My photo
A Canadian expatriate living and exploring first France now Germany, then BACK to FRANCE (!!!) with her family; former fashion designer, turned unexpected UNLIKELY NOMAD, raising two children, writing, photographing, painting, playing piano (who knew!!) and blogging - and now... full time student at ART SCHOOL!! (I MUST be crazy!!)

Friday, September 21, 2007

Maitrand Bertrand

This is Maitrand Bertrand.
He is an egg timer, and as you can see... we only have 5 Minutes left!!!
He is one version of all the very cool and funky kitchen gadgets that can be had here in Germany. He and I decided to get busy yesterday.




Ever since I was really small and living on our farm in southwestern Ontario I have wonderful memories of my mother making preservers in our kitchen with her stainless steel pots with their bake-a-lite handles and all the produce from our garden. I have always wanted to do this and even thought I love to cook and bake all kinds of food I always thought the prospect of "canning" seemed a little to daunting to even try...

Here in Germany we have several apple trees, and a white, black and red current bush that were loaded with fruit this fall ...so I figured I had to give it a try.


Here is a pot of red currants bubbling merrily away. In another pot I have the jars boiling, and I have some delicious apple juice waiting in the wings to be turned into apple jelly.




I France we had the delight of sampling a fruit jelly infused
with Rosemary and Thyme, which is delicious with fowl, pork or Foie Gras
so I was determined to give it a try. Fresh herbs from the garden...


Once the jelly had passed the freezer test,
(jells on a freezer cold plate)
I poured the jelly into the bottles in which I had previously placed sprigs of herbs.
Then I re steamed the jars to be sure they were sterile,

Maitrand Bertrand surveys the results...Looks pretty good no??

*salivating*



Thursday, September 20, 2007

Lily's 1st Bike!!

Hey!!! What is this!!!!

Whoa, just a little wobbly! Hang on Dad!!

Oops, a little spill...gee it does not look this hard...Awww I'm OK tho!!

Look at me GOOoooooo!!!


Sunday, September 9, 2007

A Big Girls Birthday!!!


I will take a little break from the Sweden photos which I will try to get more up loaded for you, but in the mean time we have celebrated Little Miss Lily's 4th Birthday ...*sigh* time flies.


We made her chocolate cake together since as even she will tell you ...She is "CRAZY" for chocolate...

She got pretty covered helping me sift and mix everything together...and had fun watching the mixer...fingers out though...and did a VERY thorough job greasing and flouring the pans in preparation for the batter.

After we had baked it I sliced it in preparation to ice.... Then a certain someone got to sample a tidbit of the trimmed off parts with some icing...yum. We iced the layers and ...oops dropped sumpin' on the floor Mommy....












Then we iced the sides, and got to choose which candies we wanted to decorate with....oooh, the REALLY fun part.... carefully placed them on the top, wiped hands clean and TA DAAAA!!!
The finished product...not bad for someone who is just 4 huh!!!




Yummy cake!!! After that we opened presents, and with the help of a new friend for Lily, "Tina Prima" (Ballerina).



Hmmmm...birthday cake SURE is good...

Tina Ballerina had ALOT to say for someone constucted out of some polar fleece and fluff, and even Ballerinas can suck their thumbs too y'know...

A big kiss for the birthday girl and then...phew...busy day....ZZZzzzzzzzz.....



Happy 4th Birthday Little Miss Lily!!! We love you!!!

What we have been up to...