fig fascination

Dear S.,

yet another late night fig post...
After a stressful day at work and drinking tea with my uni friends and catching up on our summer stories I still couldn't de-overdrive myself. So I went to shop groceries and fruit and stuff. And there I saw this: A whole box of figs for 1.95 euro. oh yes, you can imagine, I just couldn't resist. Then I cooked dinner. And made this little tartjes with N.:

blind-baked short pastry tartelettes filled with smooth pudding/cream mixture topped with a confiture of figs in red wine spiced with orange peel, cinneamon, clove and sugar :)

oh yes and I put a heart-shaped pastry cookie on top.

It's just something that came up in my mind and I think it really works... but please be my guest to judge yourself tomorrow!

Well, no I am finally tired. still in overdrive but my bones are really yearing for bedrest.

maybe I'll give in... ;)

love,

M.

(PS: I'm afraid I need another "how to shoot food" lesson...)

mittens and kittens and bags and bags

Dear S.,

after my jacket was stolen out of the car during a festival in the north of France last week, I have the biggest cold ever, accompanied by vile asthmatical cough. So I had to spend most of the time last week inside, sleeping, watching Nigella Lawson's luscious cookings, playing with the kittycat or working on projects. Actually, I have been quite productive, have a look:

My first time ever mitten! hihi, I'm so happy with it :)

especially because Charlie has a matching scarf (no, she does not hate it, she really loves wearing it!):

on the picture above you can see the knitting box I have borrowed from the Tikis, it is fabulous! It is so handy when you are knitting with different colours and have a cat too.. Charlie thinks she needs to infuse all the wool with her saliva before I can actually knit with it; or she just carries away the whole ball of wool at once.

Second project: A beam-of-light-turning-into-rainbow prisma bag for our dear friend G., whose bags were stolen in the north of France last week. So we decided to make her a new one. Also, she is leaving for Erasmus in Dresden this week.. why do all you people feel the urge to go away all the time?! ... says the foreign student :p

Here she is, wearing the precious thing in rainy Antwerp...

N. patchworked the rainbow from all kinds of different fabrics we found around the house, including old pyjamas, jeans, a sweater and the fabric I made my first dress ever out of (... the shiny yellow one. yes.) Making this bag was the perfect saturday project for N. and myself, and now we're both jealous of G. because the bag is hers.. :p

My dear, this is it for now. Back to work tomorrow early morning, and loads of work will be waiting for me there. And then there's also Uni starting this week. My mind is not quite set to that thought yet although I'm sure an interesting year is ahead of me.

I'll still have a cuppa "no stress" tea- precious little paper bag filled with dried delight... I should definitely make an entry about my/our tea obsession, sometime soon!

kisses, M.

late at night

My Dear M.,
I'm still nestles as you know, but dear J. gives me shelter for a while. It's really good to have my own four walls again. with a door to close behind me, stapping on nobodys toes.
today is his birthday and in the night at 12 he got his first present...
He's crazy about figues ( especially in joghurt)

Love,
S.

ohne worte (and for you without goat cheese)

Automn is around

My Dear,
Automn is the time of the year when:

* good companie becomes essential
*coffee is one of the reasons to get me out of bed and my home
*my pokets are full of cestnuts (I jump of my bike when ever I see one)
*cookies are even more important, especially if they are decorated nice
* i always have cold feet, so I sleep with these brand new hand knitted socks
*the days get short again
*my bed is my favorite place
* the storms carry my mind away to warmer regions
kisses
S.

We love Fleamarkets

Dear M.
Look at this. I found this super kitsch tea service, and a bowl to drink coffe french style
All the pastels, no idea where this is coming from. I guess it is the wish to finally find my nest. I'm still homeless as you know. It's a lot more difficult to find a place than two or three years ago.
I look forward to eat some macarons (or our foodcoulourd cookies) and drink some tea out of this cups. A bit "Marie antoinette" from Sofia Coppola: I want candy...




Another find: Diper safty pins, yarn to stich, and some needels...What did you finde, little treasures....
kisses
S.

How to present...guess what... FOOD

Dear M.
This is my last week in food. It's not really balanced, and you can see that I'm a hardcore sweet tooth...
Backing plums for a cake
Plum streusel, yummie. after the spinace salad, while watching "two fat ladies"

How to transport half a cake through the city on a bike?

