A Very Special Time Of The Year

Have a wonderful first Sunday of Advent tomorrow!
Even if I'm here in Italy I'm holding high the old Austrian Advent and Christmas traditions, which I love. For example celebrating Advent generally, then the Advent wreath, Advent calender, St.Nicholas' Day (and its little goodies!), baking Gingerbread and Christmas biscuits, lightning candles, singing and listening to Christmas songs.
So, light your first candle tomorrow!!! (We'll do it today, as tomorrow we'll be in London! :-))

Let's start baking!

Birthday! And Loads Of Food!

Here's a picture story of my love's 30 birthday!
Well, yes, it was mainly about food - and what you can see here is not even everything!

 Homemade Biscuits for Breakfast

Egg-Liquor-White Chocolate-Birthday Cake

Pizza Muffins!!!!

 Gorgonzola-Apple-Walnut Salad for Lunch

Peanut Butter Cups - the perfect Birthday snack!

Creamy Pumpkin Risotto - made by the Birthday Boy

 What an Antipasti platter!

Burrata - Part of the Antipasti platter

The celebrations lasted 4 days...what should I say more...the pics here are only a small selection!

Once Upon A Time II

That's part II of our Austrian weekend. After the fancy restaurant something more donn-to-earth: Mama's food!!

As we all know: Mum cooks best!

Frittatensuppe

Schnitzel - Potato-Field-Salad - Beer! (More traditional than that???)

Mum's creation

Breakfast (Striezel + Buchteln)

Fantastic soup (Einmachknoedelsuppe)

Yummy!!!

Once Upon A Time

I know I know... long time has passed since my last post, but also many things happened.The last days of November we took a long weekend off and went to Austria....Wellness-Weekend was on the plan! Of course Wellness for us also means FOOD, so we ate in a Falstaff prized restaurant. October is in Austria the wild deer season, so that's what we had. Fantastic food, perfect presentation, unfortunately the atmosphere in the restaurant was a bit...hmmmm....well....dead.

 Beef tartar, perfectly seasoned - my first tartar and I loved it!

 Some deer dishes - very very tender meat and nice side dishes.

Chocolate heaven - cone with hazelnut ice-cream filling and a raspberry sorbet.

These are Topfenknoedel...(kind of Ricotta-Dumplings) filled with chocolate. So fluffy, so ooooohhhhh.

We also had a pumpkin cream soup as a starter, but it wasn't that photo-worthy. It tasted nice, but not as spectacular as the other dishes.
That's our luxury eating experience in Austria! Very satisfying!

Apple Strudel - what else?

Hi there!
I'm quite excited about my FIRST POST ever! Let's hope it's one of a long series!

The first post surely should be about Apple Strudel - the best known Strudel worldwide.
Now, there are many many different types of Apple Strudel - it depends mainly on the pastry.
- Real Viennese Apple Strudel (with kind of Filo pastry)
- Shortcrust
- Shortcrust with sour cream
- Puff pastry

My favourite for sure is the Viennese type soaked in a plate (yes, a plate!) of super sweet milk.
(not with those fancy things like vanilla sauce or ice cream!)

Pictures and recipes will follow!

PS: how can I win against all these anti-cultural people???

Real Viennese Apple Strudel