Discovering the world: baking

Pirozhki in English

If anyone wanted to trying making Pirozhki, Rachael now has the English translation of the recipe on her blog.

Comfortable challenges

A challenge is something that will stretch your powers, with the likelihood of confirming them; you want to take on a challenge because you have confidence enough that you can succeed. A threat is a task that seems beyond your powers to accomplish or cope with.
John Holt How Children Learn

--
Recently I stopped by a Julie's Pictures blog, who sets herself yearly challenges. Her first one was to walk for at least one mile from home everyday and record what she saw. Her friend, Fiona, just started a challenge to stitch a small picture everyday – they are so simple, yet interesting and visually pleasing.

I admire and respect their dedication, but recently I came to realise that for now I’m unable to commit myself to one year long daily challenges. I set myself simpler goals, like trying to make Russian pirozhki following these two Russian recipes: with apples and meat.

Recently I also joined Everyday Matters group, which has weekly drawing challenges. There is a list of 193 previous ones and so I’m trying to complete one old one alongside each new one. Here is the watercolour painting of autumn leaves for the challenge number 34.

Back to posting

I am back to blogging, at least I think I am, though I’m starting to give up any idea of the regular posting. Cat was sick for last few days and slept really badly: waking up often at night and getting no more than 45 minutes of sleep in the afternoon. Any disturbance to my routine makes me feel lost and unable to find energy and time for writing down my thoughts, even though there is some free time left.

The oatmeal bread (recipe from Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course) worked out really well and I'm eager to make it again. I decided to improve my cooking skills and so borrowed Delia's book from the library intending to go through all the sections and recipes systematically. However looking at the contents I straight away realised that my plan will fail - there are SIX chapters on various baking and desert making and I couldn't resist trying these recipes first.

Today, after Cat woke up at 5:30, I made scones for breakfast. They came out lighter than I expected, but are delicious. There is slightly different scone recipe on Delia's website. There are plenty of other great recipes there and useful cooking tips.

Here is some miscellaneous info for you about me - I tried scones for the first time at 19!

Banana & Blueberry Muffins

When I stopped working, I started baking. At some point I realised that I was spending too much time on it and our eating abilities couldn't keep up with my enthusiasm for trying new recipes. Therefore I made the decision to bake only once a week on the weekend.

However this weekend my poor husband and daughter came down with a stomach bug and the baking had to wait until Monday. My husband loves banana bread so I keep on trying out new recipes. These muffins were made following SouleMama's Blueberry & Banana Bread recipe, because I didn't have enough time to bake bread. Muffins were baked at 180 degrees for 25 minutes only.
My husband loved them, the Little Girl only had one bite (maybe she still isn't feeling 100%) and while I like them I suspect that I overcooked them as they taste a bit dry to me. I will have to find time to make bread using this recipe.

Delicious

Yesterday I made the wholemeal orange variation of Cloverleaf dinner rolls. I baked them for 25 minutes first at 200 degrees, but then lowered the temperature to 180 as the rolls were getting brown too quickly. They taste delicious, though I probably should search for a healthier recipe (six tablespoons of butter!). I found this blog via Yummy Colours of the Rainbow Flickr group, so maybe if I have these rolls for desert with some nice orange marmalade instead of cakes or biscuits they’ll be relatively healthy choice. Right?

Japan: food

While in Japan The Little Girl didn’t eat much and I’m still not sure if it was due to teething, change of schedule or unfamiliarity of food. Not knowing any Japanese Clive and I were few times surprised by our food being totally different from what we imagined it to be: sweets turned out to be salty crackers; plain bread rolls full of custard filling; etc. Nearly every morning we couldn’t resist getting some pastries from Denmark Bakery and while I love Asian interpretation of European pastries sometimes we couldn’t figure out the ingredients at all, which slightly freaked Clive out, as he prefers to know what he is eating. One of my best pastry finds came at the end of our trip in the airport – green tea and white chocolate chip bagels – not surprisingly as my favourite flavour of ice-cream is green tea and trying out different types of green tea flavoured food was high on my agenda.

I also got to introduce Clive to gyoza and ate lots of sushi myself. Most of my sushi came from the supermarket as both the little girl and I were too tired by the end of the day to try to struggle through the late dinner with the rest of the family – thankfully Japanese supermarkets have great selection of sushi. On the other hand Clive got to experience a wider range of restaurants including Italian one, Italian cuisine seem to be very popular in Japan, and a proper Japanese banquet of about 12 mostly seafood courses organized by Aki’s parents in honour of the bride and groom.


Our breakfast at the hotel consisted of miso soup, rice and picked vegetables. Cat decided to use chopsticks like everyone else, despite being given a spoon by friendly staff, and she loved mixing the soup, attempting to pick up rice and generally waving them around, while the rest of us tried very hard to protect our eyes from her enthusiastic wielding of chopsticks.

Rollmop! finally

Our local supermarket now sells rollmop. I’m excited because I had a craving for one since Paul reminded me of them in his May post.

