Guilty pleasures

Sinful - vanilla ice cream and dulce de leche

I've discovered some guilty pleasures while being here in Geneva. One is pictured right; vanilla ice cream and dulce de leche. You might remember I had a hard time finding dulce de leche last time I cooked with it, to the point I ended up making it myself. I'm happy to say that dulce de leche is quite easy to find in Geneva, though I should add that the jar below was bought at a fantastic food market in London (more on that in a later post).

The other pleasure I've discovered here is the joy of fresh bread. Nobody does bread like the French - or French-speaking Swiss. I go shopping Saturday mornings and pick up bread from my local supermarket; it's often still warm from having just come out of the oven.

I find there is sometimes no greater joy than slicing a still warm loaf of bread - crusty on the outside, soft on the inside - and spreading a generous amount of butter on.

I should add that, remarkably, I have actually managed to lose weight since arriving in Switzerland. Who would have thought?!

New kitchen, new beginnings

So it's been quite awhile since my last post, but without a decent kitchen (and my last post will explain why), I haven't cooked much lately. That's about to change. About a month ago, Emperor D and I moved into our new apartment. I should clarify and say brand new apartment. With a brand new apartment, comes a brand new kitchen, and with a brand new kitchen comes brand new appliances!

A brand new kitchen! Hooray!

And joy of joys, the new appliances include a dishwasher! Most people will be baffled by my excitement, until I explain that in the 30 years of my existance, I have never lived in a house with a dishwasher. Unless of course the dishwasher was me. I started washing up as a child and have been doing it ever since, so it's a real luxury for me to come home, cook dinner, and then let the dishwasher clean everything while I relax on the couch.

My boxes from Australia have also arrived, along with my cookbooks in them, but I'm yet to unpack most of them, so I still think it will be a couple of weeks before I can start properly cooking and posting again. But I hope to do so soon; unfortunately I missed cooking during winter and making all my favourite winter foods, but the produce here is amazing and summer really can throw up some great ideas for recipes.

So watch this space! Most of my Scanpan pots have made it over, along with Betty, so time to start putting them to good use.