I am very much behind on my weekly reports, so these were already from a month ago.
First up, our tour of the Zoo de la Garenne on a weekend where we cancelled all our social plans because of hand foot and mouth disease. Zoo de la Garenne is much more than a zoo. It’s a park dedicated to the preservation of local wildlife (including endangered species), and educating the general public about Swiss and European species. We love going there, and this time around, Toddler took real interest in the animals for the first time. We heard the wolves howl, saw the European otter being fed, felt sorry for a limp fox who looked a bit sad and tried to spot the sleeping lynxes camouflaged in the bushes.
The visit to the Zoo was really the highlight of the weekend and also the week, which was so “normal” that I can’t even remember what I did, read or listened to. This defeats the purpose of my weekly roundups, so I will try to stick to them a bit more in the future. There were a few other things in the weekend after that:
A chocolate cake made for a friend’s 5-year-old, who is a fan of Pokémon. I made it using this recipe, which I had already used for Toddler’s first birthday. I had trouble remembering which recipe I’d used (I only found it in my messaging history because someone had asked me for the recipe!) and how I’d tweaked it. This led me to making a new resolution: printing or writing recipes, on which occasion I used them and which tweaks I made.
Because it was another slow weekend, I dedicated myself to cooking more elaborate meals. When I do that, life is easier during the week because we have leftovers to rely on during the busy beginning of the week. We don’t eat a lot of meat these days, and we have become mostly weekday vegetarians. Nonetheless, we still appreciate a good cut of meat, so we prefer to invest in less, but better. This weekend, I tried slow roasting a veal shoulder.
There is something about slow cooking and slow roasting that captivates me. I roasted the veal in a strong oven for a few minutes, before reducing the temperature and letting it cook in the oven for a few hours. The meat was tender and flavoursome, but I still have some room for improvement.
One of the weekdays, I homeworked for the first time in a long while. Because Z was also homeworking, we treated ourselves to lunch in our neighbourhood restaurant, which is a 2 minute walk from home. They cook with simple and local ingredients, but they do it with so much care that their lunch is affordable, but also beautifully cooked and presented! We are definitely redoing this.
quince cheese 