Speculoos, the belgian classic. Gets me into the christmas baking mood already
The greasiest cake ever, Mascarpone plum cake, with the redwine pear and a glas of wine, thats some dessert heaven.
Pears in red wine, you got drunk just by the smel of hot alcohol. Just one thing: WOW!
There we tried the balsamico balsam (balsamico cooked with some sugar, first it was caramel..., but I love cramel) with some frech soinace, Mozarella and peas. It was so nice, you got the idea from palais de tokyo in paris. a combination which would never come to my mind. i loved the frechnes, sweet and sour combination.. and the look
Colours: This is a orange green Dinner, Ginger carrot soup and gouacamole sandwich on the balcony, always nice to watch people while eating

when it gets dark in A'pen

Dear M.
we live in the lightes country of the world, even visible from the moon. And stars are a rare thing to be seen. this is how it looks when it gets dark. How is the batman city called again? Gotham City? Well, the old trmas seen from above, racing around the corners on the silver lines, not looking out for anybody(they are the bosses in the streets) really reminds me of it. Especially if I am at the boys place and look at them with binoculars.

And you with some dessert ... bringing it to the tikis

oh, some daylight, all that for 2 Euros. We love perrys fruit and avocado

more randomenes will folow

I know what you did last sunday...

Dear S.,

now look at what we produced this early autumn sunday afternoon:

:)

I especially love the little kittiecats... and every one of them has their own personality.

It's good to have you around!

And I really think that we should have a cooking show. Our latest inspiration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOBxo1axYaw

"The two fat ladies". Hilariously schraal and predominantly cooking rather odd english dishes, these two ladies travel through England (on a motorbike!) and cook for all kinds of people.

Now, you and I would be the perfect "Two skinny ladies" (but then cooking less disgusting dishes ;) ! The only remaining question: who of the two of us would ride the bike and who would have to sit in the sidecar?

Bye for now!

M.

summer somethings & sewing

Dear S.,

summer says "hi" one more time! This is a photo from the Neusiedler lake in Austria... I want to go back there next summer. It's on the border to Hungary in a great wine-region... and the climate there is so nice and warm... *sigh*







And today we were at the Belgian seaside:

You can see that it was a little windy :)

still, in the early afternoon we had 24 °C! I so love falling asleep in the sand with the sound of the sea in my ears... And I was able to smell something- wow! Due to my allergies and stuff I wasn't able to smell things properly for the last few weeks, oh and what a sensation it is to smell the sea then!

Now some of my craftwork: I have a small obsession with making bookcases/flaps/whatever you want to call them. It started with the idea, that our (=the literature students, but actually any book lovers') books have to suffer a lot because they are constantly being dragged around in dirty bags next to dangerous objects like sandwiches, bottles of tea, lipsticks, scissors e.a. So I thought, why not make a bag for a book in a bag. or so.







My latest one for J, with a lot of handstitched details

a whole bunch of them

a tiny one for myself

the classic leather gentleman's bookbag for T, E, A and M.

the "wedding edition" for J.

The next one will be yours! I'm looking forward to our collaboration!

Also, I think you should really give me a "how to take nice photos of nice things" course. Mine are rather... random, let's say.

tot snel,

M.

first of September = fisrt day in school

Dear M.,
in Belgium millions of kids went back to school on the first of september, and for some it was the first day at school ever.
can you remeber how it was when you were small.
At my first schoolday in primary school, my mum looked at me on my way to school, and tought all in a sudden that my frindge was to long.... so she pulled me behinde some bush and cut it with my new siccors. We all made those surprise cones in kindergarden , which were filled with good things.
But even in the following years this first day of school stayed special. The night before I never could sleep, and got massiv cramps in my stomache , so my mother would be next to me till i fell asleep. normaly I didn't see so many of my friends in the big vacations, because my parents took us to long trips in Europe. so it was exiting to see them all back, and hear their stories.



This pictrure I took last weekende in Namur/ Namen . A really cute romantic city, woorth a daytrip.

our firts day of "school" also comes closer again

kisses s.
hope all the post cover a bit that I was absence for a long time

and even more

Dear M.,
that happend when you asked N., to surprise you...
the funniest, cutes, craziest cookies...
We laught alot while making them
I have to remeber it, to make it with some children, foodcoulours are great. Ieven remeber my Mama coulourd spaghetti once blue...






The pics are a bit blurry, because it was a night action
x

even more baking

White bread with butter and selfmade jam ( plum cinammon)

more baking

Dear M.
These pictures are all taken at E. house, who shares our love for baking, cosienes and cats.
The green Madeleine is with Pistache, the colour made me think it's green tea. But I guess I have to make matcha tea Madeleines myself. Something I wanted to try for a long time.
the brown square is a Spice bread , mmmhm, so delicious.

That's the adress, they have really good bread, the best croissants I had outside France (with frangipane filling!!!) in the box are two eggs E. bought on the thursday marked in Berchem.

Domestic

Steenbokstraat 37, 2018 Antwerpen

Frech bleberry muffins, YUMMIE. With Toulouse on my lap, die Schmusekatze...

x