niilv

2012-03-08T17:17:00.007+01:00

coat: Mango, velvet black dress: second-hand, furry black sweater: second-hand, chunky piece of jewellery from a cute little old-jewellery store in Brussels, old pair of Nikes

An honest little edit.

So here's what I do and will always do. Buy cheap second-hand and recycle old rags from my own closet, trying to merge ideas and influences from people who are good at that with my own schizophrenic tendencies (feminine - masculine - feminine - masculine - ...), that I hope some people may enjoy, some people who (accidentally) land here. Because where I tend to walk the people think that calf-length velvet dresses paired with golden sneakers is not so done. It would be nice to enjoy a shared fashion moment with someone sometimes. Someone who does not think you are a living clothes stand for a change. I admit, sometimes it's a hit, sometimes it's a miss - like everything in life.

But I like being a living collage! And that's the reason why I keep blogging. People like to share the things they love, and dressing up in crazy layers is one of them for me. I could wear weird combos all the time and not share them with anyone specifically, just getting the odd stare from a stranger, without comments. I could enjoy the colours, the textures, the fabrics merely walking around in them. I keep saying weird where in fact they're nothing extraordinary from a fashion point of view, but you've got to keep in mind that I'm using that word in contrast to my own entourage (work, family, ...), where skinny jeans and fitted blouses are still the rule.

I sometimes feel incredibly silly, blogging, posting pictures of the things I wear. Then again, that's what I enjoy most in other peoples' diaries.
I tried to strangle my blog once again today, but it survived. Ill weed grow apace and old habits die hard.

--
The clothes make the person, but the person also makes the clothes. And most of all the haircut. Sad but true.
Sometimes I feel like pasting a long-haired blonde head where my head is in the picture.
A good-looking girl could make bin bags seem fancy.
I'm growing my hair out to Cousin-It length. Looking forward to hiding in it. It'll look good with velvet black dresses.

nothing new/always a challenge

2012-03-06T21:06:00.004+01:00

Just do it: team your (high) fashion with sneakers.
images: Face Hunter, Sartorialist, Style Bubble, (2 last images) Elle France

zang-fu

2012-03-06T08:52:00.004+01:00

Starting the day with Traditional Chinese medicine, more specifically the zang-fu theory.
Those who are tired generally need to up their spleen energy. Don't ask. A Chinese remedy is warm soups as breakfast, with rice added - they should give warmth and... energy.
This soup = Brussels sprouts, chicory, carrot, celery, brown rice.

2012-03-04T19:50:00.008+01:00

all images via Topshop

great-grandfather

2012-03-04T18:46:00.003+01:00

A superb picture of my great-grandfather (man in the middle), who looks exactly like my grandfather.
Photo courtesy of the Van Steenbergen family, Arendonk.

2012-03-01T13:59:00.007+01:00

Office look of the day (minus the coat). I've never wanted to dress up for work, but in the end when you're surrounded by men in suits and women with pancaked faces all the time, it feels good to stomp around in heels (wedges) now and again. I wore a matching pair of shiny leggings which have been lying around in my wardrobe since 2008, unworn. My boyfriend gave me the look when he saw me leaving yesterday morning - he thought they were thy-high leater boots.

Aspiring to this kind of layering, but no can do at wurk :(

via Style Sightings

Ahh what am I talking about! I've got an exam coming up featuring awesome words such as chymotripsinogen, carboxylate peptidase, ptyalin, ... I'm not a nutritionist yet!

sunday afternoon

2012-02-26T15:55:00.010+01:00

Easy lunch. Even though besides studying Nutrition for next week's exam there's nothing that has to be done - I have a lot of time on my hands, my laziness brought a very nice little déjeuner paresseux into being: a slice of sourdough bread with store-bought hummus and green (organic ;-)) beans from a jar with a little sea salt. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
After that my boy and I split the last of the sugar-free chocolate muffins I made - they were yumm. And then there was green tea and a spelt cookie (full serving suggestion credit goes to Simon) and the sound of Hollywood dinosaurs in the next room.

Ironically enough I've just arrived at the chapter about the chemistry and types of sugar. DESPAIR.

My morning was spent watching this film, thanks, Tavi. I know it was far from your intention and it was far from mine, too. PS I don't know how you do it, writing so many positive comments to the pictures you provide, I mean ???????. I'd also like to point out that dissing SJP is so very last decade.

2012-02-25T21:04:00.002+01:00

what I ate today (sugar-free diet)

2012-02-24T19:58:00.016+01:00

A diet completely free of sugar is not an easy one to embark on, but once you've become used to it and you've found replacements to "bad foods" that are both healthy and which taste really good, you will start to feel better than ever. Ever since I've had to do this (and I have to do so regularly) for the first time I've noticed a huge difference:

- Fatigue? Non-existent!
- Mood swings? Nope. No more.
- Bloated? Not at all.
- Hungry? Nuh-uh.
- Over-eaten? Never.

I want to share with you what I've eaten today, not to bugger you into going on the same strict diet, but to 1) support those who have to, 2) tackle conventional nutritional rules and 3) give some helpful advice to those who do feel tired, depressed, bloated, hungry and over-eaten.

