Helena-Reet: Ivanka’s letter to elf and about the cooking inclination
NordenBladet – Lately the kids do not want to eat in the morning anymore, sometimes they do but not always, because at school Ivanka Shoshana has three meals during the day and Estella Elisheva has two. However, I still enjoy starting the day in a relaxed manner and this will always entail coffee (my favourite is Löfbergs Lila french press) and either porridge (mostly oat or buckwheat with cottage cheese and boiled grated beets) or I make some sandwiches (my favourite is salmon toast with avocado, dill, and oregano, or seed bread with cheese). In case I have baked a cake or pie the night before (which happens now and then), then that will also be a welcomed good in line with the morning coffee.
I bake and cook quite a lot, rarely less than an hour daily, usually 1-2 hours a day will be invested preparing the meals. I enjoy preparing a lovely meal, it means a lot to me that the dishes are pleasant to look at (we use ceramic dishes made by myself, the sets made by Ivanka Shoshana, or also commercial pottery). When laying the table I like to place the pots, pans and cooking utensils on a hot-base right on the dinner table so that it would be convenient to eat, and the napkins are also always on the table. I enjoy purchasing and changing the napkins. It has also become a tradition to photograph the food, yet posting the pictures (blog or Instagram posts) remain infrequent, mostly I send them to my sisters via WhatsApp.
Since we celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas then all of December is the time for presents and cooking. Last week Ivanka Shoshana wrote a letter to the Christmas elves, in order to explain what she desires to find from the windowsill slipper. Among her favourite sweets right now are Oreo cookies, Mesikäpp cookies and Marabou chocolate chip cookies, very much does she also love cheese popcorn. This year she discovered that the Christmas elf had hid the big sweets bag under my bed and wrote cleverly what she desired most. Several Kinder chocolate eggs are the most common sweets among what the elf brings to her. However, it is not allowed to eat the sweets right in the morning, thus the egg remains to be eaten after the school day when the proper meal has already been eaten.
Last week I rearranged Ivanka Shoshana’s room once more (I do so every month, I like to rearrange the furniture) and I also built a log pile near the house. This year I bought dried spruce from Puu24. Some people say that fir trees would ooze a lot of resin, but I adore the wonderful smell filling the room that stems from heating with the spruce. I have also found from Osta.ee with a discount the cool vintage sewing machine legs and to accompany these I bought from Laagri Bauhof the light veneered sawdust plate. The result is a nice self-made desk onto which I placed two handmade ceramic vases along with an own handmade tray (onto which I added tangerines, but by the time of taking pictures those had already vanished).
My cooking inclination (which I have caught from the great food guru Estella Elisheva) has now also begun to bloom in Ivanka Shoshana. Ivanka came to me with a recipe that she had found on the internet and the two of us baked some chocolate pie. The recipe, by the way, is extra simple, when you prepare it from layered dough. Melt the frozen puff pastry, roll it nice and thin with the rolling pin, then cut beautiful quadrangles, chop or grate plenty of chocolate, mix it with sour cream and lay on the dough. Wind the dough into a nice roll or just fold the dough, and put the pie into the stove at 180 degrees for 20 minutes.
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