Apple Crumble

Autumn time is apple time! And I love the smell of apples. Unfortunately I cannot eat them raw, they need to be either cooked or baked. So an easy and quick way to eat apples is to make some apple crumble.

You need:
150 g butter
500 g apples
1/8 l white wine or lemon juice
100 g flour
100 g ground almond or flour
100 g sugar

Peel apples, cut into pieces and mix it with the white wine or lemon juice.

I do this in the baking pan, so less dishes to wash afterwards.

Then combine butter, flour, ground almond and sugar in a bowl until you get crumbs. You can substitute ground almond with flour and white sugar with brown sugar. If you like you can add some cinnamon spice. Then scatter the crumbs on the apples.

 Now place the baking pan into the preheated oven (175° C) and bake until crumbs are golden (approximately 20 minutes).

 Take out of the oven and enjoy the apple crumble while still hot. Delicious! :-)

A Masked Ball

This is the title of an opera by Verdi we visited: "Un ballo in maschera". Great music, dramatic story and modern costumes. Peter and I loved it very much.
Look at the opera building! Even the statues were disguised with red noses and balloons.

Discovery Day Festival

"One can always find a reason to celebrate" the saying goes. The idea behind Discovery Day is to move people from the city to their surroundings to visit and to discover new places. All goals should be consistent with public transport and at a great price achievable. Parallel in the city, a great festival with six stages and 150 stalls takes place. In addition to the municipalities and communities, presenting with numerous actions , there are also local and regional associations, organizations and artists in the streets. We strolled along the many stalls and stages, had a "Bratwurst", a grilled sausage we usually eat when being in the city.

We were looking for the sports stage where local sports organizations are presenting themselves with a little show to attract new members. My Taekwondo club has a show team which prepared for a demonstration performance: Taekwondo techniques and powerful jumps, acrobatic and comedic skills inspired the audience and me too! :-) 

                  

Our show team consists of a group of youngsters who are also members of the federal state competitive squad. So unlike the adult training group where I am exercising. We focus on "fit for fun". And fun it is!

So what is Taekwondo? It is the way of the foot and the hand, a martial art originating in Korea. It combines combat and self-defense techniques with sport and exercise. Gyeorugi (pronounced [kjʌɾuɡi]), a type of sparring, has been an Olympic event since 2000.
Taekwondo is my "active" hobby, when I am not cooking, baking or crocheting. I started more than 20 years ago, had a long break of nearly 10 years and started anew three years ago. It is still my favourite sport, even though I have to accept, that I am not 20 years old anymore, nor 30 but already 41! So techniques and jumps have lost their hight. Still an excellent way to keep in shape and to have some fun exercising.

Easy bread recipe

This morning I felt like having freshly baked bread for breakfast, and I remembered an old, no fail  recipe I have used before.

You need following ingredients:
500 g flour
450 ml water
40 g yeast
1 tbs honey or sirup
2 tbs vinegar
1 tsp salt
Variations: sunflower seeds, pumkin seeds, oat flakes, dried onions.......

First dissolve yeast (fresh or dried) in warm water, add honey or sirup and stir. I use sugar beet sirup which gives a light brown coulour. Then stir in the vinegar and add salt.
Now mix flour and your favourite seeds until you get a dough which is quite sticky.

As for the flour I use wheat, spelt, maize meal or whatever is available. You can mix different types of flour as well.
And for the seeds you can also add anything you like, you can also add nuts or bacon bits or raisis if you like it sweet. I ususally add about one to two handfuls of variation ingredients.

Grease a loaf pan and fill in the dough.

Put the pan into the oven and bake at 200 degrees Celsius for about 50 minutes. You do not need to preheat the oven! When finished take the bread out of the pan, turn off the oven and put the bread back into the oven for another 10 minutes to get a nice crust.

Take the bread out of the oven and when the bread has cooled down it is much easier to cut. But I cannot wait.I love warm freshly baked bread with butter. Soooo delicious! The bread stays fresh for about three days. I cover it up with a large glass bowl. Mostly it is gone very quickly though ;-)
A very easy recipe indeed where you can use whatever is in store. Try and enjoy!

Japanese flower scarf

Flowers in winter, around my neck. That was my motivation for the Japanese flower scarf. I first discovered this scarf pattern here and was immediately spellbound. Since the pattern was not in the Internet I bought the pattern book from Japan via Etsy. It arrived only one week later, very carefully packed. I was a bit afraid at the beginning if I would be able to read the crochet stitch diagram as everything in that book was written in Japanese. But what a joy, it worked out just right, the stitch diagram was enlarged and very clear with international symbols! I have never before worked with stitch diagrams and with the help of translation tables it was easy to crochet along.
As for the yarn I was intrigued by Lucy's description of Debbie Bliss Andes. I searched the net and found Debbie Bliss Andes at eBay. This yarn is really rather luxurious and soooo soft. It was great joy to crochet the Japanese flower scarf, everything so exotic for me from pattern to yarn. And I was almost a bit sad to have finished this scarf.

Onion Tart

I love all things baked. And I love to bake and cook, but mostly there is only time at weekends for cooking. Yesterday Peter surprised me with a delicious onion tart. It's a simple recipe and serves 4 people.

ONION TART
For the pastry:
250 g flour
250 g curd cheese (German: "Quark")
250 g margarine or butter
1 tsp of salt (optional as ham and cheese already contain enough salt)

For the filling:
1 kg onions
300 g ham or bacon
300 g cheese
4 eggs
4 tbs milk
2 tbs flour
pepper, nutmeg, chervil, herbs of the Provence, basil

a) First make a pastry. Mix all ingredients for the pastry and make a dough. If you cannot find curd cheese, try joghurt instead. Spread the dough evenly onto a baking tray.

b) Then prepare the filling. Chop the onions and stir fry them with a little bit of oil in a pan until glazed. Dice ham/ bacon and stir fry shortly as well. (We usually buy diced ham.)
Now spread the onions and the ham/ bacon evenly onto the pastry.

c) Grate the cheese (any type of hard cheese will do) and sprinkle onto the filling.

d) Now whisk the beaten eggs together with milk and flour and add the seasoning. I have used dried seasoning, but you can also use fresh herbs. If you can't find herbs of the Provence you can also use (dried) marjoram, thyme, savory, rosemary and sage. Or just the herbs you like or have in store. Pour the mixture over the onion-ham/bacon filling.

e) Place the baking tray in the middle of a preheated oven and bake at 200°C for about 20 minutes. The pastry should have risen a bit and the cheese is melted and golden brown.

 

Cut the tart into pieces, serve and enjoy! You can serve new white wine with the onion tart (usually available end of September/ October). It's very yummy! 



Phone cozy

The starling handbag needed a partner, a phone cozy to go along with it. The pattern consists of single crochets and the button is a crocheted ball. It fits the black bag as well, but maybe I'm going to do a black one too.