery, set in Sweden, and the plot not in the least feels as constructed as many others. While you keep reading a Dan Brown to prove that you anticipated correctly, you keep reading Larsson to see where he's gonna take you next, and because you have to know what will happen to the characters and how they'll react.
I really like reading a Swedish author again, all the Gatans and Kronors remind me of reading the Wallander series, which I very much enjoyed.
Right now I'm reading the second part, The Girl Who Played With Fire. It picks up about a year after the happenings in part one and as of right now (I'm 60 pages in) is just as good as its predecessor.
My mother has also send me a book in my native language, but I'm gonna save that one for Christmas and read it under the Christmas tree. (I wonder if they do Christmas trees here in Bumfuck. I sincerely hope I won't have to go into the woods and cut one down myself.)

Waiting

Today it's been two weeks since the order for the new laptop went out. They won't ship it before thursday, that much is certain, and I've upgraded from Vista to Windows 7, so no later updating fuzz for me.
*more waiting*

Also I got a call today from my good old buddy Your Captain Speaking. It went like this:

Phone: *ring ring, ring-a-ring ring* (the 'a' is a little hiccup which only occurs with long-distance-calls)
Me: Hello? Hello?
Phone: *silent*
Me: Hello? *looking at phone* HELLO?
Phone: *silent*
Me: Hell--
Phone: WWRHHOOOOOHHHHHHMMMMM!!!
Me: WTF? How did you fuckers get my number?
Phone: Hello, this is Your Captain Speaking, you just won tickets for a cruise!
Me: Fuck off. *slam phone down*

I have a steak marinading in the fridge.

Pound Cake

So we had garbanzo-bean-burgers for supper, with salad and potatoes and tzatziki. And since that is not exactly my favourite meal, I felt a little... unsatisfied afterwards, and I thought: What about a nice dessert? And I remembered talking cake recipes with a friend of mine on skype in the afternoon, and suddenly I was completely captured by an infinitive urge to make a pound cake.
So I made a pound cake, and I followed my mother's recipe closely, I even scraped off the peel of one lemon and added that to mixture.
Unfortunately the white powder in an unmarked bag among my baking supplies I thought was icing sugar turned out to be baking soda - good thing I checked first! So I just sprinkled a bit of vanilla sugar on top of my cake instead, which worked out okay. (I don't have a special pound cake pan, neither the rectangular nor the round holey kind, that's why the rather odd shape.)
And I'm just having a piece right now. And it tastes awesome. It always amazes me again and again, that I myself can make all kinds of awesome meals and cakes and stuff without having any additional education or special (grand)motherish gene modification done. Isn't that something? Yes, it is. Almost like magic.

Behind Bars

The winter is coming. The days get shorter. Temperatures go lower. Darkness comes earlier and goes later. The Air Conditioner Unit got taken out. The windows get bars.
Yes, the windows get bars. If that is an annual winter precaution or something completely new this year I don't know. The bars are not supposed to keep us inside, of course they are supposed to keep burglars and murderers and other criminals and their friends and their friend's friends outside. The bars are here to lower the danger, to lower the risk of being robbed by fellow members of this community. To keep us and our possessions safe. I feel so much safer now.
Welcome, new bars! Let us be friends.

Plumcake Again

For some reason they had blue plums (black plums, according to my receipt) at the store, so I bought them to make plumcake. I kind of improvised my last plumcake, but this time I followed the recipe a little more. Here's a (little over-yellowish) picture. I have a good feeling about this cake. It's gonna be awesome. (I ran out of plums, so that part became sugar-cake. Even better. Two cakes in one. Whee, I can't wait to eat some.)

Will Soon The Eggs Take Over?

Today at breakfast it hit me: What if eggs tried to take over the world? Isn't that a terrible danger? Aren't we all in mortal peril?
But then I thought about it, and now I'm not so sure if the eggs will ever even succeed in an attempt to dominate the world. Here's why:
As soon as the eggs gain power, they will first of all want to enslave the chickens, to make new eggs and offspring. The chickens won't care, they're enslaved already by humans, and if you're a slave, it doesn't really matter who your master is, they might even be better off, because eggs won't eat chickens.
But then, and that's the problem, sooner or later all the eggs will evolve into chickens. Then the masters become the slaves, who will create more masters - it'll either be a terrible paradoxon, the kind that fucks up the space-time-continuum, or a giant circle, that will work. But I think it won't work, because the offspring of slaves will usually not be emotionally fit to become cruel masters, knowing slavery and all. So after a while there will be masters, who don't really want to be masters and instead go for democracy or something, and then the whole world domination thing will be over with.
You might say, what if the eggs just make sure they won't evolve into chickens, just by keeping male and female chickens seperated. Yes, that will interrupt the reproduction, but also the chickens will get old and the eggs will go foul. Old chicken = less eggs, foul eggs can't rule, ergo no world domination.
Then you might add, what if there's just a small amount off chickens allowed to produce eggs, and those eggs will immediatly be educated to rule by a small group of eggs, an egg-elite of masters? That won't work either, because sooner or later all the other chickens and eggs will die of old age or decay, and then the dictators will have no people to rule, and, more importantly, no army to use against all the other lifeforms, thus, no world domination.
I must therefore conclude, that the danger of eggs taking over the world is pretty small at the moment, we can sleep in peace at night, we can keep eating eggs and chickens for now, all is well.