Where has the time flown? I've been so busy and always tired, that I rarely spent time on the PC anymore in the evening. I hope, you all are enjoying a wonderful holiday at the moment - merry Christmas to you all, who celebrate it! Over here the sun is shining the whole day, so I went for a walk on the lake before lunch. I'm not alone with the idea. Many people were enjoying the sunny day too - alone, with the family, with the dog(s),... sitting, walking, jogging,...




Even the swan family enjoyed the day ;) From the distance I first thought, they were some man-made sculptures, since they had all their heads under the water LOL




I took my camera, but forgot to check at home - no SD-card inside (and this is not the first time it happened to me lately - arghh!). Luckily I got the iPod with me. The quality is of course not the same, but at least I could show you what a beautiful day it was ;)



I'm wishing you a grand start into 2013 and may the new year will bring you health, luck and happiness!

I came, I saw, I bought. I fell in love with these cards, when I went to the city today. Portrait and flowers - a combo of two my favorite things - how could I resist? They'll be framed and hung on the wall.

For music and documentary lovers: here's the place to support the series.

Bought their CD last month and couldn't stop to listen especially to the song above (minus the orchestra, yet just great). Too bad I don't have the suitable gadget to install this.

----> stumbled upon this today

It's been almost three weeks since I'm back home, yet I'm
still in the travelling mood. Not sure, either I've ever told
you, that the connection from this city to other places are
quite bad. Travelling with the train is a pain - no direct
connection to bigger cities and/or quite expensive.



Luckily I discovered a new alternative to travel: by bus
(while regular long distance buses are not so unusual in
other countries, it is in Germany up till now. Everything'll
change in 2013 though - yayy for that!).





I've been to Munich twice since then. The first time was
to test the bus connection and visiting some interesting
places (this place among others). I also managed to visit
the lithography days and met Eva and Antok there, even
if it was only for a short while. One thing I regretted, that
I didn't manage that weekend: an exhibition.



It was the reason for my second travel to Munich today.
It might sound crazy to travel approx. 7 hours by bus
only to visit an exhibition, but all I can tell is, that it was
worth the effort. It was one of the most inspiring exhibition
I've ever visited - he is an inspiring person!



I hope, you all had a great weekend as well.

(All photos are taken today. I didn't took much photos
the last time - only photos of the gray sky and clouds ;))

Phew, two months silence. My life was pretty stressful in
July. The vacation was then well needed. It started (and
ended) with a not so great experience with the train. But the
sky was amazing that day - through the tainted train window
it looked nearly surreal.

And (much) later, we saw a rainbow circle. I'm literally
over the clouds!



In the first week I had to struggle with jet lag - couldn't
sleep or getting awake in the middle of the night. Even in
the second week I was still very tired. So, we only did
some day tours around Melbourne - Great Ocean Road,
Melbourne Zoo, Ballarat, Olinda (yummy pie!), etc.



My brother drove us around patiently (thanks, dude!) and
since he knew, I love art & craft, he took me to the
craft shows at St. Kilda and at the Melbourne Art Centre.
Craft Cubed was also on going when we were there, that
I got the chance to visit some studios during their open studio
time - e.g. this studio showed us, how they print on their
Heidelberg machine. They even handed out the results to
the guests. I was excited - you know, how I love letterpress
prints. This studio gallery got some lovely print works and
they kindly pointed me out to the next gallery too. Actually,
some days later I came back to Fitzroy, because there are
many interesting smaller stores around.



Once we went to the city too. I didn't really like it though -
too crowded. The only good thing was these guys. Look
at this video - how could one not like them ;)



But the best of all is at my parent's home. My mom and my
sister in law spoiled us with Indonesian food. My son, who
loves fruits, could eat different kind of citrus fruit from the
garden - kumquat, lemon, lemonade, etc. The chili and some
other ingredients for cooking are also from the garden. And
of course there are orchids, succulents and other plants. My
father has a very green thumb.



I really enjoyed the vacation. It's a balance between relaxing,
crafting (yup, got my fingers on mom's sewing machine :))
and action. If you are interested, please check my gallery for
more photos.

I hope, you all had (or are still having) a great summer too!

BTW, Maki has posted the result of her Japan project and
reported her visit in Japan. The project is still on-going.

