31 posts tagged “brussels”

City #5

Jan 20, 2009
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I've lived in four cities over the last 35 years:

London;
Birmingham;
Amsterdam; and
Brussels

I've also lived in a couple of teeny tiny little places, one of which is so small it isn't even a village! But it's now time to move on to city number five. I move on Monday and hope to write a blog post while sitting in the January sun very soon.

Here's a picture of a baby elephant, just because it's a great picture.

Baby Elephant

Parsnip & Potato Mash

Dec 14, 2008
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OK, the black pepper will have to wait until next week. The soup wasn't photographed despite being very tasty but the mashed parsnip and potato was. It's a fairly rough mash rather than a purée and it's about two thirds parsnip. Gorgeous.

Potato and Parsnip Mash with Young Carrots

Pastinache, Pastinaken, Panais, Pastinaga, Parsnips, пастернаки

Dec 12, 2008
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No posts for... well quite a long time. I suppose I was just a big busy.

This evening I've been enjoying a parsnip. Seasonal, organic, fresh and local. I love them roasted but I plan to make a potato and parsnip mash at the weekend and maybe a soup using the other two I have. Because, doing things in half measures is a bad thing.

Parsnips_IMG_3550

Coming up next? Something on why there is no food on the planet that cannot be improved by the addition of generous quantities of fresh ground black pepper.

Explosions, fire and smoke

Oct 28, 2008
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As soon as we heard the explosions we ran towards the window. Possibly not the right thing to do but humans seem run towards danger and we are all human. We didn't see what exploded but we could all see the black smoke coming from the burning tyres. The protest was over the imminent closure of some of Poland's shipyards because European Union rules prevent state aid.

I'm sure that burning tyres in the middle of the city is illegal. However, it's worth noting that once they'd finished their protest they put out the fire and left quietly. And they finished on a song, apparently. Always finish on a song :-)

Black Smoke Over Brussels

Me Graffito

Oct 20, 2008
1 comment

It seems that I now have some sort of celebrity status. As I walked in to work this morning I saw my name gratified on a bunch of boards on a building site. I just hope it doesn't mean I've been conscripted into an army of builders. I was absolutely rubbish at woodwork and metalwork at school. My teacher said I had two gears: stop and reverse.

Me Grafifto

Stupid security theatre

Oct 17, 2008
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Several times a year there is a 'summit' of European heads of government in Brussels. They meet up in town and parts of the city are blocked off while they're there. The security is fairly useless as the invitations required to enter the security zone are just laser printed pieces of blue card that have been written on with a ball-point pen.

Of course they don't bother to search bags as you pass through the barriers and the office has never been searched in advance of a summit.

What I find most amusing - and irritating - is that they seal the tops of all the rubbish bins in the streets near the European institutions. As I walked in to work this morning they were still sealed, despite the fact that all the prime ministers and presidents went home at lunch time yesterday. Frankly, I wish they'd just chopper them in from the airport and stop pretending to 'secure' the area.

Sealed Bin

Take away food

Sep 24, 2008
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When I lived in Amsterdam and was feeling too lazy or tired to cook I would order food from various restaurants. There was a pretty wide selection of places that would deliver food but apart from the GoFreshShop, everything was cooked fast and probably in oil. Not good.

This evening I also felt lazy and couldn't be bothered to cook. But when I stopped in Casa Italiana on may way home I came away with something that had clearly not been cooked in hot oil. I love this place and get something from there every couple of weeks when I fancy a bigger selection of vegetables than I can justify cooking at home.

Yum.

Take Away Food

Ice cream from The Lincolnshire Poacher

Sep 8, 2008
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Quickly.

Just as I hung up from this evening's call I heard an ice cream van pass by outside. Strangely, the tune seemed to be The Lincolnshire Poacher. I'm not sure why an ice cream van in Brussels would be using a tune made most famous by a numbers station that presumably broadcast instructions to spies — but there are a lot of people associated with government around here, so maybe it's an in joke for them. Who knows?

In any case, here's a nice video of someone listening in. The sounds clears up after a moment and you can hear music at a similar fidelity to what you would get from an ice cream van.

The Lincolnshire Poacher

Weighed down with choice

Sep 8, 2008
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The hill between the office and my apartment isn't really very steep. In comparison with the hill the house I grew up in was built on it's barely a quarter as steep. But this afternoon is was a damned hard trek because I was carrying an extra laptop and peripherals, four DVDs, two books, three CDs and a thankfully unnecessary umbrella.

The laptop was there because I'd left my install DVDs in the office and wanted to zap a 15" PowerBook before passing it on to a new owner. The DVDs, book and CDs were delivered while I was in Geneva and were almost left in the office for collection tomorrow. But I couldn't decide which to watch this evening and so I lugged the whole lot home, along with the groceries I picked up along the way.

Now I'm here and ready to go (once my 7pm call is finished) I've decided to watch Will Hodgson, which actually came in a very lightweight card envelope and weighs the least of all the media. I clearly need to become more decisive or get better at carrying 30lbs of laptop and assorted media around.

The Will Hodgson DVD comes from Go Faster Stripe who seem to have DVDs for a good selection of the comedians I like and an extremely fast turnaround time (better than Amazon). Looking forward to laughing.

Will Hodgson

I'm just here for the beer

Sep 7, 2008
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After one of the most surreal two days I've spent in rooms of men wearing suits I was looking forward to sitting down at home and enjoying a couple of nutty brown ales.

Waterloo Beer

Sadly, that was not to be. Brussels Airlines decided to add a 90 minute delay to the 50 minute flight back from Geneva. The captain thought this was acceptable on the grounds that they had started the day with a three hour delay. Frankly, the whole things stinks of incompetence to me. Belgium's flag carrier used to be called Sabena, which I was always told was an acronym for "Such a bloody experience - never again". I think they should take a good long look at Easyjet, which seems to use the same planes in the same configurations but actually keeps to its published schedules.

I got back late to find that the top of one of the bottles had been chipped and its contents seemed to be undergoing a third fermentation. Frankly, it looked like brown sick when I poured it, so I tried another bottle which went down like a dream. It's not a quaffing beer as it's got real body and flavour. It's something to savour slowly, perhaps with a bit of cheese or some nice Swedish crackers.

Im sure that some of Waterloo's other offerings will be appearing in my shopping basket later this week. The Tripel 7 looks very tasty.