Tired of waiting...

I am a very patient, if not extraordinarily patient, penpal... I might send a 'how have you been' message once and again to remind a particular someone of my existance, but I will never bug anyone about writing... it doesn't mean that I don't care whether I'll get a letter or not, but I know that things get in the way sometimes and there are moments when you don't even feel like sitting down and writing... I can relate to that kind of feeling, been through that before... I can understand... I don't require anyone to write more than twice a year, because with the most people, I know that the letter writing frequency is not what makes our friendship work... but sometimes I get tired of waiting too...

~ when a letter takes months to reach a neighbour country
~ when they keep a letter at the customs for weeks while the envelope doesn't contain anything other than paper
~ when people say 'I'll write you soon' every other day and never actually do
~ when people say that they've lost interest in writing letters... taking a break and collecting strength for new challenges in your life is one thing, giving up on 'the hobby' is another... I can't help feeling betrayed when somebody offers to 'stay friends' on facebook or messengers. This is not what I agreed on in the beginning, this has never been the deal! Then there are people who remember about the deal and still send me stuff on paper, but you can't even call it a letter anymore, because it's rather a string of trivial sentences that don't have much to do with me or the person I enjoyed talking to... this is a situation that just drags on and on and I live on the hope that things will get better eventually ~ but this is when I feel tired of waiting all the time and I know I won't be able to wait forever...

By the way, during the months of January (its very end) and March, I've got two letters from people who asked me to be pals and who promised to write their first letter...

... in September!!! I feel somewhat sorry that their final effort won't be rewarded, but seriously?? The first letter? The one and only chance to make a good impression? When I think I've seen all the miracles of the penpalling world, it stills gives me a surprise...

But on to beautiful things...

My amazing Maura ~ always drop-dead gorgeous... another angle from which her face looks perfect and oh that hair of a goddess... And that guy can touch it every day... awwww... envious *.* There are other fans who dislike people talking about Maura's hair or boobs for some reason, but this is my blog, so hair hair hair and boobs boobs boobs ^0^ 

I went shopping... for something totally different and ended up buying all those tapes!! 

 I just couldn't resist the ornament ones! Good quality, 10 tapes for 13 euros, hello??? at some shops they sell one for 5 +.+

 here is some illustration cuteness à l'allemande ~ Janosch with his cute book characters on the new stamps and Die Maus ('the mouse' in German, nobody wants the cute little animal to die ^^) from a children's TV show... I even bought that sucky 58 cents value and printed a bunch of 2 cents stamps on the machine, so that I can show those internationally ^^

 since a few of my penpals are fond of German football teams, they will probably be glad to see that tape ^^  and those who don't care for football will find it cute anyway... 

 letters from  my little Chinese friends ^^ 

 the letter in the back is quite a wonder  ~ it's a reply to a letter written by me in a swapbot swap!! usually, nobody ever writes back, but this girl did and the letter was such a delight! 

 some more cool mailart ~ from... uhm... the great state of Texas, obviously  ^.^

 an outgoing envelope from a while back...

 a card for swapbot ~ we were supposed to draw something that represents luck and since my partner has been married for decades, I wrote that people who have a great partner to spend their life with are truly lucky... those Mandarin ducks also spend their life with the same partner, so this is why they're a symbol for a great relationship ^^

 made an attempt to draw sweets and turned those pix into birthday cards ^^ these here are raspberry tartelettes ^.^ (when it comes to cards where you write your wishes for someone, I totally lose all my ability to express myself and mostly stick to set phrases, terrible, I know)

 

 berry cake ^^

 

and macarons ^0^ 

Lately I realized that all that I draw or paint will eventually go out and live in someone else's home... so I've bought a Moleskine watercolour book and started art journaling ^^ well, journaling is a matter of definition, same as 'art', but it will contain projects I'll try to do, pictures I suddenly see in my mind and illustrations of something that has a place in my heart... and most of all, it will stay with me ^.^ 

Moroccan adventure...

