Happy Easter!

Trying to enjoy the wonders of Spring, we decided to grow our own Easter grass this year. There´s no sign of green outside yet (we just had snow this week!) so I thought girls would be delighted to get their own piece of green for Easter.

We usually travel to my in-laws on Easter holidays, main reason I didn’t encourage my daughters to have their own baskets at home before (they often get pretty ones from their grandmother!).

You see… it was really exciting for them to watch the grass grow from seeds to “bush”. Too bad our lack of experience resulted in irregular surfaces :P. Next time I figured we need to use more seeds (even if the package says the opposite!).

Anyways, girls acquired a new skill and had fun at same time :D.

A beautiful package right? This was made by Luonnonvoima in her pre-school. It has barley grass in. Yep, I admit, it is prettier than ours >_<!

Girls trying different styling: LV has the orange basket and little PS the purple :) *the chick is flying mommy!*

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We are off for the holidays and as you might have guessed already, we are spending the long weekend with my girls´ grandparents.

Wish you all a very Happy Easter! Hyvää Pääsiäistä! Feliz Páscoa!

This post was written by karaimame exclusively for Acquiring Taste. All writing, images and other materials in this blog remain the property of Acquiring Taste and cannot be used without permission.

Talking about onigiri: My guest posts at Bistrô Pregui !

Hello friends!

I did a couple of fun guest posts for my sweet Brazilian friend Nathy from Bistro Pregui. The blog is in Portuguese but please take a look, we are currently talking about onigiri! (I even made clumsy pictorials showing how to make them ;)

I love her blog (she is very talented with graphics!) and being invited to write there made me very happy ^^.

You can get to my onigiri-introduction post on Nathy’s blog by clicking here and for the pictorial posts here and here! Hope you all like it!

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Oi gente!! Eu fui convidada pela minha querida talentosa amiga Nathy do blog Bistrô Pregui para fazer alguns posts sobre oniguiri e com muita honra eu os fiz :). Passem lá para dar uma olhadinha, estamos falando sobre o famoso bolinho de arroz japonês. Tem até passo-a-passo com fotinhos para vocês verem, aqui e aqui :) !

 

This post was written by karaimame exclusively for Acquiring Taste. All writing, images and other materials in this blog remain the property of Acquiring Taste and cannot be used without permission.

A sunny spring day walk

♩♫ “Lily, my one and only. I can hardly wait till I see her” ♩♬

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a super weekend! We finally had a relaxing one after so many hectic days… No house showing scheduled at the last moment and no running around like a mad lady getting the house presentable. Uh… yes, you got it right… we are trying to sell our apartment.

It has been very difficult to cook and use my kitchen properly with all this “stand by” mode, so no food for this post, just pictures I snapped on a sunny spring day walk  :).

Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) might be one of my favorite flowers. Its lovely scent in the air makes me sure Spring has arrived. Places were all covered by its leaves… but not much flowers bloomed yet.

“Kielo” (in Finnish) is the national flower of Finland. It is so tiny, so cute, smells so good and it is highly poisonous!  ^__^  So “lily”! *grins*

Gorgeous day wasn’t it? Weekend was so sunny and warm… (we had rain on monday, bleh :P) Luonnonvoima could practice her skills with her brand new kick scooter and Pikkusiili enjoyed to discover the birds at the park nearby.

And we saw a cute mother duck and 10 little ducklings! Oh wow… I asked to my girls “Imagine if mama would have 10 children” … hubs added “you would be mad”. Ahahaha :D

…

Let’s see if I can still blog something else this week. Maybe a bento or a recipe… I am so needing to relax a bit >.<.

Have a great day friends!

 

 

This post was written by karaimame exclusively for Acquiring Taste. All writing, images and other materials in this blog remain the property of Acquiring Taste and cannot be used without permission.

 

 

 

Panda butter cookies

Every last Monday of the month, a group of friends in twitter join a “virtual” party where photos of an agreed dish/ingredient/theme are shared.  It is the #twitterfoodparty ^__^.

I had plans for this month´s theme (cookies!) but with all the mess in my kitchen lately + trying to rest as much as possible in the weekend (to recover from flu) made me postpone the baking until better times.

Anyways! Hmm.. digging from my photo archives I present my contribution : Panda butter cookies!

I baked the cookies for my daughter´s 3 yo birthday party. In the same theme, I frosted a cake with a panda face. She ♥ pandas. And I… well, I do too >__<!

