KITCHEN DELIGHT

Despite my electric kettle meal fantasies, sice we have moved into the new flat (three days ago) we have had fancy dinners. I am quickly discovering the joy of living with an unemployed cook whose home for the past year has been a white iveco van , and is now thouroghly excited by having a house and a kitchen. He stays at home lots, cooks and cleans.

We have had: radicchio risotto

pizza

and last night i performed in:

pasta ai broccoli followed by leek and potato soup (in inverted order cause the pasta was ready before the soup)

´Pasta ai broccoli` is a simple but delicious dish from Puglia. It contains all the major food groups (carbs, green stuff and garlic) and will keep you healthy throughout the winter.

Put a big (and with big I mean tall and wide) pan of water on the fire. Salt. When it boils, throw in the broccoli which you will have chopped up in "mouth size" pieces. You shouls also use the stalk of the broccoli, it is soft and delicious and there really is no need to waste it.

when the broccoli is a bit soft, but not completely cooked, throw in the pasta. the optimum pasta shape is orecchiette, but you can use any short pasta type. Spaghetti is completely wrong.

when the pasta is cooked, sieve and transfer to a frying pan containing garlic and chili pepper sizzling away in a little olive oil. mix and fry for 30 seconds, and serve, it tastes best if topped with grated cheese, parmesan or something in that direction.

I love moving.

I love moving into a new flat, house, or room.
I love the first weeks, sleeping on the carpet surrounded by cardbord boxes and drawings of hypotetical room arrangements, ideas for a new private geography that will determine how i will feel and what i will get up to in that room. eating with few ingredients, or take outs, camping stove or electric kettle meals.

15 min. electric kettle meal

will need: assorted raw veggies (carrots, courgette, tomatoes, spinach,scallop) and some tinned ones (green beans)

a good knife and chopping board

rice noodles

water

garlic

chop the veggies and open the tins (5 min.)

in the meantime, put water in the kettle and bring it to the boil.

Pour the boiling water on rice noodles, and let sit for 8 min. (10 min)

mix the two together

enjoy!

Intrinsecal to moving is exploring the neighborhood, finding a favourite bakers, a favourite route to the shops, to the centre, to the station. Touring all the scrouzy bars and deciding which one served you the worse coffee and had the lousiest wall adornments, getting to know the neighbours and spotting the ones that will be trouble in advance.

i could go on forever.

but i would just love to show you the path along the river that i walked down yesterday, connecting, loosly, the train station to my new top floor flat, the yellow xmas lighting on the bridge in the distance reflecting in the dark river, the towers from the empty cement factory standing high against the mountain, and the evening, icy and clear, was beautiful.

Fourth floor, and i have never lived up so high in my life. nothing compared to c.´s new council flat, towering high above south london, but still a respectable hight for a ground floor aficionado like me.
and it is haunted...by playful noisy ghosts that i fear might get annoying if we don´t start to show them who exactly it is that pays rent here. Last night, the moment everyone shut the door to their room, loud noises of glass rolling around in the kitchen. G. gets up, and the noises stop. This morning, loud stomping noises all around. I get up, they stop.
i have no experience in dealing with ghosts, but i am not scared.