Another heartfelt hello from my kitchen

Hi, Yall!

You already know, I'm a huge fan of meals that are either prepped rather quickly, not very complicated or have only a few ingredients. And as I like to try new things (at least in my kitchen), I'll show you what's on our plates lately. 

Let's start with Saturdays' breakfast. Unlike in the US for example, we have the same breakfast any given workday: muesli, coffee and a small smoothie with various fruits, but on weekends our breakfast is more elaborate. On Instagram I saw pancakes with only three ingredients - banana, cinnamon, eggs. And that shall work??? Well, challenge accepted. Thus I smashed three ripe bananas, added four eggs and a teaspoon of cinnamon - rather liquidy situation... Anyway, let's dump it into a non-stick frying pan and put a lid on to get it quickly cooked without burning one side. Ooof, you have to turn them veeery carefully, but then you get little banana-sweet pancake-miracles. Add some fresh fruit and you're done! 

Meanwhile I made some amends to the recipe which means I usually a cup of oats and mix the whole thing with an immersion blender. Thus you get a smooth mix but still very runny. Surely you could add more oats, but I didn't want that. Due to the fructose the pancakes get rather dark although they are not burnt, even when they look like that: 

You could drown the pineapples in maple syrup but there's no obligation. The riper the bananas, the sweeter the pancakes. Really yummy! 

Let's stick with breakfast for a while. On Sundays we usually have eggs, and I wanted to serve them differently. Thus I chopped various ingredients (cherry tomatoes, ham, spring onions, mushrooms and put them into my muffin pan. Then mixed the eggs, poured them into the muffin tins and added some shredded cheese on top. Put that in the oven and afterwards try to meticulously peel the egg Mcmuffins out of the pan :-)

From a visual perspective there is room for improvement, but they are super for on-the-go, for a picnic or even on a burger bun with some tomato sauce. 

Little snacks are always a must-have: A healthy option may be a toast with curry cream cheese and mango slices. 

Or blueberry muffins without sugar but with rolled oats: 

If you don't have time (but some calories to spare) you might opt for store bought puff pastry. These cinnamon spirals are quick and easy and very delicious. 

In Switzerland they have a pretty popular dessert with pureed sweet chestnuts, but here in Germany you mostly find them roasted over open fire at the Christmas markets. However, you can buy them already cooked and I originally wanted to add them to a side dish with Brussels sprouts. But then I changed my plans, and the chestnuts patiently waited in the fridge to face their destiny. I put them into a cake dough with lots of chocolate chips and chopped hazelnuts. The cake was more on the compact side and not so fluffy but if you like a more rustic cake this one's definitely right for you. 

But I also want to add some dinner dishes - some with meat, some without. First thing is a boar filet. Although a boar is a large animal, the filet which was included in our last meat order from Grutto followed the more minimalistic trend... Suitable as a starter but not enough for two adults as main course. Therefore I wrapped it in minced meat and planned to wrap it in puff pastry as well - a wild filet Wellington, so to speak. But hubby is not very keen on puff pastry and then I wrapped the whole package in bacon strips and cooked it in the oven. That was something special, I can tell you!

Oh, and there is diced Gouda in the minced meat - not the baddest of ideas :-))) 

And while we're talking cheese... Here's is some deliciousness with cream cheese: Philadelphia chicken! Wrap chicken breast with bacon and start baking it in the oven. Then mix herbed cream cheese with cream and pour the mixture to the chickens. Let that sit in the oven for another 15 minutes and you're done. It's served best with rice or anything that can suck up the delicious sauce!  

Apart from that you can also make an awesome burger filling with chicken. Pulled pork is a staple but did you know you could also use chicken? Well, I chose a slightly simpler version than having the chicken in the smoker for hours. Instead I cooked a broth with chicken breasts, leek, carrots, celery and all. Afterwards I pulled the chicken apart with two forks. One part I put back into the broth and put that into my freezer. Now I have home made penicillin aka chicken soup in case we catch a cold. And the other part I mixed with a classic BBQ sauce (sweet, hot and smoky). Put that in a home-made bun, top it off with some tomato and a slice of Gouda  and you got yourself a delicious pulled chicken burger. 

