Vegan Strawberry Muffins

I just can't stop it. I had to bake muffins again. But since strawberries are nearing their season's end I thought it might be a good idea to try them in muffins before they are gone.

I found an interesting vegan recipe on http://www.eatmedelicious.com/ (http://www.eatmedelicious.com/2009/06/strawberry-lemon-sunflower-seed-muffins.html).

I hadn't left any paper muffin cups so I used bamboo cups instead.

We haven't tried them yet, but they sure look delicious:

Leek & Butter bean Gratin

I thought I should share a nice and quick recipe by which you can use up any stale bread you have in your kitchen. The original is from the BBC Good Food webpage (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8090/leek-butter-bean-and-chorizo-gratin) but since it used chorizo I veganized it and it was still perfectly yummie. I used left-over baguette and drizzled some olive oil on top, but otherwise followed the recipe (well, I doubled the amount of beans and of course skipped the sausage part). It looks a bit colourless but it's simplicity and time effectiveness compensates for everything :) and next time I could add some more colourful ingredients like red bell pepper or the like.

Music Installation with Shaolin Monks in London

Should you be in London and are interested in Chinese culture and/or contemporary musical art have a look at this show. It's kinda weird but very interesting.

And now some archaeology from our stay in Switzerland

I know, I know, you all waited desparately for some pics about the archaeology we saw. After all I couldn't be really satisfied by some replicas in a hotel room now, could I?

So here they are, wonderful sites, artefacts, and museums.


The Laténium in Neuchâtel is a very modern and didactically well presented museum. With many replicas and play-around-thingies it is not a museum I am normally looking forward to visit, but it was absolutely worth seeing. The best object was the little venus figurine from the Upper Palaeolithic site of Monruz. It is made of black jet and only 1.6 cm high with a hole drilled in, so it was maybe used as a pendant.

We didn't see a megalithic tomb, however the megalithic alignement in Clendy, Yverdons-les-Bains was impressive, too:

Bone pendants, typical for the late Cortaillod (Middle Neolithic) culture, found in a lacustrine village near Yverdon-les-Bains:

And a Middle Neolithic pot:

An Iron Age wooden idol:

Gallo-Roman boats in the Musée d'Yverdon et Région:

Antrhopomorphic menhir from Bevaix in the Laténium museum:

Post-modern installation in the ice-age section of the Laténium:

The Palaeolithic section of the Laténium (where you can find the Monruz venus):

Nice poster with an antique motif:

And the lake dweller song:

True emancipation in the age of the lake dwellers, men are weaving, women are doing...yeah what exactly are they doing??

Switzerland apart from our hotel

The old tower of Neuchâtel castle, high above the town:

Inside the cathedral:

Downtown Yverdon:

Modern Art:

And to get you into the right mood for the things to come, the (rough) location of the Cortaillod type-site, the lake shore in Petit-Cortaillod:

Switzerland

Time flies indeed. All along I wanted to post a couple of pictures from our stay in Switzerland, but well, you know ...

Now I quickly put some up, so you can see that we really had a beautiful, albite short weekend at Lake Neuchâtel. First of all our hotel, the Palafitte near Neuchâtel, was really great. It is built as a pile dwelling, but we had a pavillion on the shore which left some money to eat lovely crêpes and galettes.

The interior was impressive, a spacious bathroom,


a working area, big LCD TV, and an addictive espresso machine.


Best of all, to my greatest surprise, they had a case with replicas from archaeological finds. Now how cool is this? Can an archaeologist have a nicer lookout while making their espresso? I guess not.


I don't have a photo of the lake view terrace (no it has nothing to do with the eponymous movie) and I wished I could have spent more time just sitting in the sun, reading the odd potboiler. But well, maybe some other time....