Unicorn burger

Mystical creatures turned into burgers. The only possible upgrade I could think of would be narwhals, but let's face it, nobody's going to catch one of THOSE.

Alright, I admit it. I didn't actually make those burgers with unicorn meat. I wouldn't want to look like Voldemort anyways. But those burgers are a cute treat for a kid's birthday party (or the kid inside everyone)

Yes, bad picture quality, we didn't have a camera and only an old phone. But you get the idea!

Yeah, the picture isn't too pretty and I'm aware that the stove is a mess - but that was JUST after I transformed a burger into a unicorn, so cut me some slack!

As you might see, a unicorn with its thin legs and horn might not be the best creature to turn a burger into, but the technique works on pretty much everything. All you need is a cookie cutter. The Doctor gave me a unicorn one because he knows I'm into that stuff. But we're both not really cookie eaters. I made delicious cookies last christmas and they pretty much stayed in the box until they were too hard to eat.

So instead, I decided to use it on other food. And since we were making burgers that night, I had my project! Cookie cutters aren't normally very deep. I first tried to just cut it all out at the same time, but that didn't work at all. It's why the unicorn is missing a leg and its horn on the top. I then lifted the top and just did the rest and made sure most of the smaller ingredients (like tomato, onion, pickle) are inside the cutter.

That worked better. I cut along the edges with a sharp knife and did the same to the top on its own to try and make the best of what was left.

The downside is that there's a lot of burger parts left afterwards that look weird. But if you use a bigger cookie cutter in an easier shape, for example a big heart or star or even christmas tree, that shouldn't be too big of a problem.

It definitely turns burgers much cuter than just shoving all the greasy meat inside your mouth! It's still greasy, but that way it looks cute and you've got something to admire. You can also pretend that the grease will give you a pimple on your forehead that gradually turns into a unicorn horn. No sane person would never do that, of course. Definitely not me. Oh no.

Slap a map on that table!

Living together with a partner means that sometimes, different tastes collide and you've got to work around it. We decided to do that by combining (industrial and shabby chic for example goes rather well together), choosing things we both like and creating different corners. We don't have much room to work with that. If we get the apartment we're hoping for (which might be decided tomorrow, so I'm crossing my fingers so hard it's nearly impossible to type), we don't really have much more room than we do now. In fact, it's about 4sqm. But the overall layout is very different.

Anyways! While the man will get his own little room for his music (he has to give up on the basement room because the apartment doesn't have one, so he's at least getting that), I'll make do with a corner for myself. We started making a little corner like that for my desk and things like that in our current apartment and used the bedroom for it, but since the new bedroom will be smaller and we're getting a bigger bed at some point, that won't work. I'll have to find a corner for myself in the living room!

To get to the point - we built a small desk for that corner. I don't have tutorial pictures or exact measurements because we just used what we found and I didn't think of photographing the process. But it went like this: We went to the hardware store to get some wood. We used a long rectangular pole and had it cut to pieces that were each 70cm long. We also took the rest of the wood back home with us to use it on the table. While looking through the cut-wood-for-cheap section, we found the perfect piece for only 2€ and took that with us as well. We still had white paint at home and I recently bought a book with old maps on ebay (it was an accident, but I knew it'd come in handy one day!), so we were all set.

The Doctor put all the pieces together, drilled holes, screwed it tight. He used the leftover wood to secure the table legs in the front and in the back to give it more stability. In the meantime, I cut out the maps that I liked and made sure they had the right proportions. I measured the piece of pole that secures the table legs in the front and then sized the map pieces accordingly. With all that done, I painted the table completely. True, I could've done that beforehand, but we don't have much room for work like that as it is and wanted to get it done quickly.

I let the paint dry overnight, laid the map pieces out in the order I wanted them to be and then started on the table the next morning. I used mod podge to secure the pieces and sealed them with it afterwards. There was one line of maps on the front pole and one on the edge of the tabletop. Now, while I did my best to make sure all the pieces had the same size, there were a few that were just a millimeter longer or shorter and it didn't look as nice as I wanted it.

And while I was restlessly strolling through the apartment, trying to think of a way to fix that, I remembered the gold paint spray we used on our balcony. I masked the desk except for one small stripe on the edge of the maps, sprayed it, let it dry and tadaa- you can hardly see where the map pieces end and it's a clean stripe now.

