I don't speak the language.

This year is totally weird so far. As there is more and more nonsense around me I just wanted to join in and so you get a weird package of things. Most of these things are actually totally last year. 



For christmas I received an adorable package from Hannah with luxurious marshmallows, tea and other pretty things. It's all about the pretty things and thoughts.
Thank you so much again, my dear. The coasters are not only good for good tea but also for long drinks, by the way. Drink your drinks with style.

These pretty things are my favourite christmas cookies since I can remember.
It's a rich chocolate dough with rum, a thin layer of orange jam (apricot is good as well), covered with chocolate and sugar sprinkles. Deliciousness. Did I ever posted the recipe for these? I don't know. Maybe I will catch up with it some day, if you want to.

 
Nearly every two weeks I have a new favourite meal. The last two weeks it was this soup and I made it three times: mango-hokkaido-soup. Basically: fry finely cut onions and garlic in a little oil, add hokkaido, fry for a few minutes. Add water, sea salt, pepper, fenugreek and cook til the hokkaido is tender. Add fresh or frozen mango, puree. Serve with some pumpkin seed oil. The pictures below are from new year's eve potluck. I had the rest of the soup in the morning at 6. Hmmmm!

Sunshine. A lot of dust.

This was my hair colour a few days ago for a few days only. Could you please stop asking me, if I dyed my hair again? The answer is and always be "yes" and you're all clever enough.

And if I happen to bleach my hair and let it blond, you don't have to worry, that I never will have any bright colours again. Just wait a few weeks. I'd appreciate it.

This picture is from today so: welcome 2014! Please, don't be so confusing. I want this to be a good year. 

Today's twilight. I definitely need more light, uh! More light and less weirdness, okay? Thanks.

Cats and cookies.

Uh. Only one eye left. And where the other eye once was, there is a silver shimmering, slightly bloody wound with a lot of stitches. 
Woschech is amazingly doing well. Everything went way faster than I thought, the operation only took the doctor one hour and I was supposed to wait. While he was operating, I was roaming around the vet's practice and it was the most beautiful day since weeks. Everything was covered in a little snow, bright blue sky, sunshine. So even one of the ugliest parts of the town looked kinda friendly and I took some pictures to distract myself. And I bought some treats for Wosch.
Then I went back and I could stay with the cat while he was waking up. Pour little cat, laying there, tongue out of his mouth, snorting quietly, waking up, totally confused, dizzy, one-eyed. 
But he recovered pretty quick from the narcosis.

This was right before we went to the vet.

Sometimes I notice, that he wants to scratch his eye and is startled then, but I don't know if it's pain or the strange feeling that there is no eye anymore. Altogether he's doing really well but is pretty slow and quiet, he even accepts that he's not allowed to go out at the moment. We went together to the backyard but as his favourite thing is to roll around in the dust I had to bring him back to the apartment. Poor cat. Luckily, he's not mad at me. But that's his way: just accepting everything as it is. This cat is the most down to earth cat I've ever known. Well, sometimes he likes to discuss whether it is a good idea to go out at 4pm at night or not but most of the time he is easy to get along with.

After the operation, back at home.

Just in the right time I got a small package in the afternoon after the operation with a jar of cookies. Look at these yummy little things and the promising spring time-ish postcard! I love that. Thanks again, Iris! Let's do cookie swaps more often! (And by the way: your cookies are finally on their way to you)

Orange pistachio, maple walnut and chocolate sea salt cookies.

Today.

Sometimes I look at him and have to take a deep breath, I feel so sorry for him. On the other side, it could be way worse than that. On one ultrasound scanning they found a tiny shadow, two or three months ago, and there was this fear again that it might be a tumour. But the vet who removed his eye assured me, that he couldn't find anything like that during the operation.
He sent the infectious eye to a lab in Vienna, to get it tested. There is a tiny chance, that parasites caused all this and that these parasites are still there.
Never ending story.

