Home Cooking

Belgium doesn't have as many convenient, prepared foods as the U.S. Sure you can find frozen pizza and cheese croquettes, but we don't have a freezer--we only have a little dorm-sized fridge. This means that I spend more time shopping and cooking, which is sometimes frustrating, but we've probably also been eating healthier too.

Sometimes it's a struggle to find ingredients (especially of the Mexican variety) but for the most part I've learned how to find what I need and I've had fun improvising and trying new things. Endive and Brussels sprouts are vegetables we had hardly eaten before coming here, but I've learned to prepare both in delicious ways.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day I tried my hand at a new soda bread recipe. Even though I couldn't find cream of tartar, it turned out really well.

Last night I made some terrific portobella mushroom burgers with homemade aioli. Troy brought home frieten with samurai sauce (spicy and creamy fry sauce) to go with them. Mmmmm...

Food can be a powerful thing. I credit the homemade spring rolls I made last week with ushering in warm temps and sun this week!

Orchid

Belgians are crazy about flowers. There is a weekly flower market in Ghent that has all kinds of fresh cut flowers and plants. Plus, there seem to be lots of flower shops around. I've been coveting the many lovely orchids I see around town. But it seemed like a big splurge to me to get one...

...until Troy presented me with this one on Valentine's Day.


It's nice to have a little greenery and color around in this long waiting period before spring!

Hometown Publicity

I revised the Logos Foundation article I wrote for Flanders Today for our hometown, local paper to include more specifics about what Troy is up to in Belgium. Kind of fun to picture what the Rangers are thinking about that crazy robot guy! Check it out.

Extension

I'm happy to report that Troy applied for and received a 1-month extension on his Fulbright grant. That means the end of our lease in Ghent will be July 31. It will be great to be here for part of the summer and especially for the Gentse Feesten, a 2-week event featuring all kinds of music, theater, food and drink. It's the largest open-air festival in Europe, bringing in 1.5 million people each year. We hated to think we would miss such a party!

It's hard to believe that we've been here now for five months, and that our time is half over. We are finally starting to meet some people and feel more settled. We met a nice American couple through a Facebook expat group who we seem to have a lot in common with. And we've been going out for drinks with a fun Romanian couple. I guess right about the time we have to leave we'll be feeling like this is home. So goes the life of an academic and trailing partner I guess. Hopefully all this change and moving around will make me a more resilient and flexible person in the long run. It certainly has been an adventure!

Tante en Oom!

Well, we are tante (aunt) Lissa and oom (uncle) Troy once again! Troy's brother Casey and his wife Cassie welcomed their son Jack Casey into the world a couple of weeks ago. Here's a very early shot of the little cutie (stolen from Casey's fb page, hope he doesn't mind).


I'm excited to report that Jack has red hair! Yay! Since some have claimed that redheads are going to be extinct before long, this brings me some comfort. We can't wait to meet him!

We can't wait to meet our niece either, she's now 8 weeks old. Here's my sister and Ethan with Ria.

Winter Walking & Writing

Sorry for my lapse in posting, I've been trying to separate my blog posts into "regular life" and "Belgian life" (which you can read about here) and our Belgian life has been much busier lately!

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I've been lucky enough to find some writing work. Right now, I'm working on the third article in a winterwandeling (winter walking) series for Flanders Today, an independent weekly newspaper. It's been fun because it's gotten us out to different, beautiful areas of Flanders that we probably would not have gone to otherwise. We've been to a couple of gorgeous nature reserves and to an amazing arboretum that has redwoods.

The Bourgoyen nature reserve - outside of Ghent

But freelance writing isn't coming that easy to me. I'm up against another deadline and am having trouble concentrating. It takes me several days to write an article and I find myself getting easily distracted and needing all sorts of breaks. At times I find myself longing for the steady, clearly defined, well-paying job that I left behind.

The plus side of all this is that I've always enjoyed writing and now I'm gaining some great experience, both in writing and photography, because they are using my pictures with the articles. And I'm loving the flexibility of working from home. It will be interesting to see how this plays out when we head back to the States--especially with the economy still in the toilet.

It's surprising to note that we are now about halfway through our time in Belgium. The time has been flying!

Hello World!

And her name is... Ria Rain!

So beautiful!