Independency & self cooking

The table is , the table the epi-center in our house , the table in the kitchen and the table in the dining room. The table is where we share our stories and cook and bake . Dealing with deadly fatal allergies mean that we have been inventive, creative , autonomous the way we prepare our food . Intuition and genuine cooking are ingredients and both inseparable while being deadly allergic .

Not being afraid and yet aware of the limitations and taking precautions and avoiding certain ingredients eternally from the kitchen !

I am proud and happy when I see my allergy baby , and the way she cooks herself . The pleasure and the determination to make her own food as a student . Being independent is a necessity while being deadly allergic . Your body is a constant source of your own safe feeling and safe being .

Michael Pollen is right with his latest book! Self cooking is al about being independent . I know how important food is for my daughter and her well being . Because there is always a treat . And at home things are safe ! The love of making and preparing your food and study traditions of food and ways you can take cate of your health while you need to be careful with so many products make you aware of the richness of genuine food and cooking . On the end it feels that the limitations are easily to overcome if you make the choice to invest in cooking and baking .

Fair food and home made with love and endless exchange is stories . I have seen my girls growing up and spending time with me . Standing at stools and curious about all the excitement in the kitchen. For my allergy baby the easiness and eagerness in the kitchen make her life and her waking with allergies so rich and exciting . 

These little breads with salmon , pressed lemon , avocado and Parmesan are ready to go for packed school lunch .

Départ

Quand mon homme se déplace ce soir pour un séjour lointain on se sent loin d'un coup , un peu perdu peu être , émerveillée par un sentiment de grand amour et éveillé d'un nouveau séjour attendu avec patience .

Ce soir on a besoin un peu de se retrouver , d'installer un nouveau équilibre aussi après un temps de cocooning depuis le début d'octobre .

Confiance et patience de l'aventure inconnu. 

Medications and allergies

We are struggling with allergy medication again . It seems that the medication is not strong enough and yet there doesn't seem to be another good alternative . Ever since we arrived in the UK we didn't find the right medication.

The hay fever medication she gets is just not right. Where the package tells one can take one pill a day she take soften four in a row .

Who can come up with an explanation and a good plan. To tackle the almost daily reactions. What is the best medication . Why is there a difference in prescription between all the countries . Why did we experience these variations in prescription between France, Switserland and Morocco and
now the UK? What is knowledge ? 

Some pills make one sleepy and other simply not bring the sufficient relief .

Our latest appointment with an allergist wasn't helpful and it even seems like there is lack of true insight in the allergy issue as a whole . My concern is: she needs the right medication to be safe. There is no need, as described in her file, for further consult as her conditions won't change . Her severe and life threatening allergies will stay. Innovations and new medications in the future might hopefully bring insights in her afflictions .

Pour les filles: repas du mardi soir

Pour les filles: repas du mardi soir. Une superbe tarte: pâte brisée fait à la maison, beurre - farine - l'eau froide et un peu du sel . 

Une grande cuillère de moutarde pour imbiber la pâte une fois dans un moule.

Puis rangez les tomates coupées en rondelles, thym, poivre. Une boule de mozzarelle coupée en petits dés et puis deux petits boîtes de sardines .

Enfournez pendant 35 à 40 minutes au four. Manger chaud ou tiède.

Petite salade verte avec une mélange aux framboises et myrtilles et vinaigrette a choix. 

Life around the world: The lake of Geneva

It has been more than five years and here I am back in Lausanne.
The city, the name echoes emotions, the pace incredible unchanged after

all these years .

Pleasant, insane happy is the feeling of being back in a city where lays a grid of memories.
Flashes of colors, mixed prints from pictures albums pop up in my head, each breath I take, every turn I make bring back another hidden, unconscious and delicate silly thought. A movement, a sense of love, sparkling tiny drops of sunshine, tickling sensation in my hands.

Momentum
Summer 2008
My tree little angles. One of their last strolls in the vineyards in Cully area. Staying with friends, Americans from the Minnesota region.
We lived for three years in Lausanne, Switzerland and were at the time this picture was taken almost on our way to Rabat, Morocco. A new destination for another few years.

