This Week

My dinner of beet greens, lentils, and GF bread; mood board homework; and playing with my new yarn.

I might have been a bit too ambitious in the beginning of this project, posting everyday. But to my defense, the first week or so in a new place is always so exciting. It's hard once you start to slip into the routines of everyday life, going to class, come home, eat, grocery shopping. The need to explore becomes less immediate. I guess this is the time where one needs to move on to the next level of observation. Rather than simply seeing the more obvious differences and visually pleasing decorations around town, the eye needs to be tuned to the more subtle aesthetics. But all this rambling is just my excuse for not taking as many pictures lately. I've been writing lists instead. And knitting. KNITTING! This is possible because I somewhat accidentally stumbled up on a yarn store in town. It's more of a commercial style store, rather than the cute boutique knitting stores at home. Less shelves of lush colorful skeins, more bins of cheap acrylic mixes. But, I was able to find some 100% cotton in great fall colors for less than two euro each. I'm making another lacy cowl (simply for the fact that I only brought my circular needles). 

I've been cooking a lot lately, trying not to spend as much money on going out and prepared food. I figure if I'm good about cooking things in quantity, as to have leftovers for a few days, I will be more likely to snack on those lentils I made, rather than nibbling on my fancy g-free cookies and bread. I am working on perfecting my recipe-less, unmeasured breakfast risotto. I don't have my usual arsenal of spices here... right now it's only nutmeg, so I am trying to do very simple flavor profiles and make things more interesting by blending in other things. This morning I made a batch with somewhat less than perfect nectarines sauteed in butter cooked with the milky rice. Pretty good I must say. 

Classes this week went by so quickly. Not necessarily the most exciting, but there were a few highlights. I got to visit an artisan shoemaker with my footwear class. Saskia runs a pretty much one woman show making custom shoes in a lovely studio a short walk out of town. It was really interesting to see how things actually happen in a shoe. In our class we will only be making a simple ballerina flat, so getting to see how they do a fancy men's dress shoe was quite a treat. She even showed us a very special order she was working on, a pair of boots made with elephant (!!) hide.