I'm working on two sewing projects at the moment - a 
sleeveless top and a long skirt. Both have to be finished 
tomorrow (oh wait.. it's already Saturday, so they have to 
be finished by evening), cause I want to wear them on the 
choir performance on Sunday. I started last Saturday, but 
haven't got the time to finish them this week. My kitchen 
(where I sew because of the bigger table) is a completely 
chaos - even more than my usual chaos.



Talking about chaos... remember the disaster that struck
Japan last year? They are still recovering and still need help.
A ceramic artist started a Help Japan Project last year -
that was when I got my birds. This time she starts the Help 
Japan Project 2, thus if you want to help (and get similar
birds or.. - nah, I won't reveal it here..), please take a look
at her last post how to do so.


Birds by Maki; coaster was a souvenir from a dear friend

Yesterday I went to the museum, and let me guided through
the exhibition of a forgotten artist. Her work is stunning and
her life is so sad - somehow I could feel for her.

Afterwards I went to the Cathedral - up to the tower for the
first time. The view is amazing, even if it was still cloudy
when I was up there. Here are some of the pics I took and
you could see more here.

Back home I was hungry, but didn't got anything to cook
quickly, as I planned to get my hands on soba. Thus my
hunger has to wait. Making soba is not as it looks like (I
read some instructions and watched a few videos the night
before). The mixing part is not the problem, as I am used to
kneed my noodle dough with my hands, but the rolling and
cutting parts are tricky. I tried to roll it out using the pasta
machine, but I was afraid, that it'd break, so I went back
to do it by hand. As the result my soba was all short and
thick ^_^

In my soba:

180g buckwheat flour

20g corn starch

300ml hot water (or 250ml? add little by little)

a pinch of salt (normally, it doesn't belong to soba, I think)

a pinch of matcha powder

It was time to harvest some strawberries today before the
slugs, insects and birds eat them all up.



I also pulled and picked some greens - borage and lemon
balm. My garden is full of borage. They sowed themselves.
Each year more and more, since I wasn't able to pull them
out as soon as they started to bloom - the bees & bumble-
bees love them so and I love bees & bumble-bees.



A friend was so kind to cook chicken soup and brought me
some last week. I don't want to bring the boxes empty back
to her. So I was thinking of bringing her some strawberries.
But the strawberries were not sweet at all - too much rain
and too little sunshine. So I decided to make chutney and
fill it up in glass jars.



I had the rest of the chutney for dinner with some baked
potatoes - yumm!



In the chutney:
Strawberries - cut the big ones in halves
Ginger
Onion
Chili - with the seeds
Sugar
Lemon balsamico
Cidre vinegar
Salt
Pinch of cardamom seeds
Pinch of Black caraway seeds
Pinch of dried Rosemary
Lemon balm

For the baked potatoes: mix sweet paprika, cumin, salt and
pepper with olive oil, put the potato wedges in and mix until
all well covered with the mixture. Bake them in 220°C oven
for about half an hour until they are golden.

I thought, I'd better saved all the last opened peonies from
the rain, when I was removing the withered petals in the
garden. Perhaps a silly action, but I need a reason for cutting
so many flowers at once :-P

Two things I made lately.


a lavender wand and a collage

I had to crop (part of) the lavender very early this year. The
weather (and the fact that I didn't trim them this spring) made
them grow enormously and blocked half of the pavement.
But then, the buds are not yet well developed. Normally people
would cover the buds. But I thought, I'd rather cover the leaves,
which also have great scent. Also, normally people would use
ribbon. I didn't have any suitable ribbon, but stitch yarn in
lovely colors. It took a lot longer to make, but weaving is like
meditating.

I finally found this video again.

When I first saw it back in 2010, I thought he's SO right.
At least it applies to me (not only in creativity, but in many
cases of my life - with or without my real effort), but I know
this doesn't necessarily apply to others.

I loved my mom's ikan pepes. She used averrhoa bilimbi
and they makes her ikan pepes so special. I miss Indonesia
a lot at the moment, especially the food (of course, my son
would say, only food in my head lol). Looking at what I
have in the fridge, I decided to do my own take on ikan 
pepes for lunch..