The Apron

This morning I discovered a beautiful architectural icon in the city of Westminster.  I walked there with S. My back is in really bad shape, even with daily walks in the park; I definitely need to get back into swimming. There is no excuse, at the beginning of this brand new year. I need to start immediately, a blank page and accompanied with fresh enthusiasm .

We walked* and passed the BBC buildings and head into Regent Street. Content and somehow lost in her morning glory. What a wonderful start of the weekend; together with my sweet S, my freshman at medicine, S did what she wanted to do, she came and saw and conquered and I am a proudly mother. The magnificent architecture of Regent Street, the beautiful buildings, the white plastered 

facades. 

We take the corner with the art and craft building of Liberty. Which wooden structures recall another era. The neighbourhood is still sleepy and seems unconscious of the crowd that will soon gather in the streets around for another day of winter-sale shopping.  I love the desolate and peaceful.

While we leave Regent Street behind onto our way towards the sports-center we stroll through Carnaby Street.

I was only a small child myself when my father brought me an apron from London. An apron decorated with the Union Jack and the name Carnaby Street,b printed in dark blue capital letters. A plastic apron which I treasured and wore in the kitchen alongside my grandfather when he was baking. So funny that I came to live in London many years later and I decided to follow my intuition, my dreams and to attend the Cordon Bleu. I wore another apron this time now, with the epic Cordon Bleu initials. My love for baking was partly nurtured by my grandfather, he worked as a young teenager in a patisserie in Amsterdam. My very early memories from baking are all related to this man.

The pool is thirty meters lengths. The high ceilings in the pool area and the architectural curbed steel  structure are precious examples of the wonders and skills of a flamboyant mastering of the architecture in the early thirties of the last century. The light blue paint, the snow frozen white ornaments give the interior it's majestic allure. A bronze sculpture depicting a baby with a fish tail, placed in a small marble bath tub, seems to overlook the athletes in the pool. The pool has been renovated and reopened in 2010. I feel so good after this first swim in the new year. I didn't do any practice since my last swim in the end of August in Cassis. I find it again and again so difficult to adapt to indoor activities. Today I feel totally satisfied and thanks to S who took me and convinced me to start swimming again. The energy level of the youth is to me the best I can relay on.  Such a great gift to be around them. 

When I watch the girls, I see how they pick many good things, stick to a discipline, implement a  natural rhythm and a few daily routines. 

Discipline becomes a natural tool where one enjoys the day in a more relaxed way. I become jealous of all those friends running and training, and I know it is unfair. I laugh those feelings away and know my friends were right from the start: stay to you discipline and make it work. 

When we catch up in the hall after S's row training and my swim we walk home and see how Christmas decorations are taken down.Christmas season is definitely coming to an end. The branches, in the back of a pick-truck, still smell strong and we're secretly happy to keep our tree up until the 6th of January. The Epiphany the celebration of The Three Kings! Not before tasting the sweet flavour of Le gâteau du Roi shall we finish our celebrations.

*We have been walking since the summer of 2012. After a considerable foot print in Rabat, Morocco we are happy that we use public transport instead of driving cars. And honestly most of the time we walk! It is interesting how I was totally shocked in the beginning being transformed in the role of pedestrian... literately after so many years, decennia of cars and being a driver myself in the crazy traffic of Beijing, the rural driving in Cassis, the ultimate polite Swiss driving-behaviour and the audacious and aggressive Rabat circulation.... it was hard to change roles adapt to the role of a vulnerable pedestrian ... crossing over and not knowing where the cars came from in the beginning of our London adventure, I felt most of the time terrified and panicked. When weeks went by , came back my natural feeling to walk and now in our fourth year in the city I can only say that it is the greatest thing: no cars, no parking issues, no car-keys to loose and happy to give a little bit back.

Long life and curiosity !

This is a lovely way how we had a plate of appetizers over the winter break .

