How close it too close

Many years ago, taking a picture took time and a good deal of precision. Film and developing wasn’t exactly cheap and people couldn’t afford to waste their shots.

With the digital camera, shooting images became a whole lot easier. If a shot went wrong, the image could just be deleted. Still, not everyone carried a camera with him and beautiful opportunities were often missed.

With the arrival of the camera-equipped cellphone, amateur photographers were in seventh heaven, they could now photograph anything and everything to their heart’s content. I’m one of those people.

Animals are by far my favorite subject. Not only do they not mind being photographed, they don’t fuss that they have they change their outfit, brush their hair, or touch up makeup. One can capture them any time of the day, whether when they just get up or about to go to sleep and they always look good.

Over the years I’ve snapped hundreds of pictures of various pets and not one has ever complained about how he or she looks.

Other than pets I’ve photographed other creatures too: ostriches, ducks, swans, pigeons, raccoons, squirrels and even butterflies (if they would sit still long enough).

Today I wanted to take advantage of one of the last warm days of the year and decided to have my lunch in the swing set on the balcony. When I got there, plate of spaghetti and glass of juice in hand, I noticed that someone (or shall I say something) had the same idea as me.

Right smack in the middle of the swing set sat a bug. It wasn’t a big fly, and it wasn’t a bee or a wasp, it was something else. It was black and grey, with six legs and wings. It wasn’t a dragonfly, it was smaller than that but still big enough to make me think twice of sitting next to it or shooing it away.

So I did the next best thing … I got my phone and was going to snap a picture of it. Phone in hand I came back outside and aimed the lens. The view wasn’t good enough so I zoomed in.

Apparently, the bug was camera shy because it slightly moved. Sit still, I thought, just sit still long enough for me to get this shot so I can show you on Facebook.

Suddenly the lens went black, I didn’t see a thing anymore.

I turned my phone over to find out what the problem was, and right there, on the lens sat the bug. He must have thought … You want a close up, I’ll give you a close up.

With a blood-curdling scream, I threw the phone from my hands. Fortunately, my phone landed on the seat of the swing set. Unfortunately, I’ll never know what this UFB (unidentified flying bug) was.

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How to make ‘tomat crevette’

Yesterday’s blog post “How to make the perfect fries” received a record amount of views. Just under 5,000 people showed an interest in this Belgian recipe.

As far as I could tell there were no Belgian readers, but in other parts of the world men and women are now a step closer to putting perfect fries on the table.

Statistics show that this blog is most popular in France, closely followed by the United States. Other readers are from Romania, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Latvia, Cyprus, Philippines, Ukraine, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

So now that a good number of people know how to make perfect fries, they might wonder what to serve with those fries. In short, anything and everything goes. You can serve fries with steak, with an omelet, with goulash, with a salad … you name it and it works.

However, in Belgium we are particularly fond of serving fries with “tomat crevette”, which is a tomato stuffed with shrimp.

If you want to make this, there’s nothing to it. Even if you have two left hands at cooking, you can’t go wrong with tomat crevette.

What you’ll need for two people:

Two tomatoes

200 grams of shrimp

Mayonnaise

Pepper and salt

Preparation:

Take the tomatoes and plunge them in boiling water for no more than 10 seconds. Remove the tomatoes and submerge them in ice cold water.

With a sharp knife peel the tomatoes, slice off the “hat” and remove the inner flesh of the tomatoes.

Mix the shrimp with mayonnaise and some salt and pepper, spoon the mixture in the tomatoes, and put the hat of the tomato back on.

Serve on a bed of lettuce.

There, that’s it, that’s all there is to it.

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How the make perfect French fries

Being from Belgium, land of the best chocolates, pastries and French fries, I am frequently asked how to make those delectable cakes, tarts and petit fours.

I tell everyone the same thing … I have no idea. When baking skills were handed out, I was not exactly in the front row. In fact, I think I wasn’t even in the room.

As for making the perfect French fries, there I can help you out.

To make good fries, it’s vital that you start off with a good potato. Finding the right potato can take a while. You might think that all potatoes are suitable for French fries, but nothing is further from the truth. And not only does the potato have to be the right kind, it has to be rock hard. If the potato is slightly soft, it cannot produce a good fry.

Once the potatoes are peeled, place them in cold water. The colder the better and leave them there for about an hour.

Next, take a clean towel and thoroughly dry the potatoes. Place the towel on the kitchen counter and cut the potatoes into thick slices, about the size of a finger. Then cut the slices into fries, also about a finger thick.

When you’re done, work the towel over the fries so that they’re as dry as possible. Next place the fries in a pot and cover them with the towel.

