Helena-Reet: Our life in the countryside aka the Kardashians in Estonian style.. or whatever + Recipe: Asian spicy beef strips in hot dressing
NordenBladet – The heading of this blog might as well be “Gardening collective work aka How to take the most out of life” or “A weekend full of work and celebrations” or anything else. I am writing about how my elder sister Marie and her husband Raido came to visit us and how we all did a lot of garden work and at the same time spent several days of quality time full of jokes and laughter, karaoke and tasty homemade meals.
Rule number #1 for a good mood – Nice homemade food that has been beautifully served! + do not underestimate flowers on the table! Little details are those that count!
In our family homemade meals are highly valued. I spend many hours in the kitchen to offer our family the daily tasty, healthy and delightful dishes. We also always welcome our guests with fine meals. For many years, when the children were still small and I was still building my businesses and media portals, I used to have a home assistant-cook, yet today I do everything by myself. I enjoy this and it is the ultimate luxury!!! The free time, or more precisely the time and lifestyle that you can plan on your own, is a great luxury that only few can enjoy. The time that has been spent with family and the people close to you, is always time well spent, since at the end of the day it is the impressions and common memories that count. Besides, I as a non-feminist believe that women could spend more time at home (this doesn’t mean that women shouldn’t-couldn’t-wouldn’t also choose career). Sometimes it seems to me that feminine, gentle and caring women have become as extinct today as a rough-masculine-strong smart man with hands of gold. At least… I found one!!! I can not be happier! 😛
So… let us begin with food! First of all, a really extra good recipe that will surely make your day and the same goes for your partner, children, and all your guests, leaving everyone chanting: Love is lit by good food! 🙂 Hahahaaaa…
Recipe: Asian spicy beef strips in hot dressing
You will need: 800g beef strips, bold handful of fresh green onion leaves, ca 10-14 garlic cloves, ca 60g grated ginger and 2 jars of Santa Maria “Teriyaki sauce” dressing.
Fry grated garlic and grated or chopped ginger in small amount of oil and butter on frying pan ca three minutes, then add beef strips to pan and again fry ca 3 minutes. Then pour to pan 2 jars of Teriyaki sauce (one jar is 300ml/360g) and fry another 3-5 minutes. When sauce is ready, add chopped green onion. Serve with rice, potatoes, or salad. You will get ca six portions from these ingredients.
Rule number #2 for a good mood – Good music!
–and better make it loud! Hahaaa… I listen to all kinds of music, yet this summer’s favourites have definitely been different mixes. YouTube Search will provide – Psycho Trance (Psychedelic trance), Monstercat, “Best of EDM” (Electro House & Festival music), Ambient Chillout and “We love the 90s” and it is great to listen to those via the phone app from a large speaker. Also I like more and more Estonian music, since we also spend a lot of time with Marie and Raido, and Raido is simply the best karaoke singer in the country. Really!!! The way he can imitate Estonian bands is just super nice and awesome! It is a pity that this is his hobby and not his actual job. This however makes me even more happy that I am privileged to enjoy this free and often! In the summer we bought JBL Partybox 310 and a microphone, but believe me, soon you will realize that even this is not loud enough, and yet it takes just half of the volume to make your neighbour angry 😀 Thus… our thanks go to our peaceful neighbours who also enjoy life and who haven’t yet come knocking on our door, and yet, a new note to my to-do list: find an even more private plot where you need never worry what the neighbour thinks! My dream is to live somewhere where I own ca 10-20 ha land (there might be more land for the businesses but what I mean is for the home), where I have privacy such that the closest neighbour is far enough and night-time silence requirements don’t bother anybody. OMG! I love to dream! I so much love to dream and plan my future. Owning such a plot not only requires a lot of money but also a lot of time, freedom and passive income – when you have two children that need schooling and chauffeuring to several hobby groups, then it remains just a sweet dream! 🙂 I so much love children, but children eat up all your time and opportunities that it almost scares me.
CHILDREN ARE DEFINITELY AMONG THE GREATEST DELIGHTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS IN OUR LIVES… BUT WITHOUT DOUBT ALSO THE GREATEST LUXURY AND EXPENSE WE CAN EVER AFFORD! WORD!
We offer to ourselves moments full of music, loud music, allowing us to dream and to forget and are only for us! Only for us! We, grown people, need this!
Rule number #3 for a good mood – time spent together – working together!
Do we let the spruce hedge grow out or do we trim it? I pondered for quite some time. Since our spruce hedge was not taken care of for years, I thought maybe we should let the trees grow out (let them grow tall), but still we decided that we trim them. Also we decided that we make our life easier and take out the plantation of buckthorn that has been growing well as weed, and also some old trees. We had ca 100+ full-grown buckthorn bushes, in a way that was a decent plantation, yet buckthorn spreads as well as the lilac… eventually any nearby spot of ground will be covered by it. We took out the entire buckthorn plantation + many big old trees. Right near the gate there were two old elm trees, both suffering from some kind of disease, these, too, were taken out. Thus, this year several trees were cut down and the roots were also taken out. Taking the roots out is a rather complicated issue. It is easier with the smaller trees, but we had quite a hard time with the bigger trees.. we even tried to get them out with a vehicle (see the video!).. hahaa. Finally a fire helped out…
Which tools should one use?? From ancient times we had a Metabo saw with cord, and also a Makita saw from recent times with a battery. It is definitely more convenient to use tools that have a battery. With the Makita saw the larger outstanding branches from the spruce hedge were cut off and Raido did the hedge walls and upper part of the hedge with the Metabo saw. The cord made the working process more difficult. It is comfortable to work with tools with no cord.
In the evening we burned the branches, played the darts and ate homemade pizza and my world’s best whipped cream cake! Life is amazing when you have such good friends! My sisters are super cool! And Allan, I love you so much! 🙂
Do read also my previous blog posts (all posts are available in four languages – Estonian, Finnish, Swedish and English!)
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