Baking

Sometimes I have time to experiment and sometimes I don’t.

Muffins and cookies are new on my “OK” list while chocolate bars have already been tested. And they taste so heavenly good! All those were baked for the colleagues. I received a crate of figs in return. Yum!

Experimenting

I heard too many times in the past few months that I am soooo happy having all the time for myself. Obviously all those people who said that don’t have any idea how it is to live with a thought how to find a way to be financially independent and not to rely on generosity of my parents and partner so that I will be able to buy myself another pair of socks or something else of my desire also tomorrow, not just today. I keep telling to these people that they can be as happy as I am if they quit their job. Of course, nobody is very enthusiastic about this thought.

On the other hand, if I ignore my future, this time that I have is very precious. I am fully aware of this. Beside making lace, I’ve been also experimenting in my kitchen. Not much, just a little. The only imperfection about this is that usually I forget to take photos of the final result of my experiments.

One day I made pita bread. At least the recipe said that it was pita bread. I wondered if my dough discs would indeed rise while being in hot oven; and they really did. Now I know that it is best to eat them still warm or at least the same day, stuffed with a filling of your choice.

I also baked some cookies but I gave them away to my parents and friends, not even thinking of taking any photos of them (cookies, not parents or friends). One recipe will find its page in my recipe book and I will test a couple of other recipes in the next days. It is so hard to belive that it is almost Christmas.

Apples and more

It is time for apple strudels.

By making them we carry on the knowledge of our grandmothers, sometimes adding new ingredients to oldfashioned recepies. I added ground hazelnuts to this one.

At home again

Finally I spent a weekend at home. It felt so good although I was very tired at the end of each day. There was so much to do but not even half of it has been finished. I was:
- enjoying some time in my garden again, gathering some paprika, parsley and thyme. I cut paprikas into small pieces and froze them. They will be used in sauces later in winter. I also froze parsley while thyme was spread out to be dried on a baking tray.

- using the first Hokkaido pumpkin for our lunch. I just cut it into slices, sprinkled it with some salt and baked it in the oven at 180 degrees C. Simple as that and very delicious.

- spending lots of time in a kitchen yesterday, preparing an apple-plum-cranberries crumble. As Vlijtig said - sweet and simple although I found it quite time consuming. Especially cutting all those plums into small pieces. I will use more fruit and less crumble next time. And maybe less sugar too.

- a bit sad seeing mountains covered by snow. I don't think it will melt before next May or June. I will miss them, my refuge from an everyday life.

- gazing into the stars on Saturday between 7 and 8 p.m. hoping to see some of those promised 1000 shooting stars per hour. I saw only a few, far less than were promised. But the night was magnificent, quite warm and the skies cleared just in time. I have always loved stargazing. I thought of being an astronomer when I was still very young. Later I found out that you have to study physics to be that. A pity that we always had bad physics teachers. Though, I am not a night person, I go to bed early and prefer to wake up early.

This were the weekend happenings at home. I switched the heating on for the first time this season. And the warmth makes a home so much cozier than it is. I hope you had a nice weekend too.

Muffins

There will be feasting, peace, rest and joy.

When someone comes for a visit out of a blue and there's nothing at home to put on a table, then I have a good reason to bake muffins. Well, I had only two bananas instead of three this time, but they were good anyway. I haven't baked those for years. The recipe is from a book I bought in 1995 in New Zealand. Way back, when muffins were not even well known in Slovenia.

Have a good weekend! For me it will be one of the rare ones spent at home this year! :)

Cold northern winds

Well. It is cold outside and it is snowing. I like it. Though I hardly wait for the spring to come. Let me share with you some weekend goodness. Lots happened.

Saturday morning - with a group of people searching for the woodpeckers in the woods near river Mura. We did see a pair of middle woodpeckers; lucky people indeed. :)

Dead fox was lying on our path:

Food - ramsons (Allium ursinum):

Saturday evening - waiting for the eagle owls at the other part of Slovenia. I drove to a little village near our meeting point, and waited. Male and female started to call each other at 17:35. What a lucky woman I was that day. 71 people gathered that afternoon, and only eight eagle owls were heard.

More food, baked on Sunday. Bread and onion pie. I improvised a bit, but the result was delicious.

