April 8th in pictures

Happy Birthday, darling! Our girl turns 15!

And happy Easter to all!

Happy Birthday, Lotte!

Easter/birthday surprises

The bunnies have arrived

My lovely girl and I...

SPRING

Our dog - happy

Into the wild

Busy birds

So much energy

Happy Easter, sweetheart!

What a happy Easter/Birthday Sunday we all had! Sunshine in- and outdoors!

Breakfast at night

I have been preparing breakfast at night....actually for the next morning, using a slow cooker. I tried a new recipe, which I found at the bookstore browsing the cook book section. It was easy enough to memorize (OK, I didn't buy the book...) And I tried it out last night. It's a winner. Maybe not for my kids, that requires refined taste in oatmeal, which they have not developed as of yet....

 Vanilla Irish Oatmeal


The use of soy milk makes for not getting the milk curdled through the slow cooking process. I did not have vanilla flavored one, but just plain, it works as well and I added a few drops of vanilla essence.

4 cups of vanilla flavored soy milk
4 cups of water
1 3/4 cups of steel cut Irish oatmeal
2/3 cup of maple syrup (divided)
1/2 cup dried cherries or cranberries
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground allspice (allspice is rather brittle, it is easily smashed with the back of a knife if you do not have any ground allspice, but the berries...)
1/2 cup blueberries (thawed if frozen)
1/2 cup chopped pecans, walnuts or hazelnuts (either)


Grease your slow cooker all the way to the sides up, to prevent sticking and baking on to the sides. I used a little butter.

No Stevia was used, it just happen to stand around....

Add 8 hours.... ready at 7:15AM!

Combine all ingredients, reserve half of the maple syrup, blueberries and pecans (nuts)
Prep time: 10 minutes, the last thing I did that night before hopping to bed!
Cover and cook on Low for 8 hours.


Wake up to the delicious scent of cooked oatmeal.....


Turn off slow cooker, stir in remaining maple syrup. Add more soy milk or water if needed. Mix it up carefully, it's hot!
Make good cups of coffee....
Serve in your nicest cereal bowls, garnish with blueberries, nuts, strawberries, add a sprinkle of Chia seeds and you are good to go for hours!

Bon Appetit!


It made enough for a crowd. I remember it was for 6 portions, but mine turned out about 9 servings. 
(see photos for size)

Cooling on the deck, ready to go into the freezer for use in the next week or so for an even easier breakfast!
Have fun trying.....










All images via V.Zlotkowski

Weeknight dinner

I am getting one of these...image via

Weeknights see much action in our kitchen! Hungry mouths are to be fed and our growing teenagers have a renewed sense for cooking and a greater appreciation for lovingly prepared meals. We have had made plans to eat healthier and with more attention to variety. This night was a good example of what's on our table lately. Salads and different grains and seeds, less meat and more vegetables.

Organic oranges

I love fresh crunchy jicamas

Roasting hazelnuts

Delicious Chia

We started with the preparation of our salad: 

Cutting of English cucumbers, jicamas, fennel and oranges. Mixing them together with some chia seeds, roasted hazelnuts and a dressing of fresh squeezed lemon juice, Dijon mustard and olive oil. Pepper and salt to taste.

Almost done

Meanwhile we cooked a quinoa and brown rice mix, warmed up yesterday's leftover Moroccan style slow cooked chicken (Tagine style). I had gotten a ready made simmering sauce and it took about 35 minutes yesterday for the chicken to be delightfully aromatic. 

via

Had some green beens with it...Hmmm. Good.

There was nothing better.

Takes very little time

Do you cook on weeknights? What are your meals like? Share some if you like!

 Images by V.Zlotkowski and as indicated.

On my book radar

There are new books on my radar and below you shall find the ones which have peaked my interests!

Exploring the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world, Megan Mayhew Bergman’s powerful and heartwarming collection captures the surprising moments when the pull of our biology becomes evident, when love or fear collide with good sense, or when our attachment to an animal or wild place can’t be denied.


                                                             

                                                                  *      

"As epic as an opera, as intimate as a lullaby, A Good American swept me through an entire century of triumph and tragedy with the wonderful Meisenheimer family. By turns laugh-out-loud funny and achingly sad, the story of the residents of Beatrice, Missouri, and all their glorious, messy secrets and dreams is a winner from the first page. Alex George has created that rare and beautiful thing-a novel I finished and immediately wanted to start again."
-Eleanor Brown, New York Times-bestselling author of The  Weird Sisters 


                                                                *

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.

This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.


                                                               *

To Ella Beene, happiness means living in the northern California river town of Elbow with her husband, Joe, and his two young children. Yet one summer day Joe breaks his own rule-never turn your back on the ocean-and a sleeper wave strikes him down, drowning not only the man but his many secrets.

                                                                *
  

Richie Palumbo, the most prosaic of men, gets lost one night in 1969 while driving home with his family. He finds himself in the town of Norumbega—hidden, remote, and gorgeous, at the far edges of Boston’s western suburbs. He sees a venerable old house and, without quite knowing why, decides he must have it. The repercussions of Richie’s wild dream to own a house in this town lead to a forty-year odyssey for his family. For his son, Jack, Norumbega becomes a sexual playground—until he meets one ungraspable girl and begins a lifelong pursuit of her. Joannie, Richie’s daughter, finds that the challenges of living in Norumbega encourage her to pursue the contemplative life. For Stella, Richie’s wife, life in Norumbega leads to surprising growth as both a sexual and a spiritual being.

