Bento # 8

As soon as school starts for my youngest, I'll have to prepare kid's bentos - how cute.
Needless to say, my son is eager to try them and begged to have some already.


That's kid bento #1:

This is a really simple one - Nutella sandwiches (dino shape), red pepper slices and 2 mini chocolate muffins. Well - start small - grow as you go, hm

Cooking

We planted 7 cucumber plants this year and they are really thriving!
For 2 weeks now we are picking at least 4 of them daily - and they're huge.
I decided to use a batch of them to make pickled cucumbers - a nice recipe using honey, ginger and chilli for just a few of the jars.

We can't wait to try them!

Bento # 7

It's a busy time just now - so much to prepare for my son's school start - as well as summer school holiday in our part of Germany. Only 1 week until we're actually off for our summer holiday as well - I can't wait!


Not many bento's during the last week - but I had the chance to prepare a few - so let's see number 7:

Bottom tier: cheese tortellini with home-grown spinach pesto
Top tier: heart-shaped egg, sausage slices, apricots and a chocolate treat.

DIY project: New windows / Dachfenster wechseln

Ach wisst ihr was? Jetzt switche ich mal in Deutsch um (immerhin geht es hier ja um Deutsche Fenster ;-)
Eigentlich reden wir über polnische Fenster. Wir haben nach bisher nur positiven Erfahrungen auch dieses Mal unser Material nach gründlicher Recherche über das Internet bestellt. Die Dachfenster sind aus Polen - wurden unglaublich schnell geliefert und machen einen sehr guten Eindruck!


Nachdem die Wetterlage eine Woche lang permanent unsicher war, mussten wir bis Samstag warten, um das erste Fenster einzubauen.
Alles in Allem hat es ca. 3 Stunden gedauert (am meisten Zeit hat das Entfernen und wieder Eindecken der Dachziegel gekostet).

Hier wurde zuerst das alte Fenster demontiert.

Alles weg - überflüssig zu erwähnen, dass ich  ab hier intensiv gebetet habe, es möge nicht regnen :-)

So sah das ganze von Aussen aus - weiter wollte ich mich aber nicht herauslehnen ....

Zuerst wurde der Rahmen ausgerichtet und fixiert

Anschließend der äußere Eindeckrahmen montiert

Alle Dachziegel wieder befestigt - leider kommt man um einige Anpassungen nicht herum (da musste die Flex ran). Hinterher hatten wir einige übrig - das liegt aber daran, dass das neue Fenster minimal größer ist und einen anderen Eindeckrahmen hat.

Der finale Part: Einsetzen der Scheibe. Alles passt - alles dicht und das fast pünktlich zum abendlichen Fußballspiel.

Fazit: wir sind froh, dass wir uns da ran gewagt haben. Die Fenster sind kein Vergleich zu vorher - fantastisch. Die nächsten schaffen wir dann hoffentlich in der halben Zeit :-)

Ist mein Mann nicht genial???? 

Bento # 6

Good morning,


only one Bento box I prepared Friday evening, as my husband had to work on Saturday: 


This is Bento # 6:

Bottom tier: steamed rice topped with Furikake and carrot flowers.

Top tier: crispy tofu 'schnitzel', star-shaped egg, fried yellow pepper and some extra furikake (panda). 

This box is my favorite for 'big' lunches!

Bento # 5

Hi there,


today I found 3 different furikake-mixes (furikake = dry spice mix for rice) in an Asian grocery store here in Darmstadt. I love it! I guess I'll have to make some onigiris tonight for our bentos tomorrow (that is - after watching football and going to a school event after work.....).


Time for another bento photo (yesterdays - in fact I'm one day behind always):

Very healthy (lean grilled chicken, steamed broccoli, cucumber, home-made tortilla with potatoes and onions and two tiny ham-and-cheese-rolls). My husband starts to like the bento-box idea - his colleagues even asked if I could order some boxes for them (have done that yesterday). 


I'm off now - have to rush to kindergarden and school event afterwards!


Have a nice evening.

Bento accessories

Hi folks,


as I promised a couple of days ago I took a photo of all the bento accessories I gathered and use now:

So there are some sandwich shapers, rice forms, stencils, egg moulds, lots of cute picks some silicone cups and of course some bento boxes (not in the picture :-) for every family member.

I was surprised how excited my son was when he spotted all the stuff! He immediately started planning what HE could do with all the tools. He demanded action right away and asked me if we could do something from 'Super Mario' (? never played this).... :-)

After listening to a comprehensive introduction to Mario's World we agreed to create some (I have fogotten their name - sorry) mushrooms. That's the result:

Yeah. Don't ask me to explain the difference between the green and red ones.

