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New shiny toy
Oct. 19th, 2011 10:37 amI didn't mention, did I, that I finally got myself a new notebook? The old one had become hopelessly sluggish, and besides it was eight years old, so a new one didn't seem like hair-raising luxury.
Since I'd had a long and happy relationship with the old one, I bought an Acer Travelmate again -- not here, because I can't write blind, i.e. a Cyrillic or English keyboard is a no-no -- but from amazon.de. Am very, very happy. Now I only need an external harddrive in order to transfer the iTunes library from old to new, and then there shall be formatting and giving the old one to Gerald, who is a computer maniac and always needs spare parts. (Not sure what his wife has got to say re. old computers accumulating at home, but that's not really my concern)
In other news, boss is being obnoxious. For the second day in a row, which is unusual. Or rather, to rephrase: he's in a bad mood, which means he (thankfully) stays holed up at his office, but when he does come out, he's being obnoxious, toddler fashion. I have, however, found out that the best thing to do in such cases is to treat him in a slightly frosty, perfectly polite but distinctly distant manner. It's a bit tough, not starting to laugh when he gets visibly disconcerted and doesn't know what to do anymore, but knowing him I know that in such moods he's just begging for a fight, and I'm certainly not going to give him that.
Ursula and Irene came to have dinner at my place yesterday. Since it was a working, albeit no-sports, day, I decided just to prepare some nice soup and have a bit of cheese, ham, olives etc. afterwards.
So I made my first ever pumpkin soup, and boy was it good. To be correct, it was pumpkin-potato-carrot soup, seasoned with fresh ginger, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon and cayenne pepper; before putting it in the blender I took out some of the carrot and potato and put them abck in the creamy soup afterwards. To go with the soup I served 1) white cheese with mint, "red pepper" (which isn't really pepper) and garlic, and 2) a mixture of parsley, olive oil, black pepper and freshly ground cardamom. Very, very yummy, and accompanied by a very nice Sauvignon Blanc. Macedonian, of course.
It's funny, really, that I hadn't discovered pumpkin and ocra earlier. We do have (and eat) pumpkin in Austria, of course, but it's just never been on the radar, and the use of ocra isn't really very widespread in Austria, except if you go to a Turkish or African place. So it was Macedonia where I first ate ocra -- in one of Slvica's unforgettable oven-made stews -- and the pumpkin was just a whim, when I ordered stuff by internet last week. I thought, well let's see what happened, and fell in love. Unsurprisingly, considering how good the mashed-potatoes-cum-pumpkin tasted. Somehow I'd always thought that cooking anything pumpkin-ish was lots of work for little reward, but it turned out that it's just the contrary.
Bugger. Now I'm hungry and it's only 10.30. 1,5 hours to go till lunch... *whimpers*
Since I'd had a long and happy relationship with the old one, I bought an Acer Travelmate again -- not here, because I can't write blind, i.e. a Cyrillic or English keyboard is a no-no -- but from amazon.de. Am very, very happy. Now I only need an external harddrive in order to transfer the iTunes library from old to new, and then there shall be formatting and giving the old one to Gerald, who is a computer maniac and always needs spare parts. (Not sure what his wife has got to say re. old computers accumulating at home, but that's not really my concern)
In other news, boss is being obnoxious. For the second day in a row, which is unusual. Or rather, to rephrase: he's in a bad mood, which means he (thankfully) stays holed up at his office, but when he does come out, he's being obnoxious, toddler fashion. I have, however, found out that the best thing to do in such cases is to treat him in a slightly frosty, perfectly polite but distinctly distant manner. It's a bit tough, not starting to laugh when he gets visibly disconcerted and doesn't know what to do anymore, but knowing him I know that in such moods he's just begging for a fight, and I'm certainly not going to give him that.
Ursula and Irene came to have dinner at my place yesterday. Since it was a working, albeit no-sports, day, I decided just to prepare some nice soup and have a bit of cheese, ham, olives etc. afterwards.
So I made my first ever pumpkin soup, and boy was it good. To be correct, it was pumpkin-potato-carrot soup, seasoned with fresh ginger, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon and cayenne pepper; before putting it in the blender I took out some of the carrot and potato and put them abck in the creamy soup afterwards. To go with the soup I served 1) white cheese with mint, "red pepper" (which isn't really pepper) and garlic, and 2) a mixture of parsley, olive oil, black pepper and freshly ground cardamom. Very, very yummy, and accompanied by a very nice Sauvignon Blanc. Macedonian, of course.
It's funny, really, that I hadn't discovered pumpkin and ocra earlier. We do have (and eat) pumpkin in Austria, of course, but it's just never been on the radar, and the use of ocra isn't really very widespread in Austria, except if you go to a Turkish or African place. So it was Macedonia where I first ate ocra -- in one of Slvica's unforgettable oven-made stews -- and the pumpkin was just a whim, when I ordered stuff by internet last week. I thought, well let's see what happened, and fell in love. Unsurprisingly, considering how good the mashed-potatoes-cum-pumpkin tasted. Somehow I'd always thought that cooking anything pumpkin-ish was lots of work for little reward, but it turned out that it's just the contrary.
Bugger. Now I'm hungry and it's only 10.30. 1,5 hours to go till lunch... *whimpers*