The brightness of Brighton

On Friday we went to Brighton. As usual getting through London took a long time, so we entertained ourselves the best we could. Cat tried to get her socks off – unsuccessfully.

Then she tried to get her hat off – successfully


And eventually she and I slept. By the time we arrived to Brighton I was starving and as some of you know I become very unpleasant and dangerous when hungry. So after registering in the hotel and changing Cat’s outfit, we went in search of food. Ended up in Pitcher & Piano bar (surprisingly they have highchairs) and I finally had a good pub burger, which I was craving for awhile. Despite gloomy weather forecast the sun was shining brightly and the sky was mostly blue, so we took a nice stroll along the beach. My previous Brighton visit was in the middle of winter and I was able to compare the stark difference the winters and summers bring to the seaside town. It is so lovely in summer; there are things sold on every corner (freshly made donuts smelled very tempting), people everywhere and so much light.

Noel was brave enough to wade the water, while we looked in admiration and I wondered if my dad would be insane enough to go for a swim (he usually is). I miss them - my parents. The sound of waves crashing against pebble beach brought memories of our summer vacations at the Black Sea when I was little. It is totally different sound from the one waves makes against the sand.

Eventually we had to go back to hotel to feed the little one and put her to bed. On entering the room we were blinded by the brilliant light and had to close the curtains. They were heavy red one, but the sun still got through them creating Dracula’s cave atmosphere. Cat went to sleep surprisingly easy considering how weird and different the surroundings were. Since it was still very early Clive and his dad went out for a pint or two and I enjoyed reading Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth, which made me interested in visiting French towns of Toulouse, Carcassone and Beziers.

The next day Cat was up at 5 am (*cringe*) so I took her to the beach. There were just us, seagulls and a bunch of praying (? Studying? ) whitely clad Muslims. I felt so peaceful and relaxed and was happy to experience the magic of morning breeze, beach and water.

Once everyone else awoke, it was time for Cat’s morning nap (occasionally I find it amusing how much we manage to get done before other’s day starts). Noel was kind enough to babysit, so Clive and I had uninterrupted breakfast. And then we went to Royal Pavilion. I was happy to revisit it as it is truly stunning inside.

Afterwards we had time to look around the shops and finish buying presents for Cat’s Cape Town cousins. Toby Tiger had lots of wonderful brightly coloured items and now I regret not getting anything for Cat (but we really don’t have any more space for her clothes and most toys were for older kids). For lunch we decided to take the easy option of Carluccio's. And then it was back home.

Food == mummy

Cat finally warmed up to her grandfather and starts smiling whenever she sees him. So he tried to feed her today to allow me to make dinner for the rest of us. Her look of pure confusion was priceless. Sadly he was only able to get one spoonful into her mouth before confusion turned into crying and I had to take over. This makes me think that Clive should feed her on the weekends to get her understand that food doesn’t only come from mummy.

Mesh-mash before moving

Whenever Cat coughs or sneezes I automatically say “будь здоров” (Russian equivalent of “bless you”) and it looks like she picked up on the fact that coughing equals attention. So now whenever she wants to be noticed or picked up she does very fake cough together with the usual grumpy “mmm” sound. At first I thought that I was imagining things, but Clive noticed it as well. He and I were having a chat the other morning while she was awake in her cot. Cough. We look at her, the coughing stops. We look at each other and start discussing how fake it sounded. The coughing starts up again. We look at her, she stops. We glance at each other and start laughing. Cat’s eyes widen from surprise, she smiles and does a bit more coughing until I pick her up.

She napped for almost 2 hours yesterday morning while I was making lots of noise with the blender to make her some carrot puree. No such luck today – I was quietly talking to my mum and she woke up after 45 minutes.

She is surprising me by how fast she is getting good at eating from the spoon, though in her impatience she still manages to nock my hand & the spoon around and get some food on her face, hands, bib, top and even pants. I think we need to get some of those super “shirt” bibs that cover everything. I’m happy she liked the carrot puree as I myself dislike cooked carrots – they tastes so horrid compared to the wonderful taste of fresh raw carrots.

We are two thirds packed and hopefully will finish the rest in another hour or so. I’m looking forward to discovering the new area, but a bit sentimental about leaving this one after being here for 3 years. I find a lot of comfort in small familiar things and surroundings lately. We usually pass the cleaner man, who picks up rubbish and sweeps the street, on our daily walks. We started saying hello to each other and today for the first time he wished me good weekend today. Made me smile, made me sad as there won’t be any familiar faces, streets, shops or buildings at first. (OK, I’m being overly dramatic we are only moving few tube stops – I felt less soppy when leaving Australia. I think I’m in my “it would be nice to set up in one place for a long time” mood. Last time this happened I bought a flat, was happily discussing how I don’t have to move ever again and a year later was yearning to move to somewhere new).

If everything goes well we’ll have phone/internet set up on Tuesday (last two times it took a week longer than promised). Until when have fun and UK people, enjoy long weekend.