While having my parents in London in the second week of December I wanted to make every day a little treat for them. And this is what we had after another long walk and visiting the Imperial War Museum. I served water and tea and a plate of Mediterranean appetites. The figs were waiting to be eaten and instead of my normal choice, a fine combination of fig and goat cheese, I combined the fresh fruit with an old Parmesan. Having figs as an appetite is a family thing and I like to keep up with good tradition, it always works for me. I love to stick with my recipes and only vary with one ingredient. It is the same way how I manage, invent and re-invent my home decoration and my life! I will stay loyal to pieces of furniture which I brought along from Amsterdam to Beijng to Cassis and after Lausanne and Rabat and they stayed with me here in London. Good recipes never bore.

The humus and black olives tapenade spread on triangles of soft olive bread. The odd thing is Mediterranean foods just always give that sense of hospitality and that is exactly what I received while living in those countries along the Mediterranean sea.  

The flat parsley is vivid and fresh and a few drops of pressed lemon add a smooth touch to the palette.

I recall now these moments of food and friendship with my parents because I need to make note of it . 

Long life and curiosity ! Is all I wish for you and myself for the new year 2016

Intelligence and fair seriousness

Happy new year from London to all of you! I wish you wisdom and strengths, love and peace,  spirit and perseverance,  health and succeed. Be good to each other. Love and no war! Let us just fall in love every day again and be in love with our family and friends .

I am dedicated again to my wishes to make a wonderful and happy new year.  There are so many things to look forward to. I have my three girls who I wish to be healthy and be surrounded by love and good friendships. I can't believe I have another 12 grader. Wish all your dreams come true. 

We will see where we will travel, move, settle, live, wander and re-invent ourselves again as we're in between jobs. We might ravel and move again .... That would be a lovely possibility to embark again and envisage a new journey. Come time come wisdom.

I will study and continue to research allergies and food and ways to live sincere. Genuine food in a world where too many are struggling . I will be patient, vulnerable and following my intuition. Writing a note or a few words every day. Tell the stories.

And we will find time to continue our search and dream in the making of our stories about what we think is: a way of living with our allergies. As a medicine student she studies now in depth her allergies, the reactions, the shocks. We found together a way to share, what we experienced as a long-life condition, and focus from different angles; the mother and the daughter/the patient, the parent/educator and the medicine student / the professional.

It is a modus to make life easier while accepting one's afflictions.

We really like the way how things have worked well for us and we like to exchange this with you.

Our habitude is an old recipe. We never really changed the rules of the game, since 1997... when the little girl opened her eyes..

Comes health come thoughts about how to eat. What we eat is who we are, who we want to be, how we feel good. No fairy tale, no wonders, intuition has been since always my deeper guidance. Intelligence and fair seriousness are without any doubt beacons in a life threaten by deadly allergies. Happiness, love, understanding and knowledge from the community of the patient are life savers.

 La Mer, Cassis

Mes petits sablés salés

Christmas time and we are preparing all the fine events and celebrations.
The apartment smells already, the Christmas tree has arrived, there she stands in all her glory and green majesty. Fresh from the high lands in Denmark to the flower man in Marylebone to our home in London. And as we stay here for the entire time of three weeks of Christmas break we will so enjoy her. There's is no sound, nobody but me and the tree. I made my good old time favourite biscuits with Parmesan cheese. It is one of my appetizer at the tomorrow's table when we welcome friends to celebrate the seasons. A true classic this sablé recipe. A fine Christmas tradition, memories already.

Mes petits sablés, juste parfaites 

Tarte a ma façon: Pauw's quiche with gruyere

This has been a superb delicious quiche. I made this extremely exquisite quiche yesterday from a lovely cookbook, a French cookbook which is amazingly nice edited and it's entirely about vegetables, combined with a few other ingredients. Every recipe starts with vegetables and then the cook/author cooks wonderful dishes. The book follows the  4 seasons. It's lovely and as French as French can be.

