Nettle Soup

 To most people stinging nettles are a very annoying weed that grows at the end of the garden and stings every time you try to get rid of it. However stinging nettles are also a very nutritious plant full of vitamins and minerals, especially iron. They also contain more protein then any other native plant.

 My girls have been ill for a few weeks now with coughs and colds, so I have made them some very delicious nettle soup to fill them up with goodness.

 Using gloves I picked the tops of some young nettles. I then fried some onion and added a few potatoes and some celery. I added some frozen chicken stock I had made a while ago. After everything was cooked, I added the nettles and let it simmer for a few more minutes.  I used a soup blender to blended it all, this is necessary as the nettles are quite fibrous.  This soup has a really delicious and earthy taste.  You can just taste the goodness as you eat and best of all the girls really love it.   

Granola

Now that the weather is warmer my girls are not so keen on eating porridge for  breakfast anymore but I have lots of oats waiting to be eaten. They want to eat muesli again, so I got the idea to try and make some granola using the leftover oats.  I found lots of different recipes using different ingredients and I came to the conclusion that granola can be made with anything you fancy.  I made it using whatever I could fined in the cupboard. 

A Peg Bag

The other day I finely had a bit of creative inspiration, so I  dusted off the sowing machine and got busy.  The last few weeks have been warm and sunny, the perfect weather for drying the washing outside. But after the winter I found that most of my pegs were lost or broken because I always leave them on the washing line.  So I have bought myself some nice new pegs and I made made myself and nice new peg bag. 

I bought some oil cloth fabric so that if I leave it out in the rain (which I am sure I will) it will still keep its shape and hopefully the pegs dry. 
I used a child's size coat hanger and cut around it to get the shape of the bag.  



I then cut a whole and hemmed the edge of it.  Then I sewed the bag together turned it the right way around and put my coat hanger in. And then most importantly, I hung the washing out.  ;-)  

Spring

  The last few days have been really warm and lovely and spring is in the air.  The birds have been waking us up at 6am, one of the down sides to living in a yurt is, that it is not very sound or light proof. So we have all turned in to early birds.  But it is not so bad, this time of year always fills me with energy. 
I unexpectedly found myself home alone yesterday which meant I had some time to make some little spring things for the seasonal table.  
After that I sowed some salad and lots of other yummy things in the green house. This was the high light of my day, the sun was shining and its was so hot in the green house it felt like summer and it made me very excited for all the lovely warm sunny days to come.  

Winter in a Yurt

A lot of people have been asking me what it is like to live in a yurt in winter and especially when the weather is as cold as it is now.  This past week the temperature has been below 0°C during the day, and last night it was -15°C. Yesterday it snowed and everything has been covered with a beautiful white blanket.

Rainy afternoons are for Cake making

 It was one of those days again, when the rain does not stop and the girls get fed up with being cooped up inside all day.  Its moments like those that are perfected for cake making. There is plenty of time to make, eat, enjoy the cake and of course clean up the mess.  So the girls and I made cup cakes.   

I used one of Nigella's cupcake recipes but I didn't have enough sugar so I used some Stevia as well. Stevia is a natural sweetener extract from a plant called Stevia Rebaudiana Bertoni. It is a little bush that grows in Brazil and has been used as a sweetener for the past 400 years.  It is much healthier then Sugar and all other food sweeteners, but for some reason it was illegal in Europe until 1 month ago and still is in the USA. Now it is available to buy in most health food shops.  The only problem with stevia is that it is about 300% sweeter then sugar and only a very small amount is needed.  This means that when using it for cake making it is hard to work out the corrected proportions.  So using stevia is a little bit experimental for now.  
Nigella's recipe says to use 125g of sugar but I only had 50g so I added 10 drops of liquid stevia and added more flour to make up the bulk.  The cakes were not very sweet but I like that.  Here is the recipe I came up with.

Winter

 I have been waiting for winter for the past two months now, but it just doesn't seen to come.  Although the past week has been a bit colder, there is just no sign of snow. I love snow so much, hoping for it and enjoying it gets me through the winter.   

This is our little winter table, its a bit bleak this year but I hope and if we ask king winter nicely he will bring us some snow soon.

  Let it snow, let it snow, 

Let it snow.  

Home made Eclairs

 We went to a party on the weekend and we were asked to bring with us something to nibble. So we made eclairs.  When my boyfriend was 15 years old he worked every Saturday night in a bakery making all the delicious dreads and pastries that bakeries sell. One of the pastries being my favourite handmade eclairs.  Every now and then he feels inspired to make them and this time I asked him for the recipe. 

-The Dough.
Ingredients: 
¼ lt. Water, 
100gr butter, 
150gr 00 Flour, 
3 1/2 Eggs, 
½ tbs. Icing sugar.