Christmas cookies

Yesterday we had a lot of people home for our "Christmas tradition", which has been slightly modified from the past years. Instead of having a dinner, we enlarge the circle of friends in order to have a nice afternoon together.

We spent the Saturday preparing for the big event (afterall, we expected around 20 guests), buying some drinks, cookies and pastries and baking some stuff ourselves. We baked a saffron cake, which I like very much and some cookies. Differently from the past years, I decided to NOT bake the gingerbreads (pepparkakor) but go for something that according to Giallo Zafferano could be italian Christmas cookies.

To be perfectly honest, I believe the cookies can be prepared/eaten in whatever period of the year, but let's make them a Christmas thing, nevertheless.

Honey and Poppy seeds Cookies
Ingredients for around 40 cookies

• 60gr of butter
• 160gr of flour
• 80gr of potato starch
• half a bag of powed yeast (equivalent to 25gr of fresh yeast)
• two spoons of grated lemon zest
• 1 spoon of honey
• 1 spoon of poppy seeds
• 1 egg
• 100 gr sugar

Mix the flour, the poppy seeds, the lemon zest and the starch in a bowl.

Mix the butter with the sugar until it will become a soft, spongy, cream (for doing this I have been using a kitchen aid). Add the egg and the honey to the cream and continue mixing until the cream becomes smooth. Finally, add the yeast.

After this step, I have taken the cream out from the kitchen aid and put it in a big bowl. I add the flour mix to the cream and start to mix everything again with a fork, this time. Once it has a decent consistency I start to use the hands so that everything becomes homogeneous and compact.
Turn on the oven to 180 degrees and put a bit of flour on a kitchen bench. Stretch the dough with a rolling pin to 1,5cm. Cut out the cookies of the shape you want - we actually did them a bit thinner than this.
Bake them for 13-15 minutes (if 1,5 cm high) and let them rest few minutes after taking them out of the oven.
A little twist to the recipe is to brush them with milk and dust them with a bit of sugar before baking them.
Enjoy!

Italian weaning

We are in that time frame where we are teaching/learning to give the so-called "solid food" to our daughter. This is of course not an easy job per se' and we have been very lucky to get an infection just at the beginning of this magical adventure, making it almost impossible for a couple of weeks.

Here in Sweden, the figure of the pediatrician is mystical and rarely seen during the check-ups, we are instead followed by some nurses that, except for the medical aspects, they cover what the pediatrician does in other countries (e.g. Italy).

I am not very fond of this approach, but well, we have to live with it, so there is not so much one can do about it. Of course, one can be very lucky and get a very nice and professional nurse, as one could get a very lousy doctor.
Anyway, this was not supposed to be a post about the differences in the healthcare system for a child...so, let's go back to the original subject.

In Italy, the doctor usually gives some precise indications about what the child should eat based on the background of the kid (if he was born early, the weight, other problems) and on the medical believes the doctor is following, because, of course, there are different studies proofing different things all the time.
Here instead, we got some pages of a book to read and some "oral guidelines" provided by the nurses. I read the pages of the book and I was very very uncomfortable with such scarce guidelines that do not take in consideration that every baby is different.

A lot of people also forget that our child is half italian. This means that she should get a good dose of Italian culture, and not just in form of music, literature and language (which I am trying to preserve despite living in another country) but also through our food and the highly famous mediterrean diet.
We have also discussed it at home and we have agreed in following the italian guidelines for weaning a child, since it is actually much more schematic and it gives the bases for the mediterrean diet.
In fact, it is our belief to think that babies should learn to eat food and tastes from the very beginning and we have noticed that this is true when we have met and it took a while to make Mattias understanding, for example, how a risotto should taste.

Decised, I have gone to one of the meeting with the nurses and declared I was going to follow this approach. I have got discouraged because "of course, kids grow up also in this country and I have heard strange things about other places traditions", however, I promptly translated the material I got from a friend of mine and send it over, just they could finally be quiet (and they didn't).
All the schema and the suggestions are based on plenty of experience. Different kind of food is inserted gradually in the diet based on the nutrition properties, how easy it is to digest, how likeable it is by the kid, and what kind of risks of allergies or intollerances it could determine.

For example, despite the nurse words about demonizing fruit for being too sweet and not allowing kids to eat anything else afterwards, we start giving some spoons of fruit before starting to substitute meals with "proper" food. This so that the kid can get used to use the spoon, swallow food and eat in a complete different way. Apples and pears have been the starting point for many kids, still, most of them have learnt to eat also other kind of food when it was the right time.

A key ingredient when we speak about the meal is olive oil. Since Isabella has stopped growing in weight for a reason or another, I have got recommended twice to use margarine with the excuse that "kids think olive oil has a too sharp taste", which I think is a ridiculous statement considering that all south of Europe base their weaning on olive oil (how do these kids eat, otherwise!?) and that doesn't consider my culture whatsoever. We want to teach our daughter to eat as an Italian, and why should she learn to eat a chemical product when we have the best fat nature has to offer available?