This quiche is made of a nice dough by melting butter and than you add the dry ingredients: plain- and corn flour with an egg. Mix all ingredients until you obtain a sandy mixture. Then add the - three minute - cooled butter and work all ingredients together into a ball.
Decorate the quiche mould.
Cut the 4 tomatoes into thin slices and cover the dough,  cover with 100 gram of gruyère and a few branches of thyme. Season with pepper and salt, bake the quiche in the oven for thirty minutes.

Food is Life

There has been a few articles this week about the dramatic effects and impacts about processed meat on our body and health. Plants in full swing and a rather serious advice to stay away from the processed counter. The processed meat seems definitely related to an excessive amount of salt and antibiotics.  Several varieties of meat are according these reports as bad as smoking. The WHO is publishing research and warning the consumer.

Dear Michael Pollen you seem right after all!

When I read about Pollen I automatically think about by mother. I mentioned her often in my writings on this blog. I love her and was absolutely at the frontline of a new wave of food knowledge and -education in the seventies. And nothing changed, she stayed loyal and the transmitted her knowledge to me. She might not be my role model for cooking; I mean recipes wise, she's absolutely my role model for nutrition. Her chemistry-medical background and her work in cancer clinics have changed the way she observed the world. When she got married and became a full time mother she never stopped using her scientific knowledge in her challenging role as family 'cook' for my dad and her five children. She's my personal nutrition coach.

Common sense. There isn't really a new thing under the sun. Fruit and vegetables are the two most important groups of nutrition during my childhood. Cycling home from the field-hockey training we stopped at the apple orchard and got an apple for free...   My mother got piles of apples in wooden fruit crates in the small outhouse in the back of the garden. We only ate the fruits from the season. And those apples were so large, so fresh, so unbelievable juicy and I see why my girls get upset with the taste of apples in London when I think back.

Eat and enjoy the richnesses of each season at least if you don't have to deal with any food intolerances or  food allergies. I admit we make exceptions because of my deadly allergic daughter.
I do buy grapes, strawberries and raspberries all year round, simply because of her. Berries and grapes are for her easily to digest. Never had she experienced a reaction while consuming these fruits. And that is a happy feeling!   

I follow the footsteps of my mother and reduce our intake of meat. The girls love a good piece of meat and that's perfect. We really moderate. My allergy girl instead always had a more intense need for meat, not easy to compensate all the limitations she's dealing with since she was a baby. So common sense it is again. Every meal I try to find, since we deal with a life organised around allergies,  a recipe that is a fair mix of myself, allergy prescriptions and nutritional facts. Everyday I cook with intuition. Food is Life! 

Lunch today: plants, fibres , protein, phosphorus, iodine...

It's Halloween, and about my allergy girl.  She's home at home from Imperial College.
And I make: shrimps with garlic in olive oil. Mushrooms, garlic, coriander, lime, white cabbage sautéed olive oil. I boil her rice noodles and serve with soya sauce.

My eclectic kitchen table. The blue bowl is from Japan, which my husband brought me last year. from a business trip. The tiny little bowl has been with me since I left in Beijing (spring 1998). I took it with me in my suitcase, as a last souvenir from my 2,5 years in China. It comes in a set of three. The rectangular plates are French porcelain these I bought in Rabat. They come in a set of four. 

Birthdays

    Three roses, three daughters; gratitude 

Birthdays.
The violin teacher likes to tell me that a birthday of my children is a birthday of myself, as a mother, giving birth, gratitude for a new life.
Birthdays.
Makes me think what my English friend, from Cassis and Londoner himself, shared with me this summer.  He described to me the absolute unique feeling to be a father and a son at the same time and that he remembered and cherished the marvellous feeling. A feeling that he depicted as a floating sensation between two layers: parents and children. What an extra-ordinary explication I thought. He articulated the unique constellation within three generations. He continued then and told me how he was heartbroken when he lost, both of his parents, in his early forties.  Enjoy your floating, he told me, and I promised I would.
Birthdays.
Being a child and a parent .