Breakfast: 1 apple, 1 banana, 3 dried dates, 4 scoops of probiotic yoghurt - usually at breakfast we also have 1 or 2 cups of freshly brewed Japanese green tea and a glass of unsweetened cranberry juice (I look forward to this breakfast every single day!)

Lunch: large bowl of home-made soup (celery root, Roman cauliflower, carrot, onion, with unrefined sea salt) and two slices of whole wheat sourdough bread with butter, two lettuce leaves

Little snacks at work: mandarine orange with a couple of cashew nuts and dried cranberries, a piece of dark chocolate (sweetened with stevia)

Appetizer before supper: 3 corn cakes with mayonnaise and sea salt

Supper: home-made soup (Brussels sprouts, carrot, celery root, onion, sea salt), 4 stems of steamed broccoli, a raw carrot and some lettuce with mayonnaise and a couple of walnuts

+ lots of water

It does not seem a lot, probably, compared to the enormous amounts of food many are used to. General nutritional advice also tries to convince you that you need at least 2000kcal a day to be a healthy woman. In the beginning I was worried too when I read what I could and could not eat, basically the only things that I could eat were fruits and veggies... The 2000kcal is a misconception which I do not even have to back up with scientific evidence. I dare you to try and find it out for yourself which would make you feel more energized: living one whole day on bread, cheese, meat, crackers, etc. (starch and protein) or fruits, vegetables, nuts (natural sugars/carbohydrates and some good fat/protein)? Rest assured, I too have felt desperation after reading that from now on I could only eat stuff from the last group. I thought it was going to be boring and impossible. Six months later and I could not imagine going back to my old eating habits. I have lost some weight, which troubled me at first, but once the scale kept showing me the same weight, I felt relieved. Don't let calories scare you, if you eat enough "living" plant matter, you won't have to bother about counting kcals.

It's not so much that I have to practise what I preach and feel inner frustration about this - been there, but rather a matter of necessity. It may sound unbelievable, but I could and would like to eat like this for the rest of my life. It's very hard to make this clear to others. My brother will for example still ironically refer to my not eating meat any more, assuming that I'm gnawing at the door jamb 24/7 because I can't have a bloody peace of meat!!!, but I must say I have more or less become indifferent to it - there are of course exceptions such as Christmas parties where you almost have to shove the meat back off of your plate if you don't want to have any (grannies just don't get it, vegetarianism).
I cannot begin to describe how good it feels to have all those fresh vegetables on my plate every day. (I will quickly add that I eat eggs too sometimes, and small amounts of cheese occasionally.) In a way it brings you closer to nature again, away from processed factory food.

The menu you've seen above is how I more or less eat daily (with different fruit and vegetables), and the foods are all organic. When sugar is not completely forbidden, I do like my cookies and a piece of chocolate cake from time to time, some crisps here and there and a nice latte when I'm out with friends. It's not my choice to live completely ascetic, but I do stick to the basic principles of healthy eating, just because it makes me feel much better than the regular Western diet does.

A note on mayonnaise, because I know it tends to ring the alarm bell in some people: what could be bad about mayonnaise? The fat? The eggs? Cholesterol, you say? Your liver makes cholesterol daily, the equivalent of 6(!) egg yolks, 'nuff said? People who have been diagnosed with "high levels of cholesterol" are generally people who eat too much starch, protein and sugar, or people with leaky-gut syndrome and the like. Some mayonnaise or fresh butter won't drastically increase the amount of bad cholesterol in a person.

PS: My apologies for being slightly too concise at times, it's hard to cram all side-thoughts and explanations into one easy read. I'm trying to keep it light and interesting.

panama blue for a penny

2012-02-23T21:25:00.003+01:00

€1 + cheap mylittleponyesque earrings to match

I was thinking I might post a "weird outfit a day" (although week will be more suitable) sort of thing to get that inspiration going again, i.e. not standing in front of my wardrobe every morning just gawking at it for 15 minutes without moving, but actually grabbing things quickly and getting it right again most of the time. I feel I've lost it, and so the daily picture could be a good exercise...

they're here

2012-02-20T22:15:00.010+01:00

Four of my demos.

soundcloud.com/evelien-vs

apple cakes without sugar

2012-02-18T17:13:00.009+01:00

These just came fresh out of the oven!
I'm on a sugarfree diet (health reasons - not going into that in this post), and obviously for a pie/cookie/chocolate/coffee with milk and sugar/crisps/... lover like me that's a small disaster. I can't take anything with milk either because of the lactose and crisps/fries/... are forbidden too, because in the gut starch is modified to sugar. Obviously no alcohol either, for the same reason. Wheat is a standard no-no for me, hence the almond meal as you will see.
I'm trying to make life a little easier by delving into old and new recipes and learning more and more about healthy baking. And what's even more important, the occupation itself gets my mind off the sugar!

