Mes crazy expériences: January 2009

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Cooking : Salmon-Spinach Lasagna

En français

Today I wanted to try to cook some Salmon-Spinach Lasagna.
Here is the recipe :

What you need :
Spinach
Smocked salmon
Mozzarella
Lasagna

For the Bechamel :
Butter
Pepper
Nutmeg powder
Flour
Milk

Preparation :

Chopped the spinach leaves.
Melt the butter in a pan, add the pepper and nutmeg powders.
Add the Flour and mix with a spoon.
Add some milk to have a creamy but liquid Bechamel.
Add the chopped spinach.

In a plat, put a row of lasagna, some salmon, some Bechamel sauce.
Repeat three times.
Cut the mozzarella in slides and place them on the top of the dish.

Cook in the oven for about 25 minutes.

Sébastien don't really like spinach but he liked that dish.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Iceland : Gulfoss

En français
After visiting Geysir, we continue our journey to see Gulfoss. At first we need to go down and we start see the second part of the water fall on the way. The river look broken with a right angle.
Then we tried to go on the mountain road to Kyölur but it was too bad so we had to go back.
We went back to Gulfoss where we slept a little then to Selfoss. The landscape is flat and green in this part of the island and we could see lots of horses. The road 30 isn't very good.
In Selfoss we find a camping for the night a watch a football match during the evening. Our next step will be Vik.

Travel table of content

Monday, January 26, 2009

Raw food diet : Conclusion

En français
This is the end of the raw food diet. So I want to share with you my conclusion about the diet and the effect it had on me.
First I was expecting something bigger from the detox period, I was expecting to be sick, except very small headache nothing really happened to me. I was expecting that due to the fact that I knew of people needing to go to the toilet much more often during the first days of a new diet, and because of all the food I ate during the Christmas holidays. Nothing very spectacular occured. That probably means that I don't have so many bad eating habits in general.
However last week I went climbing with friends and find out at that I lost 2 kilos after 1 week and a half of diet. On Thursday, I went to the gym and figured out that I lost 2 more kilos. I wasn't expecting to lose that much so quickly even if I new the diet was low in fat and calories. I'm a bit happy about it.
The diet also allowed me to discover that even a diet as restrictive as only raw food can be very diversified. I needed to be creative in the first part because I was carving for other people cooked food. Then I really get used to it. At some point I was even disgusted by Sebastien's chili con carne. However I truly missed some product like pasta and bread and butter. The good point was also that I tested new fruits that I never tested before like pomegranate, jack fruit... I really like that one.
I'm very happy that I made this diet because I often heard people unable to do it even if their health is in the line and if it's a diet much less restrictive. I was imagining something much more difficult, especially as Sebastien was eating our usual food so that I wasn't "psychologically" helped in that sense. Now I know that if I ever really need to do a diet even that restrictive I can do it !!!
Changing my habits for nearly a month was also a great experience for me.
Yesterday evening, we had a very nice international dinner for Chinese new year and lots of very tasty cooked food :), arancine, spring roll, kimbap (that's not cook), beef bulgogy...

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Chinese Knot 中國结: Good Luck Knot 吉祥结.

En français

I want to share with you my new hobby that I discover not to long ago that is Chinese Knot 中國结 (Zhōngguó jié).
These is as far as I know now 12 basic types of Chinese Knot. More complicated shape are obtained by combining them.
Here I have made a Good Luck Knot 吉祥结 (jí xiáng jié).

I tried to describe the step to make it.

a) place the string in the shape on figure a
b) place the two ends of the rope number 1 on the top of number 2 as shown on figure b
c) place the loop number 2 on the top of 1 and 3
d) place the loop number 3 on the top of 2 and 4
e) place the loop number 4 on the top of 3 and 1 and under the other part of 1 and pull all ends.
f) tight slightly the knot
g) start again for b repeat c,d and e but turning in the opposite directing
h) tight slightly the knot
i) find the little ring between the loop and extent them by adjusting the length of the different loops.

I would like to try more complicated things in the future. Of course I will share them on the blog.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Christmas amigurumi : One more Amineko

En français
This almost black and white Amineko, with its colorful scarf and tail has been send to my friend Joon in South Korea. Contrarily to all other Amineko which have black eye and eyebrow, as its head is black I made them yellow. That gives it a funny look.
As it had a long journey to do in Winter I made it a scarf, so that it doesn't get cold.
It is also bigger than the first I made probably due to the difference in wool. I was so proud of my first amigurumi not even one year ago yet. That's probably why I choose to make Amineko to my friends.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Travel table of content

Ireland :