Sense of season

Good morning and happy Thursday. It's another beautiful autumn day here in London and I am getting really excited. It's the time of the year, where the leaves change color and ends Summery green and comes Fall's yellow. Regent Park has turned into a golden oase. Oxford Street is getting jolly and dressed up for the festivities and celebration of the season. High up in the air all along the length of Oxford street where it makes the turn into Regent Street dance large white paper Christmas stars and endless snow balls. The transparant decoration moves slowly, the snowballs nod their heads while whispering words, childish wishes in the evening breeze. A sense of secret messages and children imaginary is settling around Westminster. I look high up with my head in the clouds, unaware of the thick, endless stream of coats and suits rushing home. 

I wander and take a deep breath before I head home.

Blueberries and raspberries : antioxidant and colorful

Look at these berries blue en red in the perfect little bowl, which I brought back from Vietnam. Made from coconuts , these colourful lacquer bowls are superb to serve fruit, olives or like I do as a bowl to serve breakfast treats.

College Application

Jet legged....

We had a night flight back from Dulles Airport in Washington DC and now back home in London.

After a week of driving and visiting around the east coast we are satisfied and fulfilled with plenty of energy and good memories about academia, strong curriculums, endless possibilities, freedom and opportunities for the girls.

University week with our senior. 

And in between touring and listening and making notes we spend time with family : the girls's cousins, my brother and a good friend. Who I met in the mid nineties during our first posting in Beijing, China. Holistic is the one word we will remember. We heard it being pronounced every single day over the last week. Education and the holistic perspective; those seniors who like to get in and consider applying to a twenty-first century learning environment, need to understand the deeper meaning of ''being holistic'. 

Who are we and what do we like to achieve?
What's the student ambition and what does the student plan to achieve?

What is it the student will bring, add to the school?
Why is that the ultimate school for the student? How do these two fit: university and student?
Applying is like the complex matrix of many components and ingredients.
Être et avoir .... 

I am intrigued by the way the liberal art program of universities intends to be a fabulous way to integrate and combine; a pallet of colours. It reads as a compilation of one's own and the university interests, academic choices often on a crosspatch o disciplines. The interdisciplinary aspect of the often rigorous program seems one possible way to create critical thinking and to embrace curiosity. 

Kale and raspberry with yoghurt

Kale;

kale is fashion;

kale is anti cancer;

kale is the food for foodies.

For me kale was kale and one of the favourite vegetables of my mother. In my youth we ate kale in winter every week . The 'boerenkool' today thought as one of the most effective vegetables against cancer. Proved and cherished by researchers in the fight against cancer. Embraced by foodbloggers and high profile chefs.

An antioxidant which boost your immune system and is highly significant to beat infections.

We used to eat kale shortly boiled and mixed with a home made mashed potatoes dish.  Often eaten with sausage and mustard.

I admit I rediscovered kale and I owe my mother. The knowledge about the healthy properties kale was hers, long before the trendy appreciation of kale stole the hearts of so many and researchers proved her massive qualities for a healthy diet. 

Kale salad: fresh washed kale, raspberries, mixed seeds, white cowl, dressing made with honey, oil oil and balsamic oil. I like to serve with plain yoghurt.

Recipe Request

I can be very honest about my feelings over the last two weeks, it hasn't been easy. I realize that two weeks is what it takes, to re-adapt to the city and to get my life back in London. Summer came to an end as prompt as it can be. The rain and London looking grey were simply to much for me and I spent long days inside the apartment...
not my favorite me activity, not much captured my attention or my involvement...

I have been busy though with the start-up of the school-year for the girls. Although they are independent and well organized... 

I still have a role, a final touch and the mother eye.

 All three seem so busy now and London is good for them. They too miss the weather, the light, the evening stroll that make summer the best if season. But these kids are cool in the way they get back to school. Picking up their lives, hanging out with friends. First days of school blossoming with excitement and some anxiety. 

Today I feel good, things have changed over the weekend. My clock is set. Time has come, fall is in the air, a birthday next week for my youngest and lots of other stuff. No way to stick into my off thoughts, time to move on, and no more silliness ... 

In one year there will be a new start and so on for the next years ..

And then there is food! 

 Today there was ta request from my allergy girl for a decent dish, a dish from the provence, a nice taste, a recipe please...we looked up some folders with a variety of sweet and savory collected over the last years. 