Sleeping & eating

Since it took a while for us both to get a hang on breastfeeding I thought I’ll follow current official advice of not introducing solids until 6 months. But Cat is getting very curious about our drinks and food – it is no longer possible to drink anything while holding her as she nearly falls off while trying to intersect the cup, glass or can and she gets very surprised (and not too pleased) when we pass food to each other, but not her. She also appears to be hungry more often and wakes up at least twice during the night* instead of previous predictable one time at around 3-4 am. So I gave her some baby rice yesterday for the first time. Hilarious! We had great fun: she made lots of happy cooing noises; grabbed the spoon in her eagerness to get it into her mouth; smiled, stuck her hand into her mouth and licked the spoon all at the same time. Despite her eagerness, most of the food ended up on her clothes and not in her tummy. I may try to make some apple puree for her tomorrow, though our blender is about to die (it used to belong to Clive’s mum and he estimates its age to be between 15 and 20 years).

* Numerous wake ups during the night potentially have nothing to do with hunger. While looking for the flat I had to wake her up few times to be on time for the appointments and she often catnaped in the BabyBjorn before I would make it home to put her down for a proper long nap. So due to this and teething she lost most of her good sleeping habits. Her three day naps last only 35-50 minutes each and she obviously doesn’t get enough sleep during the day, but trying to get her to sleep longer only results in extremely loud protests. I’m going to try few things to get her back to one longer nap of 1.5 – 2 hours and one-two short ones. Longer nap will also give me a chance to get other things done as she isn't very interested in playing on her own at the moment and is very selective about what tasks she is happy to watch me do: hanging laundry is fine, cooking isn't.

Three months

Catherine is three months today. We celebrated a bit early by having an Autumn Apple Sponge Cake on Saturday before Clive went to the airport. The cake was delicious, the lemon reduced the sweetness making it perfect in my books (I’m not a big fan of super sweet). And Catherine was awake to witness its creation and disappearance. She is spending more and more time awake and more aware of her surroundings. Nowadays she almost never cries. The other day I was surprised to notice that her hands are bigger and while packing away her newborn clothes I couldn’t actually believe that she really was that small. The speed of babies development is incredible and I feel that I have to stay flexible to keep up with her.

There aren’t going to be any new photos this week as Clive took my camera with him to Hong Kong. But tomorrow I'll visit Baby Clinic to find out Cat's current weight.

I must be becoming extremely sentimental in my old age as I really miss Clive after only 2 days. I miss our evening chats. I miss seeing him getting Cat to smile at the end of the day – after spending all day together she isn’t as willing to smile at me and I’m not as eager to find new ways to amuse her. I miss us laughing at each other and ourselves. I miss his support and understanding, which isn’t always (and doesn’t have to be) expressed in words. I even miss the comfort of his presence in the same room while we do our separate things. I miss being able to give him a hug or just touch his hand in passing. Only 4 more days.

Sushi & snow

I spent most of my pregnancy craving sushi. It is incredible how often people eat and mention sushi in the casual conversations. Sadly, once I could have sushi again, our local Japanese restaurant closed down for the renovations until February (It starting to look like they are very close to re-opening). But on Tuesday Debbie came over with sushi from her favourite place and we had good time eating it and chatting (Clive took Anya to the theatre so it was just us girls).

I had to go to doctors yesterday, so left Anya with Catherine for about one hour. Both of them survived successfully and I hope even enjoyed the experience.

It snowed again last night and was still snowing through most of the morning. I debated if I really want to go for a morning walk, but trying to keep Cat happy while being stuck inside sounded like a bigger challenge. So we went for our usual morning walk. It is really hard to push the pram through the snow! There were plenty of people outside taking photos, having snowball fights and making snowmen.

New addiction

I wanted to try to cook something new using filo pastry, so I went to http://www.recipezaar.com for ideas and found tons of wonderful recipes. One recipe lead to another and another and another. And now I have so many recipes bookmarked that I’m struggling to choose which one to try to cook next.

I made Salmon Stuffed in Puff Pastry today. Delicious! It was a bit too rich for me with the mushroom soup for source, so next time I’m going to try to serve it with green salad and tzatziki type source instead.

Apricot Baklava recipe sounds extremely appealing; I just need to find some time to make it.

Laura, thanks for pointing me to this website.

mmm.. beer & food

Catherine turned 2 months yesterday, so to celebrate I bought myself a bottle of Boags beer from the Australian-South African-New Zealand shop to have with tonight’s dinner of South African sausage boerwors (very yummy) and salad. Clive went a bit insane buying SA food goodies. I managed to avoid temptation to get some Kellogs Nutri-Grain cereal (Isn’t it sad that I was totally uninterested in tim tams, shapes and other Oz snacks, but was tempted by CEREAL).

Anyway, back to Cat. She is getting really good at holding her head & smiling and with a lot of encouragement and demonstrations from me she is starting to bat at hanging toys.