bless this mess

x listen (album :: "bless this mess", by lisa mitchell) x

the end of winter break ...

things I will miss

+ bubble-blowing in the garden

+ lazing around, doing not much at all

+ borrowing music from the library (yeah, I didn't know that was possible either!) such as lisa mitchell's beautiful album: bless this mess. / link above

+ grey skies, overcast weather giving me an excuse to read in the warmth

+ little every day adventures

+ the non-drama of the holidays (I'm not looking forward to the rush-rush-rush-no-don't-look-up-from-your-studies-to-enjoy-life-sorry-that's-not-tolerated)

+ going to the cinemas in the morning, as opposed to during nighttime - just because

+ impromptu baking or cooking at any hour

things I'm looking forward to

ok. no, guys I'm determined to make this work, positive attitude.

+ the new teachers, the new school-year. I'm also looking forward to the all the new things I'm going to learn and the new approaches I'll take.

What about you? What have been the highlights of your break?

Have a lovely weekend, friends.

xo

lts m

rhubarb + apple nutty crumble || recipe

I stumbled upon this recipe while looking through my mother's cook book La Tartine Gourmande: Recipes for an Inspired Life by Beatrice Peltre. I'm not a huge fan of crumbles but I must say that this one was a huge success. The nut and rhubarb makes a beautiful contrast and my whole family really enjoyed it, Mima included.

Ingredients

For the fruit

• 4 rhubarb stalks (350 g; 12 1/2 oz), peeled and diced
• 2 large McIntosh or Cortland apples, peeled, cored, and diced
• 9 oz (255 g) strawberries, hulled and diced
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract
• 1/4 cup (50 g; 1-¾ oz) blond cane sugar
• Finely grated zest of 1 organic orange
• Unsalted butter, for the ramekins

For the nut crumble

• 1/3 cup (40 g; 1-1/2 oz) hazelnut flour
• 1/3 cup (55 g; 2 oz) sweet rice flour
• 1/3 cup (50 g; 1-3/4 oz) millet flour or amaranth flour
• 1/2 packed cup (100 g; 3-½ oz) light Muscovado sugar
• 1-1/2 oz (40 g) walnuts, coarsely chopped
• 1 oz (30 g) shelled unsalted green pistachios, coarsely chopped
• 1/3 cup (35 g; 1-1/4 oz) rolled oats
• 6 tablespoons (85 g; 3 oz) unsalted
• Butter, diced, at room temperature
• Plain yogurt or crème anglaise

Directions

1  To prepare the fruit crumble: In a bowl, combine the fruit with the lemon extract, sugar, and orange zest; let rest for 30 minutes. Butter eight 1-cup ramekins; set aside.

2  To prepare the nut crumble: In a bowl, combine the hazelnut, sweet rice, and amaranth flour, the brown sugar, walnuts, pistachios, and rolled oats. Add the butter and, using your fingertips, work until coarse crumbles form; cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

3  Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC).

4  Divide the fruit among the ramekins and top with the crumble. Bake the crumbles for 30 to 35 minutes, until the fruit bubbles and the topping is golden. Remove from the oven, let cool slightly, and serve with plain yogurt or crème anglaise.

Serves 6 to 8

a little burnt on the edges... || gluten-free almond coconut bars

here is a gluten-free super-healthy super-yummo recipe to eat for morning tea or for desert. i kinda burnt it on the edges, (so none of my pictures). just to clarify: you want to cook the bars at 200 celsius no more, just sayin'...

More gluten free recipes here.

chin up, beautiful.

at school we have what is called pastoral care. apparently, someone invented pastoral care so that a student can feel united with his or her peers, and do some learning. every week, we would learn how to manage our stress, lives, time etc. i don't know what happened, but this idea sunk very very low. the reality of things is that pastoral care consists of a heap of girls on their phones squealing now and then at some comment or 'like' on facebook, and a heap of sly remarks coming from the boys, and a tired, stressed teacher. i usually kick back with my friends, and prepare for the worst.

today was different. today we started talking about anorexia, and bulimia, and how society has handed us such a distorted image of women that it is hurting girls. daily.
i have a friend whom i care for, and today she burst into tears. i asked her what was wrong and she said that she was afraid.
i asked her why and she said that she was being forced to put on weight. basically at some point last year this girl had thought she was fat, and had started dieting.
first the desert went, then the bread, then the veggies and she had become consumed by a little voice in her mind.
'thinner, come one you can do it, thinner'.
(now, she is seeing help, and has a circle of friends who support her, and who tell her that being healthy and feeling good from the inside is the only thing that can make you beautiful)

in pastoral care today we started talking about ellen degeneres' partners novel: unbearable lightness which talked about these issues.
for a split second the girls and boys and teachers sent out a thought for those girls, and even boys, who were suffering from these ugly, ugly thoughts, and who felt trapped and what they thought were ugly, ugly bodies.

after that, the girls kept on giggling about their facebook accounts, and the boys resumed their nasty weird boy-gossiping. but there was that split-second. i swear there was.

please, if you are in this situation and trying to get out, i want you to know something.

a new blog design + a warm day

Here are a couple of my favourite photos taken this autumn holidays.

Yesterday was what you would call a warm-oh-wow-I-achieved-quite-a-bit-today day. Since it was one of the last days of the holidays, I decided to make the most of it. I woke up late (but not too late, one never wants to wake up too late because the day flies by so quickly), showered, ate breakfast, helped with the gardening, baked a cake (lemon and lime, just if you wanted to know), and worked a lot on my new blog design.

A huge thank you to Jianine for replying to my HTML questions, visit her lovely blog here. The design still needs some tweaking, but I am so excited to have made it from scratch. Tell me your thoughts.

orange madeira cake

Directions // Cake

- Preheat the oven to 180C. Line the base of a round 23 cm cake tin and grease the sides.

- Beat the eggs and sugar until pale and thick (for about five minutes), then add orange juice and zest, flour, milk and melted butter. Beat again for a couple of minutes. You need to get air into the mixture.

- Add the baking powder and beat again for about a minute.

- Pour into the tin and bake for 45-60 minutes, until a skewer plunged into the middle comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, then carefully  turn out the tin of the tin and leave to cool completely on a rack. When the cake is cold, ice it with orange butter icing.

Ingredients // Orange butter icing

100 g soft butter // 2 cups of icing sugar, sifted // 2-3 table spoons orange juice // 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract // 2 table spoons grated orange zest, optional

Directions // Orange butter icing

- Beat the butter until soft and creamy, then beat in the sifted icing sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the orange juice and vanilla and beat again. The mixture should be a soft, spreadable consistency - don't worry about adding a little more icing sugar if it is too runny, you never can have enough of that stuff.

- Dollop over the top of the cold cake and swirl it in messy pretty patterns with a knife. Sprinkle the top with orange zest if desired.

ENJOY!