Fry Courgette/Zucchini

DH Ahaus gave me a baby zucchini plant. Little did I know it can bloom and flourish into a healthy plant with courgette flowers. It is easy to find zucchini or courgette but not the flower here at the market or supermarket. I could only see them served in chic restaurants.

I wanted to try fry these flowers. Or filled them with cheese or mushrooms, said DH Romania.

Today I learnt that courgette is a French name. Meanwhile Zucchini is Italian. Marrow is English. And they basically are the same thing from the cucumber family.

Today I learnt that there are male and female courgette flowers from DH France. And you only pick the males to cook.

These are males hanging out together.  

The females have a courgette fruit under their flowers as a base. 

How typical, the female always bears and carries the fruit, quipped DH Amsterdam.

Yes  I fried the males! Fried males are good! LOL!

Zebra Cake

It was my birthday yesterday. I normally would award myself by baking or sometimes buying a good rich chocolate cake to celebrate yet another milestone I have achieved. But this year my plans deviated a little thanks to my friends who enticed me with zebra cake. One started to bake a zebra cake and the rest follow like a herd of zebras in the savannah.

Each and everyone of us yields a different zebra, some including myself became a bit tapir.

Going gaga and zebras  because I have only achieved tapir I decided to try again. My batter was very liquid making it almost impossible to handle. I decide to use 2 jugs instead of spoon and I have decided to add more flour in the batter making it 350g instead.

My second attempt is at least a zebra.I am going nuts with animal prints by this time.

I suppose like zebras each stripe in a zebra marks its individuality . I suppose so is the cakes we make.

Dolma

Neighbor at the corner have some healthy looking grape plants. After looking at it,a  light bulb appears with the dolma idea on my head. Immediately after I confessed to neighbor on the left about it, she showed her ages old cookbook with a dolma recipe in it. The cookbook was actually written by her deceased friend who was a purser with KLM and had travelled many countries in the world. He sampled so many cuisines and concocted and compiled them into a recipe book from all over the world. I think in Iran it is called Dolme, in Greece Dolmades and I heard my Turkish friend muttered Dolma all the time. Neighbour on the right was equally enthusiatic about the idea and we agreed to make it together.

So we collected the ingredients that we needed. Neighbour on the left plucked 50 leaves vine leaves from corner neighbor with permission of course. And went to Amsterdam to buy some minced lamb meat. Meanwhile I went to another neighbour and plucked some parsley from her front yard, some mint from my yard, and took out 1 cup of rice from the pantry.

Yields 50 dolmas!

Dolma, dolme or dolmades they sure taste good.

May the legacy of a man who wrote this recipe lives on. Eat & savour life.