zaubernuss - witchhazel

socks #25

i haven't posted in over six months... that's quite a while. sorry about that. i've been in some sort of other place and haven't felt like writing posts much. i also felt like i haven't made or done much to post about. but after sorting through my sock-photo file today i noticed that i did make quite a few pairs of socks that i haven't talked about or shown you yet.

i'll do that now:

these are pairs #154 and #155. they were a custom order from a friend to some other friends for christmas. i've used this yarn to make them - nr. 2532 (weinrot) and nr. 2522 (sonne).

my wonderful husband gave me a one-year Opal subscription for christmas! i got the first box for christmas (apparently he'd kept the box hidden for a few weeks). there are six 100g balls in each box, delivered in december, march, may and september. (i think you can order the subscription at any point though.)
this lovely pink-blue-yellow yarn was the first one that jumped right at me and i cast on pretty much after opening my presents on christmas morning. this is pair #156 and the pattern is Tennarisukka, one of my favourites so far. i love how the texture created by the knit and purl stitches makes the colours blend. they really look quite rainbowy even though there's no orange, green or purple in the yarn.

pair #157 is made using the same yarn as pair #147. the yarn is Woll Butt "Utrecht" which was a value pack of three 100g balls, all with the same pattern but in different colours. i have one more of these left in teal tones.
(you can find Woll Butt yarns here (for Austrian customers) and here (for delivery within Germany and a bunch of other European countries)).

this is pair #158. i've called it "mad stripes". it's one of two pairs i've made like this - using all of my numerous solid coloured sock yarns.

pair #158 started out as #87 (i've written about it in this sock post) which was supposed to be a totally non-matching crazy funky pair. but one of them turned out longer than the other so i had no other choice but to make the exact same socks again to end up with two different pairs of matching socks. i think i forgot to take a picture of the other matching pair. i gave one pair to a friend and the other to my mum (as they were both too big for me and i wanted them out of the house anyway - i was annoyed with them).

pair #159 was for my husband. i used one of the Opal abo yarns in beautiful shades of blue. the pattern is called "Just for Fun" and it looks really good but to be honest: it wasn't that much fun to knit. it required quite a bit of concentration to get into and i found it rather hard on my hands (which occasionally have issues with repetitive strain injury). the pattern is written for 64 stitches but i've changed it to make it work for 68. if you look at the pattern chart you'll see where you can add or remove a stitch or two to make it fit for more sizes. i'm glad my husband really loves these! makes all the effort worth it... 

i made pair #160 as a good-bye present for my daughter's kindergarten teacher. she left at the end of february and we were all really sad about it. i held her in the highest esteem which is why i made her some socks. the pattern is Tennarisukka again and the yarn is some no-name sock yarn i picked up at the supermarket when they had some.

pair #161 is a pair of scrahappy socks. they are number 31 and 32 - i count the pair as well as the individual ones since they are all different. usually i make scrahappy socks as short sneaker socks but these ones i made longer, as you can see.

pair #162 is another one for my husband. i've used Opal abo yarn in shades of green, blue and black and the pattern is called "Rettangolo". it's another one of these knot-in-the-brain patterns that requires constant concentration and non-stop counting of stitches. but the result is rather cool.

pair #163,

pair #164 and

pair #165 were made for my aunt and her two best friends. i've used the pattern Tennarisukka for all of them and they are all exactly the same except for the width of one pair (which is wider than the other two pairs by four stitches) and the length of one of the other pairs (which is shorter by one pattern repeat).
my aunt ordered a pair each for her two best friends and i decided that she has to have one as well. (if it ever gets cooler again they can all wear them when they go out together.)
all the yarns i used came from one of my subscription boxes. the colours and patterns of these are either exclusively made for the subscription boxes or they are previews of yarns that are going to be released at a later time. the yarns from #163 and #164 are part of collections to be released in late september and early october. (you can see them here and here. the pink-yellow-blue and the green-blue-black yarns are some of these as well as i've just noticed.)

this is what's currently on my needles. (the colours are not quite that dark.) i had a spontaneous urge to make some stripy picture-book socks the other day and i went to rummage through my stash for the perfect colours right away. while doing that i thought of some other colour combinations that i want to do as well...

i also did some baking today. just because i felt like it. these cookies are my perfect cookies. they have everything i want from a cookie. (i found the recipe here - give them a try, they are really quick and easy to make.)
the yarny green thing next to my cookies is a sweater i'm knitting for my daughter's favourite doll (who sadly has way too few clothes for a little girl who likes to play changing and bathtime and tucking-in and so on). i'll keep you posted on how that goes - haha!

