Tomato sauce

Yum yum. Many fresh tomatoes, herbs from the garden and roasted garlic fill the kitchen with a nice smell, plus now we have this delicious tomato sauce :-)

Coconut and cocoa rolls

1 espresso
150 g butter
3 dl sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
5 dl rolled oats
5 tablespoons cocoa
dried coconut

Mix everything well except coconut, make small rolls and roll them in dried coconut. Enjoy!

Breakfast in the garden

When you don't like anything in the fridge for breakfast, you go outside and pick some raspberries and an apple - breakfast ready. Not many raspberries left though.

This is the herbs garden - basil, oregano, different kinds of mint, dill, thyme, while rucula refused to grow.

The tomatoes finally started getting some color.

And the sweat peas were smart enough to hand on the lemon tree for some support :-)

Have a great Monday.

Squash cake

Can you imagine a squash cake to be so delicious? Really, try this recipe. Santiago still does not know it was a squash cake, and even he liked it, even though he is not the cake person. I am looking forward for tomorrow for Greta to try it, she had to go to bed before it was finished. The topping has lime juice, and it contrasts so well with the insides of the cake.

Bread

I like to bake bread (sometimes), especially when it involves mixing different types of flour. Mmmm, it smells deliciuos. This is not a no knead bread, but equally good. Test it you too, the recipe here.

Tomato sauce

Another good idea is to make a huge casserole of tomato sauce and freeze it it small portions - for pizzas, pastas, rice etc when you need it. I put everything I have of the vegetables: broccoli, leek, onion, garlic, peppers, carrots, and tomatoes, of course. It turns out to be pretty good.

Too late...

You think you would treat your family with (meatless) taco for dinner, and then realize you are out of tortilla sheets :-

Redcurrant

The easiest way to use up the redcurrant that I picked in the garden was to mix it with sugar (and a bit lemon juice) ant to store in the freezer. Yummy, so I had to taste a bit on my bread too.

Berry day

It was hard to beleive we were going to have such a sunny day after yesterdays showers. I was not hoping to pick red- and blackcurrant this year, but the sun were shining today and we did go. We had our friends with us, Greta's friend with her mother, so we had fun picking the berries. I think Greta picked more as a two year old than now, a four years old. Now it was just more fun to run around with her friend and play (and fight) than to help parents. But we got more than enough anyway, spent the whole evening washing and cleaning, so now we have lots for the whole winter.



Hope you had a great weekend.

Lazy Sunday

Hello. I hope you had a good weekend. We spent the whola day at home. I had to do something with all the two boxes of strawberries. We eat almost only strawberries these days, they are so good! So I froze a big part of them, too. And also mixed some with sugar and froze that, too. Work for the whole morning. Greta and Santiago were watching some cartoons, building with lego and painting.





After lunch I honestly tried to knit or go outside with Greta for a walk or something, but I went to bed instead and slept almost until 1830!!! I guess I needed it. I would not mind sleeping more, actually.
Last day at work tomorrow, I have mixed feelings about it. It feels right to finish working now, but I also feel a bit nostalgic, and I guess I always have difficulties switching my main activity. Good thing is that the whole next week is full of things to do, so I will not get bored.
Have a good Monday!

Summerly dinner

The weather is great, and it is goint to be like this still for another week. I don't remember such a great summer without any rain for more than two weeks! I am in love with Norwegian summer. Even does not matter that we work, we still have this fantastic mornings for walking to work in a fresh morning air, and incredible summer evenings.
Two days ago I started making a bread. Why 2 days? Because it is no-knead bread. And yesterday we baked it, and made the garlic butter. So finally today we made the garlic bread while Santiago grilled some prawns and haluomi. Recommend you this recipe for garlic bread. Wonderful smell in the kitchen for two evenings guaranteed!


Have a good weekend. We are definitely having a great one, more details later! :-)

My new friends

Please meet my new friends. The cherry tree:

 The tomato plant:

And the bell pepper plant:

My friend (and Greta's friend's mother) had too many plants and were so nice to give me one of her tomatoes and peppers. The cherry tree has another story. While I car was at the workshop, I had a rental car, but completely forgot to get a parking licence at work and got a ticket. I wrote a complaining mail, and they forgave me. According to my female logic, I saved the amount of money, so I had to spend the same amount of money on something. Therefore, the cherry tree ))

Hello, weekend!

