Citrus fillets. How to get them.

Maybe you're like me and you don't like the tough white skins on citrus fruits. So when I realized that there's an easy way to cut around them and only have the orange flesh, I was in heaven.

And it's really easy to to, just follow the steps:


Cut off the top and the bottom of the orange. Just look for the navel and the stem and cut away about 5 mm / 1/4 inch thick slices from both ends. Make sure there is no white skin left - if there is, cut away another thin slice till the cut section looks all orange.

And now to something completely different. On IKEA hacker.

This is a short intermission. Sorry for being off-topic, but maybe you're like me and have more than just one hobby:
Today, you can see on IKEA hacker, what I did to my zebra bench and how I use it as coffee table. Here's the direct link to the post:

Bench and coffee table in one

Please update your bookmarks

Hello,

Please update your bookmarks to this blog to
www.lensandlentils.com 

I have decided to use my own domain from now on, but fear not:
You will be automatically redirected from blogger to the new web address.

Cheers,
Mel P.

I'm back!

Sorry for not posting for 2 months, but I'm back again after such a long time. There were 2 things my doctor diagnosed that somehow killed my appetite and my desire to cook: gastritis and fructose malabsorption.

The first thing meant taking antacids and not eating all that is worth living: hot food, acidic food, fried food, lots of proteins, alcohol. So, no chili, no tomato sauce on pasta, no fries, no steak, no red wine. The stomach pain is getting better now, but I still have to take the antacids for the rest of the year.

The fructose malabsorption is more of a long-term thing. The diagnosis alone took 6 days of hydrogen breath testing and it seems I will have it for the rest of my life. It's not such a big deal, but it's kind of unsettling if you believed for years you were lactose intolerant. It's a more of a double edged thing: I'm terribly happy that I can eat dairy products again, but on the other hand I have to skip apples, cherries, honey and some other tasty things. So many foods I believed were good and healthy are now "bad" for me . Quite confusing. Plus, I'm back to reading every single ingredient list when grocery shopping.
Oh, and additionally: If you have fructose malabsorption, you automatically have an intolerance against sorbit (sorbitol) and other sugar alcohols (mannitol, xylitol), as they block the the few fructose transporters still left - and it's impossible to eat 100% fructose-free.

Anyway, things are getting back to normal, I started cooking and reading recipes again and you will soon see some new stuff here. Oh, and summer vacation is not far, I'll be traveling to France for 3 weeks.

Favorite kitchen helpers

Hi there,

been a while. Today I wanted to show you my favorite kitchen helpers:

From left to right:

• Blender: 25 years old Osterizer, but still works like new. I just ordered a new blade and can't wait to test it out. Basically, I use it for smoothies and chopping nuts etc.


• Kitchen Aid: brand new and I love it! Was my dream for many years... I had several other machines, but it's no fun if the thing starts to smell like burnt plastic if you run it for more than 10 minutes. But this one: runs forever. I also got several attachments as gifts from my parents, of which the ice cream maker is my favorite.


• Pestle and mortar: nothing beats homemade pesto! The thing weighs 6kg and is made of granite. And the pestle is a great ersatz ice crusher.


• Microwave: nothing beats the fast heat. Great to melt chocolate or to sauté onions if you can't be bothered with heating up a pan. Just chop the onion, but it in a bowl with a generous amount of butter and nuke it on high for 2 min.


• Henry: he's my cat, always there and always watching what I'm doing - he really is into cooking! He even stays when I cut onions, poor thing blinks because of the tears building up in his eyes. One crazy cat...

Mel