Figs

Our June and part of July was definitely dominated by our fig harvest. Our little tree was producing like never before! When we planted it 11 years ago, it was a merely a little stick, maybe a foot tall.

Every day for a few weeks we picked a couple of bowls of figs. Luckly they don't all ripen at the same time.

I bought a food dehydrator and dried what I thought where huge amounts of figs.

We indeed had a couple of big containers filled with dried figs and then Daniel discovered a recipe for a rye sourdough bread with dried figs, which is excellent and freezes really well. So, we've already used most of the dried figs and have decided that next year, we'll dry even more of them. 

Of course, we also made a lot of fig jam, some with lavender, another batch with thyme and also a few jars with orange blossom water.

All of them delicious! 

We made a rustic fig tart, 

fig pizza with goat cheese, caramelized onion and pine nuts, 

but the best recipe that Daniel found this year is for Roasted Fig Agrodolce. We made several batches for the freezer and it is delicious just on crackers or - like in the photo below - as an appetizer on toasted baguette with goat cheese or cream cheese. Next year, I'll definitely make more of that to freeze!

To be honest, I was glad when the fig season was finally over, but I'm happy we get to enjoy the jams, the dried figs and agrodolce in the freezer yet for some time to come.

❧ Silke

Recipe: Pretzel Buns

As soon as the latest issue of LandLust Magazine hits the shelves in Germany, my dad sends me a copy here to the US. I love this magazine - reading it and looking at the pictures is like a mini escape to Germany. 

So, when this latest issue had recipes for pretzels and pretzel buns, I knew I had to try making them immediately. As long as I can remember, I have loved pretzels. Growing up in Germany, they were a regular part of my life. And while we can find them here now once in a while, they aren't quite the same.

 So, by popular request on Facebook, I translated the recipe and adapted it to American ingredients.


Pretzel Buns
(makes about 16 buns)

Ingredients: 

500g All-Purpose Flour
2 1/4 teaspoon dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt
40g softened butter

For the brine:
50g baking soda

Possible toppings:
coarse salt,
seeds (sesame, poppy, pumpkin, sunflower),
or a little grated cheese

1. Dissolve yeast and sugar in 320ml lukewarm water.
2. Using the dough hook on the mixer, work the flour, salt and softened butter into the yeast water. Knead the soft dough for at least five minutes (I had to add a little more flour to keep the dough from sticking).
3. Form the dough into a ball, put into a large bowl, cover and allow to rise for either 2 hours at room temperature or over night in the refrigerator. (I allowed it to rise over night and made the buns for breakfast.)
4. After the dough has risen, divide it into 16 equal parts, form each one of them into a small ball, cover and allow to rest for 15 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 465 degrees F (240 C).
5. Meanwhile bring 1.5 liters of water to a simmer. Add the baking soda carefully as it will foam quite a bit initially.
6. Add three or four of the dough buns at a time to the simmering water for about 45 seconds, turning them once.
7. Remove from the water, allow excess water to drip off and put on a parchment-lined baking sheet. (I used a Silpat baking mat, which worked great.) With a sharp knife, cut a cross into the top of each bun and sprinkle with your topping of choice. Allow to rest for 15 minutes.
8. Bake for 15 minutes or until nicely browned and your kitchen smells like a German bakery.
9. Try not to devour all of them. By yourself. In one sitting.

Enjoy!! Easy and delicious! And if you make the dough the night before, you can have fresh buns for breakfast. Also, they freeze really well.

A note: This recipe is easiest if you have an electronic kitchen scale that also measures in grams. For the liquids, 1 ml is equal to 1 gram, so you can weigh them on the scale as well.

Tomorrow, I'll have a bunch of art for you! In the meantime, have a beautiful Thursday!

❧ Silke

From the Kitchen

As many of you know, I love creating in the kitchen! Not necessarily my own recipes, but creating delicious food from a variety of good ingredients. And my first love has always been and still is baking. My mother was an excellent cook, but she didn't like baking and so I got to do all the baking, much of which I learned from my grandmother and my aunt Inge.