A collection of recipes through the years, packed with our stuff in the summer of 2012 when we left Morocco after four years. I secretly wonder how I possibly saved these recipes in the middle of that catastrophic move. 

Together we open some cook books and we found a nice and colourful recipe: 'Daube Provencale'. 

While she went back to school I went out for groceries and a search for a gallery where they do framing. Found one in Fitzrovia neighborhood . I brought three pieces to frame. A child drawing of one of the girls: a little ballet dancer she once drew for her sister . And two paintings , one is a bouquet of wild flowers in dark blue and velvet, the second is a composition of purple plumps and a blue grey ginger bowl. My husband heritated both from is father, who collected art during his short life. He was accepted to the famous Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Due to an allergy of oil paint he left the academy. 

Cooking through French recipes is one way to learn or to keep up with French language.

The recipe: Daube provençale 

4 personnes/ I think you can share with many more!

Ingredients 

800 g de boeuf ( à bourguignon)

3 oignons

5 carottes 

1 branche de thym

2 feuilles de laurier

1 bouteille de vin rouge.'.... De Provence 

2 cuillères à soupe de farine ( maïzena / corn)

4 cuillères à soupe d'huile d'olive

Préparation :

Coupez la viande en petits morceaux, faites le revenir dans une cocotte avec huile d"olive jusqu'à ce qu'il soit bien doré. Pelez et coupez les oignons et les carottes en rondelles .

Ajoutez au bœuf. Laissez colorer pendant 5 minutes.

Verser le vin et ajouter le thym et le laurier.

Laissez mijoter à feu doux pendant 2 heures.

Mélanger la farine avec un peu d'eau froide et versez dans la daube 30 minutes avant les ravir la daube provençale .

Serve with sweet  patotoes and a green salad.

Tuesday baking.

It is always a time for baking and exploration of new fields of taste and flavors. While S is busy with the ingredients and the actual process of patisserie,  I am running up and down the stairs, on my way to the local supermarket to buy a few missing elements.
Haha baking is a 4 hands-on project and while preparing the next step in the recipe, there is an exercise in between. I like that. And as long as the sun shines these last days over good old Westminster, London we're just gorgeous delighted and in a terribly well mood. I can do those stairs easily and run around the few blocks between the local super market at Great Portland Street and another corner shop at Euston Road.

Instead of the buttermilk - impossible to find today - we decide to go for butter instead. The shredded apple with a pinch of cinnamon and the maple syrup frosting make these fancy Tuesday cupcakes a celebration of flavor. We're both thrilled with our new kitchen-aid. This makes our tiny Westminster kitchen better equiped. Look at this, there they are smiling on a glaze plate, topped with the hand of the master. Blossoming under tulip's freshness. 

Pauw's project: Ikea Dining Table, the 'bronze' chair is from Anthropology. The little pink and yellow can* was a farewell gift when we left Cassis, Provence, France in the summer of 2005 to move to Lausanne, Switzerland. The pink tulips remind me of Amsterdam.

*I use the can for different purposes. Might serve as a water jar too while having a seated dinner.

Macaroon a delight

    Vanilla macarons, recipe from the Cordon Bleu patisserie baking book. 

    

10 GRADE

Graduation day, the second graduation this time of the year.

At home we celebrate with a beautiful bake from one sister to another, made with grace by my allergy girl.
The piping is as always outstanding; patience and love for baking.
Way to go! Two sisters; one freshly graduated from her International school in London and off on a gap year now. The second sister finishing her 10 grade at the same international school and signed up for the two, very last international baccalaureate years; 11 and 12 grade. In international school know as the IBDP years. My youngest finishing her 8 grade and unlike the importanty of this year in the girls' prior Rabat American school; marking the end of Middle school, in international schools 8 grade is the third year of MYP ( Middle Year Program).

London seems a strong fit to us as a family and the three girls are doing amazingly well after our first two years in the city of Westminster.

Exhausted and satisfied.
I can't believe we' re actually winding down our second year this week.