Moominmamma's Pie

Image from http://www.annathered.com/2010/07/21/bento-77-the-moomins/

I made my first recipe from the Moomin Cookbook last night and it was really good. So here it is, my version of Moominmamma's Backpack Pie -

Boil a cup of rice. Boil two eggs to hard-boiled. Combine the rice with a can of salmon. Add some finely chopped dill and then the eggs, also chopped. Mix it all together in a pie dish. Place a puff pastry 'lid' over the top and bake in a 225 degree celsius oven for about 25 minutes.

You can adjust the ingredient amounts depending on how many you're feeding (this one served two). I served it with salad greens.

I'm sorry there is no photo of the actual dish as it turned out, but you know how rubbish I am at photographing food. Suffice it to say, the Yellow Wood household gave it two thumbs up!

This weekend I am going to try out the Fisherman's Lemon Cake (remember him from Moominpappa at Sea?)

Enjoy yourselves!

Moominsummer Madness

What riches the post yielded today! My Moomin cookie cutters arrived this morning from Finland, as did my set of miniature Moomin figures. As if that wasn't enough, Moomins Cookbook by Tove Jansson and Sami Malila was on the doorstep this afternoon! I can't wait to try out Meringue Moominesque, Moominmamma's Best Buns, Whomper's Special Pudding or Moomintroll's Morning Croissants...actually I'm looking forward to giving them all a go. It does genuinely look like a really nice cookbook.

I think it's going to be a very Moominy weekend this weekend...

And you know what they say, you can never be too rich or too Moominy...(actually I only agree with the second bit)...

Can I ask you a favour?

Image from tumblr

I would very much appreciate your in-put on something today. As you may have noticed from the sidebar, I am working on redeveloping my In a Dark Wood blog (http://inadark-wood.blogspot.com.au) into a space for my fiction writing.

I am mostly writing short stories at the moment, and so I am wondering...

Do you read short stories?
Do you read short stories online?

Sweet thanks for that!
Feronia xx

 Image from tumblr

Rain

It was so lovely to hear the rain this morning. It has rained quite heavily in Melbourne today and everything - people, birds, grass, trees, plants, soil - have lapped it up. Now everything seems quiet and peaceful - sustained and refreshed a little after the heatwave we've been through.

Somehow, it put me in mind of this gentle song.

Simple Comforts

I was having a flick through a lovely Taschen book on the weekend - Sweden Style - and one cottage in particular caught my eye. A sparsely decorated, light-filled little house by the sea, it was identified as Johan Brauner's cottage in Gotland, Sweden. A Google search has yielded nothing about Johan Brauner or his cottage, but it put me in mind of the many plain but lovely cottages we saw dotted through the countryside when we were in Scandinavia in 2011. Simple but enough to live in comfort. That would suit me fine.

The one above we spotted while we toured one of the fjords near Bergen by boat. The two below I photographed while we were walking through the Bergen arboretum.

Lovely.

Stitchin'

My grandmother was a great stitcher. As with many women of her generation (she was born in 1908), she was very skilled with a needle and thread. Throughout my childhood, I had handmade shirts, trousers, skirts and art smocks. This was utilitarian sewing. Then there was 'fancy work' - embroidery. Her house (and ours) was filled with embroidered doilies and cloths of every description.

When I started high school in 1985, we studied 'needlecraft' (it was a girls' school - that's what girls studied in those days - in second form we learned cooking and in third, typing...on a typewriter). I was absolutely hopeless. I took so long with my embroidery stitch sampler that the teacher assigned another girl to watch me work (oh, the shame) and my patchwork cushion and nightshirt were pulled apart with the teacher's stitch-ripper more times than I care to recall.

But now, weirdly, I love it. I have just started the piece of embroidery above, and to my surprise, it's very relaxing. Sort of like colouring-in with thread! It's really quite lovely to watch the picture come to life before your eyes. My mother, who dislikes crafting of all kinds, said "It's all come from your  grandmother".

Would Grandma be pleased? I hope so.

She-Wolves

Matilda of England (1102-1167)

Image from Wikipedia

With what I suspect would be described as my 'monkey mind', I am flitting from one book to another at the moment when I settle down to read. I am reading She-Wolves by Helen Castor pretty steadily, though. It tells the story of 'the women who ruled England before Elizabeth' - Elizabeth the First, that is. It is very accessibly written, providing one doesn't get too bogged down in exactly who was related to who and goes with the overall flow of the tale.

I have several degrees in history, but my focus has always been on modern history, so I am really enjoying visiting another era altogether - the early Middle Ages - and times very different in many ways to our own. As we swelter through yet more humid weather here, I am also enjoying imagining myself in the vast landscape of cold castles that sets the scene! I know, I know...the draughts and the damp and the general horribleness...but just allow me to dream as the air here buzzes thick with heat and insects!

What are you reading right now?