belated valentine's souffle

Carl and I undertook a fun cooking adventure today- we made chocolate souffles. Since we don't have an electric mixer, beating the eggs meant that we got to exercise our arms in the process!
With a little raspberry sauce, it was pretty yummy.... we cleaned our plates! Next culinary adventure might be cheese souffle.

But speaking of food and cooking (and recipe ideas from Mark Bittman, who inspired this souffle), my new goal is to eat more savory healthy breakfasts like brown rice and quinoa and wheatberries with soy sauce and tofu and veggies.

My first week in Auckland has been relaxing and fun. Carl has been super-busy with rehearsals, concerts, teaching, and roadie work, so I'm the designated cook (yay!) and I have plenty of time to practice, read, poke around in the garden, shop, go for walks, etc. Love all the flowers and fragrant trees and little birds. The cicadas are so loud- like a high frequency whistlefest!

For valentine's day I made Carl (and myself) Scrabble. I guess this may seem like a very strange thing to make, but the folks who are subletting my apartment in Philly while I'm in Auckland had spotted my Scrabble set when they visited and asked if I could leave it out so that they could play it while I was gone. And since I didn't have the heart to take it away from them, I decided I better just make my own set. First game (carl won):
Each tile is decorated with a background from National Geographic.

Tonight is Carl's last show with the APO before we head to Christchurch...free outdoor concert with 100,000 (yikes!!!) people. Fireworks, dancing elephants, the whole bit. I'm looking forward to listening to the music from my picnic blanket with a glass of wine and my book. The APO played an awesome concert two nights ago and sounded terrific. I've just found out I will likely be hired to play Mahler's 6th with the orchestra this summer.

On monday we head to the south island to visit the family and explore Fox Glacier further south. Should be an exciting trip! More blog posts soon...

Camille