Sooner or later...

...it had to happen. It's just a statistical thing, sooner or later (almost) every man has to pass this kind of event and taste the sweet or sour results of his own actions. Most make it with more or less tasteful outcomes, a few unfortunate ones die, usually for bad choice of self-procured means for the end, but anyway, almost everyone has to do it and last saturday it simply was my turn. No one to blame, I choose my fate.

I cooked.

Yes, I cooked, stop staring at the monitor in disbelief, I did. And I do not mean the "take pre-cooked food and slam that in the microwave/paddle/water" kind of cooking, nor preparing coffee (altho both are fine example of cooking by my standards). No, I mean take a recipe, buy the fresh ingredients, clean them, cut them and cook them, attending to the various stages of checking the salt, adding the spices, turning everything with a spoon and stuff.

And the funny thing is, the results was a pretty good vegetables stew ( I think that's the correct term, "minestrone" in italian) made of tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, beans, peas, carrots, onion, garlic, basil, parsley, celery, black pepper, salt. All in all, three hours of work: one to buy and clean the ingredients and two of cooking. To be said that in Germany everything goes by kilograms: you want two carrots? Buy a kilo. 2 zucchini? A kilo for you. Potatoes? No less than a kilo. So, eventually it was the most expensive vegetable stew of all time and left Susanne's fridge full for at least a week.

That's the big highlight of the week-end. The rest was a nice 2 days with some heated discussions about a couple of points that had been raised over the past two weeks (and that left everything exactly in the position they were), putting Susanne's new curtains in place (with all the possible classic little incidents that such house works can produce), dinner in what has became my favourite german restaurant (the Altdeutsche Weinstube) and all the rest. As usual, time flew too fast and we didn't go dancing, as I had half planned to do, but all in all was a nice time.

Back in Rome, the news I am expecting at work since two weeks now haven't arrived yet, my practice TOEFL score for the listening part is 30/30 and I'm organizing a VCN eritrean dinner for tomorrow. Today I should meet my brother at the pool as he started to go as well, but, unlike me, taking lessons rather than going by himself. The funny thing is that when he came back home after the trial class, last friday (only 30 minutes), he looked as he had made the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean so I'm curious how he will be this evening after a full hour with an instructor yelling at him to move and not to float around...