My obsession with food and it's colors

"Das Auge isst mit", a german saying which refers to the fact, that food also has to please the eye.
Have you ever thought about that? Preparing a meal or setting a table to have colors match or contrast in a way that it has heightens your appetite? I constantly think about this.
E.g. I'm totally convinced food cools faster on white plates than on blue ones.

Have you ever drunk coffee from a green mug? Didn't it taste weird or bitter? I've broken - only by accident - all of our green mugs and refuse to drink from the last remaining one ;)

What about green food? If you're into vegetables it's almost impossible not to eat green food, but green meals? I always need splashes of other colors in there. The only green food I really love is mint ice-cream, the one with bits of chocolate in it ;)



But it too tastes best with a splash of red with strawberries or strawberry ice-cream.




What about blue food? There is none natural except for blueberries, even plums are not blue and they come in shades of red til dark violet. Also in greens and yellow, if you include reines claudes and mirabelles

Spring is late this year and the garden is still mostly dressed in faded greens, but I can't wait until everything starts blooming and blossoming in all colors.
The vegetable garden is organized in a way to observe the good/bad neighbors rule, but everything else is there to please the eye (and mouth) coming in all shades nature has to offer.

Did I already mention that my favorite place on earth is the Provence? Strolling along the markets every city offers is like discovering new tastes at each stand. Olives noires aux herbes de provence never tasted better anywhere, a dish with vegetables from the market tastes way more intense than with vegetables from home (even if they're from your own garden) and the colors even seem to shine brighter.
I still remember the scent of the lavender-fields we drove through last year. Won't be repeated this year, as we're opting for an autumn visit.

I had set out to write something different, before I lose completely track, I'll leave you with this:


copyright is mine

Live Music - Music DVD's

Cranking the surround system up loud and listening to some live music by my favorite musicians is one of the guilty pleasures I indulge in when I'm "home alone". I don't hear the doorbell, the floor is trembling and I've got this juvenile feeling ;)

Sure, listening and wachting a dvd is not the same as being at a concert. But my fav bands simply don't tour as often as I would like them to.

Or take the Indigo Girls, when have they been to Europe last? Have they been to the continent at all or did they only perform in London? And that was in the nineties, if I remember correctly.
What about Sarah McLachlan? Same problem.

And what about Texas? Yep, don't think they'll ever tour again, now that Sharleen Spiteri has her solo career going. Do I mind? Not really. I just watched the Texas live in Paris DVD, and when she made introductions to "I don't want a lover" I suddenly thought who had I been fooling, the fascination with that song (remember the video?) was always about her.

That wasn't simple fan worship, that was a major crush I had on her. If there ever was a certain type of women I felt attracted to, than it's definitely the Sharleen type.
I really hope, that she'll play some of the summer festivals and that I'll be able to catch at least one.
Just in case you're following me on twitter or are a friend on facebook and didn't understand the "Shelvis" reference, look at this:

Next I watched an old Indigo Girls DVD, Live at the Fillmore. This one provoked another revelation: my own guitar career was over the first time I heard Emily Sailors play, not that I was very gifted, but I realized my limitations very quickly. I guess it was also while watching this video that I became a fan of Amy's, before I always liked songs by Emily better. Nowadays I'm back to loving them both as Indigo Girls and Amy as a solo artist.

Going through my Music DVD collection I had to realize that it's been some time since I bought something new. I can't believe that there's no DVD of a Sarah Bettens concert available.
Do you have any suggestions what I should buy?

Frida Kahlo

Can't say that I'm a big fan of arts, what I am though is being interested in women, biographies of women who took a path that was not the obvious one.

Frida Kahlo is one those, the leaflet for a new permanent exhibition of her paintings in Baden-Baden describes her sexuality as bisexual. But for once I knew her paintings first, before I read about her life ;)

Read more about her in my article for eurout: Frida Kahlo.


(photo copyright by Nickolas Muray / Nickolas Muray Photo Archives, LLC 2004)

What I forgot in this week's tv series

Fringe, I totally forgot about Fringe and wonderful Anna Torv, aka as Agent Olivia Dunham. The show started airing last Monday with the 90-min pilot on pro7. I sincerely hope that - as much as  I would like to see new episodes of CSI:NY - VOX won't take the bait and program unaired episodes against Fringe.


Fringe is like The X-Files, only better - that's what I heard from several sources. It's true, in a certain way, but Fringe is also completely different in its own way. The main character is a woman (yeah, you already knew that, don't ya' ? ;-)) and intriuge and secrets also make up for a good part of the plot and the suspense. Then there's the technical, scientific aspect of the show - CSI and Bones put in a mixer and brought to next level.

Well it's somehow frightening how these old research results seem so completely plausible to me.
And this is where Fringe is so completely different from The X-Files. With The X-Files I always knew that most of the story were simply unbelievable and too constructed, they also lost me completely some time before the movie came out. Just to make this clear, I'm quite sure that we're not the only life in this universe, but I don't think that we're that important that others will constantly observe us ;)

It also helps that Agent Olivia Dunham is played by Anna Torv, former Mistress



and object of desire for Shelley Conn.




