Granny Square

It´s been getting pretty cold around here lately and after being inspired here and here, I tackled the basket of wool left-overs and made a snuggly granny square blanket to use on top of my quilt to keep us warm during these cold nights. Click HERE for a granny square tutorial.

OUR PLACE

I love having a vegetable garden and getting my hands dirty.
grow your own vegetables
What I can´t grow myself, I buy locally.
10 reasons to buy local
I cook for my family from scratch every day.
cooking inspiration

My Bathroom

~ Enjoying a wonderful E-course
~ Blog post on de-cluttering
~ Article on pepping up bathrooms
~ Peak at other people´s bathroom counters HERE
~ Fabulous floor mat tutorials HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE
~ Ideas for creating a day spa at home
~ Earth friendly clothes washing tips
~ Bathroom cleaning tips

Chocolate Cake Recipe

Here´s a cake recipe where I´ve replaced vegetable oil with apple sauce.

Ingredients: 4 free-range eggs, 1&1/2 cups brown sugar, 50g melted or grated chocolate, 1 cup applesauce, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder.

Preheat your oven to medium. Beat the eggs, sugar and chocolate with a mixer until thick and creamy(about 3 minutes) then add the applesauce a little at a time while beating on high. Combine the flour and baking powder, reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour a little at a time until just mixed through. Bake at medium heat for about 45minutes. My kids love this cake and I make it atleast twice a week. You can add a chocolate glaze and whipped cream for special occasions.

Apple Harvest

We are so lucky to live in an area where apples grow in abundance. I have a few friends who call me around this time of year and offer me baskets of apples. My favourite thing to do with them is eat them fresh ofcourse but I also like to make apple sauce...it´s so easy. I make it in batches over a few days while I cook dinner so it doesn´t use up a lot of extra time. Here´s how: give the apples a quick rinse, quarter and deseed them and put them in a large pot with a little water. Bring to a boil, turn the heat down and simmer for about 45minutes. Purée with a blender or bamix. Place some clean jars in a shallow dish of hot water and pour the apple sauce into the jars while hot. Use a potholder to put the lids on tightly. After the jars have cooled down and "popped" they keep in a cool place for atleast half a year. I use apple sauce in all cake and muffin recipes in place of butter or oil - a lot healthier and cheaper and tastier too.

Our Place

Day 7: Saturday

Horse radish spread, ham and capsicum on toasted white bread, lárge latté.
8.30am.
Thanks for sharing my breakfasts, it´s been fun.

Day 6: Friday

Gorgonzola cheese and butter on wholewheat bread-roll, large coffee with milk and honey.
8.30am.

Day 5: Thursday

Salami, cheese and red capsicum on white bread, latté.
6.30am.

Day 4: Wednesday

Salami and gouda on home made white bread, latté.
5.30am.

Day 3: Tuesday

Poppy seed strudel from our local bakery, with butter and honey and a double latté.
6.15am.

Day 2: Monday

Porridge (oatmeal) with sultanas and honey, fresh orange and carrot juice, latté.
6am.

Day 1: Sunday

So inspired by this lovely and simple site...stay tuned for a week of breakfasts. Sunday: avocado and grilled capsicum on a wholewheat roll and a 3 minute egg. (can you see the camera reflection on my knife?).
9am.

Our new home!

We´re settling in. It´s been a lot easier than I thought it would be to make a new start, especially for the children. As you can see, our home is filled with familiar treasures so it´s not difficult to feel at home. There´s a lightness to our new place - old ghosts have been left behind, unfinished business is coming to a close and we have reduced our belongings to an easy to care for minimum. I´m looking forward to blogging and crafting again...stay tuned!

On Our Plates

Today´s lunch...
Mashed potatoes with green beans. Peel potatotoes, cut into large chunks(leave whole if the potatoes are small) and boil in a little water until soft and falling apart. Meanwhile, boil or steam green beans. Add enough milk to cover the potatoes aswell as a little butter and salt. Mash the potatoes, fold in the green beans and serve.
Carrots in spiced butter. Steam carrots and place in a serving dish. Melt butter in a small pan and add a little curry powder, koriander and a spoon full of crunchy peanut butter. Pour this over the hot carrots and serve. (This is a meal in itself with some basmati or jasmin rice).
Grilled zuchini. Heat up your outside griller. Put some olive oil in a small jug or jar and add fresh herbs( rosmary, thyme, oregano, garlic, basil, chives, whatever you like). Cut zuchini into thick slices and when the griller is hot, roast on each side for about 8 minutes. Put the zuchini in a serving dish and pour the herb oil on top. Let this sit for about 30 minutes before serving.
Dessert: semolina pudding (I use a vanilla pudding mix for this one) . Heat up milk according to the pudding instructions and add an extra cup of milk. When hot, add 3 tablespoons of semolina and simmer on low for 5 minutes. Then add sugar and pudding mix according to the instructions. Pour into a mould and leave until cold. Turn onto a serving plate and pour rasberry sauce over the top before eating.
If you want to serve this all together then make the pudding a few hours before, the zuchini about an hour before and then the potatoes and the carrots. MAHLZEIT!