 

that was it for now... i hope you enjoyed my sock ramblings and i hope you have a great time, whereever you are in the world and whatever you are doing.
lots of love! xxx

ingredient list for 5-elements muesli

this is a list for various basic ingredients you might want to mix and match to make your own muesli. they are listed according to the elements they are associated with in the 5-elements cuisine (see this post for more info). there are some minor things to pay attention to should you wish do follow the 5-elements order:

• it does not matter which element you start with as long as you keep the order in which they are listed. should you forget to add something, just start over, adding more to each element, but don't skip ahead.
• once you've added all your ingredients belonging to one element, stir thoroughly and only then proceed to the next element.
• there must be at least one ingredient for each element - just a pinch does it, e.g. salt for the element water!

with some fruit it makes a difference if they are dried or fresh. a fresh fruit may belong to one element but once dried it could belong to another. i've added specialties to be noted next to the ingredient in question.

 

WOOD

FLAKES & GRAINS
spelt(flakes)
wheat(flakes)

FRUIT & BERRIES
blackberry/bramble
raspberry
strawberry
blueberry
red & black currant
cranberry
apple - sour
plum - fresh
cherry - sour

SPICES
lemon zest

 

FIRE

FLAKES & GRAINS
rye(flakes)
buckwheat(flakes) - but particularly nice to eat when whole and dry-roasted
amaranth

FRUIT & BERRIES
elderberry

SPICES
cocoa
poppy seed
orange zest

 

EARTH

FLAKES & GRAINS
millet
barley(flakes)
corn(flakes)

FRUIT & BERRIES
mango
apricot - fresh & dried
fig - fresh & dried
plum - dried
dates - dried
grapes red/white
sultanas
rasins
apple - sweet
pear
banana

NUTS & SEEDS
coconut
walnut
peanut
hazelnut
almond
sesame
pine nut
pumpkin seed
sunflower seed
cashew nut
pistachio nut

SPICES
vanilla
cinnamon

SWEETENERS
brown sugar/cane sugar
white sugar/beet sugar
honey
all kinds of syrup/sirup

 

METAL

FLAKES & GRAINS
oat(flakes)
rice(flakes)

SPICES
ginger - fresh & dried
cardamom
nutmeg
cloves

 

WATER

salt

 

i hope i've done well enough thinking of every possible ingredient anyone might possibly want in their muesli - i've listed all the muesli-worthy ones i found on the original list, anyway. if you want to add chocolate drops or chips - chocolate is not on the list as it's made of various ingredients already but i think you could place it with cocoa under "fire" or just add your chocolate chips to your serving right before you eat it.
you can dry-roast ingredients such as flakes and nuts before you add them if you wish, it adds a lovely flavour.

enjoy!

muesli making

have you ever heard of "5-elements cuisine"? i don't even know if i (or google) have translated that correctly because i only ever heard it talked of in german. it's a sort of concept that can be applied to anything you cook or bake. you can even make drinks and jams following the 5 elements and it's supposed to make everything healthier and tastier.

when i grew up we had one of these posters taped to the door of one of the upper kitchen cabinets. it's a table of the 5 elements:
wood
fire
earth
metal
water
listing the most common ingredients which are associated with each of the elements, again sorted by:
hot - warm - neutral - refreshing - cold

my mum swears that once she started following the 5 elements while cooking we suddenly ate (multiple helpings) of dishes we previously would hardly touch because everything tastes so much better and "rounder"...

