Macro Monday Stop Bugging me!

More Macro Monday pictures at Lisa's Chaos.

Weekly Winners Fun in the Kitchen

Like I said before, I take pictures of anything and it all started out with Weekly Winners!
I think the real winners this week were already published on Thursday, you can find them here if you're interested.

This is my selection for this week. And in case you're hungry, don't worry, it's all healthy and home made. Enjoy!











Look for more Weekly Winners participants and their favourite pictures here.

Saturday Something ...? American Apple Pie.

I want a break from the predictability of my Saturday posts from now on. I want to use this space for ... whatever it is that inspires me through the week. I want a little more interaction with my readers, maybe answer a question I got in a comment, or a picture, a recipe, a video ... whatever. I might still follow the Photo Hunt theme every once and a while when it truly inspires me, but not every week. I think I shall title this as my
" Saturday Something ...?"
What do you think?



That said, I'll kick off with a recipe this week. My American apple pie everybody asked about. Melli asked me for the recipe, so here we go Melli!
The recipe came from one of a series of cookbooks I got when my daughter was a just a few weeks old. Almost thirty years later I still cherish them ...


You will need:

40 g of butter
90 g of sugar
750 g of apples. I used Cox Orange
75 g of walnuts
some lemon juice

********************************
For the dough:

80 g of butter at room temperature
160 g of sugar
2 eggs
the zest of one lemon
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
80 g of flour
80 g of cornflour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
3-4 tablespoons of milk.
a pinch of salt.

I made step-by-step pictures of the whole recipe, and you should follow them clockwise.
( aren't you glad I take pictures of EVERYTHING Melli?) ;-)

Preheat the oven at 190°C

Line the bottom of the baking tin with a sheet of baking paper, and grease it with butter.
Cover the bottom of the tin with the rest of the softened butter, and sprinkle the sugar over it.

Peel the apples, and sprinkle them with some lemon juice to keep them nice and white.
Fill the holes with the walnuts, and set aside.
To make the dough, soften the butter with the mixer and add the sugar spoon by spoon.
Add the grated lemon zest the lemon juice. Separate the egg whites and the yolks, add the yolks and keep mixing until the mixture becomes slightly white. Add the flour, the cornflour, the baking powder and the milk. Mix until the dough is nice and smooth.
Beat the egg whites and spoon them in using a wooden spoon.
Spread the mixture evenly over the apples and the walnuts.

Bake for +/- 45 minutes at 190°C.
(I think you should test it with a needle, if it comes out dry, the cake is done).
Let it rest for at least ten minutes before you turn it upside down and remove the tin, and the baking paper.

Fave Five, Friends, Family and a Birthday.

Oh my!!! Friday ALREADY? Friday AGAIN?!!
I've probably said it before, and I'm sure you're all going to hear this from me again, but OH MY, that week has gone by so fast, you would not believe it! Or do you?
Yes ... well ... you know what they say, time flies when you're having fun!
And a fun week it has been, I almost do not know where to start!



1. Last Friday I spent a day on the town with my sister and a blogger friend of mine. All three of us love to take pictures, and we set out to do a photowalk in Antwerp. But we did not get very far. My sister and my friend met each other for the first time, so when we went out for a bite to eat at lunchtime, we had so much to discuss that we spent the rest of the afternoon just talking!
Needless to say ( but I'm saying it anyway) :-) we had a great time together and we're going to meet up again very soon!

2. Not only do I love to cook, I've had some fun baking this week as well! I baked Easter buns, ( they're small bread rolls with lemon zest and cinnamon.) I tried to shape them like Easter bunnies but they did not come out like bunnies at all! They were delicious, that's what counts, isn't it?. And then I also baked an apple pie for my father's birthday. A recipe I had almost forgotten all about until my father brought it up! It was his birthday on Monday, and we had all agreed to bake something home made for his birthday.

3. It's been a fairly good week, weather wise, so we had our Easter brunch outside on the patio. The Easter buns, straight out of the oven, some hot chocolate, real butter and some cheese. Heaven! The blue jug you see in the collage is one of my favourites too. It was a gift from my daughter, and I used it for my hot chocolate.


4. And then of course, the highlight of the week was my father's 77th birthday. It had been a while since we had all been together as a family. We had had a little bit of a scare when my mother had spent a day or two at the hospital earlier this week, but thank God by Monday she was home again and we could all be together for my father's birthday! As you can see in the collage, his birthday party was a success.
My mother has had some follow up tests on Wednesday, and we were all very relieved to hear there's nothing to worry about.

5. We did some gardening on the patio as well this week. Some of the old plants from last year needed potting, and we had bought some roses that needed to be planted ...
Because of the warm weather, I even had to water the plants for the first time this year.
I just love it when everything is so neat and thriving and colourful again ...



