maandag 31 maart 2014

vrijdag 14 maart 2014

send more mail: to Singapore and Korea






























Today's mail goes to: Asia! One for Corey and one for Hanna. Hope they find you well! 

donderdag 13 maart 2014

a message from Tokyo
































This sweet letter from Hanna was also waiting for me at home when I came back from Turkey. She bought me a nice golden tea spoon and she'd made a wonderful illustration of Japan. I really like her drawings :) Also, what about those Hello Kitty stamps?! Hello Japan!

woensdag 12 maart 2014

RECIPE OF THE WEEK: magic flatbread































A week ago I bought this new cook book, Veg!. And what an amazingly tasty recipes it contains! Last night we had family over for dinner and I made this magic flatbread. It's called magic because you can make various things with it. You can use the bread as pizza crust, as an entree with garlic and olive oil and for instance like I did yesterday as a wrap or fold-bread. For the filling I baked pumpkin in the oven with thyme, baked some suçuk (Turkish sausage) for the meat lovers, chickpeas with mixed herbs, sweet potatoes, grated cucumber with soy yoghurt, rocket salad and for the cheese lovers some goats cheese. I'll share the recipe for the bread here, it's so good with all kind of fillings. This afternoon I had one (the leftover) with some tomato humus, chickpeas, really really really old cheese (this has almost no lactose in it) and some rocket salad! Yum!

For 8 pieces of flatbread, leftovers can be kept in the fridge for 24 hours or you could put them in the freezer.

Ingredients
∆ 250 gr. white flour
∆ 250 gr. bread flour
∆ about 1,5 teaspoon of sea salt
∆ 1 teaspoon of dried yeast
∆ 1 tablespoon of olive oil (plus some extra for the end)
∆ 325 ml of warm water
∆ you could mix some other spices in the dough like dried rosemary, lemon zest, dill or whatever you like. 

How to
Mix the flours together in a large bowl with the salt, yeast and spices. Add the oil and the water and mix together. Knead the dough rhythmically for 5-10 minutes until it's smooth, don't add to much flour otherwise it will get dry. Sprinkle some oil in another bowl and put the dough in there, twist it a little bit so all the dough is covered in oil. Leave it there, covered with a clean towel, for two hours in a warm place. The dough should be twice as big after two hours. 
After two hours you get the dough out of the bowl and sting some holes in it with your fingers. The dough should go back to it's original form. Than make 8 little balls (lemon sized) and put a little bit of flour on the counter. Roll the balls until they're 2-3 mm thick and they are pancake sized (section about 20 cm). You can bake the dough in a heated pan with some olive oil for about 2 minutes each side. Enjoy your dinner!

nominated for the Liebster Award


Rinske (my penpal --> her blog) nominated me for the Liebster Award! This is really nice of her and I'm very happy with it!! I'll explain here what the Liebster Award means. 
The Liebster Award was once invented to bring blogs with less than 3000 followers to attention, nowadays the 'price' is awarded from blogger to blogger to blogs with less than 200 followers. The idea is to get to know the person behind the blog a bit better by answering 11 questions asked by the nominator and pass this forward (the Award and questions) to other blogs you'd like to nominate. Well here it goes, these are the questions Rinske asked me:

1. If you could be an animal for one day, what kind of animal would you be? 
I guess I would be a cat for one day. I think it would be nice to run around the garden, climb the trees, cuddle with the human, sleep in the sun, chase butterflies etc. But of course, this all depends if you'd have a sweet owner and a good life. But still, I would like to see what a cat sees in a day. 

2. Describe your ideal sunday
My favorite sunday would be a sunny day. I would start the day by opening the doors to the garden and drink a cup of tea in the early sunshine. We would go out to the bakery to get some freshly baked bread and visit the greengrocer for some fruits. We would have a breakfast in the garden, still in pj's :). Than in the afternoon we would read books and hang around in the hammock beneath the trees. A perfect chill day.

