Nice food and snow

It has been so cold here, I seem to have developed a constant need to eat comfort food.
I made this soup on a weekend, with some rye bread it was absolutely fantastic. It is a carrot honey and ginger soupand it was very successful, especially with children.





I also made some Russian cake, its called "cream cheese and nut pleat."



That was truly great! I would have to translate the recepie somepoint, because it is in Russian.
I also have been knitting slowly (no change there then) on Mila's baby blanket and it is coming along nicely. I will have to hurry up with it a bit because Mila has given birth on Monday, so theoretically I'm late already.
The snow fell on London on Monday and it stayed, thick and wet, for three days. All of the transport stopped and all the schools and the nurseries were closed, and there was no way we could get out from our part of town on Monday, so we had to stay home with children and have fun instead. I felt like a child myself, distant memories of playing in the snow suddenly becoming a reality once again. We have build a Giant Snowman in the garden and played snowballs of course. We also spent 4 hours making a slide from a garden chair, few bricks, a plywood board and vast quantities of snow. And when it was done, i brought some baking trays from the house and children used the baking trays as sledges, sliding down and falling and rolling around in the snow. It was a wonderful day.

Back to reality

It only now starting to feel like im actually back from all the holidays, trip to Tallinn to visit grandma, sleepless nights with Unity's chickenpox and other various multitude of little things that have happened since New Year. Funny thing is when on my Facebook a friend of mine asked if there was anything new going on, i couldnt come up with an answer. Everything is still the same and everything is changing at the same time.
We have asked our aupair to leave, the new girl is starting on the 14th of February. Im really happy about that, i decided long time ago that i really didnt like the current girl for no other reason than she doesnt care about anyone or anything apart from herself. Its not a sin, i know, but when you have someone living in your house, I think it is only natural to want to get along/ have something in common with the person. I care about people, I care about the enviroment, I care about our bills, about house being clean, about things happening on time, I care about the quality of food that children eat, that they dont watch TV all the time, BUT I DONT CARE about buying new clothes, conversations about ex boyfriends, types of make up or mobile phones. Shoes and bags leave me cold. So yeah, Im happy she is going.
I've been cycling lately and really enjoying it again, I love my little bike, we are a great team.
I also have been knitting, I started a baby blanket and ripped it all because i hated the yarn so much, so now I started another one. I got some great yarn on sales (thats why Im broke at the moment) and now i just have to finish all the things Im doing for everybody else and then I will knit for myself.
However my main exitement at the moment is cooking and baking, I have been making new things and it always makes me happy to do new things. I found some Russian sites with recepies and there are some fantastick cakes there, so i'll be posting some recepies and pictures soon.
Ah, we also started chanting again and it feels great. For someone calling themselves a Buddhist its been way too long without practice.
So there, its all good so far.

One month later

Well technically it is more than a month now, and the funny thing is that i havn't even noticed it go by...
First things first, some pictures from Christmas:
Reminds me of a certain Bond film....
All of us.
My baby, such a big boy now but still my baby. Wonder if that how it feels even when he is 32?
Grandad cutting Christmas Turkey.
Fast and happy, that is Unity.
We had a bout of stomach flu over Christmas which wasnt great, we all had it one after the other, not very Christmas dinner friendly disease, i have to say. Didnt help that my mother in law has decided that it was my evil secret plan to ruin their Christmas by giving everyone the flu. Well, tell you what, if that was my secret plan, it defenatly has worked! I just wonder what logics would dictate that i would make myself suffer more than everybody else, because i ended up not just changing the baby and washing the poo clothes 20 times a day, but also tolerate motherinlaw's horrible mood.
Oh well, children enjoyed all the presents and attention so i guess it was worth it.

We still had the illness over the New Year so we had to cancel the party and have a quite one with homemade nonalcoholic mulled wine(grape juice) and a DVD.

