Apple - Red Onion - Flammkuchen

Cooking healthy meals has been a priority for me lately. Today's recipe I got out of Schrot & Korn's  Apple - Red Onion - Flammkuchen Since it's in German, here is the English recipe (all copy rights remain with Schrot & Korn):

For guests · For 4–6 servings
Prep time: 30 min. + Standing / Baking time
Calories per portion: 445 kcal;
19 g fat, 12 g protein, 57 g total carbs

400 g flour
20 g yeast
1½ tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 sour apples (appropriate for baking, organic)
2 small red onions
50 g hazelnuts
100 g crème fraîche (if you can't find in your area, substitute with sour cream)
100 g goat's cream cheese
salt, pepper
5 twigs thymes
10 sage leaves

1. Sieve the flour in a bowl, create an indentation. Dissolve the yeast with some warm and a teaspoon of sugar. Cover the bowl and let stand in a warm place.  (For example, I place my covered Tupper(c) bowl in a sink of warm water.) 
2. After 10 minutes add 200 ml of warm water, salt and oil to your pre-dough and mix with the dough hook of your hand mixer. 
3. Knead the dough manually, then cover again and let it rise until it has approximately doubled in volume. 
4. Use a apple corer, then thinly slice the apples with skin on.  Mix the apples with 1 tbsp sugar. Slice the red onions in rings or slices. Roughly chop the hazelnuts.
5. Knead the dough on a floured surface. Roll the dough out into the shape of your baking sheet/pans. My sheet in Germany is 33cm x 41cm. Place on the greased baking sheet. I let the dough rise for a few moments to heal the patched portions of my results. Spread the crème fraîche on the dough, leaving the edges free. Place apple and onion slices on the dough, also the goat's cream cheese. Salt and pepper. Spread the chopped nuts (I substituted with almond slices, because I had no hazelnuts on hand.) Put the sheet for approx.  20 minutes in the oven at 220°C (ca. 430°F)
6. Pluck fresh thyme leaves and chop sage leaves to spread on the Flammkuchen. Serve immediately.

Sonia's Quiche Lorraine Recipe

Sonia is my French sister-in-law and she cooks like a dream, at the same time works full-time, so she is an unachievable inspiration for me. When she has guests, she has a few go-to recipes that everybody loves and she gave me the details of her quiche lorraine that I have adapted somewhat and posted here. It's simple and tasty. This dish is perfect with a mixed green salad, topped off with her delicious dressing. Today, I just made the quiche and thought I should share it here.

Shortcrust
500g flour
1 tsp salt
250g soft butter/alternative margarine
8 tbsp water
2 Eggs

Topping
8 eggs
500ml milk
salt, pepper, cayenne pepper
250-400g bacon or ham bits (fry them in a pan to let out the fat, let fat drain on kitchen roll. Sonia's original recipe called for 400g, I prefer using only 250g)
250-300g Emmental cheese, grated (Sonia's recipe called for 200g, but I wanted a tad more.)

Preparing the pans with the crust. Frying the bacon bits.

1. Prepare the crust in a medium-sized bowl mix all the ingredients with a spoon until the dough holds together. Eventually, with cold hands knead the dough slightly. Portion the dough in a buttered baking pan AND another buttered small pan or, if available, in a quiche form. Spread the dough lightly with your fingers throughout the pans so that no holes are present. You don’t have to press them up the sides. Stab all over with a fork.
2. In a separate bowl mix the eggs and milk for the topping. Season with a little salt (careful, because the bacon bits are a little salty, too), pepper and Cayenne Pepper.

Spices in now or when the mixture is spread over the pans.

3. Spread the fried/drained bacon bits, and the emmental cheese on the dough of the two pans. Pour the egg-milk-mixture over the two pans.
4. Bake both pans in a pre-heated convection oven at 200°C for 30 minutes (If you want to bake at a conventional setting, then approx. 40 minutes, but the pans can only be baked one-by-one, so who wants that? Sonia always bakes with the convection setting). 

First the bits, then the cheese, then the egg-milk-mixture.

The strawberries jumped in for the missing green salad.

With a green salad this is enough for a family of four - six depending on the hunger level. Also, quiche is great as part of a buffet.

 Bon Appetit. SaveSave

New Creative Goals 2017 / 2018

So, after a year of hard work and dedication, my path to my teaching certification came to a crashing halt. I almost made it. I got all my homeworks done: an admissions quilt, 5 topical quilts, a class that I gave in front of my fellow teachers-in-the-making, finishing instructions for a pillow suitable for children.

