How to plan a dinner date

Dear all,

I really need to apologize for not posting anything for over two months. It's horrible I know! But I do have my reasons, hehe. I started writing columns for the school website (http://tabor.nl/index.php?id=1262) so I spent about three hours a week writing one. It keeps me busy!

So, to make it up to you, here is a how-to on dinner dates. Me and my friend Sharona are hosting one tonight for a couple of our friends. We just went grocery shopping and want to tell you about how we came up with the idea...

Our winter break started last Friday (yes we've got two weeks off!) and we wanted to organize something nice for friends. (5 to 6 people). First we were thinking about making the dinner together, but that would get too complicated and you never know if somebody doesn't like the meal. So, in the end we decided to grill (also known as 'gourmetten' in Dutch). At our house we have a grill (see picture) for about 6 persons so that was perfect! We made some simple invitations telling our friends about what to wear, to bring money (10 euros = 13,18 dollar) and to come over at 5. We're counting on five people for tonight so we went shopping for the groceries around about 50 euros. We ended up spending 51,19 euros so we did a great job hehe!

What we bought:

-steak, meat, etc.

-french bread

-herb butter

-cheese (Brie)

-mushrooms

-cucumber

-peppers

-sodas

-lettuce

-chips

-salad dressings (lemon & honey mustard)

-pickles

-onion

-salmon

-cashew nuts

-vanilla ice cream

-chocolate sauce

-eggs

-pancake mix

-fruit topping for the ice cream

-chocolateeeee of course! :)

As we just mentioned, our friends are coming over at 5. We're gonna eat some snacks and then prepare the food together (cutting up veggies and the bread, etc.).

And, because it's almost Christmas and we wanted to have a dress code, we decided to ask our friends to come in formal clothing (black dresses, heels etc.) for fun :)

We hope we have a great night!

(Pictures are coming up!)

We want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy & healthy new year :)!

Love,Rachelle & Sharona

Loveee this salad

Hello you,

A couple of weeks ago, I went to have lunch with my friend Sharona and I just got hold of the pictures haha! The 'summer salad' as it was called, tasted great and it's pretty easy to make yourself! You just basically empty your fridge hehe.
-cucumber
-pickles
-lettuce
-melon
-olives
-ham
-peppers
-any kind of nuts

The bagel that we ate the salad with, contained lettuce, mozzerella, tomato and italian herbs.


Love,Rachelle

My Dutch Side

Dear all,
I'm sorry for not posting anything earlier. Besides the fact that I've been busy, I've also been thinking about a certain article I'd like to write (no, I'm not giving any hints!). Today, and the last few days have been horribly bad. The weather's been no different than rain, wind and coldness. Instead of going to the beach, me and my friend Claudia stayed in and made 'pepernoten'. That is a Dutch treat that you buy/bake during November and December. On December 5th, there is this Dutch holiday called Sinterklaas. Now you're asking me about a longgg story haha. You should look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas

I really wanted to bake the pepernoten ['pepper nuts'] even though my friend broke her wrist. Anyway, we managed to get the ingredients mixed together and put the pepper nuts on the baking plate! :)

WHAT YOU NEED:
100 gr. of butter
250 gr. of self-rising flower
100 gr. of fine sugar
1 teaspoon of syrup
30 gr. of cinnamon
10 gr. of nutmeg
5 gr. of white pepper
5 gr. of coriander
5 gr. of anise
HOW TO:
Put the oven on 175 C.
Knead all the ingredients with moisture hands (makes it easier to knead!)
Take bits of the mix and make these into small balls, flatten them when you put them on the baking plate.
Put the pepper nuts in the oven for 20 minutes and let them cool down afterwards.

ENJOY :]

Love,Rachelle

Barbeque Recipe

Dear all,

Since we´ve been barbequing almost every day, we´ve tried many things on our grill. My favorite is and always will be is mushrooms with bacon. It´s soooo good! The salad (read below) makes it even better. So for all you people out there willing to take a risk and try something new while barbequing, instead of the boring old burgers and sausages: here you go!

• Lettuce
  
• An onion
  
• 150 gr. Slices of bacon
  
• 250 gr. Mushrooms
  
• 150 gr. Goat cheese
  
• Oil
  
• Vinegar
  
• Salt
  
• Pepper
  
• A grill
  

  
  

  Love, Rachelle

Bretagne's Summer Salad

Dear all,

Since I signed up for Weekly Hit Counter Summary, I am able to see how many times my site has been read. I'm really gratefull for everyone that comments on my blogs, gives me good subjects to write about, and all of that! So thanks :)
I'm in France (Betagne) right now and we've been eating a lot of good food here. One of the salads that my mom made this week is the one below. It's really summerish and light.
Sorry for this really short blog, but I'm running out of internet-time because we have to pay for it per hour ;) Enjoy!

