Camino panorama

July 14th (aka day 8)

The “in-between” time.

My parents finally recently came out to Europe to visit me. I have already posted the Paris bit (which was the first part of their visit after I met up with them; they spent some time in London before that), so now here’s some of the in-between stuff (before Rome).

I believe the later dates on the graffiti were in the 1840s.

A “nice” painting in Vesta Coburg. You just can’t beat a picture of Jesus with laser eyes and uneven nipples. PEW PEW!

Mom and Dad in Nürnberg

Just another castle…

Nuremberg…

For those who didn’t see it on Facebook… this is where I live.

Rome shall hopefully come later, yet somewhat soon…

Couple o’ panoramas

My dad got an absolutely awesome shot of Little Venice (I blame the fact that his camera has a cheating lens and keeps all the info for the shot imbedded in the picture; something my way-more-expensive camera doesn’t seem to do).

And here’s a shot of the old city of Nuremberg from the castle.

And as always, you can click to see the bigger picture.

A day (and a few hours) in France

It’s late. I’m tired. And I’m just going to upload these with clever mouse-over options unless explanation is needed.

This guy was amazing. He was doing all sorts of cool tricks with the ball, and then he climbed this pole while it was balanced on his head the whole time. Then once at the top, he held on and started kicking the ball around and doing more tricks with his feet.

We pulled a total mole on this one: popped out of ground just to take the picture, only to scurry back underneath.

Quoth Mom: That was good. That was a good choice!

I know… I know…

Every time I open my web browser, the WP link glares at me.

And I ignored it. Because… after all… I’ve been home for the past four weeks or so with the bum foot, instead of out and about in the totally gorgeous weather that’s been gracing us. And my parents shall be visiting soon, and that will supply me with ample pictures to amaze you all with.

So to hold you over, here’s a forbidden picture.

I’ve been lazy and injured

Saturday I “ran” in a 5k “fun run”. Turns out, I actually hobbled for the last 2k because I jacked up my foot. So now I’m cursed to be on crutches for *at least* a week, though I’m to stay off of the foot for two weeks.

If you haven’t seen it… here it was on Sunday night:

Anyway, so I’ve been doing some cooking, but nothing impressive… UNTIL NOW! Well, it’s sorta impressive. I made some pesto and it didn’t come out quite like it normally does. I think it’s lacking in Parmesan cheese, but oh well.

I was perusing allrecipe’s website and since I had a lot of mushrooms (over a pound), I thought I’d check out some pesto ideas. I decided to try this recipe, and then just take the extra mushrooms and make some mushroomy pesto pasta.

Basically fried up half the mushrooms (sliced) in pesto, added a little olive oil, boiled the pasta, then added some pesto to that. Mixed it all up for a very tasty lunch and dinner.

Then, since I lack “Thai seasoning”, I just made one up. I think it might be a little scary though… I quartered the mushrooms, added about 2TBSP pesto, about 1/4tsp fish sauce, sprinkled “Thai curry” (German) all over it, then touched it up with a splash of lime juice and pepper oil.

The idea actually frightened me a little… but now that I’ve tasted them, I’ll definitely be gobbling them all down.

Do note: if you’re not going to use the prepackaged “Thai seasoning”, and want to try this recipe, I’d omit the pesto or cut the fish sauce to about 1/8tsp. The fish sauce overpowered the pesto, which you could catch hints of, but definitely not worth spending pesto on. I’d also up the lime juice, and/or use lime zest.

The Yeast Beast!

So my friend highly recommended this gluten-free pizza dough thing. Basically, it’s a bag of flour (gluten free!) with a package of yeast. You just put the yeast in a specified amount of warm water for a while, add some eggs and oil, then fold in the flour.

The result looked way too sticky for my abilities. The package said to wet your hands (which didn’t work) to make it into the right shapes, so I tried oil. Still didn’t work. I finally just gave up and tried to get it as “flat” as possible.

I should have gone with my better judgment and added some garlic salt; the dough is pretty decent (considering its shape and texture), but not at all tasty. Still, it wasn’t that bad of a yeast beast pizza.

Spring has sprung!

It’s nothing fancy, but just a simple pleasure that better weather affords.

Never miss a sunset

Especially when they’re so rare here in the Fatherland.

Fun with oil and BEST SANDWICH EVER!

I was scouring allrecipes.com last night in an attempt to find a recipe for a chicken sandwich that sounded awesome but didn’t include bacon or BBQ sauce. (Don’t get me wrong! I adore bacon and BBQ sauce… I just wanted something different.)

I came across a “Grilled Chicken Mojito Sandwich” recipe. I approved of the list of ingredients, and today I made a visit to the commissary to see if they had fresh mint.

They didn’t have it packaged, but they did have basil and mint plants. So I bought one of each. I also then decided I should make a batch of pesto (tomorrow) and flavored olive oil. I can rarely go shopping for food and just buy what I originally intended to.

Anyway, for the previously mentioned recipe, I did a few substitutions. I grilled a whole (but rather small) chicken thigh on the Foreman grill, omitted the onions, and substituted spinach for lettuce. And I put all of the recipe on one sandwich, which made it extra drippy. With those few amendments… WOW. This is pretty much the best sandwich I have ever had in my whole entire lifetime. Ever. For serious. I wish I hadn’t used a paper towel to drip on, because when I was done, I wanted to om nom nom the drippings. Oh well.

And so, I pretty much devoured that in about… 2 minutes. Now I am fat and happy.

So anyway, while I was putting the groceries away (before I made the God’s Gift of Sammich to Mankind) I pulled out a few stalks of basil and rosemary from the freezer for the oil. While you’re “supposed” to use lighter oils for flavoring (lighter oils take the flavor better), I prefer a good, hearty, extra-virgin olive oil. No, it’s not cold-pressed… but this’ll do. You just have to let it sit a bit longer.
Anyway, I sliced the peppers length-wise, to open up their spicy goodness. De-husked the whole bulb of garlic cloves. Tossed in a dried pepper from a family friend’s garden. Squished in the rosemary and basil (since they had defrosted and were rather squishable). Then you just cap it and shake it and label it and taste it in three months. Last time I used this recipe, the oil was good enough to simply pour about 1 tsp on a opened baked potato, along with a little freshly ground pepper and salt, and gobble it up. And I don’t care for baked potatoes!