And for the end, something new in my living room. Finally. I hope your weekend was good, too. Now, let me have a cup of hot tea, there is snow blizzard outside.

Karma for today: Stir up warm, friendly feelings on a cold morning.

Sweet little owls

I am not so sure that I would bake them if I didn't have to write an article for a magazine. It took me three days! I made a dough the first day, but the light was too poor to take any photos, so I continued making them the next day. Then I forgot to buy M&M's and white chocolate, but you know how it is with shopping on Saturday - crowded! I finished them yesterday. Ž ate most of those which fell apart. Delicious, he said. You can find the recipe here.

For the dough I used 250g flour, 150g sugar, 125g butter and 1 egg. I mixed 30g of cocoa powder into 2/3 of the dough, but I suggest you use only 20-25g of it, if you are going to bake the cookies.

Time consuming, but lots of fun!

Bread of happiness

Last week I received some dough to start making a bread of happiness. Supposedly this bread comes from Vatican. It is more a kind of a sponge than bread, but it is very tasty. If you like it sweet. I didn't exactly follow the rules, because I baked it on Monday instead on Saturday. It tasted good anyway. I also gave only one third away, because everyone was on a vacation or too far away. Right, at least I gave away some of it, which is in my opinion important. I am not sure if this will really fulfill one of my wishes, but I hope it will at least bring some peace into my heart and soul. I will tell you what else I did for this in one of my next posts. I am a weird person, I tell you. :)

Č, Š, Ž

Slovenian alphabet has 25 letters. It doesn't have the letters Q, X, Y and W but it does have three others, Č, Š, Ž. One of the web sites states that there are more than 50 words in Slovenian that include all three letters. To name just a few of them that some of you, non-native speakers might have fun pronouncing: križišče, kožušček, nevšečnež, razžaloščen, ženšče, žlobudravščina, župnišče.

To make it a bit easier, I give you some hints:

Č is pronounced as CH in a word chocolate

Š is pronounced as SH in a word shoe

Ž is pronounced as, well, my dictionary says like G in a word gendarmery

I am sure that visitors in Slovenia have lots of problems with pronunciation of Slovenian words but I admit, I have problems myself with the foreign language when I go abroad. I have never heard a tourist who would pronounce the name of Ljubljana correctly. Most say it like Ljubiana or Lubiana. Funny enough, I rarely say it Ljubljana myself; speaking Ljubljana's slang we simply call it Lublana. How easy is that for some of you to say?

I don't know if you noticed that in the last few weeks I had some fun with the letters in the posts' titles, trying to follow the alphabetical order each day. Right, I can say that I combined A and G, or that I was writing about astronomy under another letter. I omitted the letter C but I will write about something starting with this letter next week. To say that it was easy would be a lie but nevertheless I had lots of fun.
To make this post a bit more interesting, I will end it by telling you that I baked bread yesterday. I mixed two different kinds of pastry together. It looks great. Perhaps those of you who don't speak Slovenian would like to know that we call bread kruh. How easy was that for you to pronounce? :)

Giving and receiving

Friday was that kind of day when I had a smile on my face in spite of the extreme tiredness I felt. It was a day when I received wonderful presents. And gave away one as well.
I met Mojca Fo, an illustrator I was writing about some time ago. She gave me a calendar she created for this year. It is wonderful. A beauty. I love it! If you wish to have one, drop her a line. You can view more of her beautiful illustrations here and info on the calendar here. I am sure she will be glad to hear from you.I packed a little felt frog for her into a folded piece of paper. It had taken me some time of 'hard thinking' before the paper folded together nicely because I printed out just pictures and not text as well of the tutorial I found on Martha Stewart web site. Paper pattern was created by Print a day.

I have also received two most beautiful paper ornaments created by Maja (you can see them on the upper photo). Made in one of my favorite colors. She knows how to make people happy. She knows how to make their day. :) They will find their place on the windows when Valentine's day is over. To celebrate the arrival of spring. Or to wait easily for it to arrive.
If Friday was a day of giving and receiving then Saturday was a day of work. Of baking, too. Finally I managed to bake panettone by the recipe Victoria posted on her blog, oh, so long ago. They tasted different from those that are bought in a shop, less sweet and fragrant but the consistency was just the same. As she wrote, they taste delicious for breakfast. I had them with cranberry's jam (Ikea) and coffee. Delicious!

