Today I am Dusting (and other stuff)…

The sudden arrival of the sun has bought all the dust in my home into stark relief. After folding the washing this morning (yes, I still doing well with last week´s Edit), I felt a strong need to flit around the shelves and windowsills, wiping them down with a damp cloth. Felt good!

We seem to have an awful amount of dust here that quickly accumulates – city living?

Trying to get a lot done today – cleaning up my shameful clutter hotspot in Mr Four´s room (as mentioned yesterday), posting a few more Amazon sales off and having a friend round for a cuppa. I promised her cookies some time ago, and last night I coincidentally made Salted Oatmeal ones – so hopefully she likes them. I had always wanted to try them since I read about them in a book once. I made them exactly as directed and they are good )

Since I was ill on Friday, I can no longer tolerate coffee (and I only drink one cup a day), so started this morning with tea and some fresh wholemeal bread that my kind husband went to the bakery for this morning before he left – I am craving whole grains really badly. Sometimes, I feel like the pregnant woman who sent her husband into the witch´s garden looking for rapunzel (a herb) as she was craving it (and we know what happened next!)

Spread with Bresso – a cream cheese with herbs spread

Oh, and I also have the children home now for two weeks holiday, so flexibility in all my plans is key…

Filed under: Cooking

Pesto – Here’s Some I Prepared Earlier

I took these photos last year, however am just about to do exactly the same thing and make home made pesto for dinner with Miss Seven. She loves helping – mashing up the garlic into a paste with sea salt, adding the pine nuts and picking all the basil leaves off the plants for me (I bought three today and hope to plant what´s left tomorrow for hoped regeneration).

Nothing seems to make as creamy a pesto as doing it by hand with the mortar and pestle. Even without adding Parmesan (which we grate separately on top), it is wonderfully luscious and flavourful – well worth the investment of time.

Pesto tastes like sunshine!

What are you having for dinner tonight?

Filed under: Cooking

Bamboo Steamer and Dumplings

Somehow we acquired another kitchen item this morning (blush), however at least it is not a repeat buy!

When we woke up this morning it was snowing and miserable looking, so we decided to make a bit more of a trip out for our grocery shopping than usual. We wanted to have something especially nice to look forward to for dinner, so took a U-bahn trip to the other side of town to the huge Asia Feinkost Haus which has plenty of variety in dry goods, frozen goods and fresh Asian greens and herbs.

Asian food is pretty ordinary here- in so far as we can´t get a takeaway like we are used to, everything has been Germanised and is fairly bland. So, you need to make it yourself if you want something that tastes different and the ingredients aren´t easily accessible as they are in everyday supermarkets in Australia. Not to say that there aren´t excellent restaurants here however its not feasible for us at present cost-wise to visit them with or without the children.

In the end we came home with lots of rice paper wrappers, frozen dumplings with shrimp, meat and vegetable fillings, sauces (hoisin, sweet soy sauce, satay), coriander, spring onions, frozen prawns, spice mixes, other dry goods and fresh vegetables.

So we have the ingredients now to make steamed dim sum/dumplings with different dipping sauces (tonight´s tea) and Vietnamese rice paper rolls with shrimps and crispy vegetables (tomorrow). We also have sufficient rice, lentils and spice mixes (butter chicken, masaman curry) for meals next week.

And the bamboo steamer doesn´t take up much room…..honest!

Filed under: Cooking, Home Matters

Pancakes!

Well, I didn´t get any “extra” work done today beyond cleaning up the house, grocery shopping (with both kids took three times as long as it should have) and making two batches of pancakes. My gluten-free friend Barbara made buckwheat “American style” ones as well.

I used this recipe (and watched the video first) from The Times. They turned out perfectly and the photo above is the leftovers from the second batch my seven year old daughter made by herself. We ate them with blueberries, strawberries and cream from a can! Yum!

I have a great frying pan from Tefal (non-stick) that I bought two years ago- it´s the pancake pan and it works perfectly. One of those items that really is worth having with only a single use. My husband missed out as he works away every week, so maybe we will do this again this weekend.

Filed under: Cooking, Friends