111 Biscotti

Let me es-plain...no, there is too much. Let me sum up: we visited Provence for two lovely weeks, returned home only to discover a plumbing/plaster disaster, were displaced for nearly two weeks, both got sick with sinusy stuff, and though we were able to move back into our apartment on the 13th, are STILL dealing with various problems created by Count Rugen and Crew i.e. the evil plumbers. (Don't tell me you're not getting the Princess Bride references...)

Anyway, after a Saturday spent packing, moving, unpacking, and cleaning (well, and a lovely party that evening at my friend Marta's house, so it was not all bad) we decided to have a rather chill Sunday. We visited the Flagey market to get The Waffle and pick up the last few ingredients I needed for my Sunday afternoon baking project: Biscotti.

Troy's birthday is June 15th, and fell on a Monday this year--a day on which he had French class as well as work. Here in Brussels (and perhaps elsewhere in Europe too) the tradition is for the birthday person to bring in treats to share at the office. Troy decided to take it one step further by bringing them to his French school as well. To cover that many people, we decided that I would whip up a double-batch of what has become my signature cookie: Citrus Almond Biscotti.

I am not a huge baker, but started baking biscotti a few years ago when I returned to Colorado after the summer I lived in Italy. They are not technically difficult to make, but are rather time-consuming, largely due to all the slicing, baking, turning, and re-baking required. (A biscotti trivia: the name is actually derived from the baking method. It loosely translates as "twice cooked".)

I started out with this:



And spent the afternoon and evening transforming it into this:



Troy had fun sharing the cookies with his colleagues and classmates, many of whom were surprisingly unfamiliar with biscotti. According to Troy, they were a big hit!

For his actual birthday, Troy requested a home-cooked meal since we had spent the better part of the last month eating out. He had asked for Mexican food, but said he didn't much care as long as I was making it. Somewhere in the midst of list-making and menu-planning, I decided to add a little bit of trickery to the evening (you've got to keep things interesting somehow). So, I called him at work and asked if he would mind a menu change, spouting off a set of complicated Italian dishes to back up my ruse. In the two hours I had between when he came home from work and returned again from French class, I managed to make the real meal, a Spanish-Mexican fusion of guacamole and chips, spicy white beans, chicken fajitas with all the fixins' and sangria.



Troy was totally tricked and the meal was delicious, a winning combination in my book. Given the craziness of the preceding few weeks, I did not have time to bake a cake like last year. So, instead we settled for scoops of vanilla bean ice cream topped with the drunken sangria fruit and crumbled biscotti. I even found a little candle to make it festive. All and all, it turned out to be a bon anniversaire.

An Unwelcome Surprise

You know that old adage, "Never let the evil plumber into your house unsupervised whilst in Provence"? Oh wait, that's not an adage. But it is sage advice indeed, as this is what you might come home to:

Unfortunately, we did not have a choice as there were some pretty serious leaks in our ceiling that needed to be repaired while we were out of town. We did what we could to prepare, including speaking to the workers directly about the need to respect our home and possessions, but to no avail.

We arrived home from a spectacular holiday in Provence to discover this disaster. Calls were made, voices were raised, tears were shed, teeth were gnashed, police were visited, plumbers were fired. In a word, we were dumbfounded. And, as nasty as these pictures are, they do not even compare with the real thing.

Needless-to-say, our house is uninhabitable for the present, so we are living in temporary quarters down the road (on Rue Jourdan, between Place Louise and Place Stephanie for those of you who are familiar with Brussels). It is a bit nicer to have a place of our own than to be stuck in a hotel, so we are trying to make the best of our current predicament by looking for the bright side of things.

This is the view out our front windows. It's not every day that you see random store openings that include DJs, dancing girls, and random happy picketers.

This is the back view. It's like Dickens come to life or perhaps like stepping into the world of the chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins. And that's certainly a new experience for most, right?

Our stove goes to 11. (Ok, so we might be reaching when vague Spinal Tap jokes are our bright side, but work with me here.)

The kitchen is a bit limited, but I did manage to make a really wonderful, Provençal-inspired Salade Niçoise one night for dinner.

 

So, in the words of the Kaiser Kid, "Things are looking up".