chestnut cocooning

Dear S.,

it's chestnut season! Last sunday we went into a nice park in Borgerhout and stumbled over hundreds of gorgeous shimmering brown chestnuts.
I know that you love them so much :)
As a child, I used to go outside and collect them with my mum and friends to construct little wood figures, with beechnuts (Bucheckern) and acorns (Eicheln). We rarely have the tame sort of chestnuts in woods with us at home, so I do not know the tradition of cooking with them myself, but I do remember them from christmas markets. So, it was a very first time for me to prepare chestnuts. I loved them! We simply roasted them in a pan for about 20 mins. mmmh, such cosy food!
But first, some forest impressions:



(nuts in chest? is that why they are called like this?)



leavesnutschestsleavesnuts!




be-au-ti-ful. When I saw these empty chestnut covers, a rather special german word came to my mind: sich einigeln. The term comes from the thing a hedgehog (Igel) does when it is scared or wants to sleep, it rolls up into a tight ball with all its spines (Stachel) pointing outwards. You use sich einigeln to say that someone closes oneself off from a conrontation/the outside world. Funnily enough it is translated with "to cocoon", which has a rather positive connotation for many people. For me, sich einigeln certainly has a positive connotation as well: what a good idea to protect yourself against autumn/winterness by rolling up like a hedgehog or sit as comfortably as a chestnut in its shell. But don't forget to open the door for friends and all that.
So, that was a lot of bla. now you deserve another picture ;)




This huge heart with the universal love message is carved into a tree in the park.
And here comes the eating part:




I also made chestnut-rum-chocolate pralines, here they are:




They were a lot of work (cook chestnuts, open them, peel them, mash them, rum/cacao/sugar them, form into little balls, glace with chocolate, chill.), and for my personal taste they are too chestnutty.

Oh well, I'll try to work for uni now. or read the paper. or knit.
This week I had an interesting talk with an old friend of mine about "Autumness". Every year when it strucks me, I try to fight it off and have the tendency to get all upset about it. Instead, my friend suggested, it is a better idea to just accept it. Embrace the fact that I get a little slower in autumn, that I need more time for cocooning, mich einigeln, and so on. This sounds good. I'll try. Not to be perfect but to just be autumn me.

Much love,

M.

palm reading (without words)

stay in s

dear autumnally m.,
Oh yes autumn gets me too. I feel absoloutly no need to get up in the morning. and I really don`t like rain, which makes it hard to get out on the streets.
staing in , and even if it's the time to craft and make things i just seems to have sucked all the energy out of me, and I'm reducing it myself by staying in bed and watching stupid films...dosen't make me feel better, just waitsting my time.
from next week on I'll lock my pc away during the week to get some proper sleep.

for the rest... I haven't been completely lazy.
Cookies made this morning ( after I've convinced me to get out of my warm balnkets) , with some nice suggary sparkel around.

and a pumpkin lampion ( I also dried the pumpkin seeds and made a nice fenel-pumpkin-cream soup)

Also i tried to broaden my knitting skills. It will be a series of bracelettes:








kisses s.

autumn comforts

Dear S.,

autumn tiredness has struck me. It's getting harder every day to get out of bed, even Charlie thinks so. The make-it-as-cosy-as-possible time has definitely started! When I woke up this morning and saw that there was no bread, I decided to bake some scones. Their warm smell and subtle sweetness are great for a weekend morning. plus, they are really easy and quick to make.




here's the recipe: (makes 12 smallish scones)

250g of flour
1 table spoon of caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of baking powder
30g of cold butter, cut in small pieces
150ml of milk or cream

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the butter and crumble it into the flour with your fingers. when it's all mixed, add the milk bit by bit until you have one smooth ball of dough. (now you should let it rest for 15min in the fridge- I never do ;). Pre-heat the oven at 240°C. Either roll out the dough and use a cutter to form about 12 roundish scones or simply roll them in your hands.
Glaze them with a bit of milk- off they go into the oven for about 10-12 minutes.
Let them cool a bit and serve with butter/jam/mascarpone/all three.
The recipe is also easily adaptable for vegans: take non-dairy butter and soy milk.

