From here to there

It is time to change the scenery, so I will move from my kitchen to the Croatian seaside for few days. On the photo is cooked chopped squash with parsley and mozzarella cheese and kus-kus. I expect to eat lots of figs in the next days. Yum! My favorite fruit.

Enjoy yourselves too!

When you are as high as the birds fly...

... then you have no wish to go down again. There was delicious food in a hut, clear sky, magnificent view, horses. I walked up Kladivo (it means hammer in English) which is a little above 2000m high. Enjoyed each and every moment of a day. There was fun corner for children and little dwarf peeking out of the flowers. The latter made me smile (though I really can't imagine to have one myself). Saturday is a good day to stroll through Ljubljana. If you are there before 9 a.m. you can see stalls being prepared by the artists, you can check the little shops that open at 8 a.m. and buy all sorts of (expensive) vegetables and fruit at the market. Don't miss that, if you ever visit Ljubljana, you won't regret it. It seems that only market is alive at Saturdays in the city center. I met Mojca Fo, happy and talkative young woman. I couldn't resist and bought a postcard made by her. Pictures are rather expensive, so I put them on my wish list. I watched her while she was drawing and it looked so easy. Yeah, right! It is time when the blackberries are ripe. Not only that I make marmalade out of them, I also make very simple ice cream with them too - I freeze them, then add a little bit of cream and maple syrup and mix everything together (I added some mashed banana the other day - yum!). Each day I pick some fresh vegetables from the garden; there is something ripe everywhere you look! First figs are ripe too and it is time to go to the seaside to eat some more. A plan is to go to the beach on Wednesday, I just wonder if Ž will really fulfill his promise. Let's wait and see.

New home

Do you remember this bird on the photo? It found a new home. One of my friends adopted it and I am sure Bird will live a happy life in my friend's home. How wonderful it is when you can make someone happy at least for one single moment!

At home

There are lots of vegetables growing in my garden and lots of weeds too. I had a fight with the latter in the afternoon and now the garden looks much better. Squash feel better, too, now that they have some sunshine only for themselves. :) It's been the third year since I have this garden and it sounds very promising if I say that it looks better every year. I admit, I am a bit lazy when it comes to weeding but I will learn over the years how to do it right and eventually my garden might look as beautiful as my grandmom's one day. :) Anyway, flowers on my windows look wonderful! I've been messing with elder berries for the last three days in my kitchen. It's lots of work for little effect. First you have to clean them, pick out all the green berries because they are poisonous (all have to be black), then slightly cook them, press through a strainer, cook the juice with sugar or honey for more than half an hour and finally fill hot glasses with this mixture. This was jam (no photo). Then I made some syrup. I mashed the berries, added some water, left the mixture for a day to settle. Then I pressed the berries through a strainer, cooked the mixture with sugar and when cooked, added some lemon extract. Both, jam and syrup have certain taste though I can't say that they taste as good as the ones made of barberries or raspberries.

Yesterday at 8 o'clock in the evening I found out that there's no more bread so I quickly made the scones. I had no plain white flour therefore I made them with wholewheat one and they taste even better. It feels so good when you learn something new.

Goodness

I wish there were more days like yesterday. Days, when no matter what you do, everything turns out well. Good things come to you on such days and nice people surround you.

I like receiving mail, especially snail mail. I am always so excited when something nice and new finds its way to me. I found this goodness in my mailbox yesterday. Thanks, Leslie. Whoohoo. :)
I love it red this season. It is amazing that I liked violet last year and now I can see violet clothes in the shops. It is always like that. I won't be surprised if I see red clothes in the shops next summer.

I promised myself not to spend so much these days but when I saw new issue of Wohn Idee in the shop last evening, I just put it into my shopping cart. I used to buy this magazine when I was living in block of flats for some years. It was a cozy apartment and I have always thought I would make it as nice as these rooms in the magazine look like. I'd moved out before I had a chance to make it a perfect place in my little world. I guess that I bought the last issue of Wohn Idee about 7 years ago. Such a loooong time ago! I hope that one day rooms in my little house will look as nice as those on the photos in this magazine. Do you recognize the fabric on the left lower photo? :)

Light

It doesn't show very good on the photos but it was gorgeous light shining through peacock's feather and honey (with red beet, hence that beautiful color) two days ago. It was one of the nicest days yesterday and it passed so quickly. Days are shorter and there is fog in the mornings. Fall is slowly creeping into our land. Again I realize that summer is my favorite season of a year.