This post is a part of a swap with the following rules ~
*pick a recipe posted on a certain blog
*cook the dish
*take a pic of everything and post on your blog

The recipes were all from a Moroccan cuisine book... We have a small fast food corner here, where you can eat falafel, harissa and such small dishes, but apart from that, I've never tried anything Moroccan. Well, that would be a challenge, I thought... For some reason, Beghrir sounded quite nice and ~ most of all ~ manageable to me, so I planned to do this:

The recipe: I was happy about the g and ml indications! I can deal with spoons, but cups just make my brain go BANG! I never know how much a cup is and the recipes that mention cups make me want to cry... (There must be a certain amount that generally makes a cup and I imagine some of you might laugh about my confusion, but still...) All the ingredients looked perfectly reasonable too and within reach, no need to find a Moroccan grocery store (nothing wrong with that, but due to my habit to get my swaps done on the last day...), I just had to go out to buy some fresh yeast... The instructions were clear, I just had to look up some words like 'semolina', so yeah, I thought I can get started... Oh, and I took the half of everything, because the original recipe sounded like a huge load of pancakes ^.^

The ingredients

 

salt, eggs,  (granny's ^^) yeast, butter, semolina, water, oil (a little bit for the pan), milk, flour and honey to add if you wish...

First step: mix yeast and water and leave for 15 minutes

 

well, I do a lot of things with yeast, fresh or dry, but I always use milk here... then it gets all happy and bubbly and I can get on with my buns and dumplings... Here ~ nothing happened... I thought I killed the yeast first, because the water was too hot, so I tried again and checked the water three times before I decided to use it... well, still nothing... I decided to use it as it is then...

Second step: mix the rest of the stuff 

 

I decided to just take two eggs, because 1 and a half sounded too troublesome to me (though it's possible) and after I mixed all the ingredients (except the fluids), I realized that I should have added the yeast stuff later... oh well... I also didn't sift anything because my sieve is tiny and it would have taken me a million years...

Then ~ beat it!!

 

it was quite interesting to beat the dough with one hand and to take a photo with the other o.O

 

I liked what it looked like ^^

The dough: should be left under a cloth for two hours... Done that, but nothing raised... mehhh... 

















Third step: just make them pancakes

















ok, the dough looked pretty much like water, but I managed to produced something that looked like a pancake...

















I know, I wasn't supposed to turn them, but I just wanted to make sure that they weren't raw on the one side and burnt on the other... It also turned out that my oven is a B**** because 2 was too much heat and 1,5 too little, so yeah...

















It took me like 40 minutes to make about 12 pancakes (don't be offended if I call them pancakes all the time), which reminded me why I hardly ever make pancakes... I didn't put any more butter on them than while frying, because my stomach would have cried, but I prepared honey to eat them with... And I also made my favourite lemon tea to enjoy with them ^.^

















I'm going to try them with sour cream (it does look like a white mouse sitting on beghrir, doesn't it? o.O)... wait, this is GOOD!!

In the end, I didn't manage to try honey, because they were so good with sour cream and then I was full! But there are quite a few left for later, so I hope I'll try them with honey too ^^

Letters and culinary adventures...

Gosh, I really wish I could skip Christmas like last year, just get away from all that stress and chaos!! I've been pretty busy with lessons and had to sacrifice some of my precious weekend time to the preparations... sigh... And in the evenings after work all I did was preparing Christmas cards and packages... BUT! I'm really proud of myself that I'll actually get everything out before Christmas, it's probably the first year EVER when I managed to do that... Maybe I'm more organized or maybe I'm in a better mood than usual, whatever it is, it feels good ^^ I won't show many of my outgoings, because some stuff is still on its way, but yeah, there is some mail I've sent and received in these past weeks and some delicious stuff I made and/or ate ^.^

 

no mail art mood at all... yawn... but I did my best with the content, as always ^.^ 

 

 the cream I cooked for the cake below, it looked interesting to me ^.^ 

 just the cake, freshly baked 

 voilà ~ chocolate chips fudge cake... looks mehh, but tasted wheeee ^0^ I didn't whip the other cream long enough though, so it was kinda fluid... but yummy...