First Conference and Giant Causeway
Ireland : Cavehill (Belfast)
Ireland : Hollywood
Ireland : The North Coast
Ireland : Peninsula
Travel in Republic of Ireland : Introduction
Travel in Republic of Ireland : Not yet
Travel in Republic of Ireland : Sligo–Mayo
Travel in Republic of Ireland : Achill Island
Travel in Republic of Ireland : From Achill Island to Connemara
Travel in Republic of Ireland : Connemara, Galway and end
Ireland : Mount Stewart
Ireland : cathedral St Patrick and Inch Abbey
Ireland : American folk park
Ireland : Beaghmore stones circles
Ireland : Irish dance

Japan :

Japan : My first (part 1)
Japan : My first (part 2)
Japan : Sakura trees are Japan soul
Japan : 深大寺 and 神代植物公園
Japan : Okonomiyaki
Japan : Trip to Nikko, part 1 climbing
Japan : Trip to 日光市, part 2 water fall
Japan : Trip to 日光市, part 3 : park
Japan : Trip to 日光市, part 4 : temples and end
Japan : お台場 and 船の科学館 (Odaiba and the museum of maritime science)
Japan : Fish market
Japan : 浜離宮恩賜庭園 (Hamarikyu Gardens)

Peru :

Peru
Peru : First day in Lima
Peru : Paracas
Peru : Ballestas Islands
Peru : Nazca
Peru : Arequipa
Peru : Colca Canyon
Peru : Puno
Peru : Cuzco
Peru : Road to Machu Pichu
Peru : Machu Pichu
Peru : Cuzco's archeological sites
Peru : Back to Lima
Peru : Last day in Peru

Taiwan :

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Christmas amigurumi : Joyce's amineko

En français
I send this little amineko to my friend Joyce in Taiwan as a surprise. I knew that she likes cat and that her favorite color is yellow. More picture can be seen on her blog. I sent it was a Christmas cart all written in Chinese that was apparently understandable so I'm pretty happy about it.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Raw food diet : calories, fat and avocado dressing

En français

I lost already 2 kilos on the diet. I never really cared about calories and fat in my meals before. I just used common sense I think, not to much oil, not too much sugar.
However the fruits that I'm eating now in greater quantity than before are heavy in sugar. So I wanted to see what was the quantity of calories and fat and sugar that I was actually getting out of my meal.
So here is what I ate today since breakfast and the values they approximately have, that also mostly what I eat every day on this diet:

Breakfast :
one glass orange juice (calories 56, fat 0.1 g, sugar 13.3 g)
one kiwi (calories 100, fat 1 g, sugar 16 g)

Lunch :
1.5 tomatoes (calories 4, fat 0, sugar 0.6 g)
spinach leaves (calories 7, fat 0.1 g, sugar 0.1 g)
bananavo : 1.5 bananas (calories 135, fat 0.5 g, sugar 18.5 g)
0.5 avocado (calories 184, fat 16.9 g, sugar 0.8 g)
gratted coconut (around 5g)(calories 33, fat 3.2 g, sugar 0.4 g)
20 g carrots (calories 8, fat 0 g, sugar 0.9 g)
20 g courgette (calories 3, fat 0 g, sugar 0.3 g)
10 g red pepper (calories 3, fat 0 g, sugar 0.4 g)
2 plums (calories 61, fat 0.4 g, sugar 13.1 g)

Afternoon snack:
1 plum (calories 30, fat 0.2 g, sugar 6.5 g)
1 banana (calories 90, fat 0.3 g, sugar 12.4g)
1 kiwi (calories 100, fat 1 g, sugar 16g)
7 dates (calories 164, fat 0.2 g, sugar 36.8 g)
5 dried apricot (calories 42, fat 0.1 g, sugar 9.4 g)

Dinner :
1 tomato (calories 3, fat 0, sugar 0.4 g)
40 g courgette (calories 6, fat 0 g, sugar 0.6 g)
20 g red pepper (calories 6, fat 0 g, sugar 0.8 g)
spinach leaves (calories 7, fat 0.1 g, sugar 0.1 g)

That give a total of 1042 calories, 24.1 g of fat and 147.4 g sugar
According to my age and height and weight I should be taken 1602 calories a day.
This diet is in fact low in calories and in fat. Most of my calories are not taking from fat. That's interesting.
I should maybe eat a bit more, I'll maybe have a fruit snack later.

Here is the recipe of the avocado dressing on the picture above.

What you need :

1 avocado
some spinach leaves
few slice of red chili
a bit of red pepper

Preparation :

mix everything

I had that for breakfast on Saturday morning as I was carving something salty.