In a French fries cooker pour about a liter of oil. This can be sunflower oil or vegetable oil and heat it up to maximum heat. If you have an electric cooker a light will tell you when the oil is ready. If you have a stovetop cooker, drop one fry in the oil and when it sizzles the oil is ready.

Place the raw fries in the oil and turn down the heat. After a few minutes, lift the fries out of the oil, leave them to cool for about one minute and then place them back in the oil.

When the fries are golden brown, lift them out of the cooker and shake off excess oil. Place kitchen paper on a serving tray and pour the fries on the tray. The kitchen paper will absorb any remaining oil.

Lightly sprinkle with salt. Serve plain, with mayonnaise, ketchup, or gravy.

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Are we our own worst enemy?

I’m in a slump. Those of you who know me know that I took up coloring in December of last year. Alex, a long time friend drew my attention to this hobby as a way of relaxation and a cure for insomnia.

Relaxation and a cure for insomnia? … that’s all she had to say, I had to try this as I’m frequently stressed and toss and turn for hours in bed.

I got myself a book and some pens and got started. And I found that Alex was right, almost immediately I felt a lot calmer, slept better and found tremendous joy in coloring.

Ten months down the line all that has changed.

Theodore Roosevelt said “Comparison if the thief of joy” and I found this to be quite true. Since starting the coloring hobby I joined three coloring groups on Facebook and when I compare my work to some of the colorings I see I get depressed. Others’ work is so much better than mine.

Some say that coloring is not a competition, and I know that, but I’ve always expected the best of myself. I also know that some colorists are professionally trained and my work can’t be as good as theirs, but I want at least to see an improvement in my colorings.

Alex will shake her head over this and say that I should just color for my own enjoyment, but that’s just it, I don’t find joy in coloring anymore, only frustration.

Someone in the group mentioned that if we could be half as considerate of ourselves as we are of others, we would be happier. And this is true, why do we have to be so hard on ourselves?

This reminded me of what a Canadian ten-pin bowling coach ones said to me … “When we miss a spare we berate ourselves with “How could you miss that!” … “How could you be so stupid!” … and more of such critical words. When a teammate missed a spare we say … “Oh don’t worry about it, you’ll get next time.”

Are we our own worst enemy? 

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Moments of confusion

We’ve all known moments of confusion. Times when we go to the kitchen or bedroom to get something, and don’t remember why we went there in the first place. Or looking for reading glasses while wearing them. But here at the house of Manero, confusion takes on a whole new meaning.

The other day I send Dieter to the store for groceries. Since there were quite a few items I urged him to write them down. Dieter whipped out his cell phone, called up the notes app, and declared himself ready. We needed steak, veggies, cat food, bathroom tissue, ice cream, dishwashing liquid, and bread.

When he came home I unpacked the bag. I found everything I asked for, except for dishwashing liquid. “How could you forget?” I asked. “You wrote everything down.”
Yeah well, the long and the short of it was … he hadn’t looked at his phone.

He offered to go back to the store, but no, the dishwashing liquid could wait a day. I would turn the bottle upside down and squeeze out whatever was still in there.

The next day Dieter went back to the store. This time, he didn’t need to write anything down as the only item needed was dishwashing liquid. 

He came home with a bag, packed with stuff.

“What did you all bring?” I asked.

“I found quite a few things on special,” he said. 

Out of the bag came a bag of grapes, a tray of strawberries, a tray of chicken breasts and a bag of cat nibbles. 

“And the dishwashing liquid?” I asked.

Oh shoot, that he’d forgotten.

Something else Dieter frequently forgets is to replace the plastic bag in the kitchen waste holder. When I see the bag is full, I remove it, knot it up and drape another plastic bag over the holder. When Dieter sees that the bag is full, he removes it and knots it up, but neglects to replace the old bag with a new one. Now you know what I’m going to say … the next time something needs to be thrown away, I go to the kitchen, open the waste holder and … yes, you guessed it, whatever was in my hand is now on the floor.

You might say … “Don’t you see that there isn’t a bag in the holder?” and the answer is … no, I’m so used to there being a bag there that I don’t pay attention.

But speaking of paying attention …

Last Sunday we were going to have chicken with potatoes, along with a salad of baby spinach and tomatoes. I peeled the potatoes and placed them in cold water.

Next, I washed the spinach and the tomatoes and drizzled them with olive oil and lemon juice.

About 45 minutes later Dieter asked if the chicken was almost ready. The plan was that while I took care of the finishing touches, he would set the table.

Chicken? … Chicken! I had clean forgotten about the chicken. Not only was it not almost ready, I hadn’t even placed it in the oven yet!

