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Autumn Celebrations + A Delicious Drink {Recipe}
I am already beside myself with excitement that the holiday season starts in two weeks! After last year’s Christmas market cancellation, I think I got my sense of joy and whimsy back and I’m ready to enjoy the coming season to the fullest! I couldn’t believe that in the single-digits of November the market was already under construction in the square! I have already smelled the ceremonial first waft of spiced punch, a phenomenon which happens every year and is always ceaselessly thrilling, as the punch stands are already out and blazing with business. Alex was joking that every year we have the same conversation, “Are you excited? It doesn’t…
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Quiet Days & My First Easter Lamb Cake {Recipe}
Happy spring, I hope everyone’s made it through the other side of winter okay! We just had Daylight Savings Time (worth every minute of evening light, in my opinion) so the warmer days and lighter nights have made everything so much better. Sometimes I think I could be a winter person, finding the season more pleasant with each passing year. Then the first warmer, light days of the year come and it’s like, nah. It was another weird March. The virus is still raging around us here in Czechland, and in fact, the first half of the month, we were bound to our own municipalities. Fortunately just in time for…
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Recipe: Chaga Masala Chai Tea
This past December I was all about ‘dat chai. I was constantly cooking up batches of this delicious, spicy and warming masala chai to enjoy in the evenings mostly, but even in the day time as an alternative to coffee. See… here’s the sad news. I had recently come to the realization that coffee is no friend to me. Maybe one of those frenemies, but not a true friend. I had also been doing a lot of research about healing my hormones and found that I ought to drastically reduce both coffee and processed soy consumption. I’m more of a black tea person anyway, so this wasn’t the worst news,…
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Sunday Baking: Pumpkin-Spiced Babka
I’ve been pottering around the Internet so long that I’ve been cooking from recipes and cooking blogs that now have ceased to exist. (Does anyone remember Whole Living, circa 2010ish? Goodbye, all those recipes!) This moment is a bit of a tragedy when you really need that recipe that you’ve been using forever, but is suddenly unavailable. So (by request!), I wanted to share with you a fantastic seasonal baking recipe I’ve been baking from for the past couple of years. To be fair, this year’s Great British Bake Off reminded me about babkas during the annual Bread Week, but this one’s in a beautiful, festive wreath shape. If you…
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Three-Day Seasonal Eating Menu: Late Summer
Here in South Bohemia, like many other parts of the country (and maybe where you live, too), we are lucky to have a bounty of gorgeous vegetables in season this time of year. Five or six years ago I subscribed to our CSA (community-supported agriculture) vegetable box which is usually only available about May-late October, and it has provided us with such delicious organic produce over the years, some vegetables that were totally unknown to me before coming here. (Achocha? Kohlrabi? I had never eaten both in my life!) In between boxes, I’m always at the bi-weekly farmer’s market picking up eggs (especially), fruit and whatever else looks good or…
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Make Your Own: Lilac Syrup
Some readers know that two years ago I started my journey with studying herbalism (more reasons why I’m doing that on that post) but I decided last month that, given the current world situation, now may be a better time than ever to go past “beginner” and take my studies to the next level with an intermediate course of study. I guess joke’s on me a little bit– hoping I’d get to “enjoy” the lock-down life because despite the pandemic I have been absolutely busy with normal things and really have to try hard (between work, cooking, garden, the necessary relaxation necessary to enjoy life) to study three subjects again……
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New Year, New Focus! + Homemade Peanut Butter Recipe
Hi, friends. I’ve written and re-written this post about three times for no other reason than I wasn’t really able to convey the sort of thing I wanted to, but giving it another go. I hope your New Year has been treating you well so far! The fact that I barely noticed we were past the middle of January means that the month’s been flying, but in a good way. Other winter seasons here in Budejovice have not always been entirely, how to I put this… successful for me. They may have started strong but I fell into some sort of anti-social, hibernatory rut and didn’t resurface in a good…
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Sunday Cookin’: Borscht Soup
this week was full of downtime compared to the weeks that are to come, so i wanted to make sure to cook a lot of healthy and delicious meals. and man, did i ever. i picked up a couple of beets at the farmers’ market last weekend specifically with the intention of making a huge pot of borscht for the coming week. you know, that funny pink eastern european soup that nobody really seems to like. well, after eating my way through poland last month, i vowed that i would make my own after i got home. i found polish barszcz to be a bit sweeter and more brothy than i…
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“Figuratively” Speaking (Making Fig Jam)
an unexpectedly lovely weekend here in ceske budejovice! yesterday we sat for hours in the sun at a cafe along the river with a new friend (outdoor cafe season still going! wooooo) and today, it was all about relaxation. ie… cooking. because making life easier for yourself the rest of the week is awesome. i’ve never had a fig before! maybe in a fig newton, but i’ve always hated those. so, i’ve recently noticed their existence– all over the place lately with big sales at the supermarkets and at farmers markets as well. it must be fig season! so i stocked up and decided to have a go at fig…