For the right balance please find below a fish dish :-) Super simple but super impressive... First you slice up two zucchinis (carrots work perfectly too) and mix them with some olive oil and spices (in my case mostly thyme and rosemary). Put that on a lined baking sheet and add some salmon (skinny side down). Add two to three teaspoons of pesto (red and green work perfectly fine) on the salmon and place cherry tomatoes cut in half on top. After 25 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius it's ready to eat - low carb and pretty awesome looking! 

In case you are willing to spend some elbow grease, here is a recipe that takes some time, but is awesome when you have to cut out carbs. Cauliflower pizza crust! OK, this is not a yeast dough, sure. But hubs and I really liked it. In fact we liked it so much, that we made it again only two days later! 

First you have to shred the cauliflower - in a blender or food processor but you can also grate it manually. Then you have to blanch the cauliflower grains in boiling saltwater for five minutes. Then chill it with cold water, put it in a kitchen towel and squeeze out as much liquid as you can. The less liquid remaining in the cauliflower, the more crunchy the crust. 

Mix that "dough" with two tablespoons of grated almonds (or almond flour), one egg, 80 grams of goat cream cheese (or the normal one) and a healthy dose of thyme (or oregano). With a spatula spread that mass onto a baking pan and bake it for 40 minutes. 

If you google it, there are different variations of that cauliflower pizza crust: with flour instead of almonds, cauliflower pan-fried instead of blanched, shredded cheese instead of cream cheese. Except from the pan-fry method I didn't test any of that, but I guess, it's worth a try. 

Now it's time to put the toppings on the crust. I recommend not to load it but keep the toppings relatively thin, because otherwise it won't stay crunchy. (TBH: ours didn't stay crunchy, anyway.) In case you're not bothering, go for it! I topped it with tomato sauce, onion rings, bell-pepper and olives, and cheese, of course. 

That goes into the oven for another 10 minutes (or a bit longer) and then you can dig in! 

In case you got your mouth watered - you're welcome!!!

Spring is in the Air!

 Hi, Y'all!

Yesterday was first day of spring (at least calendar-wise; I think meteorologically the beginning of spring was earlier). Anyway, it's about time to decorate accordingly. If you are into that kind of thing, that is. If not, who cares how your home is decorated? But as I like to decorate seasonally, let me show you what I made. 

First I crocheted some nice little bunnies around some curtain rings. You could use them as napkin rings but also hang them to some twigs (or better: branches - as these guys are made from metal, they are pretty heavy). 

You can make them lighter by taking some flower wire as basis instead of curtain rings, just like that: 

And while we're speaking of makramee: Please find my door wreath with a bunny made of zip ties. Hubby complains that it reminds him of something completely different, but then I'm irritated by the fluffy bunny tail :-)))

A while ago these geometrical shapes became trendy and thus I had to try it myself. Simply printing a nice picture was too boring, and so I printed some nice picture (you don't say...) but then transferred all crossing points with a needle onto some cardstock. And then I connected all these crossings with some soft white thread. Looks like this: 

After all these different techniques I can't leave out my sewing machine, and so I made some chickies - very fitting for spring, if you ask me. I took a lot of fabric scraps, cut off trouser legs and bed sheets, colored the beads for the feet with red nail polish and used some wiggly eyes I had in my stash for years. I love to use what I have - I prefer that over buying something new. And besides some bird sand I used to fill the birdies, I did just that. Besides, I heard that you can fill these chicken with cat litter, and when you put them into your car it prevents your windows from getting foggy. I didn't test it because first I trust in the heating of our car and second was the cat litter to rough for my fabric. The bird sand is much smoother.  

And here is my whole flock of chicks in all colors and sizes: :

And that's how they're sitting around just so - very suitable, because today is international day of lazyness!