Suddenly, another weekend!! The time goes so fast, and the spring is already here. There is still some snow outsode, in the shadows, but otherwise everything is getting greener and summerly. We even cleaned up the garden today and prepared the terrasse for summer!! In a couple of days the rest of the snow will melt too.
Greta is almost counting days until her grandparents come to visit us. She is very fond of them, of course! Otherwise, there was not much happening here today. I spent the morming (after the garden work) going through Greta's pictures from the kindergarden for the last four months, many good pictures I have not seen before, so I saved all of them for myself. During the weekends we allow Greta to use the flamenco dress at home, but she would use it every day if the could. She likes it too much. Santiago changed our car to summertires today, too. Greta is very proud to become a sister soon, and talks about it all the time :-)
So while Santiago were having his afternoon siesta, Greta and I were playing making heart beads.

Playing with beads is fun!

I am quite impressed how concentrated she can be sometimes. I am a bit jealous that am am not so patient.

After a short trip to the groceries store on a bike to buy butter, I decided to make apple and cinnamon empanadas for dessert. Liked it, even I struggled a lot with the dough.

After the dinner and some computer time, in the evening we went for a stroll with the scooter. A lot of fun now when the weather allows it, but Greta still has to learn to control it better. Also it was interesting to fing flowers along the way.
So it was getting late, even you can not say that when it is so much light in the evenings now. So I told Greta we head back home because I started to freeze :-)

A happy girl found some flowers along the way!


The last two pictures are taken not too far from our home, during our evening stroll. Usually you do not see them, but if you look closer, it is full of flowers everywhere now. We liked them, Greta and me.
We have no big plans for tomorrow, but we surely find something interesting to do!
What are you doing this weekend? Have a good one anyway.

Ksenia.

The portrair

The morning portrait of a girl eating her cereal.

The rest of the day were spent putting away the Christmas decorations. Very nive to get rid of it after several weeks. Lots of light and space again. Then we made these little birdie houses while Santiago were sleeping out his last bits of illness, he is fine now and ready for another work week. Then they destroyed the gingerbread house and ate some of its parts.

The little birdie in the house.


Also I would like to mention that I am very proud of how much fruit Greta ate today during the whole day: melon, strawberries, blueberries, plums, oranges, kiwis, and also she finished the dy with a vegetable salad. I am a happy mom!!!



I really enjoyed the family-at-home weekend, now I am ready for a work week and then the 3-weeks work trip to Korea. Yay!!!! Looking forward to it.

Yoghurt ice cream

I rarely use our ice-cream making machine. Because it requires so much space in the freezer. And you have to have it there for many hours before you can make ice-cream. But you know how spontaneous I am. I wake up one morning thinking: "I want ice cream".
This is what happened today. I woke up craving healthy yoghurt ice cream. Because I already have unhealthy gingerbread ice cream in the freezer. So I sat the ice cream making machine in the freezer, did the laundry, cleaned the kitchen, drove to the town to buy something for my trip to Korea, came home, ate lunch, cleaned the kitchen again, and then!!!! Then I mixed lots of youghurt with coconut milk, almond essence, and frozen cherries. Now I am enjoying a wonderful ice cream, and a bit proud of not being so spontaneous today, nut a bit patient and organized )

Have a great weekend.

Raspberry and strawberry popsicles

We are enjoying this wonderful popsicles tonight. Highly recommend. So refreshing in a warm summer afternoon.

The Easter bread

This is the Easter bread. Fresh and warn, right from the oven, tastes a bit of lemon, you feel the Easter mood.

Our garden

This year I challenge myself to plant a lot of edible things in our garden. Now, it was already pretty late for planting tomato and paprika, but we try. The problem is that Greta "helped" me to plant it, so no I am not quite sure where is what, and in some places there are so many seeds per one space. Ahhhh.
But the plants are big, I was several herbs, carrots, berries, and other things you see on the first picture. Let's see how it goes.

Blackcurrant muffins

Blackcurrant has lots of vitamin C, which is good when you are sick. So who says a muffin can not cure you?

250 g butter
250 g sugar
4 eggs
250 g flour
2 ts baling powder
lots of blackcurrant

vanilla cream

Mix all together (except vanilla cream). Place a spoonful of dough to a muffin tin, a bit of vanilla crean and more dough. Cook at 225 C for 12 minutes.
I also made a blackcurrant sauce and served together vich ice cream.
Enjoy!!!