Christmas fever begins

From tomorrow it will be exactly month till Christmas. Today on lunch break I went for a walk to the mall and noticed that many shops starting decorate their window-cases. To my mind, after this weekend in all city we could feel Christmas spirit. Wait until Christmas tree will be bring into town hall and we could sit with our families at the table and eat delicious food.
But till this moment there are many things to do. The most important is to by presents for friends and family members. This is the most difficult task to be done. Because not every time you guess what people want to get for Christmas.
I have not started prepare present list for this year yet, but have some ideas for my friends. This year one of my passions was kitchen, I want to share it with my friends. So, for my fiends I will prepare packages with home made Cheese, Marshmallows and Soused Mushrooms. I think they will like it and can try to make it by themselves.
What is left? Christmas tree, advent calendar, presents for family, food preparation for Christmas Eve, etc. quite many things to do, but I think I will handle everything, as every year :)

Pumpkins

This year is full of discovery. Few weeks ago I discovered that some pumpkins are very tasty without preparation. You just cut a piece of it and eat as a melon. And what most excited thing, I never thought that it can taste something like between apple and carrot.
After such discovery i also decided to prepare pumpkin soup. First time experiment was successful, but today I have to spill all soup into toilet. I spiced my soup with muscat and I think it was to much of it :( my lunch was spoiled :( . Luckily I still have a piece of pumpkin in the fridge and can proceed my experiments on pumpkin dishes.

My plants

Summer is over, it is the middle of Autumn. As you know my gardening season is already over. I mashed my own grown basil into pesto sauce about more than month ago. The only plant which is still growing on my windowsill is rosemary. Rosemary is perennial and feel good on my windowsill. I always thought that Lithuanian climate is too cold for this plant, but today read that it can stand even -15 C.
It is amazing!I know that this herb can make your dishes sophisticated, also if you season potatoes with rosemary and bake them in oven it will be very delicious or "Best Potatoes you ever tried"!
I think this weekend I will have potatoes with rosemary for dinner :)

Autumn....

There are few reasons why I like Autumn. First one is, because leaves on the trees changes color form green to yellow or even red. The other, that in Autumn you have lots of vegetable and fruit. I got few bags of apple from my mother. Of course it is impossible to eat such amount, so I decided prepare apple pie. Looked and found few recipes I never tried before.
I selected the easiest recipe, there you need only shred apples into smaller pieces, bake them on butter with suggar, put everything in the baking tray and cover with crumbs, made from flower and butter. Thats all!!! All you need, just put pie into oven and wait for a half an hour. It is very tasty and most important thing - easy prepared!
Next time I prepared this pie, I changed original recipe and covered baked apples with allready prepared pastry, bought in the shop. Pie also was wonderfull. So, I can say, with Apple pie you always success!

Nothing new

It is allready month or maybe more when I rote my last post. But there was nothing interesting in my life. My PC is still broken and specialist said, that there is no sense fix it. It would be better, by new one. It was sad news, but on the other hand - now I have impulse save money :)

Granola

As you maybe noticed, that recently all my posts are about FOOD, this post also will not be an exception :)
I am going on experimenting in my kitchen. This time I decided to make Granola or it better known as Musli in Lithuania. It is really delicious for breakfast with milk or yogurt and one more reason why I started to like it, it is very quick and simple to prepare: you just mix different type of corn, nuts, season it with honey and spices like cinnamon, vanilla suggar. Put everything in the oven and bake until it changes color into brown. Thats all! You have breakfast for long time. Just do not forget to buy milk or yogurt :)

Marshmallows

Marshmallows is one of my favorite candies, when I start eat I can not stop until all packet is empty :) They are so sweet and soft. I just can not stop :) If you do not understand me, it just means that you never tried marshmallows :D
Yesterday, I decided prepare marshmallows myself for the second time :). First time was not successful :( But this time it was better :). This time they are really tasty, soft and seems to be like bought in supermarket. All colleagues also liked them :).
One more thing I like about marshmallows, that it is very easy to prepare marshmallows, all you need it is GOOD blender(mixer). It should be really gooood, because you need whip white of eggs with syrup and gelatin about 10 minutes!!!. I think I need new mixer after yesterdays marshmallows cooking, because my mixer was not so good and next time can be the last, when I use it :(