If you like baking bread of if you want to start baking your own bread, but don't have the hours to watch the dough rise repeatedly, these two bread baking books are for you! I use them all the time - and when they say "five minutes a day," it's quite true! The loaf I made here is their European country bread, which I altered a little by increasing the amounts of rye and whole flours. It is soooo good! Each recipe makes enough dough for several loaves. You keep the dough in the fridge and bake the bread as you need it during the week. Fantastic!!

This next cookbook I got at the library. I got a very cheap copy at one point for my kindle (it was one of the almost free bargains one day), but I wanted to check out a hardcopy to get a better feel for it. It's all about preserving - canning, pickling, curing or smoking. Very interesting and it has a few really good recipes I want to try.

Now here's a new cookbook that is quite amazing. It reminds me of the way my mother and grandmother often cooked while I was growing up - farm to table. I read the entire book and want to make almost every recipe in it! Here I tried the mussels cooked in hard apple cider with leeks and apples. They were amazing!!

Ok, these next two pictures are also recipes from this last book. But I need to give you a little background story first. When I was growing up my dad was always into healthy living (and he still is). We kids were not always convinced, especially when we all "got to" drink cider vinegar with honey for a while. Of course, now I know how good all of these weird things really are! The cider vinegar, the grainy bread, nuts and seeds, whole grain everything, etc.

Among other things, my mom made our own yogurt for quite a while, which I always liked way better than the store bought kind.  So again, as I mentioned in my last post, I feel like I am coming full circle now making my very own yogurt. I decided to buy a starter culture for a yogurt that ferments at room temperature. Once this batch is done, I can use a little bit of it to start the next batch.

And then there's kefir! I remember my mom and dad getting a milk kefir culture from some friends of theirs and making and drinking kefir for a good long time. We kids thought it was disgusting. It looked like cauliflower to me and the taste was not something I liked at all back then. The culture I got here is for water kefir, which I've never tried. Both the yogurt and the kefir need a couple of days to be ready, so when they are, I will update on how the experiment is going...

And lastly ... a new love: oatmeal from steel cut oats! How amazing. How creamy. How delicious. How warming. And how had I never tried this before?! It's definitely a staple in my pantry now, especially during the colder winter months!

Here's wishing you a week filled with good food!

With lots of love,

❧ Silke

The Mystery & Magic of Change

Change - it happens every moment of every day and it's definitely not always welcome in my life. Theoretically I like change just fine, but sometimes it's easier to like it in my mind than in my actual life.

But then I realized how many of the things I love to do aren't done unless I put them through a deliberate process of transformation. Like the felted slippers I make every year.

They go from being a ball of yarn to being knitted into giant socks. (Do you notice how Winslow isn't impressed in the photo below?!)

Then they go into the washing machine, which adds water and heat and friction...

 ... and when they come out: perfect!! (For anyone interested, this is the pattern I use, click on the link: Felted Slipper Socks. The $5 I paid for the pattern has been a very worthwhile investment!)

Another example of welcome change is baking. Yesterday I made bread and had a moment of marvel.

Add liquid to the dry ingredients and you get this:

Then add heat and the result is the most delicious bread! Again: perfect. Not lasting, but perfect at that moment.

It's really not much different from life, is it? Everything has to go through change in order to become more, different and a new version of "perfect in the moment." No matter how much I try to hold on sometimes, nothing ever stays the same. And really, when I think about my life and where it is now, that is perfect in itself. What I need to remember is that different does not automatically mean worse. In fact it can mean better and better and better!

Here are some beautiful flowers for you, gorgeous souls! Perfection in the moment!

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday!!

❧ Silke

Granola Bars - well, sort of...

I have made quite a few recipes from this cookbook and all of them have been excellent! Most excellent! If we ever make it back to London, I want to eat at one of his restaurants. For sure!! 

Ok, so yesterday with the weather nice and cool I felt like baking. Oh, whom am I kidding? I always feel like baking! I had decided to make the granola bars from this book. Hm. It started out fine, but I got somewhat hung up on the cooking the caramel part. The instructions weren't precise and I am not patient. At all!

It looked fine and it dumped out of the baking form fine after it was done, but then when I tried to cut it after it cooled down, this happened:

Granola bars? I think not! More like granola crumble. But most delicious granola crumble. Did I care that I had to eat it with a spoon? What do you think? ;-) In fact, I had to stop myself from eating the whole thing in one sitting!

