Welcome Fall!

My garden is blessing me with oodles of fresh veggies ... what a bliss! That means a lot of colours, fun and a lot of time in the kitchen.See below (clockwise):
Apple sauce and pickled zucchini - vegetable casserole with potatoes, tomatoes and green beans - soup with cauliflower, pumpkin, potatoes and zucchini - very chocolatey cake.
Yum!

Sunday of the Frugal Housewife

Partly probably due to my Svabian ancestors (they are the Scotsmen of Germany when it comes to parsimony), partly due to vital necessisty in the years I have perfectionated my habit of never ever throwing away anything that is still good, exspecially regarding food.
So today we have an extraordinary frugal Sunday with homemade marmelade from garden strawberries and a cocktail of very ripe fruits from the kitchen:

 

Yum!

 

Venetian bread cake with apples. A recipe from my mom who taught me never to throw away bread ... "because the child Jesus ("Gesù bambino" is a very common figure in Italy that sees Jesus Christ predominantly as a human being. Its the poor little boy that was born in the hut, a very well known situation in after war Italy) climbed down from his donkey just to pick up a tiny crum of bread." This used to be told to children that (quite naturally) refused to eat bread from the day before.

Additionally the women of the Padan Plain, once a very poor region where my mom comes from, created a lot of delicious ways to use day-old bread. One of our favourite is the bread cake:

You need: 

day old bread cut in cubes (as much you can put in a salad bowl

1 liter of milk

3 spoons of sugar

vanillia essence

3 spoons of butter or vegetal oil

3 eggs

3 peeled and diced apples

raisins (if you like them. My kids are unfortunately rather picky with them)

Heat the milk until it begins to boil. Be careful to stir it while heationg, otherwise it tends to stick on the bottom of the pot. Add sugar, vanilli essence and butter in the end. Then pour it on the bread dices and cover the salad bowl with a large lid. Leave it while you prepare the apples. Mash them with the bread that should have absorbed the milk by now and add the eggs. Butter a casserole and bake for 25 min.

With vanillia sauce it makes a whole meal!

 And finally some pasta al forno, an absolute classic for reusing leftovers from the previous day. Mix them and add eventually tomatoes to make a sauce. Cook some pasta, add the sauce and cover everything with a bechamelle sauce. Done! Super quick and easy.
And how do you celebrate frugality? I'd love to know!
Have a great sunday!

Summer feeling!

A princess teaparty! I just had to share these heartwarming pics from Teaprincess from the other hemisphere. A lot of inspiration and dreaming for rainy winter days in this part of the world.
Happy 2012 to all my dear readers!

Picture credits here.

Celebrating with cake "Poire-belle-Hélène"

We were celebrating the birthday of the best husband and daddy of the world ;-) with my favourite combination of chocolate and pears... and some whipped cream... yum! i love the colour combination, too...
For a really easy cake mix 4 eggs with 120 gr. sugar. Add 200 gr of butter and 300 gr. of flour with baking powder. This is the base where you add now ingredients for your taste! Here I put walnuts, 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder and dark chocolate cut into pieces. In the end I arranged three pears cut in slices on the dough.
Bake for 40 minutes and decorate with powdered sugar.