For 6 little cakes:
200g almond meal
2 organic eggs
6tbsp apricot jam
2/3tsp baking soda
1/2tsp vanilla powder
1tsp cinnamon
15-20 drops of liquid stevia
50g coconut oil
20g butter
1 large apple
some cranberries

Mix the almond meal, eggs, jam, vanilla, cinnamon, stevia, coconut oil, butter and 3/4 of the apple. The butter will soften as you stir (with a fork). Grease the baking form(s) and sprinkle some almond meal in them (makes removing the cakes really easy!). Put the mix in the form and cover with pieces of apple and cranberries, and some more apricot jam if you like. Bake 25-30 minutes at 175°C.

2012-02-17T18:07:00.012+01:00

With lotsa small Flower Remedy bottles. 40 to be precise.

The organic food shop sold their last bottle of brandy... to me! The time has come, I'm going to start experimenting with the composition of Bach Flower Remedies. (The flower extracts are preserved in brandy 40%.) School told us to start with self-treatment, so I'll have to start thinking which of my personality traits/moods need a good scrub. Oh yes, I do have an idea.

With eerie pikturs.

I love this book. It's a reprint of Jean-Baptiste Marc Bourgery's Atlas of Anatomy (1831-1854), who at the time worked together with Nicolas Henri Jacob, the illustrator who made the amazing hand-coloured litographs for the treatise. Some plates are a little scary, especially the ones covering surgical directions of the time - sometimes you wonder what exactly that weird object is doing in that bared skull, and the settings look pretty sadistic here and there, but their 23 years' time of hard work and careful observation did pay off.

And here's apparently the complete (huh??) online version of Gray's Anatomy (of the Human Body), my initial inspiration to get myself a book with 19th-century anatomical plates.

The Anatomy classes start in only a couple of weeks...

in the newspaper

2012-02-16T12:27:00.007+01:00

I have just discovered that Belgian 15 to 25-year-olds these days dream mostly of becoming famous CEOs, more than becoming famous pop stars or sports players. Apparently the increased interest in this quite incomprehensible ambition (to me at least) is due to the media attention given to people such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zucherberg. Well then! I wish for them that there be enough companies to be head of. Maybe we could start an actual company that employs only CEOs, or companies could make their staff rotate, so that each month someone else gets to be CEO. I'm so allergic to this word.
So who still wants to work here, for a normal wage? There's not enough money for so many superdeluxe lives, you know! But that's OK, you all go be the famous CEO you wanna be, I'll be the famous pop star (well, someone will have to). What was more interesting was this cute thing below, the Brookesia micra, which has only just been discovered. 29mm. That's not even a fourth of an inch, is it?

hard gaan

2012-02-01T14:05:00.005+01:00

Dude (excuse my French), this is, as we would say in colloquial Flemish, "hard gaan". This song doesn't even need a second play to receive my approving last.fm love-click. It's INSAAAAAANE! OK, second time, go.

raw food - EASY!

2012-01-26T13:57:00.006+01:00

I was just gobbling up a really lovely little quinoa salad and thought I'd share the recipe with the world. Well, recipe, you just clean vegetables, chop them up and throw the bits together. I've been trying to eat more raw things for quite some time, especially with warm dishes for this reason (digestive leucocytosis, sounds worse than it is and you can calm it down by eating some raw vegetables before/with a meal).

1) wash quinoa, boil 12 minutes
2) boil an egg, 10 minutes
3) wash some lettuce, celery, carrots, alfalfa, parsley + chop up or grate if you like
4) mingle
5) add whichever you like: wheat germ oil, olive oil, mayonnaise, yoghurt, ... and some sea salt

And there's your daily portion of raw goodness.
Enjoy.

PS: a note on raw eggs, 'cause I hear some of you shouting that my egg isn't raw. Never eat raw egg whites. You can have a raw yolk any time, but the whites should always be cooked.

free your mind

2012-01-23T09:38:00.002+01:00

The easiest way to free your mind nowadays is to close your laptop's lid.

wie bent gij en wa doet gij

2012-01-21T09:38:00.021+01:00

"I am the mother of a developmentally delayed daughter, Leslie. I am married, and live with my daughter and husband, Walter, in ******, Georgia." How would you define who you are in two lines? Who or what are you going to include in this concise description? People need and want to be able to make an outline of themselves. Either the outside world asks them to do so in order to make an introduction, or they simply need a summary of the self as a way of rooting, taking a clear position in the world. Just as we cannot walk around without identity cards, we cannot go through life undefined. No one is able to remain a complete blank. First of all, because we cannot avoid or escape building up a certain curriculum of references - even a one-minute-old has them: parents X and Y and its place of birth, second, because for most of us there is an instinctive need to cosily curl up in the lap of society. It is interesting to look at the possible choices for composing this personal abstract. Some, as in the above example, do this by means of relatives and home town, while others will use their jobs or flourishing careers and mention the company they work for. Which leads me to a subject I've been meaning to write a little word about.