3. What is your favorite book and why?
This is a difficult question because there are many books I really like. And also because some books would fit a certain phase of time more than others. But, just to name some, I like Secret History and Little Friend by Donna Tartt because she writes so lively and beautiful. The stories are exciting and the characters are well developed. Also the books are quite thick! I love it when you're reading a good book and it seams like there's no end to it. I also like the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. In this book I like the wondering of a little boy through New York City. The book is written through the eyes of the boy, this is well done. Also the book is nicely illustrated, the way the book is designed fits the story. 

4. What songs give you goosebumps?
An example of a song I really like is this one by Jose James and Emily King:
But also I think this song gets to me because I listened to this so often when I was pregnant with Pien ;).


5. What is your ritual before going to bed?
I try to drink some tea before going to bed and most of the time we watch an episode of a series. We're watching the third season of 'Boardwalk Empire' right now. And also we sneak around the bedroom, try not to wake little Pien :D. 

6. Send or receive mail?
Both of course! I love finding the letters in the mailbox, admiring the envelopes and than open them up like a present! But I also love to make a new letter. This is, I must say, the creative part because I try to find a suitable piece of paper, a nice envelope and something extra for the pal I think she'd like. 

7. What is the best trip you've ever made?
Oh! New Zealand without a doubt! (click here for photo's) One year ago we spent 5 weeks in the Land of the -beautiful- white cloud. It was an amazing journey in a small van, traveling both islands, camping near glaciers, volcanoes, rain forests and black sand beaches. It was also a special trip because we just found out we're having a baby and it was our real honeymoon. The nature is so amazingly beautiful and the people are so friendly. This was most certainly the best trip we've ever made. 

8. What are your 3 favorite webshops?
I like the webshop 'Een nieuw Avontuur'  where you can buy lots of paper goods and stationary products. I also like 'Mevrouw de Uil' . It is a webshop with vintage baby goods, furniture, toys etc. And another paper/stationary webshop I really like is 'Paper Stories'

9. Could you describe yourself in 5 words?
Oh wow.. let me see. I would say 'easygoing', 'lovefordetails', 'nostalgic', 'observer', 'cooklover'. 

10. Are you a daydreamer? And what are your daydreams?
I think I am. My daydreams have to do with the future, like what kind of house we would live in, where we want to go this year (on a vacation), what I think is important to do in life and why etc. 

11. What is your quilty pleasure? 
Here in Holland we have a Dutch tv show called DWDD and they have a topic called 'Guilty Pleasures'. Dutch artists cover their guilty pleasure songs (please search for dwdd guilty pleasures on youtube because they are wonderful) so I think Rinske means my guilty pleasure song. I'll enclose the video here. When I was a child I loved the music of Kate Bush. and this is one I secretly love. 



Now I'll award the following blogs for the Liebster Award:

So sweet girls here are my questions for you:
1. What are your favorite flowers?
2. What does your home look like?
3. Is there something you'd always wanted to know?
4. What do you remember about your childhood?
5. What is your top 5 of places you would like to visit?
6. What is your guilty pleasure? --> music (this is a good question!)
7. What is your lucky number and why?
8. What makes you happy?
9. What makes you proud and why?
10. What is your favorite meal/recipe?
11. Morning or evening?

dinsdag 11 maart 2014

outgoing mail






























Sunshine mail on sunshine days! They're on their way to >>> Anne and Rinske.

maandag 10 maart 2014

a message from Doesburg





























Coming home after one week of vacation is especially nice when you find some letters on the table! This week a letter from Anne and Rinske arrived! Thank you girls! I love this umbrella tag!!

zondag 9 maart 2014

our trip to Izmir








































Turkey, the land of many cats, fresh fish and lots of beautiful mountains. Last week we spent our holiday at Izmir, visiting my mom and her friend. It was Pien's first flight ever and she was very brave! We enjoyed many trips to small villages, walking in the mountains, discovering the olive, peach and almond trees and of course it was really good to see where my mom now actually lives and spends her days.