Tomato salad with salted cod

Yes, this is one of my mother's receipts, totally in line with her line of thinking. So, it is easy to make, have few ingredients and an extraordinary result!

What do you need?
- Tomatoes
- Black olives
- Red onions
- Salted dry cod
- Olive oil, salt and pepper

f you live in Spain or Portugal, it is quite easy to buy salted dry cod. In the Netherlands, I could buy some in an Albert Heijn XL, in the section with international food specialities.

And then, what do you need to do?
- Let the salted dry cod in water the night before, and change the water a couple of times. You need to do this to get the salt "out" of the cod, so that it tastes salty, but not extremely salty.
- Cut the tomatoes and the red onions in small pieces.
- Mix everything in a bowl with the black olives.
- Add quite some olive oil, and a bit of pepper. Most likely you do not need to add more salt (due to the already salty taste of the cod), but that is up to you.

This dish makes for a really good starter; enjoy it!

Clothes ready for tomorrow

Paul is getting very organized on everything that concerns his clothes. And I am getting very concerned too when I see his "compositions". This is what he prepared before going to sleep...

What is the scarf for? Boots? We live in Africa! Anyway, I have started to use "his" system for my own purposes. So, I arrange his clothes when I know we need to go in a hurry the day after (e.g. taking a plane early in the morning). Then I go over my choice with him, so he agrees with it. And then in the morning, the whole dressing process goes really fast. In fact, most of the days he dresses all by himself now. Although, a couple of times, I realized (too late) that he did not take his pajama out, so he went to school with his pajama under the clothes!

Improvised bed in a safari park

Sleeping in the middle of nature, while animals are wandering around?



That is what Paul and Anna like to do. Well, not exactly sleeping, but doing all the fuss around preparing the bed, the blankets, the pillows and then jumping in it. We have quite some pillows at home that they can use to play around and pile on the floor. I recently bought the small carpet and textiles for the wall, and Paul is very happy about them.

And easy way to get his room in African style!

Playing with empty boxes

Sometimes children get very enthusiastic about the most simple things. For example, empty carton boxes.

I had to move few empty boxes to our storage room. In the process of getting them on the grass and unfolded, Paul and Anna had a lot of fun. Piling them up, climbing on them, or scrawling inside, everything was amusing.





So, if you get few boxes, give them a chance instead of throwing them to the garbage and let your children play with them!