When PC is boken

Today I am sad :( because my computer is broken. It had boken just before I wanted copy all data into DVD :). Luckily, to my opinion, main board had broken, so all data in the disk should not dissapear. Of course it is just my guessing, exact diagnosis defined when I bring it to repair shop. I just hope that it does not cost much to repair my PC :)

Pizza + Spaghetti ice cream = Stomachache

Today I was in Italian Gelato cafe, where you can eat pizza and choose from huge variety Italian deserts. I ordered pizza with mocarela, mushrooms and ham(Prosciutto). Pizza really was similar to that I ate few years ago in Italy. It was very delicious, like home made!
Also in this cafe I founded one desert which I wanted to try "Spaghetti ice cream". It is ice cream served as spaghetti with strawberry jam and white chocolate pieces. View in the plate is very impressive. But I do not like white chocolate and strawberry jam, I would change these ingredients, fore example, to red currant jam and it will be perfect!!!
Although combination of pizza and ice cream was not the best to my stomach :( Now I am lying on the bed with stomachache :( I think tomorrow will be better :)

Crepes

It is not Italian cuisine, this time :) It is my family cuisine, my grandmother, mother and my father often prepared Crepes for breakfast when I was a child and it is strange that they used the same ingredients, but crepes was different :) I liked crepes and still like them in different way. Sometimes I like them eat with jam, sometimes with salted cream, sometimes with butter also with different ingredients inside the crepe: banana, sweet curd or even mince.
Today I decided prepare crepes using recipe from "Beatos virtuve" book. I think I succeeded: prepared smooth paste and crepes was very thin as I wished and was very similar to ones in the picture :) Tomorrow I will taste it for breakfast :) I think with salted cream :)

Pesto !!!

Yes, again Italian cuisine :) You might think "Oh, she is crazy" and will answer "Yes, I am" :). You have not heard the main part: Today I maid Pesto, from home grown Basil :) I grew it myself! Watered it every day and it became huge, leaves look like grapevine :). So Basil was from my windowsill, all other ingredients: huts, Parmesan, salt, vinegar, olive oil from the shop :) I mixed all ingredients in needed proportion and vualia :) Pesto is done! Of course, lots of green color left all over the kitchen: on the floor, walls, table on me :) BUT it worth this. This green sauce and pasta mmm... or Italian bread(ciabatta) with pesto - wonderful sandwich :)

"Breaking Dawn"

Today I feel regretfull, because yesterday I finnished reading last book of Twilight Saga": "Breaking Dawn". Love story as always ended happily :) Every time we expext, that every love story will be with happy end. But I still feel sad, because it is ended. From the moment I finnished the book, I feel that something is missing. And this is true. I will miss that wondefull feeling when Bella and Edvard fall in love, when they where suffering and can not be together, when Edvard and Jackob competed for Bella's love, when Bella and Edvard where happy on their honey moon, when they and their family where fighting for their lives with other vampires. Every moment in this book is full of mistery and does not matter that sometimes I could guess the subject, I liked this serie of books and read it with huge pleasure. I will miss that feeling :) I think I will read it again after some time :) Maybe I will found something new in this book? Who knows? :)

Easy way to lose weight

All this week my stomach does not work properly :( all week it was like balloon an nothing helped, no matter what I ate stomach does not like, so I decide to try Allen Carr's "Easy way to Lose Weight" method and change my attitude to what and how I eat. Should be very easy use Easy way to lose weight method, because at first it is recommended to eat only fruits on breakfast. For other meals you can eat anything you like. Main idea that you can eat everything you want and as many as you want!!!! It is seems to be easy follow this rules !!!
And I will see if it really works :)

