Contentment through small things

I had a busy week at work while starting treatment for some health problems. So I was home quite late most evenings. I am looking forward every day to the moment when I enter our small cosy apartment, DH either busy cooking dinner or relaxing in the living-room (he enjoys cooking about as much as I do). I have a hard time adjusting to the fact that I don't have much time to be a keeper of the home during the week, even though this is what DH and I chose together.
So I definately enjoyed some baking time today using my hands, working in our nice kitchen to make our home filled with delicious smells and make DH happy who just loves cakes, cookies and sweets.
So here is the result (it's a cake consisting of many small jam rolls):



Btw I tried this recipe on Wednesday and we both loved. It's a spring version of Tabbouleh, the original recipe is a vegetarian one. We skipped the walnuts and had marinated grilled meat on the side :). Seriously try it, it tastes great.

Tonight we have a charity concert at our church. Maybe my camera might even take a video that I'll be able to post? Hopefully I'll be able to share tomorrow! I also updated my sidebar with quite a number of links to blogs I read regularly.
Have a blessed weekend.

New Year breakfast food

Since we lived in Norway, one dish has always been part of the New Year's breakfast at my parents' home: Norwegian pickled herring. Now that my DH and I try to make our own traditions and memories, it is still part of breakfast on January 1st.
It tasts great and is really easy to make, so here is the recipe for all of you:

1 onion
1 cup red wine
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
100 g white sugar
1 teaspoon peppercorns
3 bay leaves
5 whole cloves
1 package of herring

Cut the onion into slices. Put it into a pot and add all other ingredients save the herring. Bring to a boil and then let it cool. Cut the herring into pieces, put into a storage bowl, pour the cooled sauce over the herring and keep it in a cool place for 2-3 days. (Although this year I'm only preparing it one day in advance - it will taste anyway :)).

Have a joyful New Year's Eve today!

German onion pie

This is a very typical German dish. It is eaten mainly during the early months of fall and accompanied with a very young white wine which is still fermenting in the bottle (Federweißer).
I prepared this recipe lately for our friends Katie and John from the US and I thought I'd share it with you.

Preheat oven to 425°F. First you prepare a dough similar to a pizza dough. You need

500 g flour
one 42 g lump/block/cake of yeast
1/4 litre (250 ml) milk
110 g butter
salt

First you dissolve the yeast in some lukewarm milk. If you use a kitchen aid or a Bosch MUM you add all the ingredients safe the rest of the milk and let the machine prepare the dough. Add the milk little by little, so that the dough does not turn too sticky. Let the dough rise.


Afterwards spread the dough on a baking sheet.

Now prepare the toppings. You need
200 g cubed bacon
75 g butter
appr. 1.2 kg Spanish onions (others will do to I guess) in stripes
300 g sour cream
3 eggs
1 TS caraway seeds
1 TS grounded caraway
salt & pepper.

Fry the bacon in the butter on medium heat. Add the onions, the caraway seeds and pepper. Then pour in half of the sour cream. Simmer until the onions are soft. Let cool.


Mix the rest of the sour cream with the eggs, season with ground caraway and then add to the onions.
Spread this on top of the dough.


Put into the oven and let it bake for about 40 minutes.


Enjoy!

House styles - Fachwerk

Sarah at Walk slowly, live wildly has a great post on alternative homes.
My Beloved and I would love to build a house later (or better have it build). I think I'd also enjoy buying some really old house and fix it up. We'll see if we can ever afford to make that happen.
My favorite style of houses so far is either a Scandinavian house or "Fachwerk". That is a style which is very typical for some areas of Germany. The picture below shows me in front of a whole row of Fachwerk houses.

Frugal decorating tip

We just moved into an apartment two months ago. And I moved from a studio with kitchen to several rooms. And of course the kitchen is now an extra room. As most of our rooms face south-west, we suddenly needed kitchen curtains.
I'm not necessarily a curtain lover. It really depends on the kind of curtain. And we had spent quite a lot of money on new furniture already. So we wanted something cute which fits our style and isn't expensive.
We managed! In a decorating magazine we saw dish towel curtains. It looked really cozy and kitchen-like :). So after checking our own dish towels (too stiff or not pretty enough) we bought a pair at Butlers for under 4 € and a plastic curtain rod with hooks.

Here is the result (unfortunately the pictures are a little dark, even though we have sun and over 90° F):