Salads, cookies, risotto, more cookies and oh, I got tagged!

I’m so disorganized lately! I made food and took pictures, but didn’t get around to posting them. Oh well, here’s a big post with a bunch of stuff that I ate in the past (two?) weeks.

First up, salads.

On this plate: iceberg lettuce, red onion, tomato, kalamata olives, Vcon cashew ricotta and walnuts.

This one has cucumber, tomato, red bell pepper and olives with an olive oil and lemon juice dressing. So refreshing and full of flavour, I love eating this.

Moving on: cookies. Last weekend I had the annual ‘family weekend’ with my dad’s side of the family, where we all get together to do family stuff for a weekend. It was a lot of fun. We stayed in a village called Hapert near the Belgian border. I made some of Dreena Burton’s Home-style Chocolate Chip cookies to take with me, because those are so yummy. Some people tried them and said they liked them, too – yay!

For dinner on saturday (we had dinner at home on friday before we left and on sunday when we got back), my Mum and I made the mushroom/sundried tomato risotto from Vegan with a Vengeance, which was delicious as always:

While I was away, I happened to come across a store (‘Dille & Kamille’ in Turnhout) that sold (edible) dried lavender flowers, something I had been looking for around here but hadn’t been able to find. I bought a small package, but as you don’t need much of it in a recipe, I can make all kinds of things with them now! The first thing I tried:

They’re the Lemon Lavender Cookies from Celine’s blog here. They’re really sweet and special and, above all, delicious.

Look what I else I bought in that same city in a little second-hand store:

A strawberry-shaped teapot! I’d been looking for a teapot and now I found one that I like. I’m drinking so much tea this week because I love ittttt.

Umm, is that it? I think that’s it. Oh no, wait, I was tagged by Coppe about a week ago! To take part in this meme, I have to tell you five new things about myself. OK:

1. I’m a big procrastinator! This often leads to me sitting behind my computer working on school assignments in the middle of the night, the day before I’m supposed to turn them in, drinking a lot of rooibos tea and eating mandarin oranges (apparently I like this combination when I’m really tired?) with my headphones on, listening to music to keep me awake. I admit this isn’t the best way to handle things, but it seems to work for me. Well, not always. Most of the times.

2. I love watching foreign television channels. Since my parents switched to digital television, we have a lot more different channels and though I hardly watch television by myself, I occasionally enjoy watching the British, Spanish or Italian channels. I like the British shows about people looking to buy a house (somehow I hate the Dutch versions of these, but like these programs when they’re in English) and soaps on the Spanish channel. I don’t really understand what everyone’s saying on those (I sometimes catch a few words, like “But … you … now … children!”), but they’re kind of fun. Though unfortunately they’re far from vegan most of the times, I also like cooking shows in any language. It’s still cool to see Italian people sauté onions.

3. My hair is pretty long. People keep telling me it’s getting too long and that I should get it cut, but I don’t really want to. I like long hair. Maybe I’ll dye it. Hmm…

4. I suck at making decisions. Especially when it comes to choosing an education. When I was younger and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never knew what to answer. I still don’t! I hate this, but I guess I’ll just have to deal with it. Right now I feel like I’d really like to go study English, but I feel like I can never be sure. There are so many other cool things, too. Ugh. If anyone has any good advice on this, that’s actually very welcome.

And then I don’t know what city I’m going to, either. I mean, I like Leiden, but Nijmegen is nice as well, and so is Utrecht – and those are only the places I’ve visited! Then there are more places out there that I’ve never even been to, and those are probably awesome as well! GAH

Moving away from my rambling and on to something a bit more cheerful, point five:

5. One of the walls in my bedroom is orange and I love it. It makes me happy every time I look at it and it really makes me feel bad about ever moving out. I think I posted a picture of it on Flickr once, let me go and look for it…

Here’s one:

Pretty orange.

So, there you go! While doing this, I discovered it’s actually quite hard to think of interesting things about me. I guess I’m just that boring. OH WELL.

According to the rules, I have to tag five others now, but I think most people have already done this meme. It’s always interesting to learn more about fellow bloggers, though, so if you’d like to do this (again), I hereby declare you tagged. Oh, and Tuimeltje, I don’t think I’ve seen you do this yet, so I’m tagging you too. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to! But it would be interesting. Umm…

I promise to make my next post more cohesive. It will probably involve more baked goods, as there’s a high tea at my school next wednesday. I think I’m bringing cupcakes.

Oh, thanks to Coppe for tagging me!

One more thing: If you’re in Europe or are planning a trip to Europe and would like to find out more about vegetarian restaurants, hotels, pubs etc., check out this Flickr group! We now have lists for every country represented in the group, which makes it easier to find the place that you’re looking for.

Now… sleep.