Elbow Grease, Strawberries, and Frozen Pizza

We do have a lot of weather forces working against us here in Belgium, but it has been a fantastic discovery to know that the Belgian strawberry season starts in February!!! Connor devours strawberries and promptly asks for more calling out for "sta-bee-bees" --- it is so endearing that how can I not keep them coming? Rumor has it that these are Spanish strawberries (?) so they are only 99 cents a package even now. Thank you Spain strawberry farmers!Yesterday Connor had me in stitches because she took the little bowl of the precious red fruit and went and hid under the chair, clinging tightly to her "sta-bee-bees"!

In other Willingham domestic news, I have nearly burned down our apartment - several times. Well it wasn't that serious, but still an "am I on candid camera?" moment... For the past few days every time I turned on our oven it started smoking. At times setting off the smoke alarm and having me frantically opening windows and fanning the alarm to turn it off. I knew a bit of veggie oil had drizzled off into the oven the other day, but I thought it would just burn off and resolve itself. Wrong. I took the racks out of the oven to find mounds of burnt gunk. And we of course do not have a self cleaning oven here. So using lots of elbow grease, all is rectified. Phew.

I got the oven working just in time for us to have a classy dinner of frozen pizza last night. The pizza here is pretty good even if they don't have American pepperoni. I looked at this box and had to chuckle. Only in Europe would the boxed, cheapo frozen pizza be pictured alongside a glass of red wine!