The cookies are simple butter cookies, vanilla and dark chocolate flavored. Don’t you think they are cute?

Join the fun on twitter (look for hashtags #twitterfoodparty #twittercookieparty) and check the flickr group to see the previous party dishes :).

 

 

This post was written by karaimame exclusively for Acquiring Taste. All writing, images and other materials in this blog remain the property of Acquiring Taste and cannot be used without permission.

 

 

Savory pancakes & #twitterfoodparty

Hello there! Monday is usually a terribly busy day for me… and now that we are coming closer and closer to the holidays and end of the year festivities, mondays just seem to get worse. I am trying to gather myself and use all my time as much wiser as it is possible.

But hey! Today is the last monday of November :). For those who follow me on twitter, you might know that the last monday of  each month is dedicated to what we call #twitterfoodparty. The concept is very simple, we discuss and decide a theme/ingredient/type of food to be made on this monday in particular and then, we tweet a picture about what we’d made or ate. Simple!

I couldn’t participate in the last twitterfoodparty special edition (theme was sushi) but I will collaborate to this one… The theme is Pancake! =)

To catch all the delicious dishes coming up and what my twitter-friends are posting, look for hashtags like #twitterfoodparty and #twitterpancakeparty. It is fun, join us! ^_^

Because of not writing any recipe today, I will consider this post as my food memo :).

Meat savory pancakes & #twitterfoodparty

I´ve made these pancakes using a Brazilian recipe. Savory pancakes are very common there, you can fill them with whatever you wish and bake them using any sauce on top. Common fillings are pulled cooked chicken, ham and cheese, mushrooms, shrimps and meat. Sauces varies from white sauce to tomato sauce or bolognese.

It is similar to French “crêpe”, a liquid batter made from flour, eggs, milk and salt, fried to a thin layer on a pan with butter.  I added a bit of grated parmesan cheese in my batter because I knew I was going to use it for a savory filling. Otherwise, you can also fill the pancakes with sweet toppings, for dessert or breakfast.

My pancakes are filled with minced meat (pre-cooked with onion and spices) and topped with béchamel sauce and grated cheese. Then, just baked in the oven until golden and bubbling. :)

I served with green beans salad and tomato vinaigrette (made with cherry tomatoes, onion, raspberry balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and olive oil).

Have a great #twitterfoodparty day!

Udon-suki

When I started the blog I didn’t have a well-shaped idea of what it was supposed to be or look like. The tagline for the title pretty much explains how messy my blog is  ^_^.

So… when talking about food, I don’t necessary mean I am going to write and post the recipe for it. Some of the recipes I make use ingredients that are somehow “exotic” or difficult to find… or sometimes they are just food we eat without any further ado. :)

I decided to create a new category for the blog. It will be my “Food memorandum”. With that, I can keep track of what I am cooking (or eating!) and refer back to them when I run out of inspiration.

Shall we begin?

Udon-suki

I’d been thinking about shimeji mushrooms for long… I am a dedicated mushroom-lover ♡♥… eeeehehe and could do anything to get them for my recipes. Yes, total truth.

Couple of years ago, when the big supermarket nearby opened its doors I was amazed and happy to find out they carried shimeji mushrooms in their selection, along with the so called “normal” usual mushrooms (small shiitake and button mushrooms). To my disappointment they had it just for the opening event and soon after the mushrooms disappeared.

I am not sure where else I could find shimeji here but the other day I was reading one of my recent discovered blog and was glad to hear  a place downtown would possibly have it on its shelves (kiitos – ありがとうございます ^_^  Sari!). Took me a bit to have time to go there but I finally bought one box! Yay to me!

Having a box of “bunapi-shimeji” (white beech mushroom) I just needed to decide what to make with these little cute white shrooms ^_^. Soon after we were having a comforting Udon-suki to warm us up in a cold saturday night :).

About the Udon-suki. Basically it is a sukiyaki, a Japanese hot-pot where meat and vegetables are cooked in a shallow pot filled with sukiyaki broth, with highlight on the udon-noodle. I´ve made it like this because my girls just love udon and they could share the meal with all the family.

You see, nabe (hot pot) style food has a very special meaning to me. It was when we all sat together at table around the pot and shared the meal together. It is something I really appreciated and remember from my childhood. My wish is to pass ahead the same experience to my girls ^_^.