That's the finished project! It has a few wrinkles and you can see the wood texture through in some places, but that's what I like about it. I wanted it to be imperfect and since I'm not a perfect furniture builder, that's pretty much what I get every time I build! It was super easy and fun to build and I love it. 

Sing, Birdie!

Today was my first official university day. While there were only speeches and it's all really starting tomorrow, I was super nervous and had to calm down afterwards. I had this little bit of canvas left and was working with old book pages for another project, so I decided to make a birdie picture without really any preparation.

I first wanted a baby blue background, but I didn't have any blue colour. While looking for a substitute, I came across the gold spray I used for my map desk a while back (I'll upload that one at some point because it turned out great).

I sprayed it lightly on the canvas. I didn't want to have it all gold, but just a few sprinkles to give it some texture. When I was done with that, I drew a bird on an old book page (poems by Schiller, to be exact. I bought that at a one-world-store ages ago), cut it out, traced the outlines with black marker and added eye, beak and wings.

There was still room on the canvas so I next drew a speech bubble on another page of the book, cut it out, traced the outlines and wrote "lalala" into it. I know, super creative, but I like it. You can see the result below - it took me about 15 minutes from the initial idea to the finished "painting." I'm sure you could try something similar together with kids, too! It's easy, doesn't take up much space and looks cute!

Stuffed pork loin with rosemary potatoes

Yum! We were so busy apartment-hunting yesterday that I didn't even have time to post the recipe for my awesome lunch. We had about five minutes to eat it after I finished it, because we had appointment after appointment, but those five minutes were amazing.

What do you need?
Pork loin/pork fillet. If you roll the meat, you can use steak, too. (Use as much as you need for the people you're cooking for, I used about 400 gram for 2 persons that love meat)
150 gram cream cheese
100-200 gram bacon bits
1 green onion
4 potatoes (you can use more potatoes, of course. Rosemary potatoes still taste great, even when they're cold)
Rosemary twigs
Salt
Olive oil
Butter/Margarine for roasting the meat

The recipe is fairly simple but delicious. I started with the potatoes while the Doctor was off to buy cream cheese. I cut them into slices (they get crispier the thinner you slice them), put them into an oven pan and cut the rosemary. I didn't cut it into small pieces but left them big on purpose. They are tasty to eat when they're out of the oven. I spread those over the potatoes, added salt (more than you'd normally use on potatoes, so every potato has salt on it) and then poured olive oil over them.

The stuffing for the pork loin is simple as well. While I put the meat on the stove to roast it lightly (just for the colour and so the pores would close), I simply mixed the bacon bits, the cut spring onion and the cream cheese. Already done! I cut the pork loin in the middle so I had room for the stuffing and then spread it. You can see the pictures of that below.

Roast it for only a minute on high heat so it gets the roasting aroma but stays raw on the inside, then add a deep cut in the middle for the stuffing

Mix the ingredients until there's enough cream cheese to cover all the bacon bits and spring onion. You can vary the amounts to your liking

Spread the stuffing in the cut, you can add as much as you want here, I added enough so it filled the cut and not more because I didn't want it to spill all over the meat

Now that that's done, you can continue a few different ways. You can leave the cut open and put it into an oven dish. Or you knot thread around it so it stays shut. Or, and that's what I did, you cover it in aluminium foil. Make sure there's some pressure on it when you wrap the foil around the meat and twirl the ends so it looks a bit like a bonbon. That way, the meat juice stays inside and doesn't spill on the bottom of your oven (we don't want to make a huge mess, do we?).

This is what it looked like when I put it in the oven. You can see the aluminium foiled meat in the back and the potatoes in front. I left it in the oven at 200°C/350°F for about 40 minutes and then served it. If you want a bit more crisp to your meat, you can open the foil and leave it in for another 10 minutes, maybe even add some sprinkled cheese if the cream cheese isn't enough for you. However, we hardly had time to eat after it was done, so I skipped that step.

And even without that step, oh boy. It tasted amazing. I've never eaten rosemary potatoes before, so that was heavenly all by itself. But the meat was great as well. Because of the aluminium foil, it stayed really soft and juicy, we hardly needed knives to cut it. Below is a picture of the results.

Crispy potatoes, soft, pink meat and delicious stuffing. Definitely making that again. Not much work, simple steps - that recipe is a keeper. I'm trying a similar one sometime soon with chicken breast instead of pork loin and arugula, cream cheese and pine seeds. I'll post the recipe when I've done it

I hope you like this one and try it out!