Find more Fave Five's at Susanne's at Living to tell the Story.

Sepia Scenes meets Three Words Thursday

When Sepia Scenes meets Quilly's Three Word Thursday ....
Each week, Quilly gives us three words to work with. This week's words are sublunary, comity, & specious. The idea is to write a story using these three obsolete words ...
Don't worry, no need for a dictionary to read the story! Just click on the links to find their definitions.


Now, because I firmly believe a picture paints a thousand words, I am adding these sepia pictures. The pictures I took from this street event in Antwerp were much too busy to look good.
I used my Corel Paint Shop Pro x12 on them, turning them into half sepia by creating layers. The sepia quiets down the busyness of the scenery, while the parts of the picture left in colour create drama and guide your eyes into the picture. Well, at least this is what I've been trying to achieve here.



This small square in the heart of the city of Antwerp breathes history and tradition. Every Friday morning a street auction, locally known as Friday's Market is being held here. The ambiance at Friday's Market is a bitter sweet fusion of nostalgia and ghetto.


The Madonna on the pedestal has commiserated the sublunary affairs of the people beneath her since time immemorial.
The middle of the square is cluttered with old furniture, bikes, electric appliances, light fixtures, floor lamps ... TV's and washing machines...


Suitcases or cardboard boxes holding just about anything from books to tools, kitchen utensils or clothes. An array of people from various backgrounds are gathered here, each has his own reason for being here. Some of them are very obviously trying to make ends meet, seeking a pair of shoes or a sweater or a shirt. There is even a fair chance to spot and buy back your own bike that got stolen only last week ... Or that specious red scooter ...


Some are just curious, or intrigued by the volgivagant spectacle this street auction offers.

Some try to find an original spare piece to repair something. Another just wants to make his grandchild smile. What more could be found here?

Sad stories of desperate people trying to buy back their own furniture, after being court ordered to sell their goods publicly. Biting their lips as they watch how their new television is being auctioned off and sold for only a fraction of what it is worth.

People know you can buy cheap here, but you have to be careful what you bid for. Not all of it is in perfect state, and what looked like an interesting piece of antiques at first glance might just as well turn out to be a specious copy once you lay your hands on it .

The goods are sold as they come and there are to be no arguments about that. This particular rule is blared out clamorously in aboriginal Antwerp tongue before the bidding starts. It's repeated frequently as part of the auction chant. Nevertheless, on some occasions a certain dose of comity should be in order here as well. But courtesy and respect are sometimes considered useless virtues on street auctions. Impatient sighs and ebullient discussions tend to add to the drama when buyers and vendors often face opposite interests ...



Find more Sepia Scenes pictures here.
Other 3WT stories here.

Melli's ABC Challenge, Y and Z

Another week has passed.
What did I just say? Twenty six letters, that's THIRTEEN weeks!
This week we have reached the final two letters of Melli's Alphabet!
It was fun doing, even if it took me some time to get into it at first.
BUT ... we did it, we made it all the way through till the end!


I made a small selection of the Y's I found over the weeks, but I have only one picture for Z.
Most of the Y's are photographed at the beguinage of Leuven, the one on the top right is from Gent. I found my Z's at Antwerp Station last week. I think it's perfect for the final photo because it pictures how "time flies" when you're having fun!



.... And maybe this could be an idea for a new challenge, I don't know, it just hit me!
You might all know how much I love vocabulary, so I thought maybe we could do idioms?
Each of us pick an idiom - to our own liking - and we illustrate it with a picture.
I suggest we follow the alphabet once again?

Okay, I'll show you what I mean:

A is for "Apple pie order"


Since everybody asked about the apple pie yesterday, here they are, in perfect apple pie order!
The top ones are are all apple pies, and the bottom one is a cherry pie. They were all home made. The cherry pie at the bottom of the picture was made by my sister Lena, the second one was my "American" pie, the third one was a delicious apple lemon pie, and the top one was an apple banana crumble made by my daughter.

So there, maybe that would be an interesting idea for a new challenge?
Tell me what you think, okay?

Ruby Tuesday An Apple a Day ...

For my father's 77th birthday each of his daughters had agreed to bake some home made pastry. When I asked him what he wanted his request was apple pie. But not just ANY apple pie, it had to be "American" apple pie! This used to be one of our favourite recipes ... thirty years ago ( oh my I'm getting OLD!) but it got forgotten over the years. Baking it again after all this time brought back old memories. And his birthday party was a success.

But before I started baking ... well, you know me, I photograph just about EVERYTHING?
I just HAD to do a photo shoot with my apples!








Find more Ruby Tuesday pictures at Work of the Poet.