Junior Product Specialist
Associate Consultant
Master International Business Economics and Management
Sales Manager Benelux

Namely, that more and more of the people I used to go to school with are now clear-cut products of a world dominated by companies. The above four are people of my age and this is something my innocent mind is not quite able to grasp - insert mental image of little man in a small room running to and fro in a desperate manner, thereby constantly crashing into the walls, exclaiming "WHY, WHY, WHY". I'm not delving into the explanation of why this is so hard for me to understand, let the job titles (note the widespread use of English for more credibility!) speak for themselves. And PS, what the hell is a Services Delivery Manager? My guess: someone that rotates around his own axis all day? A delivery guy, like, I order a service and he brings it to my door in a flat cardboard box? Titles can be so absurd. Where have all the milkmen gone? I suppose they've all received a laptop, a mobile phone and a company car and went for it. As for myself, sometimes I would just like to respond that I am "Evelien, I live, and have been doing so for the past 25 years - occasionally enjoying it", especially since I hate being asked what I do for a living; I prefer not to be identified with my source of income. However, I too was born with an instinct that makes me make use of any given opportunity that comes along to subconsciously mark my territory, f. ex. I am a vegetarian, id est, meat eaters, abstain! Up until not very long ago I used to tell people I was an artist, but I've adapted my virtual visiting card and wiped that word off of it, instead simply naming some of the activities that I happen to be occupied with. (Of course when you look to the left, you will see that I'm not being entirely honest.) Which is more truthful: I sometimes play music, which may from time to time lead to the birth of an actual song. I am on the path to Naturopath, now, who knows perhaps I will quit at some point? And I do not work for a company - at least, that is what I tell myself each day before rushing out to the metro station to get to my reception at 8 o' clock prompt for half a day's profitable slavery. Whahey, have you also noticed it's Saturday? Time for breakfast!

F#m A F#m A C#m D

2012-01-20T20:07:00.004+01:00

I nearly blinked away a tear with this video - no sarcasm. The weird changes of accent and tone colour are perfect. Artists don't always have to sound exactly like they do on their records. This is the charm of live performance, there's a real person behind this great song, who even though she had a lot of success, still feels a little uncomfortable in the limelight. Don't diss! Dissing is for people that have their noses sticking to a screen 24/7.

I fell in love with this song today and that's late maybe, since I've know it since its release (thank you FB friends, there's always someone in there discovering things the minute they come into being!). It's like suddenly noticing that you like a certain somebody just a little more than you thought, even though you've known them for a while.
Hope I can still focus on my own songs a little tonight, got my head in a F#m cloud.
I want Lana's low voice.

And hair.

2012-01-18T21:01:00.007+01:00

I can no longer use Photoshop. Just the very basics I remember, but none of the fancy advanced stuff I've learned in college. It's all gone. I'm hoping to retrieve it from the back of my mind at some point. It's embarrassing to have a Photographer's diploma in one of my drawers - God knows where, in between a stack of manuals and scrap paper most probably - and not being able to turn a simple path into a mask.
Well whatever, at least for today.

Today I have been studying Bach Flower Remedies. Yes, that's right. Those small bottles with flower extracts you've all heard of, but never really trusted. Maybe you've used Rescue Remedy once before going to an exam? That ring a bell, yeah?

To be honest with you, the philosophy behind this discipline is incredibly fascinating. It delves into the human mind so deeply that it makes you feel uncomfortable merely studying the different remedies. The motives that lie at the base of our decisions, our need for or aversion to exchanging thoughts with others, social contact or a tendency towards withdrawal from social contexts, eagerness for the new or fear of change, all are subtly defined by personality and it is extremely important to position yourself as a good listener when treating someone to accurately define the source, the root cause that stands in the way of balance. Unlike what I thought before, this is not just some flower pleasantry, not some playing about with little expensive bottles. Edward Bach was an admirable man with sharp observational skills and mastering his remedies is not for the quickly disinterested. We will be given this course all throughout our naturotherapeutic education.
Above all it gives a good insight into the people that surround you as well as an elevated sense of self-awareness.

And here's a picture to go with my writing. Pictures are important. Not everyone likes to read random rants (I usually skip those too on unknown blogs). Not that this picture is particularly interesting. FULL STOP.

souvenirs from K20

2012-01-13T15:35:00.007+01:00

1) Sophie Taeuber-Arp, 2) Sonia Delaunay, Coat made for Gloria Swanson, 3) Franz Kline (1957 - Oil on canvas, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf)

I find it funny to have found the one Franz Kline I'd seen and liked at the Düsseldorf K20 museum, considering this. That Google search did take away the mystery. I still cannot decide if I admire people with such dedication for one very specific way of painting or if they make me feel as though I'm staring at a line worker's career overview. They are certainly good art history material, the ones with the highest level of persistence: if it weren't for them we wouldn't have so many "movements" to study in our art classes. Surely the concept of movements is both intriguing and necessary for/to the human mind which will always involuntarily prefer that which can be easily divided into categories and then neatly organised into neurological structures - makes looking up info so much easier. On the other hand, an ultra-specific and dedicated Kline may have reached the full potential of his black strokes at the end of his life and leave planet earth/art history a few really striking works, while artists such as Gerhard Richter who try to cover a broader spectrum of styles risk ending up having touched upon everything and nothing at the same time.

a mint little monster

2012-01-10T16:19:00.008+01:00

Happy in my newly-thrifted mint-coloured gold-buttoned wide-shouldered wool coat.
I cannot seem to find second-hand coats my size, or trousers, or sweaters, or anything. Therefore I will always remain the girl that was worn by her own clothes.
And look ridiculous(ly happy) in them.

