Banana oat cookies

 Ingredients:

2 bananas

100 g oats (2 cups)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Peel the bananas and mash them up in a bowl with a fork.

Add the oats and mix it all together.

Make small balls and put them on a baking sheet (press down on the balls to flatten them, if you like) and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Puff pastry rolls

Ingredients:

1 roll of puff pastry

1 pot of sour cream (or cream cheese with spices)

100 g (2 cups) grated cheese

1 package of diced bacon

Alternatives/variations:

As an alternative to the bacon salmon works great, too. There's a ramson cream cheese here in Germany that I think is a nice combination with that. I haven't tried other variations personally. Write in the comments, what combinations you tried.

Shopping tip:

Unless you're grating your own cheese, they will sell 200 g packages of cheese in Germany only. So might want to think of doubling the amounts and make one with bacon and another with salmon.

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C (392 degrees F)

Roll out the puff pastry and first spread the sour cream on it. Make sure to cover the edges, too, otherwise the rolls on either end of the roll will be "slim".

Next spread the bacon/salmon on it.

Lastly put on the grated cheese.

Now you're going to roll it. There are 2 variations: Rolling it from the short end will give you fewer rolls, but they'll be bigger. About 10. Or 2: Roll up the long side. It's a bit more tricky, because it's longer, but it'll give smaller and more rolls. About 16.

I personally prefer smaller rolls and cut mine about the size of the tip of my thumb to my first knuckle. Which usually is about 16-18 rolls. Place the rolls on a baking pan with some space between them. They will rise.

Put the rolls in the oven for about 15 minutes, depending on how brown you want them to be.

The rolls can be eaten hot or cold.

Enjoy!

Rolls with diced bacon:

 

Salmon rolls:

Cherries

One of our assistant doctors has a cherry tree (actually his father) and he already came the past days with cherries. I told him I'd take a larger amount from him to make jam from it. Of course he'll get a jar, too.

Today he brought me a basket full. I weighed it at home. Basket and cherries: 10.1 kg (22.3 stone).

A very dear colleague helped me getting the basket to the park deck and called a cab from the main entrance to me. It was easiest that way, especially since it's been raining on and off today. A few steps from the cab to my apartment weren't that difficult.

I took a couple of hand full and put them in the kitchen sink, added water and washed them. Then taking off the stems. Of course the stones had to go, too. I don't have any tool to do that and I used the easiest thing to do it in the end: my fingers. Before I really got started, I had the idea to change my grey t-shirt for an older orange one. Good idea. Before I placed everything in a meaningful way, the floor was the first to get some drips, followed by the wall, my t-shirt and my fingers, of course.

I wondered, if larger amounts of blood than just a simple cut would stain that much, too. I discarded the thought of asking one of our doctors though when it occurred to me that they are using gloves during surgeries.

Question: Why do doctors wear gloves during surgery?

Answer: So they don't leave fingerprints.

Actually I thought about Rorschach from Watchmen while taking the stones out. The Comedian gets killed. He's got a badge with a yellow smiley. The smiley gets a distinctive blood stain during the killing. The smiley, changed that way, is one of the most famous signatures for both the book and the movie. Although the smiley from the movie is stained a bit different from the book. Rorschach finds the smiley and goes to his colleague (may we say friend?) Daniel Dreiberg with it. Daniel is not at home, so Rorschach effectively just breaks into the home and also eats a can of baked beans. When Daniel arrives, Rorschach shows him the smiley, which leads to the following dialogue:

Rorschach: Daniel, look at this.

Daniel Dreiberg: Is this bean juice?

Rorschach: Human bean juice. Badge belonged to the Comedian. Blood, too. He's dead.

M&M: No Reservations

Dear reader,

after the dandelion recipes, even though it would probably have been more fitting last month, I think the movie “No Reservations” is a good addition. In the movie from the year 2007 with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart in the lead roles, there's loads of cooking!

Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is top chef in a restaurant and also totally a perfectionist. But even though she sets high standards for herself as well as her cooked food, she cannot handle critics on either her as a person or her food well. So her boss Paula (Patricia Clarkson) eventually sends her to a therapist.

Her perfectly organised world is put to a test, when her sister and her 9-years old daughter, Zoe (Abigail Breslin) have an accident. Only Zoe survives and Kate decides to adopt the girl. Kate tries hard to treat Zoe with exceptional food. In doing so she seems to forget that children don't necessarily want to eat extravagant things. To top it all, a new cook is recruited to help Kate in the kitchen: Nick (Aaron Eckhart). Nick has a completely different cooking style (with music!) and is full of enthusiasm and passion. Of course Kate doesn't like that at all. It takes some time for Nick to not only stir food for Kate, but also her blood. Certainly one crucial moment is when Zoe visits the restaurant and kitchen one time and Nick manages finally to make her eat spaghetti with relish.

Paula is so happy with Nick's work in the restaurant, that she offers him to replace Kate as top chef. Will Nick take that offer and what does Kate think about the possibility of maybe not being the no. 1 in the kitchen anymore?

“No Reservations” is a remake of the movie “Bella Martha” from the year 2001. The names have changed and so has the ending. Personally, I like the actual ending of “No Reservations” better. The ending of “Bella Martha” is a bit too fantastic for my taste, although not totally unrealistic. Catherine Zeta-Jones worked as a server in a restaurant for one evening as preparation for her role. Of course Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart had to learn how to cut veggies “professionally” and how to turn barbecued food. In the “Making-Of” Aaron Eckhart says that the scenes in which they had to cook as well as speak dialogue, where especially difficult. On the one hand they had to look professional, which is difficult enough for someone not professional, as well as speaking lines, wasn't always as easy as it may look for the viewer.

Sometimes a somewhat sad, but often very funny movie about a bit of cooking and kitchen, but especially (sadly) not cookbook example of life and family. I'm sure we all sometimes wish, as Kate does, to have a cookbook for life, so we don't have to make up our own recipes for life situations.

Of course the movie has some bits of songs that “Nick” is playing. Otherwise Philip Glass is responsible for the actual film music. Although one theme can be repeatedly heard, which is actually from Mark Isham from the movie “Life As A House”, which is the melody of the song “Building A Family”. I like the melody a lot. It's one of my two favourite tracks from the soundtrack album. In “No Reservations” however the melody is played so often, that for me it feels like it's only that melody and the music “Nick” plays. With all due respect for Philip Glass, and I'm sure it's not his fault, but ultimately the director's decision, but I hardly consciously hear any of his melodies at all, when watching that movie.

Until next blog,

sarah