I still have a very fragile relationship with my mother. I have decided I will not see her for next few month, I think it's the best. Talking to her doesnt work, she doesnt believe that i can say anything remotely interesting or meaningful.
Anyway, I have been knitting and have finished hat-scarf for my little sister, very pretty scarf for my mother, and now I'm halfway with a baby blanket for my sweet friend Mila.
Thats all folks.

Progress

I thought i need to write down what i have left to knit.
So in the next 10 days:
1. Finish Linda's scarf (15% left)
2. Finish Stuart's scarf (half left)
3. Finish Delia's top (30% left)
4. Weave in the ends and saw Colin's Christmas Cobblestone
5. Start Tom's scarf.

Before New Year:
1. Grandma Unity's red scarf
2. Jane's throw.
3. something for Mother (no idea what yet but has to be quick)
4. Beret for Daniella

In the nearest future:
1."little sister dress" for Unity
2.wool vest for Leo
3. Cabled hoodie for Colin's birthday
4. Josh's socks
5. Mo's doggy jumper

Only after i have done all those things i can think about knitting something for myself.
Do you know of any knitting deity i should pray to? Let me know if you do.


Only

Leona Lewis

Cheese, i know. But how do you explain goosebumps on my skin and knot in my throat? Beautiful voice. Beautiful instrument. That girl is blessed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovGFPKZ3lgM

Yarn disaster

So i was happily knitting along on Linda's scarf when it suddenly dawned on me that i dont have enough of yarn to finish it. You see i wasnt happy with the original pattern, because i thought it was too narrow. So i have doubled up the stitches. Disregarding the fact that if i do that, I'd need double the amount of yarn. It didnt help ether that this particular yarn is discontinued and i had to order it online and hope that it will arrive before next week. Fool you say? Too right I say. But now i have started on the blue scarf and hoping it is gonna take me very little time to knit it.

Nakered

I am absolutely, completely, totally shattered. I got barely any sleep this weekend because Unity had a cold and teething, but last night was the worst ever. She winged and cried and moaned and screamed out. I did absolutely everything i could to comfort her, but she gets very frustrated and almost lashes out when you try to pick her up or cuddle her. She also hates to sleep in our bed so me and poor Colin had to take turns to get up and comfort her. And just when she finally fell quite, Leo woke up about 4am and decided that he wanted to sleep in our bed, so we were all squashed and hot together.
On the positive side we had a great laugh on Saturday because we made our festive gingerbread and decorated the tree.

The brown-haired boy is Alex our neighbour and Leo's best friend. They constantly bicker but miss each other profoundly if dont see each other on the weekend. Here we are cutting the cookies.



Unity getting a bit overwhelmed and dramatic. " Oh, creative decisions." May be she will grow up to be an art director.
And here is decorating. I got different food colorings and mixed up very bright liquid icing.
There also were silver balls, hundreds and thousands, raisins, yoghurted fruit bits and lots more of things to put on top. So it all end up looking like Jackson Pollock


I didnt take the picture of the Christmas tree yet, but i will. by the way, if you want a recepie of great gingerbread, here is one:

12oz Plain Flour
1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda
2.5 teaspoons of ground Ginger
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
4oz unsalted butter
6oz Light brown soft sugar
1 egg - beaten
4 tablespoons Golden Syrup
pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees C

sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger and spices together in a mixing bowl

chop the butter into small pieces, and rub into dry mixture until the consistency of fine breadcrumbs, then add the sugar and mix together

mix the beaten egg and golden syrup together, and add to the mixture, mixing together to form a dough

Now the fun begins!
Roll out on a floured surface to about 3mm thick, then cut out what ever shapes you want. Put onto a lightly greased or lined baking sheet, decorate and cook for approximately 10 to 15 minutes depending on size of biscuit. I tend to check the colour and spread of the biscuit.

When they are cooked, leave on the baking sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack, and leave to cool completely.

The trick is to try and roll the dough quite thin because it actually rises quite a lot.
Have fun! (thats in case someone does actually reads my blog because the numbers seem to go up, however i dont get many comments)