Also, I feel much like this in it:

PS: Clicking "next blog" must be the most boredom-inducing thing I have done in the past ten years. Previous blog possibly agrees with me. Ouch!

vegetarian supper?

2011-12-20T16:24:00.011+01:00

Why not make:

The Greasy* Salad
leaf lettuce + alfalfa + a glug of both wheat germ oil** and olive oil + some mayonnaise + some crushed garlic + all kinds of nuts and seeds (crushed golden flax, remember?) + green herbs + unrefined sea salt

Pumpkin Vélouté
For 2 hungry individuals: chop up half a small pumpkin (the size of a little toy ball? mm), two carrots and an onion. You can add some parsnip too, which adds a lovely earthy taste. Steam until all vegetables are soft, then slowly add more and more water, be careful not to add to much. Mix before adding more water to see if you like the soup's consistency. Add vegetable stock to taste.

Quiche Of The Season
Steam parsnip + sweet potato + any form of cabbage + two onions, very lightly (about 5 minutes). Knead 175g of spelt with 75g of butter, three tablespoons of water and a dash of salt into a firm dough. Flatten dough and put into a quiche pan, make holes with a fork. Bake 10 minutes at 180°C before adding the vegetables. After adding the veggies poor a mixture of two eggs with a little crushed garlic over your quiche. Bake for some 30 more minutes.

For Those Who Miss Summer Dishes
Chop up wintery veggies ad lib: parsnip, brussels sprouts, cabbage, celery/celery root, beets, turnip, fennel, ... + carrots, mushrooms, potatoes and onions, which are available all through the year. Grease an oven dish with coconut oil. If you do not live in a tropical region, your oil will be solid. Hint: when cooking the accompanying rice hold the dish above the boiling water until the cocoa butter melts into a nice colourless oil. Hint 2: start cooking the rice right before putting the dish in the oven if you're using brown or black rice, as I would recommend :)
Fill up the dish with the vegetables. Heat up half a litre of passata, add spices to taste (a glug of portwine is really nice) and poor over the vegetables. Put slices of mozzarella on top and sprinkle herbs over your dish (including oregano!). Bake for 30 minutes. YUMM!
Brussels sprouts need more cooking time, you can steam them a little beforehand (or just eat them crispy).

Serve ANY dish with the greasy salad for your daily dose of leafy greens.
Soz for the lack of picture material. All has been tried, tasted and approved!
Enjoy.

* we aren't rabbits: uncooked leafy greens are harder to chew and hence to digest, that's why you need to soak them in grease, so they stay in your stomach longer! ha! don't fret, oils aren't the things that will get you fat!
** wheat germ oil is loaded with vitamin E, good for your skin, nudge-nudge

2011-12-18T21:26:00.009+01:00

This picture(*) is seriously freaking me out.

(*) The Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia by Mark Newman

That second thing is me looking at aforementioned picture, wearing three layers (thick sweater stolen from my bf + thick sweater + not kidding) and sitting next to something that looks much like a toaster. A sauna/hammam/jacuzzi session at the local sports centre today has done us really well. Truly pore-opening. Since Wikipedia told us nudity is compulsory within the Benelux, we first tried to get in covered in just a towel. I advise all other sauna newbies to check the centre's nudity policy first before trying to enter - although the sauna staff's faces are priceless when ur doin it wrong.

can you believe this?

2011-12-18T11:50:00.008+01:00

I was sad to discover this next message in my inbox this morning and decided I might as well share the news with you:

Japanese tsunami fund 'used for whaling programme'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16064002

http://blog.seattlepi.com/candacewhiting/tag/minke-whales/
"Why Japan Is Prepared To Battle Over Whaling - Their Other Agenda"
Eye-opening article, if you're interested to know more.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/japan_disaster_funds_whaling_b/?vl
Petition to force Prime Minister Noda to use precious relief funds to save people, not kill whales.

______

Shocking news is always just a little more shocking when you know what the victims look like. Here's the creatures they're after: minke (1), humpback (2) and fin (3) whale, respectively 935, 50 and 50 whales per season.

The playful behavior of humpback whales is well known and has even been mentioned in classic American literature. Herman Melville, using the character Ishmael as his narrator in Moby-Dick, said of the humpbacks that they are "the most gamesome of species and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and white water than any other."
Source: Seapics.com

wot shud I put on me sammich then

2011-12-13T23:30:00.000+01:00

You've probably heard people talk about it and you have most likely ignored it for facility's sake: milk and meat are not good for you.

For most of us, it's a scary statement that renders a wide range of questions and worries. There are ensuing questions which I will gladly answer, and there are questions I'm getting quite tired of, two of which are:
* How can I replace dairy?
* What should I put on my sandwich?