i don't know how true that is though. maybe we just grew out of a phase of suspiciousness regarding unknown and untried dishes (and my mum likes to experiment while cooking and of course using whatever she has at home at that moment).

it works like this: every element and every heat-category has a list of ingredients, headlined by general type of food - like: fruit, vegetable, diary, wheat, herbs, spices, drinks, etc.

my mum would refer to this poster while cooking and after a while she knew most of the things she used a lot by heart and by now it's sort of second nature and she follows this even when dressing a salad. (my mum's salads are without a doubt the most awesome ever!)

there are books about this (this poster came with a book which i admit to not having read yet) that explain the benefit of this more fully. personally i haven't really taken over this way of cooking yet, mostly because so far i couldn't be bothered to check every ingredient for its element.

the point is that you start with one element, which one does not matter, as long as you keep the order in which they appear on the poster. you can think of it as some sort of circle:

wood burns - fire creates ashes - they turn to earth/soil - deep under ground metal is compressed - it's washed out by water - water makes trees grow - we're back at wood

or something like it.

you have to stick to the circle and add all the ingredients belonging to the element, mix or let boil/sit for a minute or just stir (depending on what you make) and then move on to the next element. it's important that every element is added and if you don't have an ingredient for whatever you're making that goes with one of the elements, check the poster to find anything you can add just a dash or pinch of so the element is at least in.

the element water contains mostly fish and sea-food for example. imagine you make something sweet and don't find anything to add for the element water - but there's always salt which belongs to the element water. you can always add a tiny pinch of salt - even to sweet things - and everything's well.

if you went through all the elements and realise that you forgot something, start again and either add more different ingredients per element or a tad more of the ones you've used already to make sure you don't interrupt the circle.

sounds complicated and very fussy, i know, but having grown up in a kitchen were cooking like this was normal i can tell you that it's not as stressful as it sounds - especially if you take your time.

now, i said i don't usually cook this way; but once, when i had a spur of motivation to live more healthily, i grabbed the poster and made my own little table containing all the ingredients you can possibly use to make your own muesli.

we've always been muesli-people and whenever i had a phase and made our own muesli it was always very well received and eaten up in no time.

my muesli-table is organized by element and by type of ingredient: all the grains are boxed-in in orange, the fruit and berries in pink, spices in green, nuts and seeds in purple and sweeteners in brown. then there's an abreviation for dried and fresh ingredients (yes, for some fruit and berries it makes a difference).

this is the latest batch i made and it is really good. i made it as follows and in order of appearance (use a large bowl and stir well after each element is finished):

wood: spelt flakes, dried lemon zest

fire: dried orange zest - i would have liked to use dry-roasted buckwheat but didn't have any and it was sunday

i make my own dried orange and lemon zest when organic citrus fuit are in season here (mostly in winter, but we usually get organic lemons all year round). i would not ever recommend to use non-organic citrus fruit for their zest because of the chemicals and waxes they might be treated with. it should say on the product label if the zest is fit for use in the kitchen. i either use a grater and spread the little pieces of zest on a plate to dry or, as i did in this case with the oranges, a peeler to get longer strips as they are easier to use in teas and wintery drinks. since these strips of dried orange zest were all i had in the house of the element fire i asked my husband to chop them for me as fine as he could. he really did chop them very finely but the pieces were still a little bigger than the flakes you get when you use a grater in the first place. and it's awesome when you eat a spoon full of muesli and happen to get a piece or more of the orange - the flavour is just divine and a lovely surprise.

earth: chopped walnuts, black and white sesame, cinnamon, chopped almonds and hazelnuts, vanilla and brown sugar.
i'm really lucky that almonds, hazelnuts, vanilla and brown sugar (white sugar as well) belong to the same element because what i like to do for a little crunch is caramelise the chopped nuts with the vanilla and brown sugar to make brittle. i put everything in a wide pan and constantly stir on low heat until the sugar melts, starts bubbling and coats the nuts - be careful not to let it burn. i spread the hot brittle on a baking sheet and spread it out, breaking bigger lumps with a spoon, then let it cool at least long enough so the sugar's not sticky any more.
BE VERY CAREFUL! HOT SUGAR ON SKIN CAUSES HORRIBLE BURNS!
when it's cool enough i add the brittle to the rest and stir only when i've added everything that belongs to the element earth.