So this morning, instead of packing a nice granola bar in Daniel's lunch bag, I gave him a little tub of the good stuff with a spoon. I have a feeling he won't mind either.

Of course I'll give this another try. I don't like to be defeated by recipes. Next time I'll try to be more patient and cook the caramel longer so that it hardens more and glues all the good bits together.

Sending you love and gooey goodness!

❧ Silke
P.S. How do you like my chicken mug? My sister-in-law gave to it me a couple of years back and it's still my favorite "good morning, have a fun day" mug.

P.P.S. The weather is still blustery and cool and I LOVE it!! I know it'll get warmer again tomorrow and the rest of the week, but for today I'm enjoying feeling chilled... I might have to bake something else. Who know?!

Happy First Day of Fall!

Fall is here and I'm doing the happy dance! And - like a miracle here in the warm south - we are having a truly fall-like day.

It is cloudy and slightly rainy, blustery and cool. I cannot describe to you how giddy that makes me...

And outward signs of fall are here as well. Just look at our fig tree below. It's almost bare! It starts losing its leaves in August when we are still sweating profusely. Every year I think it must be sick or confused, but it always turns out to be right on fig-tree-time getting ready for winter.

Our crepe myrtle leaves turn the prettiest colors before they fall.

And the crepe myrtle tree is also starting to look bare. Both the fig tree and this one look beautiful all winter long without leaves and their gorgeous branch structures showing.

Fall also means that the berries on our beauty berry bushes are turning their bright bright pink color. Don't they look unreal? And guess who likes to eat them? The mockingbirds. We never see them in our backyard unless these berries are ripe. I recently read that you can make really tasty jelly from the berries and that the whole bush has serious mosquito repellent action. I might have to sew some clothes from the leaves for me for next summer...  Seriously considering it!

Tucker, one of our outdoor kitties is happy as well that it's getting cooler. Ok, you can see it's not really cold yet - I'm still barefoot and wearing flip-flops, but it's cool enough to know that summer is on the way out! That's good enough for me. And Tucker.

Fall is my "favoritest" (to quote Derek from the wonderful Netflix series by that same name) season. It holds the promise of all that I love: Knitting and crocheting soft and warm goodies. (These beauties are in my Etsy shop just waiting for you!)

Baking! Oh, how I love to bake! I've now made these delicious and good-for-you blueberry muffins a couple of times and they are yummy. You can find the recipe by clicking here.  I substituted coconut palm sugar for the brown sugar, left out the cinnamon on the second batch and used frozen wild blueberries. The muffins freeze great to have on hand for a little snack now and then. In fact, I might need one right now!

And soup! I could eat soup every day!! And this one is particularly easy and delicious. So delicious that I'll share the recipe with you!  (The bread is the Swedish Limpa Bread - excellent!! -  from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. If you want to make hassle free breads, check out their website. They also have all kinds of gluten-free recipes for those of you who need to watch your gluten intake.)

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Green Chile Cream
from Dinner at the Authentic Cafe

One 2-pound butternut squash
3 T olive oil
2 medium-size shallots, minced (2 T)
1/4 t ground nutmeg
1/4 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t ground white pepper
2 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup mild honey, such as orange
2 t kosher salt (I use sea salt)

1. Preheat oven to 400℉.

2. Rub the squash with 1 T of the oil, place it in a small shallow baking pan, and roast until the skin splits and the squash is tender when pierced with a knife, about 1 hour. Let the squash cool slightly, then peel it, cut it in half, and remove the seeds and the inner membranes to which the seeds are connected. Mash the pulp. You should have about 3 cups.

3. Heat a large, nonreactive saucepan over low heat. Add the remaining oil and heat it, about 1 minute. Cook the shallots, stirring occasionally, until translucent, about 1 minute, then add the spices and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute.

4. Place the squash pulp in the same pan and cook it, stirring constantly to prevent sticking, for 2 minutes. Add the water and bring the soup to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low and add the honey and salt.