Blogland is such a wonderful invention! :)

Bread

I wanted to write about something else today but I have lots of work to do, so no time to share deep thoughts with you. :)
After a long, long time I baked bread again. I have received a star tin for Christmas, so it was time to try and use it. My experiment was successful!

Following the instructions, I made a dough like I usually make it, greased the tin with some butter, put in the dough up to 2/3 and left it to rise again. I baked it about 5 minutes longer, just in case. To make it smell nicer, I put in a pinch of herb mixture which I had bought last year before holidays. Flower power, as it is written on the label, includes brown sugar, rose, calendula, sunflower and cornflower petals, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and bourbon vanilla. Smells good, tastes delicious!

I am so glad it is Friday! Happy weekend! :)

Busy days

It might be my last day behind the screen today before Christmas. If I make it until tomorrow, I will write one more post then. If not, then you are reading my last post before holidays. I plan to be here in the last week of this year but one can never know what will happen by then. I am waiting for the inevitable things to happen these days, not something to be happy about but unfortunately also not something that I would like to write about here and bother you with.

My car will be probably repaired by this afternoon and I am looking forward to this. I know that Ž has no problems with driving me around, it is just me who doesn't like bothering him with my requests. There is still some shopping to be done and I plan to do some sewing this weekend. Presents for mum and brother. In the last minute, like always. I am also looking forward to going for a walk. If it rains or not. It would be time to stretch my legs again, after such a long time.

I did some baking the other day for today's party at work. These need some chocolate or jam on top and then they will melt in people's mouth. Hopefully I will be able to be there this evening. To meet some friends. To say good wishes for the next year. Like we did yesterday at the course. Very nice people!

So, if I am not here tomorrow, I wish you all a joyful and peaceful Christmas! And lots of happy hours until then! :)

Where did it go?

Two days passed too quickly again. I had full list of things that I wanted to accomplish and eventually ticked a couple of them.

I visited Furniture Fair on Saturday but I haven't seen anything there that I would have admired. Everything had been seen before. Here are a few photos of the things I liked. Colors or only shapes and patterns...
Yesterday Ž mentioned that I needed a stove in my living room. After so much work and still not finished house, I got angry at first but later I actually liked the idea. I am just so afraid of all that noise and dust that follows if you build in something like a stove in a room. I suggested that I go on a holiday while this would be done. Well, at this moment this is just an idea. There is so much we have to do before that.
I baked again. Curd pastry filled with grated apples and raisins soaked in rum. Bread in shape of a little star. I will try some other varieties of the latter (fruit version or spiced bread) because this would be a lovely Christmas present for our neighbors. Ideas. It feels so good when they fill my head from time to time...

I finally finished the kusudama ball. Well, I made two halves and today I will put them together. It took me about five hours to make all those flowers. I also tried to make some Christmas decoration, the green ball came out quite nice. You can make one yourself, if you like it too. I am still thinking what kind of Christmas cards should I make this year. I wish to start early this time, I always make everything in the last moment, although I promise myself to do it early...

When life is good

Apples became an apple pie. (Thanks, Kari, again for those cute cookie cutters.)Gray fabric turned into a lovely cat, called Cofek (he got name by his pink nose).Fog bellow 1400 m brought me up on 2332 m high mountain. Slovenians are a nation of mountaineers, you can see that on a photo with your own eyes. It was crowded on top! The view was fantastic, we could see Grossglockner in Austria, and a sea of fog below. I enjoyed each and every moment of a day. Even that one when I was hanging above the precipice on an icy rock with fingers cold as ice.I hope your weekend was as good as mine.

Apples

Grandmom gave me lots of apples the last time I was visiting the ranch. I have no place to store them. Where I live, used to be a lake and later a moor, so today the water is actually a meter below the ground floor. Which means that I don't have a cellar and my house is built on logs (like Venice). My 'secret' wish is to move to drier place one day but this is quite a project here in Slovenia. So, one day, hopefully my house will have a cellar and lots of storage place. And mountains near by. :)
Apples become soft if they are stored in warm place and they rot quite quickly too. That is why I had to make something with them but nothing appealed to me more than apple strudel. So, I baked one in the evening. None ever looked that beautiful as the one I made yesterday. I was satisfied because I might be on a good way to bake as delicious apple strudels as my mom and grandmom.