Let's not talk about the suggestion to give gruel to Isabella, typical Swedish invention, which is not that bad, if it was not that it seems like a very strange chemical mix (I will prefer to add some of our traditional cookies, which have never killed any italian nor our teeth to her milk for making it more appetizing) although I said I didn't want to, or others that have come suggesting us to give her porridge not once but twice per day when instead our diet is based on pasta?
I have realized why Italians do not get fat by eating pasta twice per day! Pasta, this evil evil ingredient in people food! And the reason is because we are used from the very beginning to eat it so often, because our metabolism is "taught" to deal with it from the start!
(and yes, there are statistics stating that italian kids are among the fattest in Europe, but that is because of the industrial-produced snacks, not surely for the "abuse" of pasta that is part of our everyday diet).

Have I said everything already? Well, no.
Of course, also Italian mothers, especially the ones that work, do not have the possibility to cook every single meal for their babies and when it is impossible, they use pre-made baby food, but at least 90% make by themselves the base for every meal, which is a vegetable broth.
But in most of the schemas written by the doctors, at the certain point one abandons the pre-made meat for switching to the fresh one...
And preparing food for Isabella is not taking more than 10 minutes every day, although there is a peak of time spent in the kithen for her once per week.

I prepare the vegetable broth, choosing different seasonal vegetables (that I can add to the collection, following the "holy" schema) once per week, I separate the vegetables from the broth for convenience, but I know many mothers do keep every together at a certain point. I pack everything in small containers and put everything in the fridge, so that I have a portion ready for every meal.

Broth and cream made with pumpkin, carrot, fennel, lattuce and celery  

I haven't yet started to give her fish, but I have recently started with meat and I bought fresh meat, grinded it finely and finally froze it in small portions ready to be taken, cooked (right now steam-cooked) and given to her.
The fruit is fresh - it doesn't require more than few minutes for being peeled and smashed in some way.
We want to make her taste "real" food, not something that I would not eat not even under threat.

I am probably being an extremist and being very unflexible in the "Swedish context" but, well, for us it is important to teach her to eat nice food, so, why not, if we have the patience and the will (and a bit of time, also) to do as we wish?

Candles production

Thanks to the massive amount of candles leftovers, that my friend Johanna gave me at the end of last winter, I have, once more, managed to start the production of candles, according to my rulebook (which, by the way, is the most popular post I've ever written).

Please, if you have candles leftovers, be very welcome to bring them over :)

Steam

Last Saturday we had the opportunity to organize a game event, by collecting a bunch of nerds and paying a board game.
This time we tried something new and the selected game was called Steam.
Trains and Germany and strategy. This is not the first time I see this combination in a board game.

The game mechanics were quite simple, after one round and a bit of concentration, it was possible to play quite smoothly, although, as we are tricky players, questions are often asked for testing the rules and the game-owner rules knowledge, of course.

Copyright Mattias Pettersson ©

We played the game following the newbie sets of game rules, and despite that, the game was quite exciting and it was not easy to predict who would win it (although, the player that was clearly leading won anyway).

The game is structured according to 7-8 rounds. During each turn a player needs to select an ability for that turn (for example, he will be the first player during next turn), then it will be time to build a railroad path, move the goods over the railroad, collect the money or get another loan.
What is quite fascinating is that there is a small economic system connected to the execution of each step. Usually, in a way or in another, one gets granted a certain amount of money. Here, instead, one has to take the risk of getting a loan and balance it up.

I am not surprised that there are several variants of the game (and the game itself is a variation of another game, Age of Steams, it seems) since the platform is quite simple and of course, the setting can variate from Germany to wherever.

I am looking forward to test the game with the advance rule set. Maybe instead of letting someone else win, I will show off my strategical skills? :-)

Physalis

Last year, I started to cultivate some things in our balcony. This year, we were with my parents in a plants shop, and I decided to try something new. My father suggested his passion: tomatoes. However, I thought that that requires too much work and in my balcony it would get too many insects/diseases/whatever. When I saw a small physalis plant, I got hooked into it: it luckily stated that it was "easy to handle" and that ended up in our purchase.

The plant turned out not that hard to handle as it promised. I planted it in my big vase in May and, since then, it has grown rapidly to become a real plant (we can't open the window anymore...).

I was expecting it to have flowers in the beginning of the summer and fruits around August/September. However, nothing happened until very late in August. When searching information about it, I read that the first year the plant doesn't produce any fruit. I was disappointed but then mentally prepared for this (and I didn't know that the plant should survive the winter) when I started to observe the first flowers. They are quite small and yellow and, unfortunately, being the plant not in the ideal environment, I lost many flowers on the go...

