A pies and flowers kind of day
Weeds.
What are weeds? And are they misunderstood? I am guessing that those out there that spend numerous hours and money fighting with unwanted pesky garden guests will be reaching with their shaking, bloodied fingers through the monitor for my throat, but calm down, breathe, give this blogger a chance. I will get to my point eventually, as laboriously as it may end up being.
We skip the violence and move on the pleasant things.Flowers. Imagine a front yard beautifully scattered with emerging flowers. Some more fragrant than others. The new breed of white, small and gentle ones are filling the air with the most mind-swaying aroma. Every time you walk there, it feels like nature’s scent market. That is what our yard feels like at the moment.
The other day the Dod walks up to me with a flower in his hand and hands it up to me. The smile on my face must have had an impact on him too, because he ran back out with Mr.Blab saying more…more…
Next, he comes back and greets me with a small, but wide-toothed smile and hands bulging with freshly-scented, white blossoms. My heart can only take so much, but this I soaked up to its fullest. I took one of the best bouquets I have gotten from the clutch of the two of my favorite hands and buried my nose in the moment.
My new gift now has a prized position on my desk and its perfume lingers all around the place.
Freesias.
Some of the most wonderful flowers I have had the pleasure of seeing and smelling. I was not sure what they were, but one of you (thanks, Mina) mentioned the name and now I am well informed of our gracious little visitors.
Get this though. They are weeds here. Lets just say that when I read that, Mr.Blab and I basically laughed. In our world, a flower that plants itself, grows and exists without an ounce of our effort, and to top it all off smells divine and looks more than pleasing is nothing short of the perfect plant. THE perfect plant.
That was part of how my visual and smelling senses were tickled that day.
Later on I took care of the taste buds.
I am new to baking, but its growing on me. This could be good or bad, or maybe good and bad, but I guess only time will tell. For now I am giving in every once in a while. Remember my burned up first attempt at chocolate tarts? I just had to go back and improve.
So for movie night, again, I made a second batch. I made more dough than I needed so I quickly made up a savory filling for the extras. I had some old cream cheese and spinach leaves that were calling, no, begging to be freed of their fridge misery. The filling ended up like that: a layer of garlicy cream cheese with spinach and that was topped with caramelized onions and capsicums. I am not completely sold on the combination, but they were very pleasant and quickly disappeared.
The piece de resistance were the chocolate tarts, though.
The idea for these had stuck in my head from the Master Chef series. Last time I used some recipe I had found on the net, but this time I went and got the information from the source and the result was a success.
For the dough:
2 cups of plain flour2/3 cup of butter
Pinch of salt Whiz in the food processor until its crumbly. Then add ice water, bit by bit, until it starts to come together. Dont overdo it, it needs to just start to come together. Flip it on the counter and make it into a disk. Cover in plastic wrap and it goes in the fridge for awhile. 30min or so. Then roll it out thinly and cut out the circles you need to put in your shapes. Poke the bottoms with a fork and then put baking paper and weights on top (rice, beans or proper ones) to fill them up. Chill. Bake in medium hot oven for 8-10min. That is called blind baking and the weights keep the dough from puffing up and making it impossible to fill up. Remove the weights and bake for further 10min. Watch it and dont burn them up as I did at first. Then they are ready to fill up.
For the filling:
I microwave a few pieces of dark chocolate until melted. Then I add in cream until it looks like a runny chocolate sauce. Thats it. I pour this into the ready and waiting tarts.To serve we have been using strawberries and whipped cream, but the possibilities are endless. I am thinking it wont be half bad with some crushed nuts on top either.
The result left everybody happy.
The girls were inspired as well and decided to surprise us with their own rendition of a desert for movie night. Sweets buzz up any child and ours are no exception, but their minds were not only fired up by the potential sugar intake. Their creativity was impressed by the ideas of Heston Blumenthal, whos show we adore – Heston’s Feasts. We watched him put chicken in an orange jelly, instead of orange flavour into a chicken, amongst other things.
We got chocolate stuffed strawberries from our budding chefs. Thanks, Heston!
And our move watching plates were now complete.
With chocolate melting in my mouth and belly, and the fine summer scent of the best darn weeds melting in my senses, I can safely say that this day is welcomed to visit me again any time.
This, pies and flowers kind of day.
I looooove freesias! I never knew they were weeds, for some reason I’ve always thought of them as an exotic flower. :P
As for the food, I don’t even like chocolate and I wanted to have some of those tarts. You gotta stop doing that to me! :)
I am not big time into sweets, but a good quality chocolate gets me every time. What part dont you like? The smell, taste…texture?
I like the smell and texture of chocolate but usually what puts me off it is that it’s too sweet. Even as a kid I never liked it. I may have a craving for milk chocolate once every couple of months, but even then one bite is enough to satisfy me. :)
Oh, you need to get dark chocolate. I dont like the regular one much, either.
I’ve tried dark and like it even less – too bitter. lol There’s no pleasing me, is there! :) Then again, I wouldn’t turn down sour vinegar-flavoured chocolate… That would be yummy but for some reason noone makes it! Go figure… :-/
You are very welcome! (rozichka=Mina ;) )
Can’t believe they are weeds. Vanya is quite right – they look pretty exotic.
Loove the tarts! If you are gonna tempt us with such delicious indulgences you should post each of us, your readers, a piece. :Pp