I went on a business trip to Belgium last week. The trip was from Monday morning to Thursday evening so it was mainly a trip to the inside of airplanes and airports but I did actually see Antwerp for a few hours after 6PM on Tuesday and Wednesday night. On the plane ride over from Washington I chatted with a local couple from Belgium who suggested a few things to do in Antwerp. The first was to eat fine food. Horse meat was suggested as an excellent and highly underrated meat offered in local restaurants. But I didn't see anything listed as horse meat on menus where I travelled. We did manage to go out to a restaurant near the cathedral on Wednesday night that was in a building built in the 1600s with exposed thick wooden beams and a piano floating on some beams in the middle of the second floor. Since I was staying in my own hotel I walked the city both Tuesday and Wednesday night. Antwerp has some interesting architecture including a big old train station, the cathedral, and a cobblestone street lined with high-end clothing stores and old buildings. The city is a diamond town so there are many orthodox jews in the diamond district. They dress in traditional black outfits, men wear their hair shaved with two locks on each cheek, and many men sport giant furry round hats. I saw more than one family with a woman travelling through town with four children under the age of 6 pushing a double stroller and having little kids straggling behind them.

I felt lonely as I was travelling since I had left behind Sarah, Zachary, and Madeline. It might have been that spending so much time on airplanes and in a city where I didn't know anyone. I was and am glad to be home.

Posted by Dan Housman at 05:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In hanging around with people and trying to feed myself I learned a couple of interesting tricks for improving my life with food at home.

1. Use old eggs for hard boiled eggs - Sarah and I had been thinking that there was something wrong with the high-end eggs that we purchase from Whole Foods. We just couldn't seem to shell them after boiling them for hard boiled eggs and they would disintegrate because the eggs were attached to the shell. As it turns out Sarah's mom discovered, learned, or knew that using older eggs a few weeks after purchasing them generates an egg that is simple to peel after cooking. Something about the eggs changes to separate the binding between the shell and the egg over time. So it's good to wait before boiling them.

2. Save fresh bagels by slicing then freezing them - The folks down the road from us at Rosenfelds have superb bagels but we stopped buying them because they would turn into rocks on the shelf after about 2 days. Microwaving them softened them but also made them rubbery. Nick suggested that the best thing to do with fresh bagels would be to freeze them but to be sure to slice them first. This week we enjoyed some leftover bagels with a quick toasting and they turned out great.

3. Freeze old bananas (peeled) for treats - As bananas get old they get very sweet. I like those fruit popsicles like Banana flavored ones and it turns out that if you peel a banana that is over ripe instead of throwing it out that it makes a great ice cream like treat.

4. Put avocados in the fridge when they are ripe - Avocados are a fantastic food but a pain to get in the perfect state for eating. We noticed that you can refridgerate them once they reach the ripeness stage and they stay ripe. We also eat them in our frequent low carb dinner dish - Chicken Caesar salad w/avocados (a recommendation from Linda) so we always need fresh ones.

5. Half bottles of wine provide good luxury - Sarah and I like to drink wine with dinner but it is tough to drink a full bottle, well sometimes it is just too much wine for a Wednesday night. I have a preservation system but it is a pain to remember to do so we usually end-up drinking too much wine in an effort to satisfy my need to not waste things and finish the bottle. The half bottles sold locally cost about as much as a full bottle, about $10, but they are much better wines due to the lower volume. So we have bought some stock of these and use them with dinner. We also have taken the mini-wines that are about the size of a wine you would get on a plane on hiking day trips.

Posted by Dan Housman at 02:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)