jjpamsterdam

Picture taken by my father on one of our trips to the surrounding area of Quetta, Pakistan in the early 1990s.

Leverkusen channel the spirit that carried them to the title last season and turn a match around in extra time. While it's probably too late to mount a renewed title challenge, Leverkusen confirm their place as Germany's second team.

Cooked this easy yet delicious recipe for dinner today. If you like tomatoes, this is highly recommended.

Ingredients:

• 200g medium onions
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 bag pepper mix
• 2 tbsp mild olive oil
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 300g brown rice
• 800g tinned diced tomatoes
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 0.25 tsp chilli flakes
• 600ml water
• 240g sardines in sunflower oil
• 10g fresh parsley

Directions:

Chop the onions and finely chop the garlic. Clean the peppers and cut into 1½ cm pieces.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and fry the onion and garlic for 1 min. on medium heat. Add the tomato puree and pepper and fry for 3 min.

Add the rice, diced tomatoes, cumin, chili flakes and warm water and bring to the boil. Simmer gently on low heat for 35-40 min.

Season with salt if necessary.

Drain the sardines and reserve the oil. Divide the sardines into pieces and finely chop the parsley. Divide the sardines and parsley over the rice and sprinkle with the sardine oil.

Original Source (in Dutch): https://www.ah.nl/allerhande/recept/R-R1200874/tomatenrijst-met-paprika-en-sardines

While I find the wiki-style site for European alternatives ( https://www.goeuropean.org/ ) very helpful and have started using it fairly regularly, I feel like it misses an option to just look up a brand or company and easily find out where it's from. Maybe that is already an option and I haven't found it. If so, please point me in that direction.

If not, what I would hope for, is a quick and simple place to check if a given brand or company is perhaps American owned (or more generally where it's profit ultimately goes). For example, I seriously doubt my mother in law would be able to know that Toblerone is an American owned brand. The current wiki pre-supposes that users already know this.

The average EU citizen is in his mid 40s and likely not all that tech savvy. Purchasing power skews towards older folks anyway, so it should be a goal to get this demographic on board. Does anyone have a starting off point where one can easily find the information on a specific company or brand on the go? Could something like this be added to the current site ( https://www.goeuropean.org/ )?

We made this yesterday and it was a great success with our daughter. It's really easy to make, if you have access to store bought Spaetzle. If you don't, there are numerous recipes to make them yourself

Ingredients:

• 2 onions
• 1 clove of garlic
• 400 g cherry tomatoes
• 100 g baby spinach
• 500 g of Spätzle
• Salt
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• Pepper
• 0.5 tbsp sugar
• 200 g sour cream
• 30 g Parmesan (grated)

Directions:

Peel the onions, halve them and cut them into strips. Peel the garlic and cut them into slices. Wash and halve the tomatoes. Wash the spinach and shake dry. Prepare the spaetzle in hot salted water according to the instructions on the packet. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large pan. Fry the onions and garlic until translucent, add 300 g of the tomatoes and fry briefly. Season with salt, pepper and sugar. Stir in the sour cream and Parmesan. Drain the spaetzle, let it drain and mix it with the spinach into the tomatoes. Allow the spinach to wilt slightly. Season with salt and pepper and serve sprinkled with the remaining tomatoes.

Original Source (in German): https://www.rewe.de/rezepte/tomaten-spaetzle/

It feels surreal that José's first season in England is now twenty years ago. I still remember it as if it were just a few months ago. At least it is somewhat reassuring that, despite all the changes that took place in that time, José has remained essentially the same.

An interesting analysis of Chelsea's difficulties and especially about the role of Enzo Maresca. What I found particularly interesting was this piece of analysis:

"It is perhaps instructive that Chelsea have the second-highest xG in the league, according to Opta, and have underperformed it by 3.72 goals, which suggests their chance creation is on the right track. Against that, the dynamism of their football has regressed since the first half of the season."

While the tie already felt decided after the 3:0 win in the first leg, a win on aggregate of 5:0 for Bayern really cements the German pecking order that had been disturbed last season. Obviously missing Florian Wirtz is not ideal, but Leverkusen really did not look like turning the tie around at any point, in my opinion.

I don't think there's ever been a manager who described his team as: "We are the worst team maybe in the history of Manchester United."

While I'm unsure about his long term future at United, he certainly is entertaining with his honesty.

Jonathan Wilson elegantly describes why many, myself included, have been falling out of love with modern football, little by little. The best part of the article describes it really well, in my opinion:

"Those traditional fans have gradually seen the sport their families have perhaps supported for generations change. (...) Lip service is paid to fans and their devotion, but increasingly they are exploited and marginalised and their importance to the club is diminished."

Although this is most likely not at all a political decision, it's great to see Liverpool go for a European kit provider. It's only fitting that Europe's (arguably) currently strongest team will play in outfits designed and provided by a European company.

United unexpectedly managed to get a draw from their match against Arsenal. Ruben Amorim had announced that his team "just need to survive" before the match, following Arsenal's thrashing of PSV in the Champions League earlier in the week. Surprisingly, survive they did and even took a point from the currently second best team in the League.