belgianwaffle

Belgium

The oddness of Belgium


Posted in: Belgium

On the way to school the other morning, the Princess and I saw four fire engines screaming their way to a warehouse near us.  They disgorged about 20 firemen who were suited up with masks and packs on their backs.  They leapt from the fire engines and sprinted into the warehouse.  This urgency was somewhat undermined by each of the firemen in turn pausing at the threshold of the building to shake hands with the site foreman before running on to the smoke filled interior.  Do you know that in their workplaces, Belgians kiss their colleagues at the start of the day?  Fancy moving to Belgium, land of old fashioned courtesy in work places.  Unless the work place is a department store in which case, the staff are paid extra to ignore you.

Recent culinary disasters or this is all very dull stuff but why should I suffer alone?


Posted in: Belgium, Family, Princess, Youngest Child

A while ago, I had some cold cauliflower which I decided to use up by turning into cauliflower cheese. I was undaunted by two significant facts which in retrospect should have daunted me: Mr. Waffle and the Princess do not like cauliflower cheese and I had never made it before. I turned to Mr. Conran for help (one of the many cookery books Mr. Waffle brought to our marriage). The quantities were for a head of cauliflower and it all seemed surprisingly complex. This is where I made my first mistake. I decided I couldn’t be dividing everything by four so I cooked the rest of the cauliflower. Then, Mr. Conran’s recipe had tricky bits in it like “make a mornay sauce” but add extra butter. So with a greasy thumb, I flicked between the cauliflower cheese and the mornay sauce recipe. And then it transpired that the mornay sauce recipe was a variant of another recipe on a different page; you know the kind of thing “as x sauce but with ingredient a instead of b and five times more c”. So I created a lifetime’s supply of cheese sauce using recipes from three different pages of the book. It tasted quite nice too but that didn’t encourage the Princess or Mr. Waffle to indulge and a head of cauliflower cheese lies waiting in small packets in the freezer to be fed to my sons over the rest of their lives until they leave home when they will be taking the remainder with them to university.

Regular readers will, I am sure, recall that I bought wild boar in the supermarket months ago. Last week, I decided to cook it. I used Mr. Waffle’s “La cuisine pour tous” which is a terse French cookbook originally published in 1932. It assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of the reader. None of your sissy modern day explanations for Ms. Mathiot although she does give excellent instructions on how to manage the hired help and how to lay a family dinner table. The recipe for the marinade gave quantities for some of the ingredients in dl. I was not sure how much a dl was and neither was Mr. Waffle and none of our cookbooks gave instructions on this point and we were too lazy to turn on the computer (foolish, foolish people). We decided how much a dl was (by looking into our hearts and comparing the results) and using the handy calpol measuring spoon we carefully spooned in what we believed to be the correct quantity of vinegar. The beast was marinaded and on Friday night served up to my misfortunate family. Actually, the boar itself wasn’t too bad. A bit gamey but not tough. Regrettably the sauce didn’t taste of cloves or peppers or sherry or red wine (3/4 of a litre) or anything really, other than vinegar. I am reassessing our guess on dl quantities. Mr. Waffle and I gamely (ha, ha) ate some but the Princess, very sensibly, refused to have any truck with it. However, later in the evening on our way to the cinema, Mr. Waffle turned to me and said “I’m not quite sure how to put this but, do you think we could stop for a toasted sandwich?”. Who was I to quibble. And to round off the evening, the film was quite, quite dreadful. May I recommend that you avoid Code 46? Having seen Samantha Morton in this, Minority Report and Morvern Callar, I have decided that I have suffered enough and I am going to foreswear any film in which she features in future. Happy Feet, anyone?

And finally, in other news, the royal grandparents are in situ for the week, minding the Princess for mid-term. They are not yet exhausted from their labours but we aim to send them back to Dublin shrivelled husks. Mind you, the Princess refused to go out with them this morning because she wanted to stay home admiring herself in her Snow White carnival outfit. They took Michael out instead (Daniel was napping) and he nearly expired from happiness at having two grown-ups all to himself. She did let them take her out this afternoon though. I am sorry, obviously, that I didn’t mention to her grandparents that she has got into the habit of putting on as many underpants as she can at a time. Not as sorry though as her grandmother who had to take her to the toilet in the local cafe and help her out of 14 pairs of underpants.


To summarise


Posted in: Belgium, Middle Child, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

Daniel has been vomitting on and off all week.  On our worst night we got to change his bedclothes three times.  We went into town yesterday (we are your worst nightmare, a double buggy, two parents and a three year old and, yeah, we probably could have gone in during the week) and took ourselves to the Metropole to revive our flagging spirits – I recommend it, it has the cleanest toilets in Brussels.  So, as we sat in splendour here it was inevitable, really, that Daniel would throw up all over the rug.  With admirable calm, we stripped him down to his nappy (which he then insisted on removing but it was hastily restored) reclad him, apologised to the waiter and took ourselves and our kit to the adjoining table.  On the good news front for Daniel, he has started to walk, though, understandably, not very steadily or very fast.  This is unfortunate for him.  Michael has gathered that there is praise to be had for walking so he either out runs Daniel into waiting parental arms or, as Daniel is balancing delicately having just stood up with great effort, Michael barges past him and knocks him over.  It is not easy being a twin.

