La rentree...

This is the time of year I really love most of all. I do not (yet) mind the grey, stormy days, I find them exciting. I love the colours of the leaves, the smells, the acorns, the different sort of fungi that sprout up everywhere, the chestnuts, the autumn festivals and the general feeling of tranquility in the air.
This sense of contentment lasts till just after Christmas, I then start to feel depressed by the endless greyness of the skies, the everlasting rain, the darkness of it all... But as yet, I am nowhere near that stage. I always feel the same sort of excitement at this time as at the beginning of the school year, which the French so charmingly have named la rentree...
I was a weird child probably, but I used to love the first few weeks at school after the summer holidays. There were such countless possibilities of hundreds of new things to learn and do, the smell of new pencils and notebooks, the wonder at new subjects... So in that spirit ( and definitely inspired by the great British bake off) I decided to give bread baking a go. I never before did any of it, was always happy to leave that to my dad. And even he chickened out most of the time, and would bake Irish soda bread, however lovely that was none the less.
I did buy a book with lovely bread recipes 5 or 6 years ago and decided to dig it out. As I also found somewhere else a good recipe for toasted teacakes ( which you can not get in this country for love nor money), I had my first go last weekend.
This is my attempt at rye bread. I have always loved the idea of a Rueben sandwich or pastrami on rye, but that particular kind of bread is not to found in the shops here. So finding this recipe was a huge bonus for me. I find it a real wonder that from something looking like this...
After some pummeling and kneading gets to this, I loved the sheen on the dough, which unfortunately does not show in the photograph...
And after some proofing turns into a monster...
I forgot to take a picture of the end result, which tasted quite good, but would not have stood up to any close scrutiny. It looked a bit tight, and I am not sure what caused that, obviously I need to practise a lot more and read a bit more about baking bread.
As I had promised a friend to get her a recipe for Sacher Torte, I had to make a few first to see what the best recipe was. I like baking, which is funny as I am quite slapdash, and if there is one area in cooking where you should not be that, it is baking. Anyway, this is quite a fiddly recipe and I did not quite master the icing. It looks a bit rough and ready, but it did taste quite good.
Now I am off to find a few nostalgic recipes for a children's party, I guess I will find a few in here...

Have a gorgeous weekend, even if it is raining!

How to teach myself...

Living in a small country, there is something you learn very early in life... there is a lot of foreign soil out there. Where people do things differently, talk differently and all together are different. This either makes you extremely curious about everything, some would say obsessively so, or it makes you just very anxious about everything and everybody that is slightly different from you and yours.
I definitely am a fully paid up member of the first (tribe, I was almost going to say) kind of person. It makes me very happy that I can read, speak and understand Dutch, German and Englisch equally well, to me all three are interchangeable. However, my knowledge of French is lacking far behind. I did quite well in school with it, then abandoned it altogether, on account of the fact that I did not understand the French and therefore that I was never going to France anyway for exactly that reason ( I am the queen of warped logic)... But then for no apparent reason, everything changed late last year.
I had been thinking that I really wanted to go to Paris for a few years, and last November I finally was brave enough to do so... and I fell hard for it. But, I also discovered that my rusty school girl French was really not taking me anywhere. It is the odd word I understand, and I usually can get the gist of what is being said, but I am not able to hold my own in a conversation.
So, being me, that frustrated me no end. I felt I had to do something about it.
I discovered the Petit Nicolas books in Paris, then through some other means discovered that I really love Sempe's drawings, so there was an easy choice. Also that they are children's books made me think that they would be good to start out with. I also got an audiobook with Petit Nicolas stories, to help me get a feel for the rythm of the language. To learn something about the French in general, their culture, way of thinking etc... I got myself a few newspapers, because they are brilliant for that. And just because I am addicted I got myself a few glossy magazines as well.
And there you have it, my self-styled teaching method ( should I patent it?) I really enjoy learning this way. And who knows, one day I could be fluent in French...
A little follow up on my sunflowers. They started to droop a bit, and even though I managed to revive them a couple of times, by the weekend they started to get a bit tired. So... I removed them from their stems alltoghether and put them on this blue plate, as I really like the colour combination. This way, I get a bit more wear out of them and they can cheer me up a bit longer.

Have a great, sunny week!

Somebody cure me...