I've been tagged

By Eva.
So here are the Tag rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you (i.e. me)
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write 6 random things about yourself
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger (me) know when your entry is posted.

Don't you already know everything about me? No? So:

1. I don't scream often but
2. I love ice-cream. Not so much the fruit ones, I am more a chocolate type.
3. I haven't been at the hairdressers for 5 years. I cut my hair myself. Though it is time to visit one soon. I want it short again!
4. I can't stand having long nails. I always cut them short.
5. I don't like jazz music. But I like rock, country (yes, Kari, I know!) and classical one. My favorites of all times are Canon by Johann Pachelbel and soundtrack of Dances with Wolves. I just wonder what my neighbors think of me when I play them real loud?
6. I love jigsaw puzzles. I have several at home (well, after my last move they ended up at my parent's house attic). Most of them are ancient maps because I love them, too.

I tag Victoria, Emily, Kristel, Kari, Dana and Flora. You are welcome to play along if you want to. It is always nice to read something new about yourselves.

If they only lasted a bit longer

My days off work. The weather is playing games with me this year, today when I am back behind the screen, the sky is crystal blue. I was up there where you think that you can touch the sky.
I was planning to go up this mountain (Prisojnik). Ž forgot his walking boots and we ended in the hut below, eating this and later enjoying ourselves in a shadow. It was crowded, so crowded that I wished to go home. And I was angry and sad. It felt like a day lost.
A day later I went out there alone. It was a beautiful day. One you can only dream about. Like today's. No crowds, I met 10 people in whole day. And I had my walking boots with me. It was a pleasant walk, about 3,5 hours one way. Vrtača was the name of the mountain I was up to. My way up. On the left is Stol, the peak I was up to some days before.It was like a botanical garden up there, like if a gardener planted those wonderful alpine flowers. And I saw a giant whale. Can you see it too? :) I also visited grandparents. Two cousins came around too. I remember them being born and now they are grown up girls, one with a family of her own. How time flies. I picked some blackberries and experimented again. Sugar and blackberries - one day it will become a syrup, and jam. The jam is too sweet, but it was too late when I remembered that I should have put in honey instead of sugar. And only half of it...
Yesterday I was in a cloud. Most of the day. Up on Brana, one of the mountain peaks near Ljubljana. In spite of fog, it was a wonderful day. I enjoyed myself immensely. I have never been in more cozy hut before. I saw them again, the capricorns. Well, one of them. I thought it was a dream because I have never heard that they lived there too. Yet, there it was, lying peacefully on a rock. If you watch, you see.

"it is very simple,"

she thought.

"you go, you see,

you put one foot in front of the other

& along the way

you do your very

best to enjoy it."

Words found here.

Ni Hao

That's how we were greeting the people when being in China in 2001. This is what I hear from the radio every day these days. There's only 2 million of us, Slovenians, and so good we are at the Olympics. Something to be proud of. Really.

Bread

Usually I bake bread at home. I love baking bread. It is so amazing how many different kinds of bread exist in this world! And it is so much fun to be creative. Though, you can never know what will come out of it, out of dough you make.

I wanted to make something else than a common loaf of bread yesterday, so I baked focaccia. When I was in New Zealand (oh, such a long time ago!), I bought a book about muffins and quick breads which includes some nice recipes for focaccia as well. After all, focaccia is a bread too! In Slovenia we call such flat bread pogača, which is pronounced almost the same as focaccia (it would be probably written pogaccia in Italian (g is read as g in Greg). One recipe for pogača is also patented but I have never tried to make it.

I've put some chopped dried tomatoes on top of it because I had no rosemary at hand. And I didn't quite stick to the recipe, I have to admit that.

