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Variable weather was predicted for today. Well we had 10°C and rain in the morning, 10°C and rain at noon, 10)C and rain in the evening. In between the rain did stop sometimes.
At work:
I took a day off so nothing to report.
My brother married today.
Well not with great ceremony, just the ceremony at the town hall and a meeting of the family afterwards. He is, like me, not the matrimonial type. He has been living together with Martinne for quite some years now but last year she lost her job and is unlikely to get a new job anytime soon (if ever).
She is an arts teacher and not many of these are needed, the work she did was on short contracts teaching to kids with learning problems, the last years she had classes of autistic kids. That are grant-subsidised temporal jobs, basically for the same money she would get if being actually unemployed. Now the allowance she gets depends on her household structure. Being single she gets more than she would get when married. But, if on inspection, it is found that she does not live alone she runs the risk of having to pay back the allowances retrospectively. Inspections are quite rare but one of her ex colleagues has be inspected (and fined) because someone had denounced her.
By getting married they make their situation officially correct. It will not change their relationship (I think)
In the news
In Brussels a tree fell on and cut trough the overhead electric wires of the railroad, causing hour long delays. What makes this special is that The NMBS (railroads) had requested the cutting down of the tree but did not get permission from the local government because the required papers for cutting it were not in order. A spokesman from the NMBS expressed the hope that security issues could get priority over bureaucracy.
I made asparagus soup. The hard way. I brought back two kilograms of asparagus pieces for soup. That are asparagus that are not grown straight or that got cut wrong or broken. It are typically pieces of between 3 and 10 cm long, in various thickness (0.5 to 4 cm) and with ragged or slanted cuts. Sometimes with splits in them. They are much more difficult to peel.
The easy way is to just clean them, boil them and then pour the broth trough a sieve. The result is a clear thin soup.
The hard way is to actually peel them, chop them up in rough, about 1 cm long chunks add these to your stock (self made by boiling down meat with some herbs) and then mix it all till all the chunks are gone. The result is a much stronger and thicker soup, one that doesn't need cream.
The big difference is that the hard way entails about two hours of peeling.
The result is a huge casserole of delicious soup, some of which can be frozen for later.
Then, while the soup is simmering nicely I peel another bunch (about 800g) of asparagus to go with the baked salmon. No need to tell I ate too much.
And I could not resist the temptation of putting this up.
(I know it is a gif that should be burned, but I don't know how to convert it to PNG while retaining the animation.)
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