A heartfelt Hello

Hi, Y'all,

I relocated a lot but when asked for my hometown, I'll answer Eschweiler. As you might have heard in the news, the city was severely damaged by heavy rain and floodwater by the river which runs right through the city center. Family and friends are affected, and my thoughts are with everybody who was hit by the flood!

May I post something nice anyway? Or is it inappropriate in light of the catastrophe? I considered and reconsidered and finally came to the conclusion that it is okay. I am grateful that we and our river Elbe were spared, I am relieved that nobody of my relatives was bodily harmed, I am proud for my nephew who is constantly out there in the field with his fire department and actually saved someone's life the other night, and I am deeply touched by the solidarity not only in my family but in the whole area. People help each other, spontaneously, solidary and unrequested - just so. Everybody contributes in his or her way, and this is f....ing amazing!

And if I can offer only a minute of distraction with this little blogpost, then this is exactly what I intended. Nothing more, nothing less. And therefore, a heartfelt hello from my kitchen counter:

Right now, we are BBQing all the time, and after our monkey bread experience I wanted to try something else as side dish. And as my new casserole needed to be put into action, I thought of focaccia bread. Basically, that is a normal yeast dough, but with added olive oil and baked in a flat pan. I got hand on a finely ground spelt flour which I tested right away: 

You could leave it like that but I added some cherry tomatoes and dried rosemary needles as well as some herbal salt (thank you, sis) and of course another good drizzle of olive oil. Looked like this:

Although this was a dough made of 500 g of flour, the bread was done after 20 minutes in the oven. Please have a look at the golden fluffy awesomeness! 

Last weekend friends visited us in the afternoon, and in this situation, Germans usually serve coffee and cake. Due to the heat I wanted something light and summery - sorry, no Black Forest Cherry cake for now :-) And as I wanted to avoid using my oven, I made a Key Lime pie. Which means: crumbling some oatmeal cookies and mixing them with melted butter. Put that in the fridge and in the meantime, whisk cream cheese with lime juice, lime zest and whipping cream. Add gelatin, put it on the cookies and again let it sit in the fridge for quite some time. Decorate before serving, and note to self: Add the icing prior to the cookie crumbles. If you put the cream/icing on top of the crumbles, they slide sideways. Therefore, please excuse the somewhat unsymmectrical placement. It's called cake artists for a reason, right? But it was yummie!  

And as we are talking summer and coffee - ever heard of Dalgona coffee? Totally new to me, but thanks to Pinterest I now have an alternative to iced latte. 

With Dalgona (I believe, it's from Japan) everything is different: Not the milk is frothed, but the coffee, and the milk doesn't go on top but comes first into the mug. But one thing after the other: You need instant coffee powder, milk (any type you prefer - oat, soy, you name it), sugar and ice cubes. Pour the milk over ice into your glass and then take three table spoons of instant coffee, one and a half table spoons of sugar and three table spoons of hot water into a separate bowl. Whip it up with a handheld electric mixer. I didn't believe my eyes, but that mixture turns light, fluffy and creamy in 30 seconds only - simply wonderful! And heavenly when the warm coffee foam gets mixed with the cold milk! I don't recommend freezing the milk but I might consider testing a bit of Bailey's or caramel syrup...

Btw, this is how it looks like:

Just. Stay. Safe.

 

From head to toe

 Hi, Y'all!

Long time no see - yep, guilty as charged! But I offer compensation in form of pretty cute pictures, and moreover, some doggie content at the end :-) 

My work team recently got a new member, which means, one of my colleagues is a new father since March. And I established my own tradition of welcoming babies of colleagues with something handmade. But I couldn't decide whether to sew a teddy bear plushie or a bathing blanket or something completely different. I changed my thoughts again and again, had new ideas and threw them away and started all over again.

But then I caught sight of a few skeins of yarn in my stash and just started to crochet. And again, I could not make up my mind what to do and so little man ended up with three hats and three pairs of booties. Now he can be stylish and wrapped nicely from head to toe in three different outfits!

Let's start at the top:

And here in detail - smallest hat, a little doggie:

And then a medium sized polar bear: 

And lastly the largest hat, a funny owl with tilted head:

Now let's turn to the lower end and please find below the smallest shoes, little Vans:  

And then we have classic chucks, made them often and people always liked them:

But if you know me, you also know that my all-time-favorites are the ones with the yellow seam :-) And they inspired me to the following adorable booties - you have to lay a foundation for good taste early, right? 

Aren't they absolutely stinking cute???

And as we are expecting another little tenant in the apartment on the fifth floor I just carried on and made these here for head and toes: 

But now let's come to the promised dog content... It's summer with according temperatures, and our two flat-nosed furry friends can't stand the heat like their long-nosed fellow species. Therefore we have to cater for refreshment... 

Our granny dog doesn't jump into the makeshift pool but tries to drink from it instead :-) But to cool her off, we bought her a cooling mat. 

New objects might be dangerous, therefore, you have to approach them veeery carefully... :-)

But - YAY - she finally made it! 

And I think you can really see how proud she is.

So stick to something, even if it takes more time than planned. :-)

Take care and stay safe!