It worked: Endive feast!!

Hi there,

The recipe for endive our aunts Yaya and Janneke posted worked!
Daddy slave didn't want to eat endive for another day,
so we got the leftovers:

Yummie!

P.S. Can you see how big Lily'explorer (top right) and Lil'wheeker (top left) have gotten?

Endive; the Recipe

Hi all,

Since the veggie of the week is endive, I thought I'd write down a recipe for endive, so here we go:

Ingredients:

- (Broad-leafed) Endive

Directions

As soon as the endive is dropped into your cage, it is important to start slicing and dicing right away since endive is at it's best while it is still crunchy. Endive is always a tasty veggie, but at it's best when fresh.
Eat whatever is left after you're done slicing and dicing.

Enjoy!
Yaya

The Leftovers

A crop of endive is kinda big, so it is okay to share a bit with your humans for the following traditional Dutch recipe:

Andijvie Stamppot
(endive 'mash pot')

Ingredients (serves 4 humans)
- 400 gr. broad-leafed endive
- 1200 gr. potatoes (preferably floury)
- 80 gr. butter
- 4 cups of water (500 ml)
- pepper, salt and nutmeg
- warm milk
- Rookworst (Dutch smoked sausage)
- mustard
Variation tip: stir little pieces of bacon and Dutch cheese into the stamppot. My human likes old dutch cheese, but it has a strong taste so if you're not sure a young dutch cheese might be better.

Directions
Put the potatoes into the water and boil them until they are soft (about 30 minutes). Cut up the endive into small strips. Boil the rookworst. Drain the water from the potatoes. Mash the potatoes with a bit of warm milk, butter, a pinch of salt, pepper and nutmeg. Stir in the raw endive and serve with the rookworst and a bit of mustard.

For the non-dutchies: rookworst and dutch cheese (e.g. Old Amsterdam)

Veggie of the Week Endive

Here are Agent Dinosaur and Agent Bumble Bee eating a leaf of Endive:) they love it!

Veggie of the Wheek: Endive

This weeks' veggie will be Endive. Slave says this is a winter veggie, which can be bought here mostly in autumn and winter period.
As you can see, the Endive looks like a big crop of Salad, the taste is quite bitter,
and we get to have a whole leaf per guinea pig!
According to the Guinea lynx vegetable chart below, it's also known as Escarole.

Here is a table with it's nutritional values:

Guinea Lynx' VEGETABLE CHART 100 gram portions	Percent Water	Energy (Kcal)	Protein (g)	Ascorbic Acid (C)	Calcium (mg)	Phosph. (mg)	Ca:P Ratio
Endive (Escarole)	93.79	17	1.25	6.5	52	28	1.9:1

Source: http://www.guinealynx.info/diet_vegs.html

We also read it's high in fibe, vitamin A and K

Oh, wow, this is was wikipedia says about Endive: 'Endive (pronounced /ˈɛndɪv/[1] or /ˈɛndaɪv/), Cichorium endivia is a leaf vegetable belonging to the daisy family.' Wow, there is something like a Daisy family? I have got to be a part of that! Ow, it's a plant family? that is too bad...
Here you see me and Woopy sharing a leaf. Can you see, it's as big as me!

Slave says Endive is also very nice for people te eat, she likes in raw, mixed with mashed patatoes, and a sausage. What makes it really yummy is adding small chunks of Cheese (she's Dutch, huh?) and a little ketjap (soy sauce)...
Okay, those humans are weird, we just eat it raw.
Please send in your pigtures or stories about how you eat Endive!
Also i'd like to know if it's available in for example the US. It seems like a very Dutch veggie to us...

Green Wheeks,
Lil'Wheeker (aka Daisy)

Btw, Because of the Great Piggyfriend Slave Penny tips, our slave is now growing Endive and carrots inside (as it's cold outside)! We hope it will work, one of the seeds sprouted, but as slave planted both in one pot, we've no idea wether it will be carrot or Endive...