For the dinner I had the fruits on the other picture.
Banana and peach with curry power on the top.
In the bowl you can see coconut milk, a sip of peach juice, curry and cinnamon powder.
I tried it later with more different fruits, that was delicious !!!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Christmas amigurumi : little bunny

En français
The second Christmas is a bunny that I made to my friend Jen in Philadelphia. It is a bit bigger than Melasse and completely blue. It also has a funny smile. I think she likes it, she decided that it's a boy.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

So annoyed by busy people

En français
The first thing I should maybe explain is what I mean by "busy".
I mean people who says so often that they are "busy" or "don't have time to do such an such" when in fact if they really wanted to they could probably find the time to do much more.
Maybe it's gonna be better with examples :
" I would really like to speak an other language but I really don't have time at the moment I need to go shopping for food" (For the third time in a week)
"I want my kids to be smart but I can't look at their homeworks cause I'm so busy working"
"I really want to go to /the cinema with you/your party/do some sport/.../ but I need to do that work"
... You see what I mean.

At first I felt guilty (yes yes, seriously) how comes I'm never busy... NEVER...
I want to go somewhere, do something... I just do it, seems pretty simple.
According to the logic of the "busy" people : I'm not supposed to BECAUSE I should be busy too.
AND I should be busy working !!!! Not having fun !!!
If you're busy reading "Angel Sanctuary" during your holidays it doesn't count, if someone ask for something you have to do it cause he is not on holiday, he is busy he doesn't have as much time as you so, just help OK.
Who can pretend reading is a serious activity anyway.
No one will ever dare say to his boss, I'm sorry I didn't to this part of the work cause I was so busy watching Buffy killing vampires... Be realistic a bit !!!
But why not, that would be pretty cool indeed to let the business on fun stuff be as important as the business on serious stuff.
That is where things get very complicated...
I'm NEVER "busy", I tried, seriously, I tried !! It's very very difficult to be that busy !!!
I mean if I got a plan to go hiking for example and a lots of work to do, I'm just gonna manege to have the work done in advance or to delay it to a better time and I even plane the case when I can find something fun to do by accident. If I'm busy, and something unexpected come up, I stop and go back later to my "business".

Then I decided to think a bit more and find out that I got nothing to be guilty about. People are finally never as busy as they pretend to be.
There is just three reasons why people are "busier" than me :

The first one is that they are using the "busy" thing to get rid of something they don't want to do.
Example : I don't want to go to the cinema with you because the movie you choose is totally bad and I hate the main actor anyway. But instead of telling you no I don't want to, I'm going to pretend I'm busy, stay longer at work even if that mean procrastinating and finally really believe that I'm busy, so you're not gonna be disappointed.
Yeah yeah there is a lots of people like that we all know at least one....

The second one is that they want to do it but are afraid to
Example : I want to do that but I'm afraid that people are gonna laugh at me if I fail or something... so I'm pretending to be busy at something else not to do it.
Most of the time they do that unconsciously, I think, I least I hope... that join a bit the cause of procrastination problem I discussed in an other post.

The third one in a question of priority :
My priority is the FUN !!!!
Wait a minute, I do every work on time, every boring daily(what ever) duty on time no problem !!
I just do it so that I can have as much fun as possible, that the thing I end up doing the most is having fun !!!
I can hear some people here : " Yeah, good for you, (but I'm not that organized, euh not that one), but I have important things to do, serious things to do, I'm working and I'm busy..."

Just the point here is I'm annoyed about people always tell me with a smile that I'm so great cause I do things that they can't do, like spending several hours on hobbies, because they are busy.
It's not me who have a problem with time, it's them, I don't have to feel guilty about not wasting my time with pretending to be busy when I'm not. They are just not honest with themselves.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Christmas amigurumi : the millipede

En français
For Christmas I decided to make amigurumi for my friends. The first I'm gonna present you is the millipede. It is about one meter long and is very flexible. It hasn't one thousand leg as his name says but only 120... lol.
It's kind of cute with his big smile and antennas. It made my friend very happy.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Raw food diet : cake-looking fruits

En français
I'm feeling fine on the diet so far. I still want to eat other people cooked food especially Sebastien's cause he is cooking what we are used to eat together, like yesterday night pizza for example. But he promised to make me one the week-end I left the diet, so that OK. I'm trying to take this diet like a game, on meal at a time. Anyway for Chinese new year I can eat whatever I want, and I got lots of ideas about that, you'll see.
Here is the recipe of the cake-looking fruits :

What you need :

slices of peach
3 apricots
2 bananas
1/2 avocado
grated coconut
some blueberries
some pomegranate

Preparation :

Mix the 2 bananas and the 1/2 avocado to make bananavo.
Put the slides of peach in a plate
Cover with half of the bananavo
Put the half of apricots
Cover with the rest of the bananavo
Cover with the grated coconut and with the blueberries and the pomegranate

That's amazing to me to discover how diversified raw food can be, I can't even imagine for cooked food.
There is so many recipes. I realized that most of the time we are eating the same food, the one that we know well and that we know how to cooked and prepare. But their is so many more to discover, just by trying something different.
This diet allow me to discover other flavor, for example I never had pomegranate before and I would never have though of trying avocado with fruits.
That's a great feeling. We'll see what I will discover in the next two weeks.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Raw foot diet : banana-coco balls

En français
I'm feeling OK on that new raw food diet, I can feel some detox effect like small headache and pain in the upper part of the body, but that's normal. I even tough it was a bit strange not to have it before the third day of the diet. Everything should desappear in few days and I should start felling the good side effects, I hope.