The DIY TV mirror

There are a few little treasures in this apartment that have been here longer than me. I'm not the only builder in this house, the Doctor is pretty awesome at it as well. One of my favourites is the TV mirror that hangs on our living room wall.

It's really simple. At least so I was told. All you need it an old TV frame (you can probably find those at the dumpster or buy a cheap broken TV on ebay or something the like) and a mirror that preferably has the same size/fits into the back of the TV. If you don't have a mirror that size, you might think about cutting it if you want to make a TV mirror.

When you've got what you need, you're only one step away from completing the TV mirror. Use silicone (the kind you would use to seal your sink) to glue the mirror to the TV frame. It's a fool proof way, you just need to let it dry thoroughly. It might be ready after a few hours, but since we're talking about a mirror here and those shards bring bad luck, I'd recommend letting it sit for a day before you hang it on your wall.

As you see, it's super easy to make and looks great. Especially if you have a man in your house who's into technology. And what man isn't....

And yes, I do realize the irony in the TV visible in the TV mirror...

Pumpkin soup that actually tastes awesome!

I'm not a fan of pumpkin. I never made anything pumpkin-related myself, but whenever I ate it, it was just.. not that special for me. The Doctor likes it even less. So when I bought a pumpkin today, I did wonder whether I might have hit my head in my sleep.

A good friend of mine, Toni the Canadian, told me about her pumpkin soup yesterday. It sounded easy enough to make and I figured I'd give pumpkin another try. The Doctor wasn't too psyched about it, so I decided to add some ingredients that he likes in order to make it taste awesome for both of us.

The recipe Toni gave me was easy enough. Roast onions in some oil, add flour, chicken broth, pumpkin and milk. So I looked around the kitchen to see what else we had. There were potatoes, bacon, garlic and cheese. Good enough, I thought, and started to work on the pumpkin.

Now, I assume most people have made delicious things out of pumpkins. But getting the seeds and all the weird strings and finally the meaty part out of it took me an hour. And even after an hour, I only had about 200 gr of it. That had to be enough, my arms already hurt like crazy.

I skinned the potatoes, onions and the garlic and cut it all into small pieces. (I used so many plates for all the different ingredients that the kitchen now looks as if we had a huge party with dozens of guests) I followed the Canadian recipe, but added the garlic right away. I roasted it in margarine with the onions, added flour and then a liter of water. I let it boil, added veggie broth powder (I didn't have any chicken broth powder on hand and I thought the veggie broth might taste well with the cheese I had) and then pushed the six potatoes I still had into the pot.

After about 10 minutes of slow boiling, I added the pumpkin. Another 10 minutes passed before I added soft cheese with herbs (I'm not sure if that's sold everywhere in the world). I assume, if you don't have that, sour cream or normal soft cheese taste great as well.While I let that boil together to make sure it was all soft, I roasted bacon bits, scooped them out of the pan with a spoon so the oil and the droppings remained in the pan and then roasted the pumpkin seeds. I didn't want to throw them away after all.

Finally, I pulled the pot off the oven and puréed the potatoes, pumpkin and everything else in the pot until it was really creamy and there were no big bits left in it. I added a pinch of salt and some pepper. I wanted nutmeg in it, too, but found out that we had none of it left. If you wish to add that, I'm sure it would make it taste even better.

I poured a portion of the soup on a plate and garnished it with the roasted pumpkin seeds and bacon and voilá:

It doesn't have that really orange look because of all the potatoes in it, but you can still -taste- the pumpkin. And let me tell you something, it tastes delicious. I'm glad I made such a big pot of it because even the Doctor ate more than one plate. Even though it's just soup, we're both really full (it's all the cheese!). Even though it was a lot of work (mostly because it was my first time with a pumpkin, I assume. No pun intended), I'd make that soup again anytime and I'm adding it to my recipe book!

Here are the exact ingredients I used:
1 onion
5 cloves of garlic
margarine for roasting
1/4 cup flour
6 medium sized potatoes
200 gr pumpkin
100 gr soft cheese (herb version) or normal soft cheese or sour cream
salt
pepper
nutmeg
bacon bits (as much as you want as it doesn't got into the soup)
pumpkin seeds

I hope you have fun trying this recipe!