... and failed shamelessly! lol I don't know - either I used
too much lime (as substitute for the bilimbis) or my tongue
hasn't been able to taste everything right. I could taste the
hotness of the chilli, although it was not as hot as I expected
using two chilis, but I couldn't taste the sourness at all - only
the bitterness (the last rice cakes I ate yesterday was also
bitter instead of sweet). Weird!

But at least I had some fun with my kitchen waste while I
was waiting for the fish to cook ;-)

Sick on holiday - arghh!! The summer flu has caught me.
Again, I cannot smell and can only barely taste anything.
Thus, when I made some rice (cup)cakes yesterday (well,
it started as a rice noodle experiment and ended up in
strawberry rice cakes), I thought they were not so sweet,
but my son told me that they're very sweet o.O



The rice cakes are more an Asian style of cakes - steamed.

I used the following ingredients, but I'm going to vary a bit,
to make the cakes less sticky (and also perhaps less sweet)
next time (if ever ;-) as I'm not such a sweet tooth actually).
For 8 cups.

150 g wholemeal rice flour
50 g starch (mine was a mixture of rice/corn/tapioca)
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
200 ml hot water (or 250 ml? - I forgot..)
2 Tbsp sugar

Mixed everything up and wait for half an hour.
Add one egg (size L). Mixed again.

Prepare a steamer (I used a similar setup as here, but used
the steamer basket of my pressure cooker instead of the
bamboo steamer). Arrange the muffin cups in the steamer.
Fill in 1 Tbsp dough in each cup. Steam them for around
5 minutes. Cut strawberries in half and arrange two halves
in each cup. Cover the strawberries with dough. Eventually
sprinkle with some coconut rasps. Steam again for another
15 minutes.

Taste better, when the strawberries are still warm (but then
the cake is also stickier...).

It feels like I'm having my first holiday in years. When I was
self (and at the same time part time) employed, I couldn't
really switch my head off of business even in my free time.
How liberating it is to work in a 9-to-5 for a change (though
guess what I dreamed about at night of my first holiday lol)!



On my last day before the holiday, I could finally enjoy
walking home again without my head spinning around what
to do next, but simply observing the wild plants growing
along the way and took a few home for an arrangement
(first I wanted to put them together with the peony from
the garden, but they are so lovely on their own).

Yesterday I finally work in my poor, neglected garden
and also the plants on the windowsill got some attentions.
How bourgeois I became to take a holiday only to spend
time in the garden? A side-effect of the 9-to-5 job? :-P
No, normally when I got home from work I'd cook and
dine with my son. But this week he was on camp with his
class, so that I could work in the garden until it got dark.



Remember the violas I planted back in 2009? I collected
the seeds, but they keep sowing themselves and even took
over the flower box, where the strawberry used to grow
(there is still one strawberry plant left, tiny and almost non-
existent among the violas). It's interesting to see, that I got
new hybrids (the one above reminds me of a dalmatian ;-)).



Also, some flowers changed their colors. When they were
just blooming, they're partially white or yellow. Within the
next days, the white parts would turn into light purple like
in the picture above. Again the next days they'd turn darker
as you can see on that tiny bit on bottom left. Since I never
change the soil in the box, I wonder, either it's because the
soil has become so acidic now..?



I'm looking forward to see my Japanese hydrangea blooming.

In the past weeks I've been eating much more meat than
I usually did. Although one bad experience with a butcher
weeks ago reminded me that it's time to reduce it again,
somehow I couldn't stop carving for meat dishes. Yet, I
am no longer willing to buy anything from that butcher
anymore. I need an alternative.

I remember, my grandma used to have vegetarian days and
eat fake meat dishes. As I was more a vegetarian than I am
now, I used to taste them too and I had to say, I liked fake
meat.


top: before and after cooking the dough
below: fake chicken in murgh badami style


After watching some videos and reading some posts about
homemade seitan, I finally tried to make my own to cook
murgh badami (or rather a murgh badami inspired dish). I
start with wheat gluten, instead of flour - it saved me time
(and water).

