Swiss Cuisine

This coming Friday and Saturday, I will take part in an amateur "Around the World" sale. Aside from showing our products, we have to bring three dishes from our home countries, all hand-made... I contemplated bringing a fondue, but didn't feel like driving 80 miles with the pot balanced on the dashboard. I need dishes I can prepare ahead of time, and possibly with very low potential for accidents. I chose to make Leckerlies and "pains d'anis" (anise breads). Since I had never made either of them, I had quite a few surprises. The first one was to find the right ingredients: not easy to find anise extract in the area, or kirsch, which really surprised me, unless I really don't know where to look. Then, the doughs: the mix for the Leckerlis is so thick and heavy that I'm sure, I'll have no problem knocking someone down with it. Extracting the spatula off the dough is quite an achievement in itself. And if the Leckerlies are fairly quick to make, shaping the pains d'anis takes ages...

At the end, the Leckerlies are a bit gummy, but I'm counting on the ignorance of the visitors to make it fly. But the pains d'anis are delicious...

As for the third dish, I think I'll just bring a bowl of fresh strawberries with some thick cream...

Easter Bunnies

Sunday, we went egg-hunting with my parents, via webcam. Anastasia was all set with her sparkly ears, and Kyan, despite being quite sick, couldn't wait to go out and find what the Easter Bunny had left. A traveling Bunny, I shall add, as he even brought some chocolate from Switzerland.

Triassic, jurassic, crétaceous...

The mermaid movie is finally almost done, I will have a bit more time for the blog. And to balance with this underwater invasion, I've been practicing drawing... dinosaurs. Kyan and Anastasia are crazy about dinos, they come up with impossible names which are, apparently, mostly correct, and that leads to slightly surreal conversations ("Where are my herbivores?", " I can't find my stygimoloch!", "Dynonichus, where are you?" (that would be Anastasia who naively believe that the said dyno will answer...), "I would like a pink apatosaurus...", ...). Every evening, the experts kidnap my sketch book to look at the newest arrivals. Here are a few of them...

Creatures

And another birthday party for two of Kyan's little friends. The mother of the twins had hired an animal expert who showed up with a dozen creatures, ranging from the chick, bunny, mouse and hamster to turtle, iguana and snake. The parents had at least as much fun as the kids.

And, of course, there were TWO fabulous blue cackes...