Some flower kitsch made my day on thursday: these two fabrics are rest pieces so they were really cheap.. perfect for linings and details. And I just couldn't resist the socks, as you can imagine :)



This week I also got infected by the ever-present cupcake-virus. These are my first cupcakes, enjoy!






Today I want to start my own black shopping bag and finish my mittens. (why is it raining today? it's saturday!)

See you later, dear!

M.

expeariment

Dear S.,

I LOVED the inside picknick at our place yesterday! So nice to have a bunch of good friends together for a autumny-cosy afternoon with blankets and candles.. And all the food... hmmm! We had:

home made pumpkin soup from home-grown pumpkins
gorgeous cupcakes
cheese, nuts and grapes
tea and coffee
selfmade cookies
your beautiful cakes
scones with home made jams and mascarpone.

what more can I say but: :)
J. made beautiful photos, she should guest blog for us!

ok, now about the expeariment:

I got lots of pears for free. too many to eat fresh, so I started to search for pear-ideas. I came across an interesting recipe, tried it and it is a great succes!
It is pear, lemon and white wine jam (but you can eat it as a compote.

Have a look:








I already made two batches of it, the ones with the beautiful caps are meant as presents, the other ones are for us ;)

this is the link to the recipe:


http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/743191176900072/Birnen-Konfituere.html

I'll continue with my study-afternoon. Right now I'm reading about Russian Formalism.
(ok, I really wanted to tell you something more about it, but I just can't seem to put it in words. I'm not all that wordy today, apparently ;)

See you soon!

M

happy saturday

Dear m.,
this is what I did so far at this grey saturday. A classical saturday: waking up, cleaning the kitchen, and baking. Still wear my pyjama, but now I will jump under the shower, get dressed and than I`ll go to you to have a inside picknick.

My favorite dough recipe:
150g flour, 1 Pinch salt, 50 g grounded almonds, 50 g powdersugar, 100 g cold butter, 1 Egg yolk. I basically mix everything ogether with my hands, and if it's to dry just add some wather or a bit of the egg white. I Love baking but I also am a keep it simple person... so I just press the dough in he bakingform( coverd with butter and a bit flour) with my hands. adn hep into the preeheated oven. 170°C for 15 to 20 min.:
that's it.








these are the little tartelettes, filed with wine-appels and chocolate cream.
the rest of the cream I just filled into a jam glas.
Looking forward to the picknick and all the nice company
kisses
s.

dots

Hey hey,
partly dots partly good stuff from germany. two month and it`s christmas. I actually plan already what to bake, and this year I will cook on christmas eve because my mum has to work.It's crazs but it might be the german in me. Here in belgium people only know one christmas cookie: Speculoos. and this one is actually a all year cookie just in a special form on santa clause. Whereas you have hundreds of them in germany and austria.
Another difference is that you get certain thing easier and cheaper in our homecountries so both of us imported quite some grounded nuts, whole nuts, dried fruits and spices( vanilla beans, safron, pink pepper and anis ). the round white dots are "Backoplaten", by the way the non-holy version of altar bread. It's used to make kokonut macroons ( and it sticks wounderfully to your palate).
and don't you just love the spanish backing powder packaging, such a wonderfull design.
further there are the brown caramel sugar rocks for tea. a boc to keep the cookies (let's see if that's gonna work) , and one puls warmer( second to come, it was meant to fit my hat but my brother liked it so much that I gave iit to him. It is faltering that my little brother wants to haev something self knitted from me).


sticking a bit to the dot topic, i took also a pic of the favorite neclases of that moment, all round, all long...












that was it so far.
I brought so much with me , and forgot about my underwear wich is still hanging to dry in germany. I won't be back there before christmas, so I know what to shop tomorror...
Kisses
s.

p.s.: It was sooo nice to talk to you again after all those weeks and days, and all in a sudden we are in a different season...
let's make pumkin lamps in the weekend

clouds

my dear,
another experiment. something I wanted to do for a long long time. Marshmellows!
and i found a really easy recipe. mainly gelantine, powdersugar and water. so much fun, and if you are more patient than I am you can make forms with it. my patiens was sufficient to make clouds. here you go a lonly cloud on a beautyfull warm automn day.



