Bottom of the Barrel

Wandering around my 'hood the other day, I stumbled (ok, I "deliberately" my way there), into the Jewish quarter, as evidenced but lovely bakeries full of breadstuffs with unpronounceable (to me) names. Chilled by the cold and encouraged by the walk, I wanted to go in and have a bite of everything when I spied the much blogged about L'As de Fallafel!

Well, what can I say about L'As de Fallafel which hasn't been said before here and here?

It's good, 'nuff said.

Moving now to my lunch today....

Bread soup.

Have you ever heard of such a thing? I had heard talk of it but had not much desire to try it. Until today. Let me explain.


Having gone overboard with the bounty of bakeries everywhere, we had been buying bread at every opportunity. A lot of bread. Unfortunately baguettes don't keep very well. And what to do with old stale bread? Well we could make croutons or stuff chicken but since I'm not fond of croutons and with no chicken in the fridge, I thought I'd cut them up and freeze them until needed.


And much, much, much earlier than I would have imagined, I needed them.

I've been stuck at home (damn the inefficiency of this delicious country!) for 2 days now waiting for a locksmith. And, thus we don't have any food. Still trying to resist the lure of the instant noodles, I thought I'd see what I can do with the stale bread and vegetable stock I had made over the weekend when this popped up. Pappa Al Pomodoro sounded just perfect on this chilly day. If only I had garlic, onions, etc, etc.


So, what's a girl to do? Improvise of course! (And people always wonder how come my food looks nothing like the recipes!)


So, 1 can of tomatoes, a squirt of tomato paste, black peppercorns, smoked paprika and a bit later I had this.


Ok, so it's not the best, tasting more like adult baby food than some exotic Italian soup but it did use up some of the bread and stock. With some black pepper and a splash of olive oil, it was palatable, although not likely to be repeated.

Apologies if this entry isn't up to scratch but it's been a bit difficult recently. For those who are interested in hearing the dark side of my rose-tinted world, I have been "helped" into annoyance. Soothing sounds and words from the landlord has inspired me to compile a list to help those of you who may be landlords.

Not to sound ungracious but please, if send some to clean the flat and fix the issues, please make sure that person does NOT:

• break the lock and neglect to telephone the tenant and instead jam the door in order to provide some obstacles to would be thieves
• break the lamp and hide it in the cupboard hoping we won't notice
• stain the carpet
• throw out half of the tenant's stuff because they think its trash
• reshuffle all the dishes and plates to their liking, causing the tenant to search all over again for hidden dishes
• eat the tenant's biscuits then hide them at the back of the cupboard in hopes that the tenant will not notice. I will notice. I don't mind, eat my biscuits but don't hide the packet or how will I know to replace them?

And whatever you do, please please please send the locksmith when you say you will so the tenant is not sitting there all day waiting for the bloody lock to be fixed in order to leave the house!