I think the house will smell of good things tomorrow because some apples are still in a basket. And the weather forecast today says that you will be able to find me somewhere in the mountains on Sunday. Happy weekend everyone!

Cookies for people...

...made by the recipe I received from my colleague at work. I felt extremely tired all day long but I managed to bake the cookies for guys and gals who love birds and nature. We met in the evening and during the lecture I relaxed a bit. I think that laughing helped a lot (and a cookie or two, too)! I went home with a brand new Abba CD (yep, I am still a bit old fashioned, not having iPod and such modern things. Believe it or not, I refused to have a radio in my car. I admit, I don't listen to music very often...).

Have a lovely Friday and weekend, too!

Goodbye summer, welcome fall

The temperatures dropped from above 25 degrees C to around 10. After all, in one week the fall will officially start on the calendar too. This is time of fairs, of harvest, of colors. Time to go around and see what the year has provided for us. It was time to go to the coast again, to pick figs and other fruits to make some jam. My face brightened when I saw the trees full of fig fruits but most of them were already rotten. The fig season is definitely over. Cornelian cherry didn't have any fruits on and also plum trees were empty. I saw quite many passion fruits and some pomegranate bushes with beautiful fruits on them but I couldn't pick those because they were on people's gardens. If I had some place to store such plants during the winter, I would have pomegranate plant and lemon one too. I love the color and shape of pomegranate blossoms, I love the smell of lemon ones. The house smelled of freshly baked bread on Sunday morning and I have been making myself a fruit breakfast since Tuesday (instead of eating chocolate children's food). One peach, an apple, some oat flakes, sunflower seeds, dates and curd, that's what I had in my Sunday's breakfast bowl. It has been raining since Friday evening but yesterday it stopped for a while, so I went to the castle of Ljubljana where medevial days were going on. Ljubljana has this huge castle which dates back to 16th century. Some of the buildings stood there already in 12th century. It was very cold, so I just looked around a bit, bought some delicious sweets and walked through wonderful narrow streets back to my car. It was lunch time and I could hear the sound of tableware and plates from behind the windows, I could smell the food people were eating, I walked down the street where mom lived when she met dad, I heard music coming from one of the houses, I passed by the garden which I would love to have, big and full of trees in the city center. While driving back home this thought crossed my mind: I am so grateful to be living here in this little peaceful land.

Sweets for a chocoholic

Usually when I go to Koper, which is a coastal town, I always get something delicious from my colleague who lives there. He has an orchard full of figs and persimmons (kaki), so I usually come home loaded with such goods. I know he loves chocolate and sweets made of it, so yesterday I baked brownies for him. Ž is probably going there today and I know that I will enjoy lots of figs again, if he really does. Exchange of goods for goods is called barter in economics as I was taught, but I am sure that I am much happier when I have full mouth of figs than my colleague when he gets my sweets.

P.s.: Is this getting a bit like a baking and cooking blog? Do I really do only that? Time to go to the mountains again? :)

Fruits of the summer

It is amazing that the days are still very hot. Usually it cools at this time of a year but it seems that there will be another week of nice and warm weather. It felt like a very long weekend but I can't explain why. Maybe because I was busy all the time and maybe because I was away at my grandparents again.Grandmom gave me some blackberries that grow in the ranch. These are not wild ones but grown ones. I froze some of them and made myself delicious 'ice cream' for dessert after lunch on Sunday (well, that was yesterday and it seems so far away already!). I had some plums and made dumplings with them. I mixed some flour, curd, salt, one egg, rolled the dough and made only four dumplings out of it. Some put a bit of sugar into the plums but I don't do this, I prefer adding it after, if needed. I melted some butter, added a spoonful of bread crumbs and sprinkled this on top of dumplings. Yum!I also baked some kind of a dessert from apples but I won't write much about it. Everything went wrong and it is good only if I pour lots of milk on it and then eat it. I will try some other recipe the next time. I still wonder what went wrong.

On the upper photo: from my garden into the basket - potimaron squash, parsley, celery, carrots, red beet, rhubarb and flowers of calendula/pot marigold.

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.