make your own shoe.

...here.

veggie cabbage roulade a la mama

i cooked a dish today that i had not eaten since i turned vegetarian 12 years ago (or longer!). it's the vegetarian version of a german classic.

for the filling:
- fry diced onions until transparent
- add sliced chili, fry until everything starts to brown
- add quorn mince, fry briefly
- add plenty of nutmeg, cayenne pepper, a little bit of rosemary and oregano, chili powder, salt and pepper
- put aside to cool down to room temperature

- soak two slices of bread or rolls in water, squeeze until they stop dripping
- add mince-mix
- add two raw eggs, mix it all up

for the roulades:
- remove outside big leaves of white cabbage (also works with savoy cabbage)
- blanch in boiling salted water for 3-4 minutes, depending on the thickness of the leaves
- remove from water, put aside (no need to cool down with ice)
- form a little ball of mince and place into cabbage leaf, wrap it around and then wrap a second one around it
- tie roulade together with a piece of clean string (tie a bow, otherwise you'll have trouble eating)

for the sauce:
- fry onions until transparent
- add caraway seeds
- add remainder of cabbage (chopped into bite-sized pieces)
- fry for a while
- pour over 150mL of white wine, reduce down to 1/3
- pour over 100mL of vegetable stock, reduce again
- add some veggie gravy powder if you like, to give the sauce some thickness
- in the end, place roulades in the sauce, put on the lid and simmer for ~15-20 minutes

serve with boiled potatoes. and beer. guten appetit!!!

ps: the filling of the roulade can also be used to make a fake meat ball. make the desired shape and roll through some breadcrumbs, then fry in a pan.

a picture of siggi

it came out very small, but you can make out the various injuries... in real life, siggi's head would never hold up straight, but that's artistic freedom.

productive holidays

the fruit of my first week of holidays: www.dr-cee.net

my childhood friend norman and his soft toy siggi

emptiness on my blog. here's a little story to keep you entertained....

when i was little, i lived across the street from a boy my age called
norman. we used to play together a lot, from the age of five to ten
maybe, along with my little sister claudia and sometimes also his
older sister katja. it was quite simple: in the afternoon, we'd just
walk over the other house, knock on the door and play until dinner
time.
i think it's fair to say that i was quite shy as a kid and maybe
therefore mostly well behaved. my friend norman was the opposite - he
was a wild boy! when playing hide and seek, he'd hide in unusual
places like the rubbish bin, where i would never find him. he'd come
home and be so impatient to be let in the house that he threw himself
against the entrance until the glass door shattered (the entrance was
not only made of reinforced glass, it also had a metal grid in front
of it. yet he still managed to break it). when doing our homework, he
just wouldn't stay on his chair, but run off and climb onto the
kitchen cupboards to hide from his mom. he'd even jump down the middle
of the staircase or hang down from the poles of the landing until they became loose. since he could never sit still, the material of his seat at the kitchen table had been completely rubbed
off. i would often be in awe watching him do things that i would
never ever dare to do. when being told off, he'd not only continue
whatever he was doing, he'd even sing a song made up
especially for this occasion. i was fascinated with this degree of
insubordination. obviously, his mother less so....
she had a really hard time controlling the child, as he seemed to
respond to almost no form of persuasion. apart from one: norman had a
soft toy cat that he'd named after his uncle's real life cat siggi.
soft toy siggi would sleep in his bed every night and had been hugged
so many times that there was no fluff left on the fabric (the fabric
had once been white and was now grey and beige). what was left of the
material had been reduced to a thin mesh of strings through which you
could see siggi's insides. its neck had already been reinforced with
new material, but even that had almost rubbed away and was
now a floppy ring of cloth dangling around an even more floppy neck.
even though siggi was almost indistinguishable from a cleaning cloth,
norman loved it like nothing else. hence siggi was his only weakness...
when the last measure of disciplination* seemed necessary, his mother
would threaten to "hurt" siggi. most times, the threat alone would lead to norman
giving in, but on several occasions it came to the worst:
siggi became one-eyed and its tail showed clean cuts in four
different places. he'd even been slit through the throat and had a
whole paw cut off. unfortunately, any injury to siggi would cause such
a flood of tears in the boy that the cat would be sewn back together
the same day by a very sorry mom ...until the next time it became
necessary to go to the extreme.

when i met norman last summer, he seemed like a very quiet and polite
man. he stood still throughout the entire length of our conversation.

i wonder whether stitched-together siggi is still around and whether it is missing any
body parts... ;-)






* i think i made up this word but i like it.

yesterday was my last day at work. my next day at work will be the 22nd of september 2009!

i left work excited and happy, but today i woke up a little scared: what am i going to do with all of this free time?

i'll tell you what i am going to do. in this roof-top blog.

have a nice summer.