So, the recipe is as simple as this:

• 450 g white flour,
  
• 15 g yeast,
  
• 250 ml lukewarm water (perhaps a bit more),
  
• two tbs oil (preferable olive) + some for sprinkling the top of focaccia
  
• teaspoon salt + some for sprinkling the top of focaccia
  
• chopped dried tomato, tyme (olives, chopped bacon, rosemary,...)

Combine flour, yeast, water, oil and salt in a bowl. Mix the ingredients and then knead the dough until soft and silky (so, about 10 minutes if you do this by hands), leave about 1 hour to rise, knead again, put onto a tray (I used the round one for pies), flatten it with hands and leave to rise for another 1/2 hour. Press fingers into dough (all over it) and sprinkle with chopped tomatoes and some herbs (or you can use whatever you have at hand - olives, onions, cheese...). Sprinkle some oil over the top and bake at 200 degrees C about 25 minutes (until golden).

There are many other recipes for focaccia. Perhaps you would like to try to bake one of the breads from this bread blog? I have found it just now... Oh, amazing!

Btw, I will be back behind the screen on Monday, 18th... if I don't stay in the mountains with some shepherd. ;)

Graphics

I found out about David and Polona's graphics long time ago in the library. They presented their work at the exhibition. They were selling their beautiful pictures at the Christmas fair when I met them next time, and I didn't have enough cash with me to buy one of their colorful beauties. Those graphics are not so cheap and besides it is hard to decide which one to choose.

So, today I came across their web site. I still like their work, only a little piece of what they offer is presented online.

On the left picture is David's picture called Tulip's kingdom (80x10cm). I like it a lot, a perfect piece of art for my wall. I just think I will have to save some more money before I am able to buy it. :)

This year so far

Yesterday while going for a ride by bike (oh, how I neglect you, my beauty!) I was thinking that I had put lots of hope into this year. I had expected it to be a gorgeous year. Looking back at these past months, I had to say that many obstructions totally blocked my good intentions to remember this year as a good one. Things just came my way, I could not prevent them from coming. Do I really attract all these bad moments in my life by the way I live, by the way I think? I don't know. I try to be positive and think positive... Looking at my home, it still looks messy and not really a place I like living in. I will have to wait until autumn before everything will be settled again. Perhaps that's also why I keep going to the mountains so often, to be somewhere where everything is simply perfect. I think my life is worse than a year before. Perhaps I should just stop trying to make everything alright. So, if I had to describe this year so far with one word, it would be setbacks.All these thoughts came to my mind when I was reading Geninne's yesterday's post. Her blog is the first one I came across in my life and it is still the first one I read every day. It is funny but I stopped commenting on her blog. Although I like the things she makes. It is sometimes so weird when you get no response to your comments and I wonder if I should really continue writing this (my) blog. Though I like looking back at the moments in my life and remember. Either nice or sad moments that happened once upon a time.

Beekeeper

Since I was about 7 years old when I accidentally jumped over a bee swarm on a meadow near my granddad's house where we lived then, my dad has been a beekeeper. More or less he took this work seriously because bees are fragile living beings. An old saying says that a bee dies like human being and not like other animals (Slovenian language has special word for dying of an animal and special one for human beings). We didn't eat lots of honey at home but all that we did had been produced by dad. It seems to me that he took beekeeping more seriously this year. He has a huge knowledge but he is not persistent enough to work with the bees as he should. Yesterday mom invited me over to have lunch with them. Later they were going to visit my grandparents and dad decided to bring some honey to my uncle who lives in the vicinity of grandparents. Dad was telling me about the new glasses that he is going to use to store honey in and about the stickers he is going to have. I had only 5 minutes to make a sticker for this glass of honey, so I quickly drew one. Right, the bee is missing but there was no more time for that. Perhaps next time. It is important that dad liked it.
Later at home I made myself banana shake. I can hardly eat bananas by themselves but I love all the things made of them. Lately I've been making myself this simple drink of banana, yogurt, cinnamon, maple syrup and some chocolate chips. Delicious!