I will answer, however, why I won't answer them.
Because 1) plenty of books have been written about the more popular questions that spring to the average omnivore's mind and 2) in my world, they've become useless. Now that does not mean I'm up there in my ivory tower looking down on those who don't eat well. It just means that I believe I'm not the soft-approach type of person. Cold turkey, ice bath, face the truth. And we'll have to, if we want to get to 15 billion self-proclaimed omnivores without having to gnaw at each other's hams n' loins because the meat supply has become insufficient.

What that whole eating-well idea really boils down to is bringing about a huge change in thought pattern and overthrowing current habits. Bread, pasta, wheat, starch = no more than stuffings. Protein = propaganda (I promise I will clarify that at some point, but in the mean time there are many good articles available that will put forth many more arguments than I ever could at this point, for example this one.)
Especially when you are trying to recover from a certain illness, your diet needs to be 80% veggies/fruit, period. If that looks strict or impossible, try making it a daily goal. If you don't meet that goal, that's fine, as long as you can bear in mind that the base of your pyramid - contrary to popular belief - should be fruit and vegetables.
So pile on the leaves, fruits, stems, flower buds, seeds, buds, roots, bulbs and get happy. Or get over it, as I would say to some.

It's fairly easy to please people in their plates, what's harder is to meet their nutritional daily needs. I find it tragic to see those star cooks get awarded and rewarded for preparing food that does not even surpass the level of pleasing taste buds. What I would like to see is someone capable who's able to put people on the right track. Someone who knows how much omega-3 fatty acids I need everyday, where I can find them and how I can squeeze those into my daily food rituals. Maybe someone who can inform people about what are the good fats in the first place? Because omega 3 may now ring a bell for some, since fish oils have been commercialised, but these fatty acids do not necessarily have to be derived from animal source. For example. (Answer: in my morning ritual a spoonful of golden flaxseed is included, f. ex. plain white yoghurt + fruit + golden flax (which you ground right before using them), providing 2.1 grams of ALA - alpha-Linolenic acid, one of the omega-3 fatty acids. Why ground? Ungrounded flax will merely pass through the digestive tract, since the fluids there aren't strong enough to break down the seeds to get to the fats.)

As vegetabletarians, our fridge is permanently stuffed with at least seven different seasonal vegetables. I'm no 5-star cook, but I know how to improvise with the fridge's contents. It's pick-and-prepare: for each underground veg you pick two that have grown above the ground. Sounds weird, huh. Just believe me for now and throw in some coconut milk if you like, and many spices. Make sure the greens aren't overcooked, but rather lightly steamed in a little bit of water if you don't have one of those steaming machines (I don't!). Never bake things in vegetable oils (huhh what?? LATERZ, it's bloody half past eleven), but use them cold in salads. AND CHEW WELL, 40 times at least - also future-article material.

This shows I'm not a professional writer as I'm too impatient to post this article-thing and it hasn't even turned into a well-funded coherent writing yet. And my sleep goes above all.
Good night, nice recipes soon.

OMG

2011-11-28T16:52:00.016+01:00

Did you know...

you get a tan because your body needs to protect your skin from intensive exposure to sunlight to avoid vitamin D overload?
protein, fat and carbohydrates are interchangeable? I.e. when there's a shortage of one of them, the body will convert one of the other two into the missing compound!
Edit: fever does not "burn" pathogens, that doesn't make sense. The body's temperature is increased to speed up its metabolism, facilitating the healing procedure, and the heart rate is increased as well. Of course, if merely the body's temperature were to be increased by 1 or 2 degrees without speeding up other functions this would only facilitate the multiplication of bacteria. Sigh.

Studying my introductory Naturotherapy course with a cuppa black tea.

Just sung through the whole of Songs Of You & Me for the gazillionth time. Never fails to recharge a sobby/tired vliin.
See?

I wonder at what age those good-little-schoolgirl looks will have changed into grown woman. My guess: never.

2011-11-27T14:13:00.007+01:00

Red velvet, gold buttons, soft light and Beethoven's violin concertos in the background. Having a whale of a time hanging around in my castle.

2011-11-26T22:22:00.005+01:00

"Katia" by Ellen Verbeek

They've been screaming for my attention from different windows, but alas: I'm a vegetarian who doesn't purchase new leather products anymore. See you on Ebay, Katia. And no, I don't think that being a safety net for other peoples' ~~consumerism~~ is hypocritical.

pannenkoeken

2011-11-24T14:20:00.012+01:00

Thanks for all the inspiration, Ally, Michelle, in times when I didn't give a flying Pterosaur about style/what to wear. I admit this series is heavily inspired by you two. 1. scarf and sweater: second hand, 2. trousers: COS, shoes: second-hand, 3. good old COS coat and sturdy leather bag - gramma hand-me-down, 4. must... squeeze... foot... into... frame, 5. I have a head too, the wig's mine (it's actually my own hair, miscut bonzai-style three months ago by a young hairdresser who thought it funny to sabotage my plans to look just like Tao), 6. dead pancake, 7. Ukrainian jam (OK, blame Photobooth, it's prunes and rhubarb).