Harvest Time

We are enjoying a wonderful summer - long, hot days reading in the shade, swimming at the local pool, eating outside and keeping the garden watered. We have 2 large water tanks - one collects the rainwater from the greenhouse roof and the other one collects the water from the back roof of the house. This year it has rained regularly so I haven´t had to turn on the tap to water anything. I also collect the cold water from the shower (while I´m waiting for it to warm up) in a bucket and that´s enough to keep our indoor plants watered. The vegetables in the garden are maturing much earlier this year and aswell as eating them fresh, I´ve started stocking up our pantry for winter. I am so grateful for this garden and when we move house that is high on the list of must haves - I would hate to have to buy all my vegetables again and start worrying about pesticides and the long trip a head of salad has behind it before it reaches my local supermarket. For those of you who don´t have a garden, try your local farmer´s market. We have an abundance of green beans, zuchinis and spring onions this year and I spent yesterday afternoon making chutney and zuchini slices with herbs. I think you call chutney relish in the US, it´s a sweet and sour mix of vegetables that you eat with meats or bread or roasted potatoes. Basically, you just use a bit of oil to fry some spring onions and then you add diced zuchini and pieces of green beans(you can make this with almost any other veges too). Add tomato paste or pasta sauce or curry paste aswell as any other herbs and spices that you like and a little salt and pepper. The magic ingredient is cider vinegar (how much depends on how much chutney you´re making. Start with a dash, taste and go on from there)- it gives the chutney a kick. Let the whole lot cook on low for about an hour until it´s thick and saucy and spoon the mixture into clean jars while it´s still hot. It will keep up to 6 months in a cool place, about 3 days after you open the jar. For the zuchini slices, layer slices in jars, add herbs (rosmary or oregano are my favourites) and some mustard seads. Put a mix of cider vinegar and water (1:1) in a pot and boil, add some salt and spices (chilli powder, koriander, anything you have at home). Pour over the zuchinis while hot, about 3/4 of the way up is enough as the zuchinis will lose some liquid. Put the jar lids on tight and place them on the middle oven rack and sterilise at 90°C for 30 minutes. These are great with mozarella cheese and bread or mixed in a salad. I love going to the cellar during the colder months and choosing condiments that I know grew in my garden. Stay tuned for more recipes this week!

Nesting

It´s raining outside but there´s plenty of colour in here! I received a lovely gift this week from Mirre in Holland - a beautiful pocket wallhanging which has now been placed on the side of my work bench and it´s perfect for scissors, pencils, tapemeasure etc. In the next picture you can see some bags which I´ve made for a swap - more on that another time, it´s still a secret. I saw Hanna´s lovely postcards and thought I´d make some of my own...I then covered them with contact plastic and hung them on my kitchen door as inspiration. They catch my eye whenever I sit down to drink a coffee and endless ideas pop into my head so I´m usually not sitting for long. It was a big harvest week in the garden this week...we dug out over 10 kilos of wonderful potatoes and we picked the last of our tomatoes, onions and capsicums. I cooked letcho with them and the smell had me dreaming of long Italian summers.

Many of you have asked where Reichenfels is, or Carinthia. Carinthia (Kärnten in German) is the most southern state of Austria as you can see on the map. We have a 1 hour drive to the Slovanien border, 1 1/2 hours to Italy and 2 1/2 hours to Hungary or Germany. The major cities near here are Graz and Klagenfurt, both an hour away and to our capital city Vienna there´s a 2 1/2 hour drive, so as you can see, it´s quite a central location.The reasons why I love living here are; the location; the fresh air; the fact that it´s very easy to be considered exotic and a little crazy when everyone else who lives here is conservative; our lovely and spacious house; the government policy which allows you to have children and NOT lose one income; the distinct differences from season to season; white christmas.
What I don´t like about living here; emancipation is a foreign word (both men and women are discriminated against...it´s frowned upon when a woman has a career and when a husband is too "hands on" at home); the school day starts too early and is too short (from 7.45am to 1.10pm ) ;the long distance and price to travel from here to Australia; the much too long winters and much too short summers; people don´t speak about their problems much, they would rather complain about the weather and other things that they can´t change.
There were many times when I felt homesick and misunderstood here but I´m glad I held it out, life is good!

mosaic

mosaic
Originally uploaded by chestofdrawers.

I love it that I´m getting a lot of comments about our mosaic. Behind the mirror - which is from a small shop in Grado, Italy, there was an ugly chimney hole which kept staring at me after we decided to move our fireplace downstairs. One evening, while sitting on the couch watching tv, my eyes kept drifting over to the hole and I decided to do something about it so I collected a few tiles left over from tiling the kitchen floor, the bathroom and others that I´d begged off friends after they´d finished various tiling and I hammered away at them. There was also some leftover building glue in the cellar so I made a rough drawing of a tree as I liked the idea of a tree growing in the middle of the house and I started glueing. I really enjoyed myself with this project...previously the wall behind it was yellow but my boyfriend talked me into filling the joints white and painting the wall white - now it´s perfect. I must admit, I love looking into other people´s homes, seeing how the different personalities shine out in the furnishings and accessories...this flickr group has made it possible for me without going for long walks around town with the hope that someone will have their curtains open so I can have a peek - and people thinking I´m a weirdo when they catch me!
THANKYOU Amanda for your amazing idea and for the lovely glimpses into your day to day life on your website.