2010-07-29

Heaven on earth! Finnish summer cottage Part1 - Mint garlic chicken for BBQ

These days am dealing with mixed feeling - happiness and sadness, for the reason that I will be winding up my thesis early next year (fingers crossed) and equally sad that I will moving out of Finland after 5 years. Finland is my 2nd home now and I have been so much into. God know where my next destination will be? So I will miss Finland, as its the best place on earth, when it comes to nature and there are few location in this beautiful country, the  moment I land in those locality I forget myself and the rest of the world. One those types are Summer cottage. For two years I have stayed in summer cottages. Last year it was more fun as many of  my friends were there, and it was very primitive cottage without  electricity, felt like living in middle of forest. We just had cottage to sleep and little kitchen. So it was something like going to stone age staying with nature beside lake side, men did fairly good fishing and we BBQ food and lived like prince and princess of forest. Not forget to mention about almost 24 hrs day light and wonderful smoke sauna.

This year it was few of us, just myself Somjai her husband Tero and Somjai's Russian friend. So it was more or less a peaceful time, everyone had there own time, basically being yourself. Again our cottage was on lake side but.....Sorry guy am flying to Vienna tonight so will write more in detail in my next post till then enjoy the preview and the BBQ chicken I made for the trip :)

                                                                          The sauna house
                    
                                              Beautiful patterns on the woods inside the cottage

             That's Me! :)
 

            View from umbrella
 

        The hot BBQ spot
 

The Lake view around 2 AM
 







                                          Pringles my addiction, all this on Sunday..Happy girl


2010-07-21

Laugh to Death Kitty Party - Strawberry, Kiwi Creamy Mini Tarts

Summer is on full swing in Finland, feels like being in India, air is sharp enough that it gets through our skin and a layer of sun-block, doesn't help. During July technically we see countable number of people working in departments. We girls, myself, Shanthi, Asima and Ritika (new Punjabi Kudi, joined the group of PhD, welcome darling! Official) have our coffee breaks during week days at 14:00 and will let it continue for short chit chat, gossip and laughter. To give it more life, Shanthi organised  a kitty party last before Saturday. Technically it was supposed to start at 18:00. Myself and Asima started of well dressed perfect for kitty party and half way done, Asima's bicycle gear 'broke', yea strange. So we had to take bus and wait in bus stop for 30 minutes and enjoyed sight seeing of passengers, wearing summer dress, trust me it was fun!


 
Finally reached late yay! Best way to start party. Shanthi invited us with great aroma of food. I immediately barged into kitchen to check what was cooking. The menu was kema paratha (minced meat roti) chicken gravy, pulav and coconut kheer, special dish potato curry (from Ritika) and peas roti for veggies. We loaded the refrigerator with ciders,  it should have been wine, but we were lazy to pick from alco. 


Party kick started, then we had an adorable guest, Nisha's one month old baby, Nisha and her mom. He was center of attraction (little krishnan). As always we started with life, visa, next destination, PhD, work, money all normal stuff. With cider slowly flowing in air was getting light. Food time, my favorite. Shanthi is one person on earth who will never circumscribe to number of people and time but feeds wholeheartedly. I call her annadata (food giver). We enjoyed the delicious food and kheer was too good ( I graciously enjoyed two round), soon want to post in my blog as it my new favorite. Then it was time for baby darling to go home, we escorted him to bus station, wearing slippers (house-shoe) and that's when we started to giggle. As you can imagine, wearing a party dress and slippers LOL. Giggle that started ended at 4:20 AM. Oh yes. We gossiped, made fun of each other, spoke endlessly. It was wide range of topic, few went quite deep, but it was the time we laughed our hearts out, forgot the world, everyone, our PhD's, in simple rest of world other than us was shutdown. 


It was the time to eat my tarts, I made a mistake while packing. I closed in air tight box and not remembering that tarts was still hot, so when I opened the box, found them soggy and not crisp anymore.  We had to give few minutes of high heat treatment. Ladies were polite enough to try it and to be honest it was not good anymore, but they ate it...awee true friends.


We continued again, now it was the time to hit everyone's strange behavior, like mine.  I  get up in the middle of night all of a sudden and will start to search for recipes, yes mid-night cravings and I love bollywood gossips. My leg was pulled endlessly like wise everyone had respective turns :)) Then we decided to sleep, each of took respective positions, hardly there was 30 seconds silence, someone or other started to laugh remembering previous jokes and it went on again, there was couple of good nights but final call came from Asima at 4:20 AM then we decided to doze off.


Even the next day while we were going to respective homes, we carried a big smile on face, clear mind and happy soul. This proves how blessed we were to have great friends for life. Thank you ladies for the wonderful evening lucky to have you all  and more elated to express it my blog, something I would love to read again after years :) 





                                                                                                         

2010-07-08

Choco Raspberries - Little heavens / Easy giveaway

Most of you would have noticed my White Chocolate Raspberry Macadammia cake. There were some  leftovers of raspberry filling sleeping well in my freezer, which was used for the cake. Somehow didn't want to get rid of it, as they were homemade and would never like to waste food. So came up with this idea. Since I imagined these little wonders to be adorable, arranged props in pink. But the funny thing was, ended up giving it to my friend Nonappa for his B'day. So couldn't use all the pink props, which I spent hours in finding but had to use brown and gold chocolate box. 

For this recipe, I used both dark (70%) and white chocolate. To be very honest, with dark chocolate it was just OK. But with white chocolate it was too good. May be because the little sourness in raspberries merged beautifully with white chocolate (it needed the extra sweetness). As always, raspberries and white chocolate - match made in dessert heaven.  

Am quite slow with blog, since PhD is taking upper hand. I have bank of 10 recipes waiting in queue to be posted. That means this recipe was made two months before :p. Hope I would be fast from the day after my dissertation :) Enjoy!!



                                                          


                                                           









2010-07-01

Spinach Chickpeas - Palak Chana Rice

June was remarkably a busy month for me, inviting friends, attending many dinners, visit to Finnish summer cottage, so it was plenty of cooking, five cake baking in a row and work at office, was the reason why I had been away from blog baby. Tried three new cake recipes will post hopefully soon. I know I have to get updated from people in blogosphere, waiting for the weekend to do that. So here is the recipe for the week, chickpea spinach rice, very simple and healthy one. Hope you will enjoy!

                                                                                     Three beautiful spices


                                                                                            Baby Spinach


                                   My porcelain Princess shoe, new kitchen accessory  - cooked chickpeas


                                                                                                   Ingredients


                                                                             




                                                                             Grated Coconut





                                                                                 Carrot flowers and curls


                                                                                               I enjoyed :)



 
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