Painting for starters. Or well... me.

You might have read the post where I said I'm a great cook. Well, I suck at painting. I'm not sure if you know that feeling of really wanting to do something. Like singing when your voice sounds like nails on a black board.

For me, that's painting. In my head, I have these great pictures. I know exactly how they should look. They're beautiful, rich of colour, have all these hidden little secrets. And then I start to paint. And normally, it turns out like this.

Translation: "I'm a pubic hair and I'm sitting in your fridge. Happy eating!" I don't always draw pubic hair in a fridge, this just happened to be the first thing I saw when I opened the fridge in my new apartment.

 Mind you, that's one of my better pictures. Nevertheless, I can't stop trying. I'm nowhere near perfect, but it's fun and the Doctor likes them. Or pretends to. Either way, I get to hang them from the wall and feel all fancy.

Since I don't have a huge budget and no collection of paint, I have to start out simple. Which is better anyways, because there'd be a huge mess of colours if I had dozens of paint cans. This time, the Doctor was nice and bought me some canvas and paint; ochre, brown and black.

I had a specific thing in mind so these colours weren't coincidence, I actually asked for them. I saw this picture, really simple, of four flowers on an ochre background. And I figured I could try that and see if I manage to make it look nice.

I started out with ochre, naturally. As you can see inthe picture above, the ochre looks really bright, so I only used a bit of water to make it a little thinner. Unfortunately, as it began to dry, it grew darker and darker. I went with it - what else could I have done. But since learning from mistakes is always the best kind of learning: Try your paint before you use it if you haven't used it before. See how it turns out once it's dry! Especially if it's cheap paint. Nothing against cheap paint, but it can be a bit of a surprise.

While the original painting looked a bit like canvas, this doesn't. But oh well, can't change that now! (Especially since the only white paint I have is white wood stain) I let it dry completely over night and the next day, I started distressing it a bit. I wanted it to lose some of its colour as well as look a bit old and used. I used medium rough sandpaper that I found in the Doctor's secret cabinet of wonderful things like drills and sandpaper. It's not that wonderful but it does come in handy now and then.

I managed to scrape off a bit of the top layer of the paint and I made sure to scrub extra hard over the edges and in the middle, where the wood sits against the canvas. (Not all canvas have that, but this one was so big it needed it). For a few more of those white lines, I used an old book, held it on the back of the canvas and then sandpapered over its edge.

It's still a bit dark, but doesn't look as weirdly yellowish anymore. So that was a good thing. I actually managed to sandpaper a little hole into it, luckily nobody's noticed yet. When I was done with that, I mixed the colour for the flowers. I wanted them to be really dark brown, almost black, so that's what I used the other two colours of my extraordinarily huge collection for.

Now, I've often made the mistake to mix a colour that I use for a rather big portion of the picture and then not mix enough, so I figured "better mix more this time." Unfortunately, four flowers don't need that much paint, so I ended up with way too much. I guess this kind of thing comes with experience.

My flowers, as you can see in the final picture, have dots as petals. I wanted to see what to do them best with. I used the eraser end of a pencil. It worked nicely, but I wanted to see what else would be useful. I used a paintbrush, but it didn't look the way I wanted it to look. I'm also not patient enough to draw all that, I'm the instant-result kind of person. I used body parts! Even my nose. Most of the petals were made by my index finger though. It worked, it's a bit annoying to get rid of the paint under your finger nail though. Personally, I like the finger print that comes with it in some of the petals. It just adds a bit of personality and texture to the picture, in my opinion.

That's the result. The lines aren't perfect, I used too much paint in the beginning so there's a bit of a blob there and they look a little shaky because my back and my arms were tired from drawing on the ground, but the overall result isn't too bad, in my opinion. You've seen the other picture I drew in the beginning, so I think there's at least -some- improvement visible here.

The Doctor hung it on the wall above our couch. I think he even used a new nail with the sole purpose of holding my picture up, which makes me proud, because I just hung it from one of the bazillion nails that are already stuck in our walls next to something else so it was really askew.

And now it hangs there, my first "real" painting that doesn't look as if I'd fallen into a huge trash can filled with old paint and then rolled around on some canvas. It will never hang in a gallery, but it was fun to make and I definitely learned from it. I already bought new canvas today.

Painting will most likely never be my #1 thing to do, but it's a nice change.