The pancakes are rather healthy (no wheat, no milk), if you ignore food combinations. I'll talk more about those later one, when you are a little older.
:)

The recipe is as follows:
- 60g of spelt and 40g of buckwheat flower (or whatever variation of measurements you would like to experiment with, or just spelt, or just buckwheat (don't recommend, although not disgusting))
- 300ml of almond milk
- one egg (orgaaaanic, orgaaaaanic)
(- no sugar)

Mix and bake a little longer than normal pancakes or they'll look like the one I've just shown you. Happy baking!

live in this world

2011-11-21T22:40:00.024+01:00

So what does that mean? Wanting to “live in that world”? Walk around like a coke whore 24/7? Narrowing womanhood down to gratuitous sexuality? (And then, what is sexuality? Does that mean showing your insert degrading word for feminine bits to whomever?) Not being able to communicate something onto photographs without that fag dangling from a smudged lipstick-drenched mouth? Living in a shithole? Badass, man. Admirable. May the whole world one day be flooded with this sort of people! (Btw landed here ’cause I’d found an old link in my Favourites to Johnnys Bird, wondered why, then looked for some explanation. In other words: irrelevant.)
I sincerely hope they’ve got other things going on in their lives apart from slacking about and dressing up prostitute-style trying to be interesting. Or not. After all, every good burger needs some extender.

http://fashiongrunge.com/2010/09/21/these-legs-dont-run/#comment-3662

"I just want to live in this world." That quote keeps on repeating itself before my inner eye like those good old marquees in HTML would. How can she make that statement so lightly?

I really shouldn't have cared, at all, let alone leave a comment. Tidying up my favourites folder I stumbled across a page called Johnnys Bird and couldn't remember why on earth I would ever have saved a pathway to such an unasked-for miserable display of empty would-be debauchery. (Note: I was not spitting while writing that last sentence.) Real or staged: it's cheap rebellion for the poor of mind. I don't believe any of it, but the author's utterance was downright unfounded, and therefore too unsettling to put up with.
And I know I'll be considered jealous for this by some, or prude (while being neither). It would be the easiest way of wiping away a radically different point of view for those merely interested in shallow imagery.

Does remind me of a recent night out at the house-party of another unknown hip inhabitant of Belgium's capital, where my companion slapped the buttocks of a young girl dressed up as a Playboy bunny to make her snap back into the reality and consequences of being a little too frivolous about your sexuality and showing (too much) female flesh. However, I did reckon the reprimand was a dangerous act in itself, seeing as it raises the issues of freedom of thought and even the incredibly risky she-asked-for-it.

This is just a 5% share of my nocturnal activities' total. As I wrote earlier: completely irrelevant. Not that any of the other 95% are of a higher importance (that is, a.o.: researching the possibilities in anti-cancer therapies for cats, writing a summary for my Naturopathy course, being creeped out by my boyfriend's music still playing while he's out - I left it on, now it's Schittke's Concerto Grossi, you should definitely try that on a lonely night in - and drinking my bodyweight in water). That percentual comparison was of course yet another fruitless aim at putting things into perspective; we all know I've now spent more than an hour criticizing things which aren't even worth acknowledging their existence in the first place.

On a lighter note, I'll be discussing the ideal (ideal in terms of healthiness) breakfast with you one of these days. YAYYY!

2011-11-21T17:53:00.001+01:00

So was mine.
restoringeden.org

why no zip

2011-11-17T08:31:00.003+01:00

Could have been to good to be blue.
All those whites and baby blues that have piled up in my room taking up much-needed space for more important things - not to mention the insert time unit wasted on Etsy - in that great anticipation for a fuse with this... bathrobe?

It's baltic.
I need a zip not to have the 14 underlying layers of C&A freeze to my sternum (or show, for that matter) :-(

milk? now we know!

2011-11-13T20:22:00.006+01:00

I bet most kids these days can't tell anymore where their daily glass of milk comes from.

From a bottle? From a factory?
No wonder when mother cow does not even get a visual credit for her loyal services.

It's been a while since I've bought a bottle of milk myself - switched to soy(*) a couple of months ago. Today was another one of those pancake days and when reaching for a carton of Alpro soy I noticed a friendly cow's snout on the store brand milk next to it. At last, international hypermarket chain Carrefour put the cow back on the milk bottles. Which seems to me, is only right. One small step for (a) cow, one giant leap for mankind!

(*) health-wise, soy is not the best alternative

chicken or mink?

2011-10-11T21:35:00.000+02:00

A rather absurd question at first read, but somehow it has changed the way I look at fur, or fur-wearing ladies, for that matter. There was a time I used to gaze-attack any woman in the street dressed in a coat made of animal bodies, but consider this: wearing fur isn't worse a crime than eating meat.

Like most of us I was raised with daily portions of meat and I hardly ever questioned that. Maybe I did once, when I was ten or so and I had been observing my grandfather who'd taken on a macrobiotic/vegetarian lifestyle at the time. It seemed like such a great and refreshing idea not to eat poor pigs, cows and chickens! So I would ask now and again if I too could become a vegetarian, but the answer would always be No. Why? Because we cannot cook a different meal for every single family member. That was that, and I would not be toying again with the idea until five months ago when Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals magically appeared on a stack of recommended items at the book store where I was waiting to pay for a copy of Ulysses. (Note: I've vegetarianized three people since that day.) (And yes, Ulysses, may that be (one of) the challenge(s) of the year.)