Daniel and the Princess are cautious children.  I know that this is unusual and I am grateful.  Michael is not cautious, I suppose that this is normal.  It is scaring the bejaysus out of me.  Yesterday I found him trying to surf on the coffee table.  Earlier in the day I heard a tap tap noise and I sent the Princess to investigate “it’s just Michael standing on the chair and rocking back and forth”.  When I sit him on the counter in the kitchen, he is dangling off it by his fingertips in moments.  His sister has sat on that countertop for over three years and when she wants to get down, she still asks me to lift her.   I let him sit at the computer keyboard. He used this opportunity to climb up on the desk and on to the bookshelves.  I’m a shadow of my former self.  On Friday he went to the creche on his own because Daniel was vomitting.  Mr. Waffle stayed home with Daniel and I took Michael in.  He was a bit clingy at first but was lured away from me by a pink buggy and when I went he had barely a backward glance for me as he wheeled his treasure round the premises.  When I collected him he had spent 7 hours in the creche, the longest period he and Daniel have ever spent apart.  I asked how it had gone.  Absolutely fine except when he woke up from his nap and looked around for Daniel.  I have to say, Michael was pleased to see me, but then he always is, in the gratifying manner of young children.  He ran around the room picking up little things for me and handing them over saying solemly “ank u” a noise I believe to be thank you.  Daniel, safely at home with his father, didn’t seem to have noticed Michael’s absence at all.  Perhaps he was doing some work on his walking.

They’re both starting to talk more.  I encourage them to kiss each other and when they do we all clap hands and say “Bravo”.  The other day, I was distracted and Daniel kissed Michael and I failed to react.  “BWABO!” said Daniel indignantly clapping his hands.  He can still say “that” and “the bath”.  They can both say “Hi” as well as “Mama”, “Papa” and “bye”.  It’s maybe not enough to get by in a foreign country but they’re getting there.

An old friend of mine came to visit at the weekend.  He came with a friend of his whom I know slightly.  His friend asked whether I was working with 3 small children.  “Yes” I said proudly. “So am I” added Mr. Waffle indignantly.  I think we have a mountain to climb on this feminism thing.  My friend is gay and so is his friend though they are not partners.  I don’t know why but the Princess was inspired to investigate the whole issue of gay marriage during their visit.

Her: Mummy, can men get married?

Me: Yes.

Her: To each other?

Me: Yes, certainly in Belgium.

Her: Are T and N married.

Me: Um, no, I don’t think so.

T and N: NO!

T (kindly): And if we were, you would certainly have made the cut for the wedding.

The Princess would like to be a flower girl.

She also wants to know who made God.  Any tips?

The final insult


Posted in: Belgium

I drove into work this morning because it was so cold. On the way in, trying to change lanes (on the little ring, if you know Brussels), I had my wing mirror clipped by a speeding large car. I glared at him balefully and adjusted my mirror which was undamaged. At the next junction an elderly and oddly dressed gentleman came up to my window and tapped on it crossly. “You damaged my car” he said. We pulled in and had a look. Alas, his wing mirror had a small dent. It is so typical of me that as we sat in my car, I decided that, really, it was all my fault. This, despite the fact that he was wreathed in alcohol fumes. He wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t entirely sober either. He was retired. And despite his large car, which he confided was a hire car, he looked very poor and was wearing a strange assortment of tracksuit bottoms and tops. We filled in the accident form. This being Belgium, we ended up filling in the form in Dutch which neither of us understood very well because he had no copy in French and I only had an English copy. I dutifully marked that I had been trying to pull into his lane but refrained from remarking that he smelt of drink and had been driving very fast. Partly, it was my wishy-washiness but partly it was because I felt we could probably bear the cost of repair considerably better than he could. Anyway, we parted relatively amicably. However, after he had left the car, I noticed that there was a big damp patch on the passenger seat where he had been sitting. I suppose that we’ll all be old, drunk and incontinent some day.

Reasons to love Belgium


Posted in: Belgium, Reading etc.

Firstly, there is this picture. Then the other day in the Princess’s school I saw a poster encouraging us all to go to something arty which was supported by the “Ministère des classes moyennes”; disappointingly when I found the Ministry site, it is translated into English as self-employed which is not the same thing at all. Finally, do you know that all children who go to school in Belgium whether rich or poor are entitled to a “classe de neige” which is a week of school on the ski slopes? Subsidised by the State, as appropriate. What a fantastic thing for taxes to go on – let’s hear it for the Belgians please.

NaBlPoMo – Still with the mothers and as Paul McCartney said in one of his less successful numbers, “what’s wrong with that, I’d like to know”

Alana

Did you know that teenage boys can sound like their mothers? Just warning you, as is Alana. And I have just discovered that she is a poet too. Yes, I know, that sounds like bad news, but it’s not. Truly.

Dooce

You think I covered this earlier, but no, this is Dooce for alphamom. Funnily enough, they seem to have barred her from talking about motherhood, it’s about music, tv, concerts. For my money, not as good as dooce.com where her daughter, Leta, gets a lot of airtime but perhaps of more interest for those among you not blessed with progeny.

Apparently, I do have standards


Posted in: Belgium

This morning, I was standing on the pavement waiting for the traffic lights to change and standing beside me was a man in a suit holding a well dressed, beautiful looking little girl who was about nine months old.  She had a runny nose.  Her father searched his person for tissue but to no avail (done that).  Then, he wiped her nose with his fingers (done that).  Then, he looked at his snotty fingers, shrugged his shouders and wiped them on her dress (done that).  But her nose kept running. He wiped it again with his fingers and then, absentmindedly, licked them clean (this is where I draw the line).