Lavendel biscuits

Lavendel biscuits

Couple of months ago, when I had my birthday, my neighbours gave me some self dried and wrapped lavendel as a present. Since the it has been sitting in our kitchen corner and trying to tell me I should use it for something. Well, I decided finally to "roll my sleeves up" and do something with that lavendel. I found a nice and easy sounding recipe in Internet on site Ichkoche. After small changes I was ready to try it and it worked out great. Even Hubby who normally doesn't care for lavendel though that the biscuits were good. So guess what I'll give for my neighbour as a christmas present :D

A beautifully packed present I got from my neighbour

Lavendel biscuits

250 g wheat flour

130 g butter

1 egg

 130 g sugar

2 tbs (about 2 g) dried lavendel

pinch of salt

for the top

egg wash

dried lavendel

decorating sugar 

1. Rub the cold, cubed butter togeter with the flour

and throw in the salt.

2. Place the sugar and the lavendel in the mixer and let run

for couple of minutes until the flowers and sugar

are some what fine.

3. Foam the lavendel sugar with the egg

4. Add the egg foam to the flour mixture

and mix into a dough

5. Let the dough rest in the fridge for about one hour.

6. Roll out the dough and cut out the desired biscuits

7. Brush with the egg wash and sprinke with lavendel

and decorating sugar

8. Bake for about 5 minutes in 200 Celsius.

Biscuits in the oven

Enjoy!

A late afternoon stroll with the Cutie

Christmas magic in Zürich

Zürich is a lovely christmas destination. I have been there twice inside couple of days. First with Hubby and Cutie and two days later with Cutie, my sister and her friend. My sister was visiting us for one week. During that time she also drove to München for a few days and visited the Christkindlmarkt there. She actually thinks that the christmas makets in Zürich were more enjoyable. I wouldn't know because I have never been to München in christmas time.

We have a tradition that every year shortly before christmas we visit Zürich to enjoy the nice atmosphere. Before we used to go to the moves and have dinner afterwards. All the moves playing in the cinemas close to us were dubbed so the only change to watch any with an original audio was (and probably still is) is to go to Zürich. Last year we even stayed over night. Now, with the Cutie, the movies are obviously out of the question and so are fancy dinners as well. Well, it doesn't matter because we just enjoy the walk around the town, the lovely christmas lights and great foor at the christmas market on the Sechseläutenplatz: Wienachtsdorf. We were there already last year and this year it was even better. There are loads of food in offer like Flammlachs, curries, fancy burgers, peruvian food etc. This is the place to go for a foodie. Here are some pictures to inspire you to visit Zürich.

On the Bahnhofbrücke

Hirschenplatz

Hotel Storchen in the front and the tower of St. Peter behind it.

Grossmünster

Ice rink on the Sechseläutenplatz

Bellevue and the christmas market on the Sechseläutenplatz

Christmas lights on the Bahnhofstrasse

Paradeplatz

An animation film being projected to the wall of the UBS building.

Christmas market in the main train station

Christmas market on the main train station

Paradeplatz in the day light

Bahnhofstrasse

Bürkliterrasse

Quaibrücke

Christmas market on the Sechseläutenplatz

In front of the ice rink

A merry-go-round on the Sechseläutenplatz

Christmas market on the Sechseläutenplatz

Peruvian food in the christmas market

The menu

Lomo saltado

Indian food in the christmas market

One of the many christmas trees in Zürich

Lake Zürich

River Limmat and Grossmünster

Busy with Cutie

Such small hands

We have had some interesting times at home so the blog has been pretty much neglected. First I was put on a sick leave because our Cutie wanted to arrive too early. For about five weeks I wasn't allowed to do anything and that almost drove me mad! Well she did decided to take a head start and arrived four weeks too early. Despite the problems I had had she did take us by surprise. My mom had been visiting us for a couple of days and two hours after I had taken her to the station, so that she could head back to Finland, I was in a hospital and being told that the baby is on its way....only hours earlier I had been wondering how should I make it through the last four weeks :D Everything went well. She was so tiny but beautiful and healthy.

As you can imagine, this has all been very exciting but at the same time tireing, fantastic, surprising, cool, new and pretty much everying possible for us. She is our first baby and after being eleven years together, just two of us and the cats, we are suddenly three. That is something!...

She was a skimpy one, as you can see, but now already double the birth size.

Somebody had taken over the pram.

This way they can both fit in :D

Slowly we have gotten to know each other and the days have started to have some routine. I have been baking and cooking all kinds of things but the photos are missing. I guess we are being to busy on taking photos of her from all the different angles :D

All I can say is:  thank god for the Ergobaby and the baby sling! Without them I would not be able to do anything. Some time ago we celebrated my 30th birthday. We decided to organise a party. It was both a birthday party for me but also welcoming party for Cutie. I did most of the things myself. We had cassis-chocolatemousse cake, reindeer tartles, tomatomousse tartlets, cloudberry cookies, orange-cocos chocolates, Baileys chocolates....etc. just to mention some of the things. So it was a lot to organise/bake/do but most of the time Cutie was taking it easy in her baby sing while mommy was getting her hands dirty. I did so much nice things but all the food photos are missing, unfortunately.

But I do have couple of photos of the chocolate cake I did for my sisters and of the Sunday Zopf I did when my parents-in-law where here. So here you go:

Pimped Sunday Zopf

With oats, flax seeds and poppy seeds.