Stay safe and sane, Y'all!

Whoopsie Daisy!

Hi, Y'all!

Is everything fine on your end? Here in Germany we were pretty much gone with the wind, as we were haunted by not only one or two, but three hurricanes the last few days. Thankfully nothing major happened to our home, and I am relieved. 

When I remember correctly, I already told you that I wanted to try out stitching. Basics are well-known, I guess, but I ordered a bundle of stitching frames and a colorful variety of stitching threads which I now put to good use. I had leftovers from a cream-colored bedsheet which I cut into 30 cm squares and wanted to turn them into napkins. I hemmed them and was very proud of my pretty decent mitered corners. Then I wanted to embellish them with different flowers, so that each napkin is unique but all of them together would form a pretty flower garden. Good plan, but then I got totally carried away and the embroidery turned much larger than planned...

As you can see, the embroidery takes too much space of the napkin, and tbh, 30 cm squares fit better for a hanky than a napkin. But let's have a closer look at the different flowers: 

I started with white daisies and yellow buttercups - at least in the beginning they were yellow. I then changed them into white to differentiate better between the white and the yellow napkin. 

Then I made some red roses with a woven stitch - it's far too complicated to explain that stitch on the go - if you're interested you will find tutorials galore on YT for example. 

Next in line were some lavenders in different shades of violet: 

After that I made some grape hyacinths in pink with dozens of tiny little knots one next to each other. That makes it 3D but in fact impractical as a napkin. 

I then embroidered some corn flowers in blue: 

And last but not least dandelions in yellow:

I like all of these embroidered pieces very much, but as mentioned before, they do not make good napkins. Due to their size, place mats or doilies are out of the question. BTW: I hate doilies! I mean, I could put them into a frame and hang them on the wall, or I could integrate them into a quilt but then I wouldn't need hemming and the mitered corners. But that should be no problem. Another option would be to frame them all together in one picture - in two rows of three, that might look nice. You see, I am pretty indecisive right now. Any ideas? 

Stay safe, y'all!

Hi and hello!

Hi, Y'all!

When I take Heinrich on his first walk of the day nowadays, it's getting a little bit lighter every day - isn't that gorgeous? After weeks and weeks of rain that is a hint of spring which I highly appreciate. 

And regarding morning routines: I just wanted to drop that I reached half-time of my 60-day habit changing challenge! My results so far: 7 times per week pure water instead of syrup, 6 times per week Yoga directly after getting up and 5 times per week I practiced French. If you consider that you stick to new year's resolutions for 21 days in average, I'm on a good way on my day 31 now. Let's see where that leads me...

Besides, I can show you two little things I created in my sewing room: Our neighbors suffer from infiltration! And I don't mean politically :-) Although their apartment door was already repaired, they still have air coming through underneath the door. But I don't want them to freeze so I took a pair of jeans, chopped one leg off and created such a stopper thingy: 

Slightly embellished with some trimming and a leather patch and accompanied by another jeans leg, this time in black. I filled the whole thing with fabric scraps I couldn't use otherwise. Therefore, it is washable and pretty heavy - exactly what you want in a draft preventer.

For breakfast we usually have cereals and a smoothie. Often I drink it later and therefore take it with me into my office. But the water condensation always causes these annoying stains on my desk, thus I had to sew a coaster or mug rug. Took some softshell fabric I used for my rain jacket and used the grey fleece as outside and the black water repellent as inside. Looks pretty nice and matches my office color scheme. Maybe I'll sew some more; a monstera leaf for instance may look very nice, too.  

