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the bake off bake along, week 4
it’s dessert week! after i watched the fourth episode of the great british bake off, i was at a loss. (even more so when i saw the preview for the following week! ahhhh) the spanischer windtorte seemed like something i really ought to attempt because it comes from a country very near where i live right now… and i’m just into that kind of thing. however, we were just about to leave on a long weekend holiday away and i couldn’t bear the thought of the torte just sitting there for four days. crème brûlée it was to be. now, custard and i have a history. at a relatively early age, i became…
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santorini, pt. III
the last two days spent in santorini were my favorite; a complete dream. picture lazy pool-side mornings after a delicious breakfast and sipping iced lemonades. sailing around the island on the bow of a catamaran with a cold greek beer in hand. a permanent smile plastered on my face. jumping off the stern and checking out the “warm” spring. a veritable greek thanksgiving-style feast of shrimp saganaki, salads, and grilled calamari. yes… i was on a mission to eat as much seafood as possible– there is no such thing as too much! the final full day, we were our own explorers on a quest to discover the south side of…
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the bake off bake along, week 3
week three in the bake off bake along is bread week! hooray, bread! but of course, i have to choose from between a quick bread, a baguette, and the show-stopper, an elaborate bread-sculpture. in keeping with staying far away from the show-stopper challenges, and i’m not a fan of baguettes (just not a sandwich kind of girl) left me with the quick bread. immediately, i had an idea for my loaf that i had to run with. throughout my childhood, my mom would buy this cheddar jalapeño loaf at safeway and it was soooo good. mountains of cheddar, the spiciness of the jalapeño that left you wanting a tall glass…
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august in bohemia
on the last day of being in athens, i was ready to come back to the czech republic. that sounds kind of awful to write about the last day about your long-awaited honeymoon and i hate to admit it, but the intolerable heatwave had me dreaming of breezy czech august days. getting back to the flat. cooking. getting back to normal. boring stuff like that. fortunately it’s been far from boring. after summer camp, we’ve made it a mission to tick a handful of experiences off of the list. you know, that list you make when you move somewhere of things to do and places to go that you just…
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the bake off bake along, week 2
welp, week one started off successfully and innocently enough, so i thought i’d continue on to week two’s theme of the great british bake off: biscuit week. biscuits to americans are those big, thick (yet kinda fluffy) crumbly rolls that are normally served with savory foods, especially gravy. so as the episode rolled on, it was apparent that they are all baking cookies. buuuut, i’m pretty aware of these cultural differences by now. i did once mistake a yorkshire pudding to be a sweet american-style pudding pudding, and was totally disappointed that it would not fulfill my pudding dreams. (source) but yeah i get it, cookies = biscuits. let’s get…
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santorini, pt. II: from imerovigli to ammoudi
{this post is third in the honeymoon in greece series– catch up if you’ve missed the others!} from our perch in beautiful imerovigli, every day i would stare out at the tip of land that curved around like an arm to the village on the very tip of the “hand”, oia (ee-uh), purportedly one of the most beautiful villages on the island. before arriving, i thought it would be fun to hike there from imerovigli but when i arrived, i saw it all laid out in front of me, above. (map via) how often do you actually see the path of your hike laid out in front of you? what…
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i heard it at summer camp
ahhhh, summer camp. the obligatory summer job that helps keep the lights on around here in those slower months when people aren’t exactly jumping at the idea of having lessons, but it also brings us great joy… when summer camp is administered in small doses, of course. we almost missed out on summer camp this year entirely because of our back to america travel plans but managed to teach one week of it right after we came back from greece. one thing i love about it, besides tasting all of the czech meals at lunch time, is it’s not so much just teaching as it is hanging out with kids.…
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the bake off bake along, week 1
so, what do you do when it’s too hot too go outside? stay in and bake, of course! i have never seen the bbc program, the great british bake-off, until a couple days ago when i decided to give it a go. (hey, it was too hot to do anything else) i actually really enjoyed it– it reminded me of my love of british programming and britain itself. after my seven week stint falling in love with the UK three years ago living with hosts throughout scotland, you can go ahead and call me an anglophile. (full on. card carrying member.) so! with the dog days of summer in full…
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santorini, pt. I
the moment i’d been waiting for for almost a year: when our ryanair flight from athens touched down in santorini (thira) at 7:50am that mid-july morning, bright and early. the anxiety-inducing bright yellow and blue colors of the ryanair brand did nothing to ease my flying nerves*, nor did a greek yogurt and honey i’d recently ingested at the airport, NOR did the fact that the ascent and descent (least favorite parts) seemed to be the majority of the time of that very quick flight. but when we finally touched down (“WHERE IS THE LAND?!!!”, me, sweatily gripping the arm-rest moments before landing as we were still flying over the…
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home improvement
upgrades, upgrades. moving on up. i could call this post “living without stuff pt IV: cynthia decides to scrap the whole minimalism thing”, but that’s not entirely true. you see… by athens (the last couple days of a two month american/grecian travel whirlwind), i was so excited to get back to my own flat and just do normal life things. cook, read, hang out on the balcony… but since we’ve decided to stay at least one more year here in budejovice, we realized our living situation needed a little overhaul.maybe this is because of the “luxurious” american living we’ve experienced… or perhaps it’s more closely related to our renewed determination…