Eating Tomatoes

Agent Minty reporting.

 

Here are pigtures of myself and my friend, Copper, eating tomatoes. We just love them. I wanted our pigtures taken outdoors so that my eyes would look the proper colour but it was raining and windy and I decided that I would make do with Slave's useless camerawork and she took these in the playpen. Copper didn't mind as his eyes are red anyway.

 

These are tiny cherry tomatoes so Slave only cut them into halves. As winter is coming the tomato plants in the greenhouse will not produce many more fruits so Slave will have to buy them from the supermarket. They do not taste as good as the home grown ones but we will eat them all up.

 

Yum yum.

Veggie of the Wheek: tomato

The veggie of the wheek is the tomato. Tomatoes come in many different shapes, small, big, sweet or less sweet. Above you can see a tomato cut in half. As there are four of us, we all get a quarter of the tomato.
We like tomatoes but our late friend Lotje used to adore tomatoes, watching her eat tomatoes was hilarious according to our slave. She would take a bite then her face get a disgusted look. But then she did like the taste and took another bite, get another disgusted look on her face and take another bite...

<><>

Guinea Lynx' VEGETABLE CHART 100 gram portions	Percent Water	Energy (Kcal)	Protein (g)	Ascorbic Acid (C)	Calcium (mg)	Phosph. (mg)	Ca:P Ratio
Tomato	93.76	21	0.85	19.1	5	24	0.2:1

Source: http://www.guinealynx.info/diet_vegs.html

We don't get tomatoes often, but we do like them. Here you can see Chico enjoying a piece of tomato.

Here's some points to take notice of when feeding tomatoes:
1) Be sure to remove the green tomato plant tops, tomato plants are poisonous!
2) We just read that if you have big tomatoes you should remove the seeds. We never did that, but also don't get big tomatoes...
3) We are doubting whether tomatoes can be a bit acidic like apples, which are not nice to eat when you have a mouth sore.... and can even be the cause of mouth sores when given in large quantities!
4) We don't advise the really small very sweet tomatoes (also called snack tomatoes in the Netherlands) for your piggy, or at least in very small amounts, cause since they are so sweet they must be high in sugar! Which is not very good for piggies...

Okay, well I hope you enjoy tomatoes, do let us know how you eat them, and feel free to send in pictures or videos of you eating tomatoes (see the contribute tab on top of the page).

Tribute to the Apple

Hi All!

Miss Yaya here, aka the Guinean Queen, aka Agent Piggy Galore. Apples are absolutely AWSOME!! I love Apples soooo much! No other veggie tastes as great as an Apple; that perfect balance between sweet and sour.. ow and don't get me started om the crunchyness or the different textures while you chew through an Apple *swoon*. I do not know what I like more, the skin with it's sour aftertaste, the flesh or the crunchy bits of the core. But anyhew... I LOOOOVEE APPLES!!!

*hemhem*

Apple dearest...

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade*,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

*that is.. until I devourst thy

Slave tends to forget I like apples, she buys them far too little and when she does, she often forgets to feed them to me. She sits on the couch and chews happily away. Whenever that happens I wheek up a storm and make her feel VERY guilty (well, she should anyway... The ladybug-Apple in the pigture is  Slave+Apple+Guilttrip ;-) )

Lots of Wheeks! And may ye have bountiful of apples (or something like that anyways.. ;-) )

Miss Yaya

Veggie of the week - Apple

Agent Silver Streak reporting in.

 

Slave took some pigtures at the weekend of those of us who had grown since the last photoshoot. She said that these were the last days of summer and she wanted to take outdoor pigtures so that our eyes did not look red with the camera flash.

 

Silly Slave. Elliot has red eyes anyway.

 

She used pieces of apple and cucumber to bribe the subjects to sit still on a garden chair and had her son nearby in case any of us made a bid for freedom.

 

Here is my best friend Elliot with his apple. He cleared it up as soon as the pigtures had been taken.

