Brussels Saturday Round Up

I've gone a bit fetishy about food in the last few weeks. It's classic displacement spending, food being far cheaper than all the things I really want to buy. It's "Paris Syndrome". I only bought two Petit Bateau t-shirts in a year living in Paris, but I bought an elaborate cake every bloody day. It's false economy and it's making me fat, but who cares, the winter is coming and I have no plans to leave the house ever again except to buy more cake.

So today I:

1. Took a trip to the Asian supermarket by the Bourse - yes, the one that got closed down by the health inspectorate for vermin infestation, ssssh I don't need to know - for spices and chana dahl and bunches of coriander. I am planning a giant vat of dahl ("half butter, half roasted garlic, half lentil" said M, with an accurate, if Apprentice-esque grasp of percentages) to offset the giant cakes and further my plan of never leaving the house again.

2. Stopped off at Marcolini on the way home in the rain for a hot chocolate. For €2,10 you get chocolate poisoning, combined with a sense of faint superiority because it is high quality chocolate poisoning AND two tiny but surprisingly delicious speculoos. Unfortunately I also got carried away and bought a vanilla éclair. It looked so pretty.

3. Checked out Brussels's first - I think - cupcake bakery, only, what, 8 years after the rest of the Western world? It was quite sweet, but it smells of imminent bankruptcy to me. I mean, surely we are all cupcake weary and broke, aren't we? Who's paying €3,20 for a cupcake at the moment?

Me apparently. But I'm calling it research.

Yes, my thumb nail is dirty. At least it's not green any more.

I chose almond, lemon and raspberry. I was predisposed to despise it, because of my galloping envy of cupcake bakery owners, but apart from the frosting, it was pretty good.

I also went to Lidl in search of B's mythic €3 Cava. It had quite the festive atmosphere on a Saturday afternoon, like an early cocktail hour. About half my local store seems to be devoted to wine, which I endorse wholeheartedly. The rest was discounted biscuits and toothpaste, all handy, if of limited usefulness for cooking purposes.

There were other compensations on my walk, including these strange owls:

This tiny boar:

And this brilliant display in the window of my favourite bonkers taxidermy and stuff - in - domes shop:

He also had a selection of nicely mounted glass eyeballs:

I feel like these should be the perfect gift for someone, but I haven't worked out who yet.

This mural, in Louise metro, remains a source of great puzzlement to me.


Can anyone throw any light? Or just make up something plausible? I don't like that goat's expression.