 German children start with beer pretty early... hehe... NOOOO, it's just a lemonade commercial! I'm addicted to the lemonade made by the local breweries now, I haven't drunk beer in a loooooong time after discovering the lemonade ^^ 

I decorated an envelope with Glagolitic letters ~ it (probably) was the oldest Slavic alphabet developed by a scholar named Constantin (later Cyrill) in the 9th century and was the base for the first written Slavic idiom ~ Old Church Slavic... Later the students of Cyrill and Methodius (his brother) brought the scripts and the idiom to other Slavic areas and also developed the Cyrillic alphabet that is used until now for Russian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Serbian. blablabla... 

 A veritable culinary adventure ~ me & crazy friends went to Frankfurt just for a Chinese all-you-can-eat ^.^ And discovered this cute Taiwan tram!! I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to visit Taiwan again next year, but I don't even dare to think of it too much yet, because I'm afraid that it won't work out... sigh...

well, we had hotpot ~ we got this pot with normal and HOOOOOOOOOTLIKEHELL soup (the amount of chilly peppers is mindblowing, we couldn't get them out soon enough to avoid the explosion of our heads after the first spoonfull) on a gas stove

then we put all kinds of stuff into the soup and cooked it ~ we could choose from a huge buffet with meat, seafood, vegetables, tofu and other stuff

then you could just pick what you wanted and eat from your own bowl with sauces you liked or without ~ my favourite stuff: squid, tofu and enoki mushrooms ^0^ unfortunately that was the moment when I realized that the normal soup contained cilantro... I almost puked... so I had to stick to the HOTASHELL version... 

there was plenty of other stuff to eat, like cute little buns (baozi) ~  they taste better when I make them though ^.^ 

sweeeeeets ^0^ in the upper right corner is a fried piece of dough (youtiao) which I haven't tried before... Since I love all kinds of savoury dough, I loved youtiao too ^^ the rest is fried banana with a crust and different kind of sticky rice balls (mochi)

this was my own Christmas present for myself... I've been thinking of buying proper artist pencils (I only had watercolour pencils so far and well, it's just not the same thing) and now I finally did ^.^

 I must admit I have to figure them out yet, but so far I had fun using them, even if the result wasn't exactly what I expected, not to mention 'artistic' ^.^

presents from a friend who went to the Philippines for business ^0^ hard to tell what I like best ~ the wire binder is VERY handy and the lip balm feels terrific and tastes like mint candy... I need to remind myself not to eat it... 

see my Maura labels ^0^ they're awesome ^.^ the stamps are quite interesting too, they celebrate the 100 years anniversary of the Sorb peoples association in Germany ~ yep, there are native Slavic peoples in Germany! not everybody is aware of that ^.^

I drew something from a Bamu & Kero book ^^ They are so cute and I thought my pal might feel like having a cup of tea while reading my letter ^^ 

a good mail day ~ the present is unopened yet ^^ I'm so silly, I know.. Postcrossing card, Philippines card from my friend and a great letter of my youngest penpal ^.^ 

gosh, they have such beautiful stamps in Russia!! seriously, I'm so disappointed about German stamps most of the time... all they got for winter season is Maria and Jesus, terrific!! =.= 

mail/postal service-related stamps from the Philippines ^.^ 

turrón from Spain... yummm... 

well, I've been wondering what the hell makes macarons so popular (while being SO expensive) for YEARS and now I've tried that caramel-fleur-de-sel thingie and gosh, it was like heaven T0T totally recommended!!

I've baked toffifee-muffins with moulds from one pal and the recipe from another and felt in heaven again... I love my pals ^0^ 

more unopened Christmas mail (Denmark has beautiful winter stamps too =.=) and a letter from one of my favourite places on earth ^^

yeah, that package isn't opened yet neither ^^ then two more cards from Taiwan, yay ^0^

and finally, some of my outgoing Christmas cards ^.^

well, if you scrolled down this far ^.^ ~  I'm wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, even if I feel a bit grumpy about it all, but yeah, I sincerely hope that you have beautiful holidays and enjoy yourself ^.^ Go out and make some snow angels, if the climate allows it ^^ Have a nice holiday whatever you celebrate!  Do spend time with your beloved ones and eat something nice ^0^