Mom-alone-at-home-food

Today is Mom-alone-at-home-day. I didn't want to cook, but I was hungry, so I boiled some pasta, threw wild rocket, spring onions, a teaspoon full of cashew butter and two teaspoons full of chili paste together. Turned out a bit hot, but for a 10-min-meal you can't complain.

Speyer and the Vikings - again

I decided to go and see the Viking exhibition in Speyer one last time. Since you can't take any photos I wanted to burn an image of the most beautiful pieces into my mind. So we arrived at a cloudy day. Here is a glimspe of the cathedral's towers through the trees.



Just across the cathedral's square is the Historical Museum of Speyer.

Well, I can't show you Viking age artefacts, but we also went into the general exhibiton and here I finally could bring my camera to good use.

Here is a nice piece of a pot from the La Hoguette group. This group is interesting because it too used pointed-based vessels so uncommon for the Linear Band Keramik (LBK) culture and they formed the Western frontier to the incoming LBK. It was under a megalithic grave that they found this type of pottery for the first time. It also has very early dates (at least as old as LBK or older) and a lithic tradition that is clearly local and mesolithic. That's why I love this culture group. They used crushed bones as temper for their pottery and that's why I don't love 'em too much. Interestingly there was pottery from a megalithic grave in England with bone tempered pottery, too.




a whole pot would have looked similar to this one:

Lüning et al. 1998

The dots represent sites with finds from the La Hoguette group; The shadowd areas are the LBK culture and the Cardial group, respectively.

http://www.archaeologie.bl.ch/Pages/Museum/auston/auston_2_2.jpg

Ok I, I get the message, you are slightly bored by my 'very interesting' artefacts, so I just quickly show you some very beautiful items.

A lided container (early bell beaker culture) from Ludwigshafen-Mundenheim:

The famous golden hat from Schifferstadt:

An Iron Age bangle from Rodenbach (460-400 BCE) :

Wine harvesting with Bacchus, a scene from a Jupiter column from Roman Speyer:

And a bottle of Roman wine, vintage AD 325:

On our way back to the car park, I saw a playground with a brilliant - no, not a merry-go-round but a giant ant. A superb method to avoid insectiphobia in children:

And what for dinner? A caramelised onion and lentil wellington from uk-tv food (http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/516620). Good to prepare and then just pushed into the oven. In 20 min dinner was on the table together with new savoy cabbage and carrot veggies and a wild rocket salad. Yeah, I know, the photo doesn't look very nice. I took when it was still on the baking sheet fresh from the oven. But believe me it was really really tasty.

The merry month of May or the dreaded asparagus time of the year

My friends probably know, I'm not a friend of asparagus even less white asparagus that is so common in Germany.

But well, M is a big fan and once in a while I have to give in and cook pancakes with white asparagus and sauce hollandaise. While white asparagus is nasty in itself, in combination with a fatty and eggy sauce it is nearly unbearable. However, on my way to veganism, I choose to not only replace the pancakes with oatmilk pancakes but also try a vegan hollandaise. I used a recipe from vegetarian times (http://www.vegetariantimes.com), a well-known American journal for vegetarian lifestyle and made some adjustments to give it the taste my usual hollandaise would have.

I didn't tell M and he loved it. He said 'mhhh your sauce is really great today' and swished the pot clean with a last bit of a pancake. Well, see, it works without animal (dead or tortured) involvement.

And here is a photo of completely vegan 'pancakes with white asparagus and sauce hollandaise':

I am just wondering whether I let my unknowing spouse die in ignorance or whether I should tell him that he ate (and liked!) something very healthy today.

Baking Frenzy

There is probably something I miss in life, since lately I calm down my agitated melancholia by going into the kitchen und yanking out muffin and cake tins. Well no matter what the deeper meaning behind this outlandish behaviour is, P and C are obviously enjoying it or rather the result thereof, like blueberry muffins

or banana bread.

Unfortunately there was no time to get the camera ready. It was gone too fast. R.I.P. banana bread.

I guess I will try to make a lemon bund cake tomorrow.