I think it looks nice with the black seeds.

This is how you do it with a baby: the small one in the baby sling while mommy is making some chocolates.

A chcolate cake for my sweet grazy sisters who came from Finland to visit us

The flowers are from my our garden.

I made the base with a Sacher recipe which I got from Peter. It has almond flour in it and that makes the cake very moist.

Our wedding day in Morges, Kanton Vaud

Hostellerie Le Petit Manoir

We drove to Waadt for our wedding day. For those who don't know, our baby's due date is in July and at the moment I'm on sick leave. Due to some issues I'm not allowed to do anything like clean, go for a walk etc.

Yes I know that I'm supposed to be lying down all the time but we decided to go anyway. We had booked the hotel already a month ago and I had also booked a table for the restaurant (15 Gault Millau points) in the same hotel, so we didn't have to drive somewhere far to enjoy some nice food. Thus we thought that it can't be that hard on me when I'm basically just sitting down the whole time and we stay close to our room.

We stayed at the Hostellerie Le Petit Manoir in Morges which is like 10 minutes drive west of Lausanne. I would have liked to book a room at the Lavaux wine region but unfortunately everything reasonably priced was already booked out. The drive was about 2 and 1/2 hours from us. We had never been to the Romady, the French speaking area of Switzerland, before. It was funny: it felt a bit like abroad but at the same time somewhat familiar.

Our hotel room

The french balcony opening to the garden

As mentioned we dined at the restaurant of the Petit Manoir. It has 15 Gault Millau points which is good and we think that the food was worth of the points. We took a 5 course Menu Tentation: Terre, Mer, Lac & Montagne. It was 118 CHF per person which we found was okay in the Swiss price standard. I took a couple of pictures but not of all the courses. Here is what we had:

Le couteau des côtes bretonnes

en duo avec la coque - aéré de bettrave - gingembre confit

***

La morille brune

farcie aux petits pois - amandes - bouillon au vin jaune

***

L'omble chevalier du Lac Léman

poché aux agrumes - carottes jaunes et algues - réduction terre et mer

***

Le boef Suisse

coeur d'entrecôte au charbon - fèves et oignons doux - jus aux épices

***

La rhubarbe

glacée - comme une tarte - pamplemousse, cynorrhodon

Hubby had also a selection of cheese before dessert for 18 CHF. There were, of course, also an amuse-bouche and pre dessert served which are not on the menu. The small pre dessert was super good: lime cremeux, celery sorbet and nut tuile. I could have had that as a dessert :D All in all everything was super. Specially the patisserie section of the kitchen was doing an fantastic job. Service was also good and very attentive. They, for exaple, asked if I would like to have an extra pillow.

Le couteau des côtes bretonnes

Le boef Suisse

La rhubarbe

The next day we jumped in the car and drove all the way through Lavaux to Villeneuve and back. We stopped a couple of times to take some photos but unfortunately the weather wasn't very good. Everything looked gray and we couldn't really see the mountains at the otherside of the Lake Geneva. But we did saw enough to realise how fantastic it must be on a sunny day. It was quite hard for me not to stop at every place and go for a walk. We are usually very active when we travel and we like to walk a lot to get to know the cities and villages we visit. Thankfully I had Hubby with me, who took care that I didn't wander of anywhere. We'll definitive have to go back to this region of Switzerland. 

Because of the weather we took very less photos. If you woud like to see the region better you can check these videos in Youtube: Lavaux, Switzerland and Video Lavaux English and Welcome in Lake Geneva region. Here is a Youtube channel for the Vaud with plenty of interesting videos: Vaud - Région du Léman.

Chillon castle

Vevey and Montreux seen from Villeneuve

In Villeneuve

We wanted to have lunch at Tout un Monde in Grandvaux which seems like a great restaurant with a suberb view but unfortunately we weren't able to find a parking place close by. Even the multi-storey car park was full and because I'm not allowed to walk we opted for the second option in Lutry: Cantinetta Meal. This is an Italian place right at the Lake Geneva in the harbour of Lutry. It's not fine dining but the food was good and the place was full of loud Italians which I think is a good sign ;) We had to wait shortly for the table. Even though we hadn't reseved we got aperitifs offered because we had to wait. The food is typical Italian from antipasti to pizza and pasta. They have a real pizza oven and pizzaiolo and the pizzas looked great but we didn't try them. We had:

Hubby:

Carpaccio di tonno rosso con emulsione agli agrumi e cipollotti freschi 28 CHF

Spaghetti alle vongole verachi 35 CHF

Me:

Melanzane alle parmigiana 22 CHF

Paccheri artigianali con cime di rapa

pomodorini del Vesuvio e lardo di Colonnata 30 CHF

So, it was no fine dinig but well our money's worth. All in all with coffee etc. we paid 129 CHF

Cantinetta Meal in Lutry where we had late lunch

Hotel garden

After the late lunch I was so tired that I just wanted to go back to the hotel. In the evening sun peeked out behind the clouds and I woud have loved to do a short wak at the Morges habour/lake side which was only about 200 meters from the hotel, but we (Hubby) decided better not to. So we spent the rest of the evening watching football and Hubby went to get us a snack from the nearby gas station.

Well, watching the European championships on our wedding day is nothing new. We also did that on the day we got married. After our marrige ceremony we ate with couple of friends in a restaurant and watched football ;))