Shopping in our village

Our village is too small to have its own grocery store but we do have a small farm shop. They are selling mainly their own products but sometimes also something from other close by farms. The whole year around in offer are apples,  non-filtered apple juice, potatos, honey and eggs. The other stuff gets sold when in season. We try to support small food producers like this as much as possible. Right now in the season are tomatos, zucchinis, plums and cucumbers. 

At this time of the year we don't need to buy any cucumbers or zucchinis because Hubby's grandma provides us with some every time we visit her. But as I passed the farm shop the other day I had to buy a big bag of tomatos and plums because they looked so juicy and nice. After getting back home I got busy in the kitchen and made for us some plum pie and tomato-avocado bruschettas. 

Bruschettas are super easy to do. All you need is some bread and topping. It's a nice way to get rid of your old bread. Because the bread gets grilled (or toasted) it doesn't matter if it's already a bit dry. For the filling I mixed avocado, tomato, onion, fresh coriander, olive oil, dried chili flakes, lime juice, salt, peper and sugar.

Avocado-tomato bruschetta

The plum pie was also fast to do with a ready bought puff pastry dough. Just roll the dough and place it to a greased pie form. Half the plums, remove the stones and place the halfs on the dough. For the crumble I mixed 100 g butter, 100 g sugar and 200 g flour. If you have too much crumble, you can freeze it without a problem.

And this is what I did with the left over puff pastry dough:

Maybe not the healthiest snack, but tastes great

New aquaintance

We moved into our flat last year in April and so did all our neighbours because the house was just newly finished. Last summer one of our neighbours had the idea to organise a grill party to get to know each other. It was lots of fun although out of eight flats only three were taking part. We though we had such a good time that we decided to throw a party this year too. This time me and Hubby were the oranizers in charge. The weather was perfect...we didn't have to sit in the garage like last year but instead got to enjoy the lovely sun shine. There were also more people taking part than the prevous year. We brought the grill, meat, plates etc. and the others brought apero, drinks, salads and desserts. And we had fun time! Now already talking about a fondue party in winter...

So what is the purpose of this little story. Well, it serves as an introduction for the following photos:

As I mentioned, we provided the meat for the party: chicken, spareribs and different sausages. We had some left over so what to do with it the next day? Left-over sandwiches of course! We had a Las Vegas-marathon with some super saucy spare rib and chicken sandwiches.

Spare rib sandwich with chili mayo, grilled zucchini and manchego cheese

Spare rib sandwich

We also learned to know someone new. Our neighbours, who come from Bayern Germany, brought a really tasty digestive to the party: Penninger Blutwurz. This herb liqueur is some serious heavy stuff with 50 % alcohol in it but after a super filling grill party meal it was the perfect thing to have. I took a look at the company's webpage and they seem to have some quite appealing products. I definitive want to give the L'Affaire, rhubarb-vanilla aperitif, a go one day when I can find it somewhere. By the way, I wonder if the blog has to be an over 18 thing because of all this alcohol?

Herb liqueur

Here again

Woah, quite some time has passed since the last post. It's not that I haven't done anything in the kitchen but rather than I haven't been bothering to take photos or write about my/our doings. The whole July passed nicely in a lovely weather which of course meant lots of grilling for our small family. The thing I love about grilling is that the kitchen never seems to be quite as dirty as when everything gets cooked on the stove :D I'm pretty sure that every professional cook has the problem of trying to cook clean in a home environment.... some how too much stuff always ends up on to the floor ;D Salt, for example. We used to have an open salt on the kitchen table so that it would be easy to take a pinch of salt during cooking when ever needed. Well, every time I used it I wiped my hands on my trousers and guess what? Our floor ended up looking more like a salt mine than kitchen floor. No more open salt for me. And yes, I do wipe my hand too often to my trousers so it's alway better to use an apron. And now follows some cute photos:

Comatosed

Comatosed

Look at me I'm cute

Something's down there?

All that talk about the grilling so here's something to show for you

From up clockwise: Tzatziki, Aubergin dip and Taboulé

Lamb cevapi a la Hubby: Super good!

In Finland for the first of May we always make some Munkki, which is basically a doughnut. Somehow I never came to it to do them this year. Some weeks ago at work I suddenly got this huge craving of Munkki and desided to bake some. They turned out pretty nice.

Munkit:

5 dl milk

50 g yeast

1 1/2 dl sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp salt

2 tsp cardamon

about 14 dl wheat flour

100 g butter

Roll the ready doughnuts in sugar or cinnamon sugar

Rising up

Getting deep-fried

Freshly deep-fried munkki (doughnut), I love them!