For the red ones we used egg, tomatoes and mozarella for the dots. The green one consists of mozarella and (home grown) cucumber (- yes yes yes - we harvested the first ones and they taste delicous!). Next to the green one there is a box also featured in the game - made of yellow pepper with some mini-sesame 'nails' and a spaghetti questionmark on it. Phhh - how creative for a friday afternoon I'd say.

Bento # 3 & # 4

Lunchbreak :-D

Time for my bento # 4. 

You miss # 3?

Nothing special yesterday - just a nice and spicy soup. Good for the temperatures here in Germany.... it's freezing cold. Summer? I DO remember some nice and warm days when I was young *sigh*.

Here we are:

I used the egg-shape moulds for the first time. Funny - isn't it? I guess I have to buy larger eggs for that purpose, though. 

I think I can write about another renovation project soon - we just received our window delivery.

Changing the windows will be a real challenge (and not a desaster - hopefully ;-)

It will be a huge improvement for our bedroom! The windows there are total crap. We had a very cold winter in there - despite the heating. So *yippee*! 

Bento # 2

Good morning,


I received my second delivery of Bento stuff yesterday *woohoo* - great and cute ('kawai') stuff for making and decorating delicous Bentos.
This batch came from http://casabento.com/shop/en/. They are located in France but deliver internationally. Delivery time was a week - that's absolutely acceptable. I'll post a photo of the whole stuff tomorrow and I can't wait to use it. It's been late yesterday evening (had to watch football of course!) so I just unpacked everything and admired it. As I don't have to pack foodboxes for my kids (full service at the kindergarden - and for my daughter - she is not sure yet if it is cool enough ;-), my dear husband will have to enjoy my decoration tries *eg*.


Nevertheless, this was yesterdays bento for me (forgot to shoot a photo of his box)...:

DIY project: new finish for the dinner table

Finally I found the time to get the table done.

It's a nice mahogany table - but during the last 30 years or so its finish wore considerably off. There were scratches on it, water marks and also some small damages...

I bought a large can of 'Aceton' to remove the shellack finish and started to dissolve it through applying the aceton with a soft brush then scraping most of it off with a scraper and rubbing the rest off with a soft cloth. It worked fine but it is a bit tricky as you have to move very quickly. The shellack comes off like a thick liquid - almost like honey - and it's sticky like hell. I used up a good deal of cloth. After this, the table looked like this:

Then I sanded it down with fine sandpaper. Afterwards I cleaned the surface with warm water, let it dry a bit and applied a water based stain (mahogany coloured) with a sponge.

Unfortunately after drying it turned out to be quite blotchy, so we had to sand the surface down again. Same procedure again. After the second layer of the stain was dry it looked ok - so after letting it dry for a whole day we moved the table inside to apply the varnish. I chose a glossy finish from 'CLOU' (not water-based as this would have dissolved the water based stain) and applied it carefully with a roller and brush. First layer was not enough so after waiting 24 hours I applied the second layer.

Well. The result is ok - but I'm not totally happy. On one part of the table there are small blotches in the varnish - I have no idea why. They are small so it's ok for now. I think it would be necessery to sand the finish again very carefully and apply another layer but to be honest: at the moment I don't have the energy for that and we really missed the table so I'll postpone this until whenever :-)

I'm happy when I look at the table now and I'm glad to look at the wood and not having to cover it up because of the ugly scratches.

Getting used to the technique

Wow - my second Post. I'm gradually getting used to blogging though I'm far from being a technical expert. Some layout rules are weird - I'm not sure how to post on the right pages. I want to keep general news an updates on this (?) main page - and more detailed or topic-related ones on the specific pages (like 'Project House', Project: What's cooking'). Please have a look around - maybe I'll have to adjust the layout gradually until it works fine for me - so bear with me :-)

So news?
In Germany everybody is very excited due to the Football EM. Of course we are also watching most of the matches - preferring the not-so boring ones *g*.
My youngest is staying with his daddy this week so it's a little more quiet than usual.

How very exciting: I received my first order from http://www.bentoshop.de/ yesterday.
So I'm ready to start 'bento-ing' - ha. I like the idea of having nicely prepared and home-made lunch everyday. Making it look nice is really fun. So check out my first result of  preparing a 'bento-box'.

See you soon.

Project: Blog.

Hi all - 
finally I decided to start blogging. There is a big chance that I will do so for the pure experience of blogging only - but I embrace the pleasurable opportunity to delight you all with nearly never annoying news of my world. Revision mark: at least I will try to keep this project going just to prove myself that 'I can'. Did I mention that I'm planning to write a novel? This is one reason(among many others)why I'm doing this. Fine. Let's start :-)