5. Simmer the soup, stirring often to keep it from sticking, for 30 minutes. Puree the soup in a blender, food processor or in the pan using a hand-held blender.

6. Ladle the soup into bowls and place a dollop of Green Chile Cream on top. Serve immediately.


Green Chile Cream

1 medium-size poblano chile
1 medium-size jalapeño chile
1 t olive oil
1 1/2 T sour cream or crème fraîche
1/2 t kosher salt
pinch ground white pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 400℉. Rub the chilies with the oil and place them in a small shallow baking pan. Roast them until the skin begins to blister, about 20 minutes. This may be done at the same time you are roasting the butternut squash for the Roasted Butternut Squash Soup. Do not overcook the chile or the flesh will become to fragile to handle. Place the chilies in a small, nonreactive bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let them "sweat" for 5 minutes. Peel the outer skin from the chilies and remove the stems and seeds.

2. Place all the ingredients in a blender or food processor (I cut everything up quite small and then use my hand-held blender to blend it) until very smooth (we personally don't mind it a little chunky).

***********************
This may look involved, but it really isn't. If you roast the chilies along with the squash, then that's all done at the same time. The rest is easy peasy. And so good! The soup is almost sweet and the chile cream has a nice kick - a perfect combo!

I hope you are having at least as good a day as I am having!! Enjoy this Autumnal Equinox with it's balance between night and day, light and dark.

With much love and fall-giddiness,

❧ Silke

P.S. I can still tell that I had a clerical job for many years - I typed up that recipe like the wind! The wind!! I totally rock. ;-)

Felted Slippers and Banana Bread

Do you remember the giant socks from yesterday's post? Well here's the before

...and the after picture. I included the shell in both photos so you can get an idea of the size change when they are washed and felted and warm and fluffy.

The perfect fit and so nice and toasty! If you are interested, there's a link to the pattern in my last post.   I bought it on Etsy some years ago and it's still being offered.

Now, let's talk about Pinterest. I know many of you who are on Pinterest all the time and are pinning away happily. I am hardly ever on it and this is why: it gets me to start new projects every time. I hadn't been on Pinterest yesterday for more than five minutes before I found this recipe for Greek yogurt banana bread.

I realized I had all the ingredients on hand and started making it immediately. Big success!! I used coconut palm sugar instead of the white sugar because I thought the caramel flavor would go well with the rest of the ingredients and it does!

Also, I baked it in a normal-sized loaf pan instead of the mini pans from the recipe and baked it for about 65 minutes. I'm going to slice it all up and freeze it for a convenient and delicious snack when I need one.

And right now, there's a soup in the crockpot - also a Pinterest recipe I found yesterday. It's all good, but Pinterest certainly has the ability to start me on projects I hadn't planned for...

Wishing you a delicious day. With much warmth. And bright colors. And maybe a slice of banana bread...

P.S. I had originally linked to the wrong banana bread recipe, so if you get this post via e-mail, you'll need to go to my blog to find the correct link.

❧ Silke

Good Bread and What a Difference a Day can make

Those of you following my blog for a while know that I'm a nut for good bread! I love it! Probably more than any other food. And I like to bake my own and do so every week. This was a fun recipe with very little hands-on time. It's a 100% whole wheat variation on the original No-Knead Bread.

You mix the dough together with a spatula and then just let it sit at room temperature and rise for 12 to 15 hours. After that you stretch and fold the dough a few times and then let it rise for another 1 1/2 hours on a tea towel.

You heat a lidded cast-iron pan in the oven to 450 degrees and dump the dough into the hot pan, close it with the lid and bake it first with the lid on and then off.

And, voilà, a beautiful crunchy loaf of whole wheat bread. You can find the detailed recipe here.  Next time I'll try a variation with rye flour and soaked grains.

Now to the other news. I caught a really tenacious and bad cold virus just around Thanksgiving and it has hung on until now, getting better at times and then returning. The latest variation was a really sore throat which I've had for over a week. And no energy. I've been resting and taking good care of myself and finally today I feel better. I think I got more done today than I have in the past two weeks! I'm glad and I feel for anyone who has gotten sick with this virus or the flu this winter.

I wish you perfect health and a great day!!

❧ Silke