Off my E-bay habit! With the invention of Paypal, or rather my discovery of it, things went downhill fast... I just love browsing E-bay, and started treating it as my personal fleamarket. I can spend hours browsing and unfortunately will always find something that I really, really, really need...
These are a few of my most recent finds. I got really into Alfred Meakin stuff, and as that is something you do not find a lot of here in this country, E-bay came to the rescue. I adored this plate and had to have it, unfortunately it arrived broken, so now I am trawling the net to have another go...
I so loved the doggy teapot too, it really spells a certain era to me...
Carlton ware and what I call Torquay ware is another thing you will not really see here, so I got myself a few bits and pieces...
There is some more Alfred Meakin (the Montmartre pattern, for obvious reasons), a couple of lovely Susie Cooper platters, a Quimper pin dish, and, and, and...
Are you the victim of certain addictions, obsessions or whatever you want to call it? Please tell me I am not the only person who gets this stuck on things.
I have to apologise for the quality of the photos these last few posts, my poor little camera seems to be getting very tired these days. One day it will completely zonk out on me, I am afraid. So I am desperately looking for another one... Maybe there is one on E-bay?
Leaving you with a picture that I think Matisse would love to paint...
Minus all the dross of course, but there is no escaping books etc in my house.
Off now to my domestic goddess part, baking a lovely blueberry cake and making some ice cream ( my newest obsession). Oh, and to do some knitting of course, need to finish the cardi this weekend!
Enjoy a lovely summer weekend!

It is all yellow these days...

Which is funny, as I never used to like the colour before, suddenly I have developed a " penchant" for it ( oh yes, my French is coming on in leaps and bounds!).
Hello to my lovely bloggy friends, I know, it has been months and months since you heard from me, but indeed, I am still alive and kicking. I am not going to apologise for not being around for so long. There was nothing the matter with me, it simply was a combination of too much working and not being very inspired. It should all get a bit better in this respect, I might get to bore you from time to time again! I am looking forward to catching up with all of your blogs and leaving the odd comment again! Diane, thank you for your comment on my last post, as ever it made me giggle... I wish is all I can say...
This morning I woke up to these lovelies, aren't they just the ticket? I love their colours, they really exude summer to me.
As I opened my eyes even further I noticed how this scarf actually echoes the colours of the flowers. I loved that, it is actually the background of a self portrait by Paul Gauguin. Which is not half as cheery as the background suggests. A couple of months ago I went to a show of paintings by him in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. I really love paintings from that period.
Almost a year ago I knitted myself a pea green cardigan. The first thing I knitted again after about 25 years of a knitting free period. I was pretty proud of it, but nobody seemed to notice. Then suddenly as I started to wear it again early summer people started to comment on it. This even resulted in my first commision ever! I am so pleased with that and am really buoyed up now to get a few more. I really love this colour too, and if it were not for the fact that it is discontinued now, I would knit myself something in it too.
Is it just me, or has the light changed again. Suddenly there is such an early autumnal quality to the light again. It catches me by surprise every year right after this:
which spells truly high summer to me. I am glued to the tele every year for this. This year probably more than ever because of my sudden obsession with everything French. Ah well, we all have our little foibles...
Now off to read all your blogs, have a fabulous evening all!

Branching out...

I love trees in all seasons and in all settings, I love their lushness in summer, and the fragile beauty of the new leaves in Spring. I adore the autumn colours, and the sheer whimsy of Christmas trees. But when I maybe love them most of all is in winter, without any adornements, in all their stark beauty.
I love them for their graphic qualities...
For their framing abilities...
But maybe most of all for the fact that they almost, but not quite manage to conceal what is behind them...

Green is the new black...

Or so the word is out on the streets by the looks of it. If even one of my favourite statues is wearing it, it must be true...
On my last visit to Paris I went to the Rodin Museum and somehow was totally overawed by Rodin's statue of Balzac. So, this time round I had to go to the Balzac museum, which is in one of the houses he used to live in in Paris. And look what the museum is wearing...
This is a truly gorgeous spot by the way, the little garden must be lovely in summer, even now there were people sitting round here, just enjoying the sun.
I love the special hue of green that you see a lot around the city. Whether it is on the Musee de la vie Romantique...
Which by the way is in the former home of a Dutch painter that I had never heard of, or on the innards of the very special Grand Palais...
And look at what offsets these marvelous floral displays...
Do not you just want to sit down here and enjoy the sun in the Jardin de Luxembourg...
I definitely got some inspiration on the colours I want to wear this spring, pink ( think pink) by all means, but this kind of green is a must as well, there are so many signs, I can not ignore it.
It is just these guys that are still bucking the trend, but with a bit of peer pressure that should sort itself out...
Enjoy the rest of your week!

Reflections...

Sometimes I really like the way photos turn out, whether intentionally so, or just by chance. They can either completely portray a certain mood or feeling, or at times there is an added effect in them that makes them special.

Like this one I took at the Gallerie Vero Dodat. You can almost sense the faded glory and the feeling of loss of a certain time, yet it is still beautiful, and I love the face that you seen the other side of the gallerie reflected in the windows.
Or there is this surprise, I took this in the Rue Fleurus, because there really was a lovely courtyard inside the gates. You do not see much of it this way, but you see the rest of the road, somehow it makes the photo very three dimensional.
This is possibly my favourite, it would be, as I took it in the Musee Zadkine. I looooooove Zadkine, this made me realise how much again. Maybe this way you do not see a whole lot of the sculptures, but you can see a bit of the house he lived in and the gorgeous weather! I was very lucky there... I love the effect of having being able to see the outside and the inside of things at the same time this way, I think it is magic!
Have a great week and hope for some sun!