So at the moment I hope that the wound will heal very well and that he will be a bit more agile again. And if there are any parasites: fuck off.

Caramelized almond cookies.

Actually this was the Chewy Cocolate Chip Cookies recipe from Post Punk Kitchen but as I can't follow a recipe, I changed it into non-chocolate-at-all cookies with caramelized almonds and they turned out delicious and super-crispy-chewy-yum.

Finally I could use my cute matroshka measure cups which I have already for a while but never used before. I didn't have measuring things with 1/3, 1/4 etc and as I am reading a lot of American blogs and cook books, these thingies are quite helpful.

Cookies (makes around 30)

3/4 cup oil 

2 cups sugar

1 tblsp + 1 tsp flaxseed

1/2 cup soya milk

2,5 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder (cream of tartar)

1/2 tsp salt

100g almonds

5 tblsp sugar

Grind flax seed and mix with soya milk, set aside.

I had whole almonds wich I put into a plastic bag and crushed them, but you could use already chopped almonds to skip this step. 

Heat a big pan and add almonds, toast them while strirring from time to time. Be aware not to burn them.

Lower the heat and add sugar and stir again when the sugar begins to melt. Toss almonds in caramel. 

In a big bowl mix flour, baking powder, salt and sugar then add oil and the soya milk with flax seeds. Quickly form a dough, add almonds (a lot of them will fall off the dough, just flip them in your mouth, no one will notice) and put the dough into the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Just before the dough is cold enough preheat your oven.

Roll dough into 1inch balls and put on a baking sheet with parchment paper. Don't flatten them.

Bake them for about 10minutes on gas mark 5, remove from the oven and now flatten them with a fork, while they're still hot and soft.

Let them cool completely and they will have the most wonderful consistency.

Lime Meltaways

Made Lime Meltaways. Were delicious!

300 g margarine (Alsan)
70 g powdered sugar
lime zest from 4 limes
60 ml lime juice
1 tbls vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
550 g flour
50 g starch
1 tsp salt

Mix margarine and sugar for 5 minutes until mixture turns white and fluffy. Ad zests, lime juice and vanilla, then gently stir in the flour. Don't knead the dough for too long!

Divide dough into four parts, form rolls and put them into the fridge for at least one hour.

Then just cut slices from the rolls and bake for about 15 minutes (gas mark four). 

Mix powdered sugar with a little vanilla sugar and roll the still warm cookies in it.

They taste the best after 2-3 days in a cookie box.

Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I have different recipes, most of them with egg-replacer (which I hate, they're a waste of money and totally needless) and other things, so I mixed a few together and made this. It is one of the easiest doughs you can think of! The cookies went crispy but still chewy and I think they're perfect. I had about 75g chocolate chips or so, but you can use up to 100g or leave them out and use something else instead. White chocolate chips, nougat chunks, nuts, cinnamon,...but here is the classic way:

- 1 cup sugar (I used raw cane sugar, very caramelish)

- 0,5 cup margarine

- 1,5 flour

- 0,5 teaspoon cream of tartar

- chocolate chips

Mix together sugar and margarine until very soft. Mix flour with cream of tartar* then add it to the sugar-margarine-mix. Mix very quick, add chocolate chips or whatever you wanna use and then chill the dough for about 1h in the fridge. It has to be very cold and firm, otherwise your cookies will melt into one big ugly megacookie, which is not a good option. This happend to me before and no, it is not tasty at all.

When it's chilled, preheat your oven while putting the cookies onto a baking sheet. I used about 1 big table spoon of dough per cookie. Just roll a ball out of the dough and flatten it only a little bit with your hand, put on sheet. They will spread a little while baking, so don't make them to flat. You can also flatten them with a fork to have patterns on it.

Then put them into the preheated oven and bake for 8 to 10 minutes on gas mark 6. When golden brown remove from oven and let sit for a minute before you move them onto a plate or something.

*I always use cream of tartar instead of usual baking powder. You can use a lot of it in a dough without tasting it.