Things I want to do.
We talked a bout it today.
so this would be: Soap, sourdough adn cheese at the moment.
All those products we use daily without nowing how to make them, so I want to try out a lot from scratch. Do you have a list like that?
I think self made experiments are good against the inner automn greynes.
kisses
s.

stripes

Dear m.,
where I come from it's quit flat, with little rivers, forests, fields and cows. I love cows. As a kid the farmer would come to bring us frech milk twice a week, so I knew from exactly which cows it came from. ( and I loved their smell and to let kalvs suck on my whole hand) .

The cows you see at this foto are called birthday cows. my mom always takes pics from them , adding a sign with the number of whom ever birthday it is.

for the rest these are foto's from the weekly sunday biketrip. I always look forward to it...seeing the seasons change. All those smells, the wind in the hair.
And the nice little objects you finde everywhere.
The white blue pale is a "sleeping" may-tree, a german tradition for the first of may(will be explained in may). It's another thing I like , stripes, especially blue-white ones, especially especially in cloth, especially especially especially if guys wear them.
so, enough of guys, more signs:








kisses

Von Nähkästchen usw.

Dear S.,

back in Antwerp, both of us. Good. Good to have you here.
The last 4 days were so immensly turbulent and it really struck me now that I am in my masters too. It is so interesting and intense, but also such a difference to bachelor studies. hard. 2nd thing that struck me: autumn. As you said today, you only notice the change of the seasons when you travel outside the city. The only difference here is that it's grey and colder.. the heating is on.

I really like your new atelier, and I do envy you, I want such a room too! Unfortunately literature students are not considered worthy of their own atelier.
I do have a working spot at home though that I really like, here it is:




This crappy old table includes garden view and a kitteh that decided to make it its own. Always when I sit down and work on my table Charlie goes to sleep on her blanket on the table. Once in a while she bites my books, tries to drink my water or catches my pen. (when she noticed I was taking a photo she was embarrased to be on it asleep and started a whole show. she is currently searching for a kitty boyfriend, you know).
What else is on there: cheap purple plastic flowers from my mum, a part of the art-wall in our kitchen, my beloved Ikea lamp, crafting projects, books. and a reflection of our brick wall. I really should stop taking photo's at night :)

Writing this and taking a closer look at it, I really notice that I should take more care of my working spot.

A few weeks ago a got a great Charleston-inspired H&M dress as a present. I love its softsoft rosy color, and I really wanted to wear it for my brother's prom ball. So I collected all kinds of accessories to complete the outfit:



The shoes were a real bargain, I found them in Austria for 8 euros. The long pearl neclace comes from a flea market, the pearl bracelet is a heritage from my aunt. what I still needed was a fitting bag- so I made one. The broche is also a DIY thingie.

And here another random photo, because it fits the colours of the dress pic:
Charlie having herself a little tea-party with the beautiful tiny rose service we found at the second hand shop.



My dear, there is an old saying that claims that the state of a girl's sewing box reflects her state of mind("wie es im Nähkästchen eines Mädchens aussieht so sieht's auch in ihrem Herzen aus" or something like that). I always found this saying true for my own room, and now it is true for this entry and myself. I'll borrow the words of Virgina Woolf to end now and explicate my state, kind of. It is a little dramatic, I am aware of that ;)

My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?

Love,

M.