The Physalis requires surely sun, but not too much constant warmth. Or if it is warm, it wants also a lot of water. Many times, at the end of the day, it looked like it had been "cooked", but with a bit of water, the day after it looked very fine again. Without the sun, the leaves look pale and boring: right now, there is not so much sun anymore and, in fact, they are having a not so fancy appearance.

It needs to be planted in a big vase - if not directly on the ground (I am not sure it would be ok with the climate here, though), since the roots become quite impressive. Luckily, in the vase where I planted it I managed to squeeze just a little plant of chilly, so there has been, it seems, enough space for both of them.

It is now November and there are some "objects" that clearly look like potential fruits. I wonder if inside there there is really something, or it is just an illusion.Will we eat them for Christmas??? :)

Where to make a baby eat (or at least try to)...

Being Isabella around 6 months, we thought it was big time to buy her an high chair where she could sit and eat. Or at least, thinking of eating at least, since that is not the easiest step ever...(and different astral conjunctions haven't helped us at all, so far).

Here in Sweden, THE high chair is the Tripp Trapp - Stokke, which had almost seduced us as well. However, we resisted such expensive temptation, since we thought (clearly) that it was quite expensive (did I say already that it was expensive?) and it didn't have one of the most important features (in our little world): the brick. Yeah. We know that for a *little* sum you can get a plastic fancy tray to put on your table. But our table is too fancy for such a fancy item and we decided to save that little sum of money (not so little, if you think that that is just a piece of plastic).

We almost fell for Italian design. But we betrayed my motherland for the simple reason that the whole chair was a big, clumsy, piece of extremely-washable plastic. Probably practical, it could be also folded so it would take relatively less space. However, each of those chairs looked enormous and I was seeing already my agile husband tripping two hundred times on the extended legs.
Chicco, and its Polly 2 in 1 (Mattias had hard time to understand what was the 2 in 1 applied concept) was one of the possible candidates. However, it didn't convince me at all (and yes, it was me taking control over the operation).

Then. I decided to at least search for the high chair that my sister-in-law purchased. She said "it is like the Stokke, but with the brick". Thank God, despite being a mother and breastfeeding, I still have some glimmer of a working memory. The brand was Svan and incredibly enough, it is Swedish.
We look at the main chair, but I saw again Mattias stumbling around or me, lifting the chair up and moving it with the grace of an elephant, in order to make Isabella see her mother in her obsessive-compulsive cleaning mode.
However, exploring the website, we found the perfect chair for us: High Chair Colorline Anka, that is duck-shaped. Or at least, resembling a duck.

Having wonderful experiences of purchasing "blindly" from the internet, we really wanted to see real-life this chair. Unfortunately, it was not possible.
After some extra thinking (a couple of seconds), I decided that it was worthy a try. The chair was relatively cheap, the shipping cost included in the price, it was in wood as we wanted, washable as the obsessive-cleaning-freak behavior required and with the holy brick.

What can I say? The chair arrived, the package was lighter than I thought, once opened there was very little to mount (a strange Swedish product, if I may say so...) and it is very very compact. Isabella seems liking it very much and, even though it is not as fancy as the (in our opinion) overrated Tripp Trapp (yeah, it is overrated also when bought through Blocket and repainted!), it suits all our extremely peculiar wishes.
I am actually astonished that Swedish people are not up to a Swedish product and do prefer a Norwegian one?! What happened to the world???? :)

Char cartouche

I must say that the Google translation of the name of this dish sounds incredibly fancy. I had no idea how to say this before today! Anyway, the dish consists simply of cooking a fish from the trout family, in the oven, sealed in aluminum foil. The specific fish here is what I would have called simply salmerino, in italian, and röding, in swedish.

The dish in itself doesn't require too much preparation, but is quite tasty and has a "built-int" nice presentation.
The trick consists in buying the right fish, that is, it has to be fresh enough or the result will be miserable.

Ingredients:

• a fish of the desired size, headless and cleaned
• a bunch of rosemary
• a bunch of fennel seeds
• half a lemon
• a spoon of olive oil
• black pepper & salt

After cleaning and drying very well the fish, I put it on the aluminum foil. I cover it with the spoon of olive oil and I start to season it with fennel, rosemary, pepper and salt, putting them both in the inside of the fish as well as the outside.
I squeeze the lemon juice on the fish and I slice a couple of slices from the half-lemon. The slices can be put both on the fish and inside the fish, I think inside the fish gives more taste.

After the fish is properly seasoned, I close carefully the aluminum foil and I put it  in an oven pan, in the warm oven, previously heated to 180 degrees. I let it cook for 20 minutes, then I switch the oven settings to grill and let the fish grill for 10 more minutes.

Once the fish is ready I take it out of the oven and open the foil.

It is now time to clean the fish. Since it is cooked, it is quite easy to remove both the bones and the skin, although with this type of fish it is almost impossible to have it bone-free.
Once that is done, the fish is ready to serve!