Here is the recipe of the dessert that I made to go with the Rawzagna.

What you need ?

2 banana
a bit of lime juice
grated coconuts

Preparation

Squash the banana with the lime juice in a bowl. Adding a liquid to the bananas when squashing them make it easyer.
Add coconuts and mix. You need add enough coconut to be able to form small balls with the mix.
Form small balls and roll them in more grated coconuts

It's ready !!

I made two others people test it. One didn't like it and the other one said it was funny.

Raw food diet : Rawzagna

En français
I decided few days ago to try a raw food diet as and experiment. I started last Monday and I'm supposed to last until Chinese new year that is the 26 of January or the week-end before if I have a Chinese International dinner.
That's not the first time that I'm "playing" with food. Few months ago I try to live on liquid food. I think I wasn't really prepared and that didn't last very long, just a week. The main problem was that seeing people around me eating yummy food was a bit frustrating. So this time I'm trying to make my food look more yummy than theirs, while actually eating only raw fruits and vegetables. I also use oil, vinegar, salt and spice but no sugar as there is already enough contained in the fruits.
So of course I'm creating raw food recipe, I'm very new at it so it's maybe not that elaborated. Be indulgent.

Here is my first recipe of rawzagna (that's like lasagna but without the lasagna)

What you need ?
(for what's on picture 1)

5 small tomatoes
1/2 small courgette
1/2 avocado
1/2 lemon
1 mushroom
marjoram
oregano
basil
chives
some spinach leaves

Preparation :

Marinara

Mixed 2 tomatoes, the 1/2 avocado, the 1/2 lemon, some of the spinach leaves, oregano and marjoram together.

Rawzagna

Cut the courgette and the last 3 tomatoes in slices
Cover a plate with courgette slices
Then cover with half of the tomato slices
Add the marinara on that
Cover with courgette slices
Cover with tomatoes slices
Cut the mushroom in slices and cover the tomatoes with them.
Put some basil and chives on the top.
The rest of the spinach leaves serve to decorate the plate.

The good thing about raw food is that you don't have to worry about it getting cold !!! :)
Next time I'll show you the dessert I created to got with it.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

I love hiraganas

En français
I know, I know I still don't know all my Kanji and I didn't finish Heisig yet... I know I'm supposed to learn the Kanji first... Am I acting like a bad girl ? Maybe yes but maybe I got really good reason for that !!!

So what happened with my learning of the Japanese writing system is that I started to get confused.
I felt very confused about being able to say things I can't write and understand written things I can't say.
Basically in front of a Japanese text I could understand the kanji (At least the ones I know so far) but couldn't read it aloud, and I'm also able to make complete sentences without being able to actually write them.
That's probably due to the fact that I'm still taking classes (without kanji).
I know that's not good at all, boring most of the time especially the first 1 hour 30 out of 2, very very slow and not real Japanese. The problem is that the teacher is happy to see me when I got there, cause lots of people gave up and I really care about the happiness of the people around. And eventually I would like to have the certificate that you get only if you go there... I'm a bit stuck here.

Anyway, what so great about knowing the hiraganas ?
First you can write everything, it's not real Japanese but Japanese kids start by learning that anyway.
And it's really easy... even after learning only about one third of my kanji what is 46 characters to learn compare to that. When I really started and stopped playing around it took me three days.
I used the Heisig method Remembering the Kana. It was even faster than the method said.
It allows me write every words we learn in class, and also to read the Karaoke of Dragonball Z songs when I watch the anime. Seriously it's great, when I see a Japanese text I can read a bit and have some sound as well.
Of course I still learn the kanji, can't do without kanji !!!

The first picure is a bit blurred but I couldn't resist putting it there as chibis are so cute. Click on it to see it clearly !!!

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Happy New Year !!

En français
I'm finally back from holidays.
To start the new year I would like to know which are your favorite topic on my blog.
So that I could write things you're interested in.
Can you please vote on the right for your favorite topic and leave comments ?

That 2006 and January 2008 pictures, I'm cheating a bit we still did get any snow here.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Monday, January 26, 2009

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Friday, January 23, 2009

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Friday, January 16, 2009

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Monday, January 12, 2009

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Friday, January 9, 2009

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

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