Veggie of the wheek: Carrots

It's time for another veggie,

this is not our favorite but it's okay, Here our slave buys the variant that has slender carrots and with the green tops still on.
Some supermarkets have a trashcan next tot the carrots so you can throw away the tops before you leave the store! Why would you do that? All these lovely lush green tops, what a waste!
Here you see us enjoying some carrot tops, Yum!

Btw, we even read on a website (see below) that you humans can eat the carrot tops, Well don't get any ideas (the website has recipes) and just keep those tops coming towards us!

Here's a pigture of our Daisy eating a carrot,
She shows the version where you keep your (little) paw on top of the carrot for eating comfort, and it helps to keep your carrot safe from veggie snatchers...

The nutritional value of the carrot according to guinealynx is:

Guinea Lynx'
VEGETABLE CHART
100 gram Percent Energy Protein Ascorbic Calcium Phosph. Ca:P
portions Water (Kcal) (g) Acid(C) (mg) (mg) Ratio
Carrots, Baby 89.81 38 0.84 8.4 23 38 0.6:1
Carrots 87.79 43 1.03 9.3 27 44 0.6:1
Source
Also we must mention Carrots are pretty high in sugar, It's okay for healthy piggies we guess, but if you have diabetes as a piggy, this veggie should be avoided....

Did you know England has an actual Carrot museum!!
It says on their website that the Dutch have bred the carrot to become orange
"A tale, probably apocryphal, has it that the orange carrot was bred in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century to honour William of Orange."
More on their website: http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/

Well, Do show or tell us what kind of carrots you eat!

Veggie of the Wheek: Chicory

Agent Carrot reporting.

 

As we have been talking about Chicory ( yum yum ) I thought that you might like to see what it looks like when it is growing so here is a picture of a plant in Slave's garden. This is how it looks before it is blanched to make the chicons that we know and love.

 

The leaves have to be cut off later in the year and the plant put somewhere dark and warm so that the chicons can grow.

Veggie of the Wheek: Chicory

Agent Badger reporting.

 

Slave took us outside today to mow the lawn and there was a photo opportunity as the sun was shining..

 

Here is a pigture of our friend Peony demonstrating the art of eating chicory. She is not an agent but Slave thought that this was a good pigture for me to submit. Usually the chicons are broken into pieces but today she used whole ones to bribe us to keep still for the photos. It worked.

 

Yum yum!

Veggie of the wheek: Chicory

Hi fellow veggie lovers,

This is Agent Not-so-lil'Woop. Our all time favorite veggie is chicory!

Here we will tell you more about this vegetable, because we understand many piggies outside the Netherlands have never had this! What a shame, we loooooooooove it.
Some slaves eat it, it's pretty bitter, but it's supposed to be nice with ham and cheese out of the oven.. Yeah right!

According to Guinealynx this is the nutritous value of Chicory per 100 grammes:
Guinea Lynx'
VEGETABLE CHART Endive, Belgian
100 gram portions (Witloof Chicory)
PercentWater 94.52
Energy(Kcal) 17
Protein(g) 0.9
Ascorbic Acid (C) 2.8
Calcium(mg) 19
Phosph.(mg) 26
Ca:P Ratio 0.7:1

How do we eat Chicory?
First all gather around the edge of the cage where the veggies are distributed.

Then after you get a piece there are several options:
You either just eat it in the corner where you got it, this is for confident piggies like me!

Or you hide in the house, and this is important(!), put your butt in the door opening so others cannot get in to take your chicory.

And be sure to stretch for those veggies, like Daisy is showing us here

Do feel free to play a little tug-of-war, and steal your cagemates piece!

And don't forget to have a sip of water after if thirsty, see Chico's demonstration.


And as an extra, for you confident piggies: Eat the chicory out of your slaves hand!
I am the only one who dares to do this at Guinygirlz Mansion.


Please let us know if you ever get Chicory and show us how you eat it!