Books

I haven't written about the books I am reading for quite some time. During the summer time is too precious to spend it reading while outside the sun is shining. But sometimes it is just too hot and humid to do anything else than sit in my armchair and live a life of a hero in the book. Right, I had plenty of guides to the mountain areas borrowed from the library but I had to bring them back just yesterday (yes, a good reason to buy myself some of them!).

Why I am actually writing this post? Because yesterday I borrowed a book that reminds me that nothing is wrong by being bold and brave and change your life if things are not the way they should be. Well, I wish I was 10 years younger (and I am sure I will say the same when I am a year older...).

So, here's the list:

• Eat, pray, love by Elizabeth Gilbert - either you have to be very brave or have just enough money to do what she did. I think that travels like hers really help you to find yourself. But how can you do something like that having children?! Being super extra bold?
  
• Giants in the Earth by Ole Edvart Rolvaag - I think that the book has the same message as the one above. How sad it is that people destroy someone else's life. And I am sure you know what's my view towards the religion... This doesn't mean that I don't believe... The story is about the pioneer life on the prairie.
  
• Three day road by Joseph Boyden - what the war can do to a man, to friendship. A story of two friends and the I. world war. Slovenian men had to suffer a lot during this war. We had no country of our own and some were living in Italy and some in Austria. How many relatives had to fight between themselves only because they lived in the different parts of the land where Slovenian was (is) spoken. I wish to visit the place of the fronts some day. Well, I mean those parts where people were dying in thousands. The other day in the mountains I saw a wire that was left of the border between two countries. Very sad remnants, I tell you.
• Winter of the Wolf Moon by Steve Hamilton - this one is about friendship. And how boring our lives can be. At least that's how I saw the story. It made me think how boring my life can actually be. Sometimes.
• A piano in the Pyrenees by Tony Hawks - how life can be fun and easy if you know how to make it this way. And sometimes you just need some cash to fulfill your dreams, I guess.
• The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw by Bruce Barcott - thanks to Kari I had a chance to read this remarkable true story. When the money turns the world go around, there's nothing you can do to save the bird. I passed the book to my colleague, I hope she will like it as much as I did.

So, above are the books I liked reading. The ones that I thought about even after putting them down. I liked Three day road the most. It is a weird book, I warn you, but I am known of reading weird books... Happy reading, if you chose one of the titles above when you next go to the library!

Another peak

It is this time of a year when nothing feels better than going up to a mountain peak. It is not the peak that is important but the path that follows up there. Today I found a beautiful quotation on Lee Fierbaugh's blog. I would like to visit Muir Woods National Monument one day. There are many heroes that lived once upon a time. Like John Muir. Or Joseph R. Walker.

Friday was my day off again. The weather these days is not stable and the clouds were chasing me again.

I'd got fed up with sitting in my armchair so I went to sit on Chair. Stol is the mountain I climbed this time. Its name in translation means chair. 2236 m above sea level. It took me 3 and a half hours to get to the mountain hut and another ten minutes to get to the peak. Oh, it looked close and yet it was another 10 minutes to go!It must be a wonderful view from there in a nice clear weather. This is what there was, one moment clear blue sky, but turn around, and you could hardly see in front of you because of the foggy cloud that crept up the steep slopes. Lots of flowers on the way, I had to look at them and smell them too. That's why it took me so long to get to the top. I had to lean over the precipice to take a photo of Kerner-Alpine poppy (Papaver alpinum kerneri in Latin and kernerjev mak in Slovenian)! I needed even more time to get down back to the car! I passed through beautiful mountain pastures. I wouldn't mind spending a day or two up there. If there was only sour milk available but it wasn't. The herdsman explained to me that the cows are too way up the hill to milk them! Lunch on my way was very delicious. Some of the last wild strawberries and there were plenty of sweet raspberries. I wish I had some large dish with me to pick some more and bring them home. Though, I did bring some for Mr Ž. A handful.The inscription requested to bring one of these log of woods to the mountain hut. I did. And I think I was the only one... Obviously I took the longest and the loneliest path. As long as this summer lasts, I will be going up the mountains over and over again. Mr Ž has lots of work these days, I hope he will be able to go with me for a few days to the Julian Alps. There are still so many wonderful spots left to discover.