And as we are talking about nice and pretty: Before Christmas I ordered some black metal rings to adorn them with salt dough houses and to put them in my windows. Unfortunately, I didn't like the finished product at all! Therefore I stashed them in my ufo box. But then my sister told me they're going to move, and I thought this is the perfect opportunity to make them a door wreath. Please adore the prototype currently hanging on our door:  

As my sister gave me her stitching ring she used for her first attempt in cross stitching decades ago, it deemed appropriate to use such a device for her wreath. Plus, I could pinch some vegan leather in between the two wooden frames. That didn't work for my metal ring, obviously. My sister's wreath is slightly smaller than mine, but equally pretty: 

I try to organize our menu by season. Therefore, we have lots of squash and cabbage right now. But always the same old same old gets boring quickly, and so I tried two new recipes for Savoy cabbage. First a strudel with puff pastry, savoy cabbage and minced beef which we completed with some bechamel and white wine:

And then we had pasta with cabbage and walnuts - completely different: Cook pasta and cabbage and then mix some of the cooking liquid with walnuts and parmesan cheese in a blender to get a creamy sauce. Fold in the cabbage and pour it over the pasta. Top it off with some chopped walnuts and some grated parmesan and you're done. Very yummy!

And last but not least a pro-tip for bottles: If you use such devices as SodaStream, you will probably know my battle with keeping the bottles clean. Even when you use a bottle brush it might get difficult. Usually I take some rice to clean my water bottles: uncooked rice, water and a few drops of laundry detergent into my bottle and shake it, baby, shake it! Perfect result, but the rice is doomed afterwards. But my favourite drugstore recently added stainless steel cleaning pearls. Same principle as the rice, but no waste. You can use them for thermos jugs or vases, too - I like very much!  

Stay squeaky clean, safe and sane :-)))

Cookie Monster!

Hi, Y'all,

The weather outside is frightful (ok, I'll stop here, time for carols is definitely over, but you get the picture). Our doggie wants to stay in his bed the whole day, and I feel him, but can't help it. But to make life sweeter, cookies were invented. Well, in Germany cookies don't categorize as dessert like in the US for example, they are a treat mostly for Christmas time - at least the homemade ones. But in my opinion (and in the opinion of that large coffee chain with the white on green logo) cookies can and should be enjoyed throughout the whole year. Although I must say, I prefer my small cookies which disappear with one or two bites over these palm-size cookies.

Therefore please find something to make your mouth watery...

Here are - arranged with love and atmosphere - my usual suspects, e.g. vanilla crescents and hazelnut macaroons (detailed pictures below). 

Furthermore, I made Nutella cookies aka reindeer noses for all neighbors in the house. Of course, there was one cookie with red frosting in each parcel :-) 

They were packaged in TetraPak with a crocheted border. That way you could - if you wanted to - reuse the former milk cartons as pencil holder, storage container or flower pot.

Besides these staples I always want to try something new. This time I chose orange clouds and jam stripes. The orange clouds turned out beautiful and were delish, but I wished the orange flavor to be more prominient. S'pose to take more orange zest next time. 

The jam stripes are ideal for batch production :-) As you might know, my cookie decorating patience is strictly limited. To embellish single cookies devotedly with sprinkles, frosting and whatnot - that's not my thing. They have to taste good, look pretty and have to be done quickly and easily at the same time. Therefore, I had to try them. At first you make long flat rolls with your dough and place them on your baking sheet. Then carve a channel into the dough and fill it with jam (I took the second last jar of my homemade grape jelly). 

Bake that and spritz some melted chocolate on top. In theory you could leave that step out, but I like the cracking chocolate when you take a bite. And the combination of fruit and chocolate is a match made in heaven!

Afterwards cut the strands into stripes and you are done! And for me personally, that is the perfect dough/jam ratio - there are other cookies where you glue two layers of dough together with jam, and most of the time, there is not enough jam in between for my liking. But if you take more jam, it spills out. These cookies are the perfect workaround for that problem! 

And while baking, I have to add the last cake I made. Hubby and I binged some Netflix baking shows lately, and an Italian cheesecake left us highly interested. I know the German and American cheesecakes but Italien was new - so I had to test it. There are varieties galore but I opted for a version with amarettini cookies, apricots and quark/curd cheese (thus no ricotta or other form of cream cheese). Was pretty awesome! 

With that said - enjoy your time and cookies!!!