I'm looking to forward to see the next episode or more precisely the ending of the second episode, cause - once again - I fell asleep while watching TV. This doesn't say anything about the quality of what I've been watching: lack of sleep, waking up at 4am and pain killers are mostly the main reason for this.

I also watched Bones yesterday afternoon, that was one hilariously funny episode - the one where Bones has the guard of a baby for some days. This situation results in some of the best bantering dialogue we had for some time. And not only Bones, but Angela and Cam were also in this; Cam having the best line with "giving this body up for that?" - I'm so with you on this, Cam - especially when you're dressed like that!

 




The ending was so in line with Bones character, they had me almost thinking that she was setting up a fund for the little kid - but no, she provided help for the entire city and work for the adoptive mother.
I think I'll keep this episode for some time, I need to rewatch it - several times :)

This week's tv series

I'm not only behind on writing; I'm also behind on watching ;) This week's tv series offered the usual stories and somehow more of them than normal were deceiving.

Having watched 3 episodes of the Mentalist I don't think I'll ever get into that series. It focuses way too much for my taste on the main character (yeah, I know, that's what main characters are for) while the other characters remain hollow.
NCIS had its moments, which required an immediate post from my part already last Monday. Yesterday's episode concentrated almost exclusively on Gibbs and Gibbs sen., not much to write about Ziva. But she's always worth some screencaps.

 

CSI Miami featured Kate Moennig, but having never watched TLW I can objectively say that it wasn't the most important role in that episode, as it centered on the story of the M.E. and her son being the suspect in a drug deal and subsequent murder. Oh, and it's still my least favorite CSI, though I'm starting to think that this might be due to the synching.

Criminal Intent is also strange this season, at least Wheeler is back but all in all there are too many intrigues doubled with strange behaviour going on. Let's see when Criminal Intent and Life will change slots, I'm betting on this!

Law&Order SVU did a really weird plot this week, about homeless living together as a family and having harsh rules like disrepect requiring the death penalty. At least they didn't have any inconsistences with Det. Benson's hairdo.

CSI Las Vegas is still missing more female characters.

I forgot to tape Cold Case and Numb3rs, on my backlog watching list remain
1episode of Bones
4 episodes of Exes and Oh's
1 episode of La vie est à nous
1 episode of Wire in the blood

You don't know La vie est à nous? It's a french soap showing on TF1 Saturdays at 5.50 pm. Read what you missed so far on eurOut.

Iphone

It's been a week now, that I received my iPhone and the exhilaration is still there :)
So far I only needed to consult the manual twice, once to find how to place the sim-card and the second time to learn how to uninstall some application. Everything else comes naturally and the usage is very instinctive. These are the same requests I make to software as well, if the first page doesn't appeal to me and when I'm required to go through a configuration process that lasts 10 mins or more, then I'll get of it as quickly as I can ;) I'm more patient when it comes to software for computers, but not when they're destined for usage on mobilephones.

So far I kept:
Twitterfon
Facebook
Evernote
Stanza
eReader
AroundMe

I'll keep AroundMe for some more time, even if it ignores the fact that the Rhine has to be crossed and the restaurant is in fact 15km away and not only 3 km.

Just yesterday I installed Shazam but haven't had a chance to test it so far. Apparently it's able to tell which song is currently playing at the store, shopping mall, cafe or whatever. I'm curious if that really works.

While putting together the Lesbian News Snatch for eurout, I came across this headline: "New iPhone 3.0 Operating System Revealed!", nothing really new, but the source where this headline came from peaked my interest - as it was queensspeech, the site which is collecting lesbian and gay news from around the world.

Why would they feature an article on the iPhone? Turns out the article was published on gaywired.com and they weren't the only gay site or blog to pick this up. To summarize this, apparently it's gay to be gay and to own an iPhone ;)

Apple and software designers are also picking up on this trend and several new applications for the gay community were released since the beginning of this year. I tried some of these and as always I'm wary when it comes to the word gay cause it's been proven often enough that gay doesn't mean gay and lesbian, but exclusively gay.

You can check for yourself by searching for "gay" in application section of the iTunes Store. The community apps only work when others sign up to this as well and I'm ambiguous of those, could be fun though during all those pride events ;)

The only app (only talking about free ones) that made sense to me and didn't require any signing up is called GayCities and offers addresses and other information for currently 70 cities around the world. Based on your location it shows the nearest cities to you, Zurich for me.


More important to me now is that I'll find a case for my iPhone. As I've got an issue with how things feel when touching them I'll have to head out to the stores and touch-test acceptable cases. I'd really like to get one of those silicone-things, but will probably end up with a leather one ;)
Any suggestions? The colour has to be uni, no discussion.

Why I like NCIS

No, I hadn't known anything of this, when I predicted that the teasing would be back shortly in NCIS. Yesterday's episode though had some of the quality stuff, why I like this series so much.
It starts with Abby opening a cake box, given to her by Ziva, a thank you for allowing her to spend the night at Abby's appartment.
Tony get's totally excited at the thought of Ziva and Abby together and those two just play along.







Don't they look cute?