metal: oat flakes, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg - all dried and ground

water: a tiny pinch of salt - it gets lost among all the other ingredients

it's not necessary but i like to do it because of the flavour it adds: dry-roasting the flakes and nuts i use. i didn't roast the walnuts but i roasted the spelt and oat flakes and the sesame - and the brittle of course. i really like to add buckwheat - non-flaked but also dry-roasted. i don't like the flavour of buckwheat when it's the only grain used for something (my mum sometimes used it as a substitute in cake or for veggie-burgers when i was little and i couldn't stand it - still can't when i think about it...) but when mixed in with all the other ingredients the flavour doesn't really come through but the shape and consistency of the seeds add greatly to the whole eating experience, if you know what it mean by that. when you roast buckwheat, some of the seeds can pop, which gives you the cutest little mini buckwheat-popcorn that add a touch of playfulness to your muesli - i know lots of ready-made ones add stuff like that too...

this batch is almost out already. T and his dad really like it. T gave me lots of hugs after his first portion, declaring it was the best he ever ate. makes me feel so appreciated...

you can add all sorts of dried and fresh fruit of course - the dried for storing in a jar or tin the fresh right before eating. i usually don't put dried fruit in when i make it. i stick with the nuts and flakes because i know my kids would just pick them out. i add them right before eating if i want them and then i don't care about the order i put them in...

you don't have to care about the order of putting things in at all by the way. just search through your cupboards and drawers and toss together all kinds of flakes, nuts, seeds, fruit and spices you want.

for some reason the 5 elements stuck with me as far as muesli making goes - i don't know why. i don't know if it tastes better that way or if it's just a way to make me add more interesting things than i otherwise would, simply because i see them on my list. i just know: it's really nice and my family likes it too.

 

lots of love! xxx

 

p.s.: i'll add a full list of all the possible ingredients with their associated elements in a separate post in the right side bar. if you speak/understand german, feel free to use my handwritten list pictured above - i hope it makes sense.

strawberries and jam

on the fist weekend of july my mum, my sister and i drove about one-and-a-half hours up into the higher parts of lower austria to pick strawberries. it's a little cooler up there which means the strawberries ripen more slowly and later than they do hereabouts in the flat lowlands around vienna.

my mum took some photos of the field i think but i didn't get a chance to load them onto my computer yet.

we picked two of those wooden baskets each and then my mum bought each of us a pre-picked one on top of that. i don't know how much i ended up with in kg but it was a lot! we ate so many strawberries!

in the above picture i'm in the process of sorting some of them for making jam. i started with the pre-picked basket: the most perfect ones went into the white-and-green "gmundner" bowl for eating just like that, the not so perfect ones went into the strainer for washing, and quite a few went into my mouth.

i plucked the stems, washed and chopped the berries, weighed them (1kg), put them into a large pot and gave them a good mash with a potato masher. i wanted the jam to be not entirely smooth but not super chunky either.

i followed the instructions on the packaging of the gelling agent. (because i had enough normal sugar i didn't want to buy the special sugar that has the gelling stuff added to it already which all the supermarkets sell throughout summer and autumn so people can make jams and jellies.)

i washed my small collection of pretty and special jars (i have a small collection of pretty and special jars) with very, very hot water and boiled their lids.

then i scooped the boiling hot jam into some of the jars - washing gloves still on because you know... hot!

and because there were some jars still empty when the pot was i did the same thing again with another kilo of strawberries. (although i had to get two more jars that were not so pretty and special.)

the whole of it didn't even take one-and-a-half hours. which makes me think that i could make jams and jellies (or compote) more often. we always used to when i was little - we hardly ever had store-bought jam...

of course we started with the jar that didn't get filled all the way...

we're on jar three already.

yum...

star-fish-soup

we had star-fish-soup today - haha! the kids love this sort of food.

