Belgian Frites and Gooseberry Crumble

Brussels is a soaking wet cat of a city today, although not quite as wretched as London, which, according to the BBC, is experiencing monsoon-like conditions tonight. This weather equals - no moving. No way is this vegan cowgirl going to mess with her coiff. I have Leonard Cohen to see tomorrow night. So, rather than shifting boxes and cd containers, some baking and our vegan version of Brussels' famous frites are on the cards for tonight's activities.

Earlier, after leaving K at the campus, I headed home. Poor K was staring forlornly at his soggy looking cheese sandwhich (chesse!! I can't believe I kiss you with these lips), while I came home and chomped on some really fresh carrots, tomoato and my favourite - cauliflower. It wasn't all rawtastic, I had a little pot of hummus to keep the veg company in my belly.


After lunch I headed to the gym, and I couldn't help but laugh at myself as I followed my chest workout with a hilarious bike ride. Picture this - Lynnie sweating her heart out on a stationary bike, getting all huffy and puffy at the end of my 25 km ride, WHILE watching the Tour de France...I looked down at my distance counter...18km...I look up at the T.V......153 km. Hilarious.

After a walk in the rain, and a quick shop stop at Shanti, we settled on showing the Belgians how to do one of their specifialities vegan-style. Tonight's quick, but, healthy meal, is frites avec pumpkin burgers. I admit to having no hand in this little cultural challenge, choosing to stick with the baking component of tonight's noshing.

For the first time, I snipped off the ends of some gooseberries, and added them to some blueberries, oatmeal and some maple syrup. A nice warm treat for my tummy. Before now, my only experience with Gooseberries was teaching the immensley dense Anton Chekov short story entitled Gooseberries. Can I just say that I abhorred teaching that story...no one liked it, not even me....I couldn't wait until I could re-write that syllabus.

Update: Gooseberries are by far the most delcious little berries to pop out of the molten lava of our Earth's interior...ok, so it isn't really molten lava, more like, really hot nickel and iron and some bubbling rocks...but, let's not split hairs. They are brilliant - all pink and white in their transparent, but, colourful way. Sweet and sour, hard and squishy. Little contradictions. The crumble turned out wonderfully. I am not tooting my own gooseberry-baking horn - it was all them and their great flavour. The photo turned out much too blurry for my liking, but I will share it anyway....just because.