This is my certificate quilt 2016/2017 - unfinished

Unfortunately, I miscalculated the efforts needed to finish my certificate quilt, which is shown here on this post, set up on a self-made quilting frame that I put together. It was hand pieced with EPP (English Paper Piecing) and it was hand quilted with a braided pattern. Well, the quilting is only 3/4 done, so I will pick it up at the guild office and finish it off for my sense of well-being. To get my certificate, I will have to design and execute a new certificate quilt. The Patchwork Guild will send the topic to me in May and I will have a full year's time to get it done. This time I will succeed.

A selfie of me trying very hard to get the quilt done.

That is one goal that I have. The other goals are: creating beautiful quilty things, writing regularly in this blog, creating videos in my channel, setting up a shop in Etsy and/or DaWanda, giving lessons, taking lessons (especially Hand- and Machine-Quilting).

Hmm, I could go on, but that could be a little ridiculous, as I do have a day job of 6 hours/day. I sing in a church choir and I plan to dance with my dance troupe, plus I love to cook, bake, do photography, paint and do all sorts of creative things. Let me try to stay realistic, otherwise in one year I will be disappointed again regarding the status of my certificate quilt.

This is me turning over a new leaf. Let the fun begin.

Gathering Ideas for my Certificate Quilt

I got this crazy idea in my head to get certification as a Patchwork and Quilting instructor. So, right now, I am gathering ideas on my Certificate Quilt, whose topic is "Woven and Braided". This placemate touched me somehow. I wonder how I can transform this in a super idea that is easy to do.

Twin Baby Blankets in Pink, Blue and Beige

Before Christmas 2015 I finished baby blankets for Sabina's and Markus' twins: Max and Sophia. I took ten months to get these done. Not bad considering that I was so busy with work, my many hobbies and three weeks of vacation in the States and a week each in Brittany and on the island of Sylt. The top was quite simple. I patched everything together on my Pfaff. I quilted by hand. The borders look like primitive art. There are leaves on the border and flower corners for the girl blanket. On the boy blanket I quilted butterflies in the corners.

Here are two pictures:

Dear Jane - a long and windy road

Sometimes I ask myself, "Why did I pick a Dear Jane Quilt as a project?" Especially, why did I choose to do a Dear Jane fully hand-sewn. I don't know if this is normal, but it takes me sometimes a day to finish a block. That is, I pick out the fabric, I study  how others have done it, then I trace the pattern out of Brenda P's book on to freezer paper, then I start the arduous process of sewing/cutting/ironing. Phew, it's going to take me forever!

If you look at my previous posts, ha, I am talking to myself here :-) then you can see that I actually started this project about 2 years ago. I now have 8 from 225 patterns done. The finished blocks - ok, they are not finished, they are only assembled - aren't even perfect.

So, again, why am I torturing myself? What is the fascination with a Dear Jane anyway?

Here are my reasons:

1. I compare this type of quilt to a marathon quilt. There is a certain amount of satisfaction knowing that I am attempting something that takes patience, perservation and, yes, skill. I am building muscles in my hand. Or, I am getting bursitis, I don't know at this point. I have done sprint kind of quilts. Those are fun, too. You choose easy patterns and you get satisfaction in the way the colors of the prints come together. But Dear Jane causes you to build up those happy hormones once the momentum builds up. 
2. There is a social aspect. My quilting mentor Suzie, I don't know if she knows that I call her that, what a responsibility, turned me onto the idea. She gave a course on the topic and she has almost finished hers, after 5 years. I want to join this exclusive club of Janiacs. 
3. It's almost like meditation. The pace is slow. It is quiet - inside my head, too. I sometimes think of Jane Sickle. What was she thinking? How was she coping with the War in 1863? And gee, I was born 100 years later. How is that for time/space continuum.

So, that's enough seriousness for now. I am going to pop into town and buy some more fabric, because the round that I'm doing is still in the reds and I need a couple more swatches. I am not following the original color scheme exactly, but I am trying to stay in authentic colors. I have traditional flowery reds and burgundy. I might go with pastel pinks, greens and yellows. Well, I'll see how it goes. I am in for a long adventure with this project.

Kingston's Baby Blanket Finished

I know why I don't post more. It's so awkward gathering pics of everything, plus figuring out how to do this efficiently from my tablet. Ok, whining aside, in my last post which to my amazement was over a year ago, I said that Kingston's baby blanket would be done by the time he graduated from high school. Luckily, that was an exaggeration and he got it on his first Birthday, which is not bad considering that I started it in September 2012, when I last posted, took a break around Christmas and didn't start again until, hmm, I don't know, summer of 2013?

Here is a fuzzy photo of the recipient:

I hope he can use it and he doesn't grow out of it too soon.











Here is a more detailed montage:

I finished it, while we were vacationing in the Limousin Region of France. It was only occasionally warm, which made the hand quilting go well.

The lion application was ok, but I need to find another system for my next application project.