lentils anyone...?

i was pondering over what to cook recently. i had some chicken filet that needed roasting and i couldn't make up my mind what to make to go with it... we've had enough pasta, rice i thought was too boring that day and i wasn't in the mood for potatoes...

i've been wanting to make something with lentils for a while though. i found two indian lentil dishes that i really like on the internet before so i went ahead and searched for some more lentil dishes.

i didn't find anything.
well, actually i found a lot but nothing that tickled my fancy really. almost every recipe had lots of chili and indian spices in it - which is usually totally fine with me (maybe except the chili) but somehow that didn't seem to be the right thing on this particular day.

so i made up my own lentil dish. (scroll to the bottom of the post for the short version.)

we used to have lentils a lot when i was a kid and i never was a big fan of them. we had the big brown ones that need soaking over night and cooking in the pressure cooker.

 but a while ago i (re)discovered the small red and yellow lentils that cook pretty much like rice does. i buy them at the health-food store (the organically grown ones) and for some reason cooking them just makes me happy.

first i put on the lentils according to the instructions on the packaging.
though it says they don't need soaking - at least not over night - i did some resarch and found out that they will be easier on the stomach when they are soaked for 15-20 minutes and then rinsed thoroughly prior to cooking. it washes out some indigestible contents.
the longer the lentils soak the less cooking time they need until they are done.
they are also supposed to be cooked without salt in the water - salt keeps them from softening.

i find that for my family's needs the quantities of lentils i have to cook are quite the same as the amount of rice i would need as a side dish.
i have a teacup that has the perfect size to measure rice and lentils - 1 1/2 cups full is just right for side dishes.

i cook the lentils - 1 1/2 of my teacups full - in twice the amount of chicken soup - 3 teacups full of water with one little tub of chicken soup concentrate (i suppose that has salt in it but they still soften) - on medium heat.

i soaked the lentils for about 20 minutes beforehand so it took about 10-15 minutes until they where done. i checked every now and then. they are usually done when most of the fluid has evaporated or been soaked up. the small red and yellow lentils sort of fall apart and become quite pulpy. i have yet to figure out how to keep them lentily to make lentil salads.

accordingly this dish might not be suited for people who don't like pulpy, mashy food with lumpy bits in it.

while the lentils cook i chop some onion(s) - depending on the size - and grate some carrots. the amount of vegetable is up to personal preference really. that's also why i don't give full particulars regarding the quantities used or needed. anyone to their own taste. i end up with a balance of lentils to vegetables being about 1:1.

next i sauté the onions and carrots with a good-sized lump of butter until they start to brown slightly - don't let them burn.

the lentils should be done by then and i put the vegetable into the pot with the lentils and stir the two together. adding a dash of vinegar helps bring out the flavour of the lentils more and after a quick taste i decide if it needs more salt or not - usually not or just a little pinch since the soup adds some flavour too.

today i made some chicken with cream-sauce to go with it and it was yummy!

(sorry about the photos - i'm not a very good photogarpher and not in the least a food-photographer which is an art form in itself.)

when i made this for the first time my hubby's words were something like: "it's much fruitier than it looks.", which i took as a compliment - he finished it off. it's true anyway because when you look at it you expect some sort of earthy indian spiced curry flavour. the carrots add a nice fruity sweetness to it.
even the kids enjoyed it a lot.
i'm blessed with them in every way - one of those ways is that they are not really picky when it comes to food and will at least try everything that i cook... and today i even got a long "mhmmm!" from R...

 

now here's a quick summary:

you need:

• red and/or yellow lentils
• onions
• carrots
• (any other kind of vegetable you want)
• butter
• vinegar and salt

-----------------------------

• soak lentils for 15-20 minutes, rinse very well
• cook in water or soup until soft/fallen apart (10-15 minutes - check every now and then)
  
• chop onion and grate carrots (you can add any other vegetable you like of course)
• sauté vegetables in butter until softened and slightly browned
• add vegetables to lentils and stir
• spice to taste with a dash of vinegar and salt if needed