Polenta

Recently I found one interesting thing, that I am fond of Italian kitchen. To my mind I could live in Italy and even do not care about national Lithuanian food, just maybe i could not live without potatoes :)
But I could exclude potatoes from my menu if I could eat Italian food every day! Just imagine: sweet tomatoes, pasta, dried ricotta, pesto, basil, polenta and PICA!!! and other amazing dishes.
But stop I was planning to write about my experience with Polenta and when I started to think about food you see what happened :) my minds took me somewhere away from the beginning idea.
Ok, Polenta. It is Italian food made from maize, more clear it is hominy(mush). You just put corns in the boiling water prepare hominy, then I put everything from the pot to backing form. the bottom should be covered with 1 -1.5cm high of hominy and wait when it cool down. After few hours you can cut this kind of cake :) into pieces and fry it on grill or in fat. I tried just to fry it on the pan and it was some kind of challenge. Difficult to explain it in English, but if you want to know what I am talking about you can try :) and you will understand what I mean.
But the taste of polenta is worth that sufferings :) the top of polenta is crispy and in the middle you reach soft hominy taste, it is divine!
You should try it at least once in your life!

Films I want to see before I die

I was inspired to create this list by one of our office attractions. As I wrote every day if there is possibility we listen "Guess the movie" game on the radio and trie to guest. So every day I remember or find out the new film I would like to see before I die :)
Now there are about 50 films in my list, but as you could guess every day it is coming longer and longer, because it is difficult to see one movie per day.
But I hope I will see every film from the list till the end of my life :) I am very optimistic these days!

Coffe break at work

In every company or collective people have different traditions. In our office every day we listen "M-1 plius" radio station and also every morning Radio DJ invites all listeners to play a game "Guess the movie". It is very simple game: DJ take a scene from one famous movie and play it by themselves. If you know what film it is you can call to the Radio win a price. Of course we do not compete for the price, but it is always very interesting to listen the scene and guess the movie. And I can say that very rare cases when we do not guess the movie's name!!!
We can proud ourselves that we are movie experts !!!

Vegetables month

Last week I find out that Summer is over after this month and I have not prepared any salad yet :( and decided to fix this misunderstanding. I went to the market which is settled near place where I live and bought cucumber, tomato, onion, snap-beans and of course potatoes :).
This week I already ate cucumber, tomato and onion salads filled with oil twice and it is still Friday!! so I can really make record!
I will not write about potatoes and how I like them :) and how tasty it is, but I can write about snap-beans, it is also very tasty and very easy to prepared. You just need to wash them and put into boiling and salted water, boil about 15 minutes, then took from the water and stir-fry in the pan, then I season with pepper and if needed salt. Thats all!!! it can be as a garnish, but I like it as main dish.
To my opinion, i can name this month of the Summer "Vegetable month"!!! Two previous was "Cold soup Months" then I was obsessed on cold soups

New mania

Yes it is almost a year I have not wrote any post in my blog. But I just does not have any inspiration :) yes I am like writer, can not write even my blog if I do not have inspiration!
Today I found that I have new mania in my life - it is BOOKS! And it started from very innocent event I was already bored of knitting and decided to read Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye". Book was difficult to read, but was interesting, because till the end I could not guest what the end will be. After I finished this book I decided to read the one I wanted long time ago It's Dan Brown "Da Vinci Code". The Subject very exciting, with lots of clues and detective elements. To say a truth I do not like to read about Bible times, but in this book it was so interesting read about that times and different interpretation about religion, that I finished the book in few days. And last book after which I can hadily can say "Yes, I have new mania" is Stephanie Meyer "Twilight Saga". After I read half of first book "Twilight" I was in love in this story :) Yes again after 5 years I am deeply in love in love story :D (p.s. last time I was crazy about love was serial "Betty la fea")
And you know I feel better than ever this year, my depression is gone and I am enjoing life, no matter it is rainy, sunshine or extremely hot LOVE WILL SAVE THE WORLD believe me I know this :D