Just enjoy!

Hi, Y'all!

The last two weeks were insane, because Heinrich was ill. Our pets are family for us, and therefore I worried a lot. What happened? He got nipped by another dog - not funny, but sh... happens. Not overly dramatic at first, so business as usual. But then the whole thing got infected and he had an abcess, thus we went for the whole nine yards - vet visits, emergency clinic, antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs and a little dog who hates going to the vet but bore everything very bravely. In the end the buzz cut will grow out, the swelling not longer looks like there's an alien going to hatch and begging for treats already works. Healing in process!  

And after that load is taken off my heart, I can happily post again what I did the last weeks apart from that. Let's start with the kitchen... 

For Easter I wanted to treat our mums and mixed them a nice bottle - this time with coconut cream, pineapple juice, white rum and molten (or melted?) white chocolate. Unfortunately one bottle did not reach its destination because - allegedly - packaging was not sufficient and the bottle broke. Interestingly enough the second bottle packaged in the same way, reached my mother-in-law in perfect condition. And besides, the first bottle was unharmed on its way from here to Eschweiler, but then already almost on the homerun, someone didn't pay enough attention. And as you might imagine, there is no arguing with DHL even though I had an insurance :( 

During the Easter holidays we were in Stuttgart visiting the girls. As a gift I had prepared a vegan "Eierlikoer" - supersimple and superdelish! 

Basically, you mix vegan vanilla pudding (with oat milk, can be storebought by different manufacturers) with vanilla extract or vanilla sugar and vodka. For the color you might want to ad a pinch of kurkuma, but for the taste it isn't required. To add some kind of egg flavor you could add a pinch of kala namak salt, but that's totally optional. Worked pretty well without. 

Perfect match: braided bread vegan style. Eggs and butter basically are substituted by apple sauce, and besides it's a normal yeast dough - in this case with spelt flour: 

My mother-in-law- sent us an Easter package filled with goodies, and above others it contained a falafel-mixture directly from Israel, which I had to test right away. Thus, we lately had falafel burger with home made sunflower seed bread, grilled red pepper and ajvar with oven carrots as side dish. Very crossover and very tasty! 

To balance out the vegetarian dishes we had pesto chicken the other night. Easy, as always: Just put some pesto and grated cheese onto the chicken breast and bake that in the oven. Place it on a bed of tomato spaghetti and throw some cherry tomatoes and basil or spring onion on top. Totally recommend as it is so aesthetically pleasing :-)

For lunch I usually prepare something quick like toast or wraps. Normally I fill them with hummus and bell pepper and roll them up. But then Instagram made me do this instead - please take a look of all four stages of wrapping:

Fried that in a pan until the cheese was molten or melted or in a state that pleased our palates - fancy, right? 

We both like the French pizza version called "Tarte Flambee", and up til now I always bought the ready made dough. But a few days ago I found a recipe so simple I had to try it: 300 g flour, 150 ml water, 3 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt - mix, roll and fill. No yeast, no baking powder, no waiting for the dough to rise. That amount of indredients is suitable for two smaller crusts, but I made one large sheet pan out of it. Topping was light creamcheese, red onions, bacon bits, mushrooms, grated cheese and chopped walnuts. Add a spinach leaf salad and a glass of white and start the weekend! 

But it takes two to tango, therefore I'll show you not only my kitchen accomplishments but also what I made in my sewing room. There are two colleagues/neighbors who are expecting their second children and thus I dug out my sewing machine and made two sibling teddies (or teddy siblings), rice-filled heat pads and little hats. 

And for my colleague who is waiting for his first born I made some leather booties and a rabbit toy - very cute! 

And last but not least I want to show you my latest experiment: A while ago I stripped one of our bedding sets from a perfectly cute but very impractical ruching and piping. Then I was left with a long cord and an even longer fabric strip which I used to make a rope bowl. The basic principle is as follows: You wrap your fabric around the rope, and then you roll up the rope and connect everything with a wide zigzag stitch. When the bottom is large enough you start building the wall of the bowl. Was a bit tricky and the rounding of the bowl has room for improvement, but for the first attempt I quite like it. 

 

With that said - have a nice weekend and enjoy Spring time!