Summer Salad (4 persons):
- lettuce
- big piece of grilled octopus (3 ounces)
- 1 onion (sliced)
- 4 slices of lemon
- cajun herbs
- salt
-pepper
-oil
-vinegar


Love,Rachelle

The 1,2,3,4 Apple Pastry

Neeeext recipe! :)

This is what my friend and I had for desert last night. It's so easy to make and you're done in about thirty minutes.

Apple Pastry ( 1x)

1 piece of puff pastry

a half or a fourth of an apple

1 spoon of (vanilla)sugar

1 spoon of cinnamon

Put the oven on 225 Celcius (437 Fahrenheit!)

Mix the sugar and cinnamon together

Slice the apple's skin off, take out the core and slice the apple in either halves or fourths (depending on how big the apple and the puff pastry are).

Throw the pieces of apple in the bowl of sugar+cinnamon and cover the apple completely.

Put a piece of the apple on the puff pastry and throw on even more sugar and/or cinnamon.

Take the corners of the puff pastry and bring them together right above the apple, so you're not able to see the apple anymore. Now, okay this is kind of not healthy, but put on some more sugar+cinnamon on top of the pastry. haha.

You can now put a little bit of water on top, just enough so the pasty is wettish.

Put your pasty in the oven for about 20 minutes. If I were you, I would take a look at your pastry a couple of times because I saw that the sugar on top started to melt and drip off.

Enjoy! =]

Loveeee,

Rachelle

Sonja Sandwich

Heyyyy there people!

I'm so sorry I haven't posted anything in like...weeks?!

So, first of all I needed to apologize for that.

Now, me and my friend Sharona made some really good sandwiches for dinner last night. So I thought, why not share it with you guys. The recipe doesn't really have a name, as far as weknow, so I'm just gonna call it the Sonja Sandwich. Sonja Bakker is a Dutch nutritionist who created her own diet called the Sonja Bakker diet. She wrote books and has/had(I thought they stopped publishing it...) her own magazine. My friend got this recipe from Sonja's magazine, nameless. haha.

Honestly, I never cook so I was scared I would burn everything and set the kitchen on fire, but luckily that didn't happen. So, for all you beginners out there - this is like sooooo easy.

The Sonja Sandwich ( 4 persons)

4 slices of bread

8 thin pieces of raw ham

2 mozzarella's

3 peppers (red, yellow and green)

a handful of cherry tomatoes

100 gram of arugula

1 clove of garlic

2 spoons of olive oil

1 spoon of balsamic vinegar

fresh grounded pepper and salt

wash and slice the peppers. Don't forget to remove the seeds. It doesn't really matter how big your pieces are, but I would slice them in fourths. Grill the peppers for about ten minutes (you could also use your oven or your bread toaster if you're as daring as me haha) Slice the tomatoes in halves and slice the mozzarella's in big pieces. Cut up the garlic as fine as possible. Mix the garlic with the olive oil. Toast the slices of bread first or put them in the oven with the garlic+olive oil right away for a couple of minutes (just stay in the kitchen...!) Take the slices of bread out of the oven/toaster and put them on a plate. You can now grill the ham with your bread toaster or put them on your sandwich. Take a handful of arugula for each piece of bread, and put the peppers, cherry tomatoes and mozzarella on too. And to finish it off, sprinkle some pepper and salt on top of your sandwich.

=] , I hope you like it, I know I did!

It looks really inviting, so colorful too - great for a dinner party!

Love,

Rachelle

Cucumber salad!

Okay, so I've had this salad before. But I never really realised how much I actually like it and how easy it is to make it yourself! My mom is just so good at it! :-)

all you will need is:

* a cucumber

* SWEET chili sauce

-cut off the skin of the cucumber
- take out the seeds

-slice the cucumber in small pieces (thumb-sized)

-put the pieces in a bowl

-add sweet chili sauce (start with two tea spoons and see for yourself how much you like)

-mix it, so the chili sauce covers every piece of cucumber

and, done!

Enjoy,

Rachelleeeee.

How to make your own brownies!

Ah, brownies. Don't we all love them? And really, they're so easy to make. Just follow the instructions on the box with the brownie mix. The only hard part is to wait for it to cool down after you take them out of the oven (need...to...resist...the...brownies....got...to...wait...a..little...longer...). Since we put on some extra chocolate frosting, it took about four(!) hours for the frosting not to be sticky or gooey anymore. Okay, it was a really thick layer. But it definitely was worth the wait! Great brownies, with extra chocolate frosting and four different types of sprinkles. Uhm, chocolate heaven?

Shout out to my dear friend Margriet who I made these amazing brownies with! You go girl!

Love,

Rachelle