                                                               *

    
At Dreams & Desires, 50-year-old Emma’s quaint bookshop in Milan dedicated to romantic fiction, the passionate bookseller serves coffee and tea to her customers and completes order slips in pen rather than using a computer. One day, she finds a mysterious handwritten note stuck between the pages of a novel. The message is from her high school sweetheart Frederico, who is now a successful architect in New York and whom she hasn’t seen in thirty years. When she finally meets Frederico again, Emma is convinced that her life is about to turn into a romance novel – an intercontinental fairy tale between Milan and New York, between two post office boxes and two lovers that are separated by the Atlantic Ocean and half a life. But Frederico is married, and their epistolary romance, punctuated by once-a-year sojourns on the island of Belle Ile, seems to have no future. Paola Calvetti's PO Box Love is an ode to old-fashioned relationships (the ones that last a lifetime), old-fashioned habits (such as writing letters by hand in fountain pen) and old-fashioned notions (such as politeness, and the great lost art of conversation), and will enchant readers of such perennial favorites as 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff and Same Time Next Year by Bernard Slade.

                                                                 *

Vibrant, fresh, and intelligent, The Little Women Letters explores the imagined lives of Jo March’s descendants—three sisters who are both thoroughly modern and thoroughly March. As uplifting and essential as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Gabrielle Donnelly’s novel will speak to anyone who’s ever fought with a sister, fallen in love with a fabulous pair of shoes, or wondered what on earth life had in store for her.
With her older sister, Emma, planning a wedding and her younger sister, Sophie, preparing to launch a career on the London stage, Lulu can’t help but feel like the failure of the Atwater family. Lulu loves her sisters dearly and wants nothing but the best for them, but she finds herself stuck in a rut, working dead-end jobs with no romantic prospects in sight. When her mother asks her to find a cache of old family recipes in the attic of her childhood home, Lulu stumbles across a collection of letters written by her great-great-grandmother Josephine March. In her letters, Jo writes in detail about every aspect of her life: her older sister, Meg’s, new home and family; her younger sister Amy’s many admirers; Beth’s illness and the family’s shared grief over losing her too soon; and the butterflies she feels when she meets a handsome young German. As Lulu delves deeper into the lives and secrets of the March sisters, she finds solace and guidance, but can the words of her great-great-grandmother help Lulu find a place for herself in a world so different from the one Jo knew?
Some things, of course, remain unchanged: the stories and jokes that form a family’s history, the laughter over tea in the afternoon, the desire to do the right thing in spite of obstacles. And above all, of course, the fierce, undying, and often infuriating bond of sisterhood that links the Atwater women every bit as firmly as it did the March sisters all those years ago. Both a loving tribute to Little Women and a wonderful contemporary family story, The Little Women Letters is a heartwarming, funny, and wise novel for today.



All reviews via amazon book description and as shown.

Maybe they are interesting to you as well, and let me know, what you have been reading lately!

Food discoveries

SaviSeeds - Sacha Inchi Seeds,
these beautifully star shaped seeds from Peru are chock full of goodness, especially omega 3, protein, tryptophan and antioxidants. 


I quote the website I found for information:

SaviSeeds are the richest source of Omega 3 on the planet! At 7000mg of heart-healthy Omega 3 per one ounce serving, they offer 13 times more Omega 3 than an ounce of wild salmon - and with SaviSeeds, you’ll have no fishy aftertaste!

Since Omega 3 is not naturally produced by the body, it’s essential to consume Omega 3 rich foods like SaviSeed to reduce inflammation and promote heart, joint and mental health , and even help to prevent cancer and disease.

Not only are SaviSeeds amazingly rich in Omega 3, they also contain Omega 6 and 9 in an optimally balanced ratio. Modern day diets have significantly raised levels of Omega 6, as it is found in grains, poultry and eggs. Consuming foods like SaviSeed with higher levels of Omega 3 will balance fatty acid ratios for optimum health.

Here is how they compare:

I tried them today and they are an excellent and delicious snack!

Get them here,  or at Mrs. Green's and other health food markets.


And this has been quite regularly my breakfast for over two years now (I alternate with oat meal), which I love and find most delicious as well:

Images via website.

Another book post

The latest books, which found their way in to my book shelf:

I have been wanting to get this for so long, finally I did it!

Worlds apart, yet another of my cravings: Madame du style Castaing! 
Bought it vintage, it's way more affordable... and a good deed. 
I call it book rescue!


Do you rescue books? Before they get recycled?








Image through amazon.com

Childhood memories

When I was a little girl I had a book, among many others, which always delighted me. Surely, it must have been read to me many times. Later I remember it reading it all by myself.
It stood in our nursery bookshelf for many years and after I outgrew that age I forgot all about it.
Perhaps one of my sisters has kept it. I will have to ask them.


A few weeks ago I browsed on Etsy, the site I love for many of my vintage research explores and guess what I found? Exactly! The very book!
It immediately brought me back, more then forty five years, into a small bedroom in Dresden.


Out of all places, it was sold by a kind woman in Norway, who maintains a small Etsy shop, devoted to vintage books mainly in Russian and German.

At the doll doctor's

With a strangely moving feeling memories began to trickle back.
I bought the book and as I held it between my hands a few days later I suddenly remembered days, many years back, spend in the small bedroom my sister and I shared.
We would re-enact the story line, taking dolls and teddy bears to the doll doctor, one of us being the doctor, the other the concerned mother of a sick doll child. I could see the light in the bedroom, the pushed together chairs to create the sick ward. A small doctor kit, complete with thermometer, bandages and creams, which must have been given to one of us for Christmas perhaps, played a major role in getting the patients healthy again.
A distinct scent lingers in the back of my memory, the scent of shea butter from the tiny tins, filled with the delicious smelling concoction.
The curtain of time comes down again, dimming the stage lights of my memories, but for a moment the book brings back these childhood days and it fills me with happiness.






Image my own.