So you see, we’re both scatter brains. Put the two of us together and … well, you have a recipe for disaster. 

Perhaps our biggest blunder happened a few years ago in downtown Toronto.

We were walking along King Street when a man stopped us to ask for directions. “Excuse me,” he said, “can you tell me where Bay Street is?” And that’s when it happened … Dieter pointed to the left, while I pointed to the right. The man looked at us with a frown above narrowed eyes. He didn’t have to say anything, I knew what he was thinking … These two can’t be trusted.

I’m rather good at giving directions, but Dieter is terrible. I’ve heard him on occasion and honestly … some of the people he was trying to help might have ended up in Alaska.

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The price is ... wrong

Quite a few of us are familiar with “The Price is Right”, a TV show where contestants guess the price of various items, ranging from a car to a bottle of shampoo.

Everyone who watches the show invariably guesses along with the contestants. Some are quite good at it while others don’t seem to have a clue about retail. I’m one of those people.

With little things, such as groceries I’m pretty good with guessing prices, but where it comes to bigger items such as lawn mowers, cars, and real estate, I’m way, way off.

My latest miscalculation involves a window. Not an ordinary window, but a fake one. Let me explain …

I recently found myself in the basement of a building. Even though I was several feet underground, I saw windows everywhere, displaying lifelike images of a sun-drenched forest, a babbling brook, and a beautiful coastline. Since I was in the heart of Toronto, all of those scenes were quite impossible. But it was a nice idea to make the basement less claustrophobic.

Not only did the windows display clear images, they were accompanied by birdsong. Throughout the basement, I heard what I thought were finches, chickadees, canaries, nightingales and a few birds I couldn’t identify.

I was so smitten with the idea that I asked for the name of the manufacturer of these windows, and once home I looked up the website. Since no prices were listed, I contacted the seller by email.

“This won’t come cheap,” Dieter warned me. Yeah well, maybe not, but a window like this would look great in my bedroom and kitchen. Not only would the window make for a great look but the birdsong would help me fall asleep. If such a window cost $200 or $300 it would be worth it.

When the seller emailed me back the next day my dreams were crushed and I was once again reminded just how bad I am with guessing the cost of items. The window did not cost a few hundred dollars but … (are you sitting down?) $13,000. Needless to say that my idea of this beautiful window went out the window.

I’m not the only one bad at guessing prices. Where it comes to my son, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

He recently had his heart set on turtles, miniature aquarium turtles. He guessed these little critters to be $10 or $20 each.

Before rushing out to buy these aquarium turtles he went online to research their ideal habitat. He would need an aquarium filled with a little water, some dry land, rocks, moss, and a special light to keep the turtles warm. All of this was doable, the miniature turtles, however, were not.

Dieter has grossly underestimated their cost. When he visited a pet store, he found out that these turtles cost $240 each. So that idea went out the window too.

Needless to say, neither of us are likely to apply to be a contestant on “The Price is Right”.

I'm leaving

Fall has arrived. Yes, I know, officially fall arrived on September 21^st but on that day, and the days that followed, Toronto enjoyed a bright sun in a blue sky and a temperature warm enough to be outside in shirt sleeves.

Today all that has changed. The sun is nowhere to be seen, the sky is a mass of grey clouds, and it’s cold. To make matters worse, it’s raining, and rain always makes a day seem even colder.

Ordinarily, I love a rainy day, the harder it rains the better I feel. I get really creative or I curl up on the sofa with a good book, with tea and chocolates within reach.

When I have to go out I don’t like a rainy day quite as much. I have to put on a jacket and instead of sunglasses take an umbrella along. Not that an umbrella guarantees me staying dry, I’ve had more than one umbrella ruined when the wind blew it inside out.

Some might say that fall is beautiful, and I agree. The Don Valley in Toronto displays a magnificent array of colors, but for how long. Soon those yellow, orange and red leaves fall off the trees and then they lay on the ground, rotting away. Except for chrysanthemums flowers are dying and nature loses all its color.

And from here on it’s only going to get worse. If meteorologists are to be believed, we’re having a tough winter ahead of us. We’ve had a wonderful long hot summer, so they are predicting an awful long and cold winter. Ugh, I can just imagine, temperatures way below zero, snow up to our ears, black ice … well, it is Canada.

If Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, to me this is the most miserable time of the year. Fall has only just started and I’ve already had enough of it.

In winter, with packs of snow, nature at least gets transformed into a magical landscape and there’s some fun to be had. Skiing, ice skating, throwing snowballs at each other, but what’s to be done in the fall … throwing wet leaves at each other?

Maybe I should do like the Canadian geese, head south and wait for winter to pass. I can’t fly, but I can walk.

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