My homemade seitan was too chewy, especially the bigger
pieces. The smaller pieces was better (although my son was
still not convinced - he's rather a real meat lover). I need to
do some experiments to improve the texture. Isn't cooking
fun? :-)

I just couldn't help it - each of those fabrics on the left photo
were calling my name :-P Only at home I got some vague
ideas, how to assemble one with another. Now I need to
overcome myself and draft some patterns...



Last week I went to our local "city potter" to see her current
work. She had a lovely cup - matte black on the outside and
white glaze on the inside -, but I was actually looking for a
big cup. She did have some big cups, but not in the right
colors. I wanted white/bright inner glaze (I love to see the
color of the tea I drink). She then offered me to make a big
cup in a similar design as the small cup. She told me it's a
500 ml cup (but I can actually even pour 750 ml liquid in).

It's really HUGE, but it's perfect for me. So practical!
No longer making (too much) tea in a teapot (and forget
about it for a while, that it's already cold when I want to
fill my cup in) from now on *huge grin*

Making (Chinese style) noodles or pasta has become a ritual
in my off-days lately, like today or on Sundays.



After trying some different recipes, today I slightly modified
her recipe and think, I finally find a mix I prefer for my pasta
- not too stiff and not too soft.

300 g wheat flour (type 450)
50 g wholemeal semolina
3 eggs (size L)
ca. 1 Tbsp olive oil
3/4 tsp salt

This is the first time I made tagliatelle. I normally don't like
this kind of pasta. But after making ravioli for the my son
and his friends, I still had sauce left and somehow it was
calling out loud for tagliatelle.



Ingredients I used in the sauce (no sugar needed, if using
a lot more tomato puree, which I ran out of...):

1 garlic clove
1 onion
1 pepperoni
1 red bell pepper
1 leek
2 carrots
300 g ground meat
2 Tbsp tomato puree
690 g passata
olive oil
sugar
salt
pepper
nutmeg
paprika powder
oregano
basil

Can't tell you the amount of the spices though (it's already
a magic, that I still remember what I put in - ha!), since it's
a tasting-and-adding thing. I'd advice you to do the same.
I think, that's one of the fun part of cooking: the taste of the
food reflects the mood of the cook. And my mood today
was a good one :-)

My food today yesterday* spun around spinach and noodle.

Remember my first attempt in making fish balls? I used frozen
fish and thought that was (one of) the reason of my failing.
I took another chance today yesterday.



I used this recipe for inspiration, but I played a bit with the
amount of the cornstarch. The consistency of the balls are
not yet perfect. See those tiny loose parts in the water? I
ran out of cornstarch after I cooked the test ball and realized
it was too soft. I added a little bit of flour, but obviously still
not enough...



Nevertheless I was finally able to enjoy a meal I was longing
for since last month. Homemade egg noodles with fish balls,
shrimps, shiitake and spinach (lacking Asian greens ;-)).

The spinach I used was frozen spinach, so I still had some
left over. Luckily I remember a recipe I wanted to try for a
while: homemade ravioli (the pasta machine was still on the
table anyway).

I didn't have Ricotta, but I have milk and lemon, so I made
paneer to substitute it (made it once here). I didn't use egg
for the filling - I simply forgot to add the leftover egg white.
I mixed the flour with some wholemeal semolina, so the final
result was a bit umm... "leathery". Yet the taste: heavenly!!
- even without the sage and butter sauce.




For my son I made some ravioli only with paneer (and salt),
as he doesn't like spinach nor parmesan. He loved the ravioli
too. This dish will certainly be on our plates regularly ^_^

___
*) Typing too long and suddenly it's Monday already. Enjoy
your week! :-)

It was cloudy the last days and I so hate the dark corner
in my kitchen - the mirror doesn't really help. I started to
put some glass vases and bottles on the cupboard, filled
up with water. The reflections looks like small light sources.



After I started with eight pieces in a line on Saturday, I
just couldn't stop to make it even brighter on Sunday.



More light sources, but also a little bit more chaotic...

**

I wish, you could smell the lovely fragrant of the Calamondin
blossom virtually...

cat in a box

No, not a food post for once ;) Just wanna show you "my"
sweet cat, who visited me, when I came home from work.



And no, I won't ship her!

I made some samosas using this dough recipe for the second
time. As for the filling I mainly took only potato and peas.
They taste great plain, but even better with chutney... yumm!!!