I've always known that chickens weren't raised on beds of rose petals. I've always known that their deaths were unbelievably disgusting and cruel. My mother explained to me when I was still in primary school, how they killed chickens. It's the kind of knowledge you fiercely repress, the kind of imagery one gladly wipes off of the inner eye. Many people "oh no" while biting a large chunk from their chicken burgers, then shrug and go on with their lives. Then they will take another bite, look out of the window at McDonald's and sneer at an old woman in a fur coat passing by.
In short. Know what I mean?

And I LOVE our Belgian animal rights organization "Gaia", as well as PETA and all the other ones, and I'll support every single one of their actions, but I think we should not ignore the animals that have become less popular for the sake of conscience (the unfortunate trinity: cow-pig-chicken). We don't need meat to survive, we just happily forget that when attending Christmas and garden (BBQ!) parties. This statement was made by the owner of Belgium's largest fur retailer. To protect his own business that had just come under attack again? Possibly. Probably. I do not support the production and murdering of animals for clothing, but neither do I support the production of animals for the sake of taste. To shove that daily piece of animal protein down our greedy throats. I am glad that at least someone thinks further and speaks up once in a while, even if that person is a fur retailer.

+++
I think I could like Beck's music. Taking on his older work I've started off with One Foot In The Grave, after having listened to Sea Change (on which here at home we both agreed Beck had been listening a lot to Gainsbourg while writing - beautiful, though).

+++
All of this, even if it's menswear.

on debuts, shrines, cynicism and changes

2011-10-09T17:55:00.024+02:00

Times have changed.

(I am listening to Björk's Debut while writing this.)
For a long time I didn't feel the need to write, or to be more precise: to write for an audience. To expose thoughts, feelings, interests, (wardrobe?). This hasn't changed, I still haven't regained that urge to blog, which is all the more a reason for me to give it another try. Writing for an audience is scary business, even risky business perhaps - I had a very close family member turn his back on me because of the way I openly worded my opinions. The heaps of reflection I have given the subject of blogging hasn't helped me to form a more solid opinion. The dilemma to write or not to write is still a live issue. Is blogging egocentric? Can I share my views without feeling like I am building a virtual shrine for myself? And is blogging useful only to yourself or to others as well if there are already 2,677,169,594 other blogs? (9 tracks into the Björk album the music is starting to get on my sensitive nerves.) Then again, we might as well ask ourselves if it is useful to be a human on this planet if there are already 7 billion other human beings trying to be (a) human on Planet Earth.

Times haven't changed. I am still a sucker for brackets.

Times have changed. Since being on a bread/gluten/sugarfree and overall extremely healthy diet I have been baking my cakes and pies with almond meal.

The weather is changing. It's getting colder and colder and little floaty dresses are replaced by huge sweaters and pullovers. Luckily I love huge sweaters and I am not much of a little-dress girl who feels the need to put the woman she is in that standardised and clichéd vestimentary frame anyway. There are always exceptions to the rule, of course, for example those times when one wishes to provide the world with an extra piece of evidence to one's gender, i.e. when a certain man just has to notice that you are a woman. Or when it is one of those days on which you have to give your feminine self that little bit of extra confirmation.

Times have changed: the blog now has the most abominable-looking lay-out I could come up with.

To conclude this impulsive scrap: it would be needless to say I did not like Björk's debut. Nor - most probably - the whole body of work she has produced after that. I could have drawn that same conclusion beforehand and without ever listening to it. (I had read some of the lyrics at the Mediatheque and was already somewhat sceptic.) It's "n'importe quoi", especially vocalwise. The lyrics are worthless, vague, scared to really say something, tell us a real story (like 99,9% of all lyrics, in my honest opinion). "Debut" has therefore not been a step forward in my ever-continuing quest for something real and authentic. Will keep you and the world posted when music hits the vliin spot again.

To add a second conclusion to this impulsive scrap: what you may expect.

* overall irregular posting or no posts at all for a long time (obviously stating the obvious here)

* uncensored criticism on more or less everything imaginable within my scope of interest or concern

* little or no images at all

* also, some positive things: facts and tips I want to share from my Naturotherapy evening classes

* some songs in the near future
* that said, let's get started! Sometime.

I've got an 8-track and I'm not afraid to use it

2011-09-16T23:34:00.014+02:00

I'm working on a demo. Two songs down, some more to go. I don't know at which number I'll stop worrying if it's enough to allow to leek into the public sphere. I can cherish my little songs in the comfort and privacy of my own four walls, but can the outside world? And more importantly, do I care? All kinds of questions I need to figure out, but most probably not, as they are highly irrelevant.
I'll carry on the way I have for the past 8 months: hiding out, writing or not writing songs, everything in my own time. The less pressure, the more product (ooo, what an awful word!).

Anyways. Demo still, probably, to be expected by the end of this year.