First Eggs Benedict EVER!

Today I had for the very first time in my life eggs benedict! Yes, I have never had them before at all! It would actually not be too weird as they are not something that people eat here in Germany. But I have lived a whole year in the US and I have never had them EVER!

I have to admit though that I have heard about them - even had seen recipes. I actually never wanted to try them. I love eggs and I am always looking forward to Sunday for that is the day I will have my breakfast egg. But poached eggs with sauce hollandaise? I have had poached eggs. I have had sauce hollandaise. I have had bacon. But I could simply not imagine that all of this would go together well. But when I saw this post on Simply Recipes about eggs benedict I thought - that's it. You have to try this! You just have to have them at least once - just to know how they are.

So my husband made them for me today for breakfast ... and BOY was I surprised! I can not believe I missed out on that for 31 years! If I just would have known! If somebody would have told me! I LOVE them! Well, if someone would have told me I probably would have not believed him anyway ... but all of these things together ... YUM! After I had finished my first one my husband had to make me a second one! Then we were out of bacon. Which was probably good cause otherwise I would have been filled up for the whole day ...

So this was the first time, but DEFINITELY not the last!

Jam that tastes like SUMMER

Couple days ago my husband brought home lots of fruit to cook jam. I was trying to talk him out of it ... after all you usually cook jam in summer or fall ... but not in winter. But of course he would not listen. Turns out that for once it was good that he did not listen. This jam really made my day! :-)

And the best ... after A LOT of persuasion my husband gave me the recipe ... to share with you. So if you want to you can make your own.

Ingredients:

1100g pineapple
400g mango
750g papaya
150ml lime juice
jam sugar

The amount of jam sugar needed depends on your liking and on the kind of jam sugar you use. As I am not familiar with what is available where you live I do not feel comfortable stating a certain number. My husband however used 1kg so-called 1:1 jam sugar plus an additional 500g of so-called 3:1 jam sugar.

All you have to do is
- cut the fruit in small pieces
- cook it
- puree it a bit (you might want to leave some pieces in there - depends on your liking)
- add the (jam) sugar
- cook according to instructions on the jam sugar (or until jam starts to set)
- fill in glasses
DONE!

Sorry, as I type this up I realize this might not be the best recipe for a novice jam cooker ... but to me cooking jam is basically throw together some fruit - add jam sugar according to weight of fruit - cook - done! It works very well. :-)

If anyone is interested I could transform weight specifications into another measurement ... am just not sure what measurement you would prefer. So just let me know which one and I will add that.

Banana pancakes

This will be just a quick post without any pictures ... sorry. But I have found such a great recipe which I just HAVE to share with you! If I am ever awake enough to actually not only make pancakes in the morning but also take a picture of them before they are gone ... I will add the photo! ;-)

I totally love pancakes. But I usually drown them in syrup so they are actually not a very healthy food and that's why I don't make them very often. Now I found a recipe for banana pancakes which taste really great - even without having to drown them in syrup! I sometimes eat them just like that - without anything! Not always though - bit of butter and syrup does not hurt the taste... ;-)
I even froze some which is of course VERY neat because I am usually WAY too tired to actually mix a pancake dough together in the morning BEFORE having anything to eat ...

More pictures

So I took some more pictures of my little witch. This time she was more happy ... :-)
Very important for her was her little pet.




I also wanted to show some pictures from Halloween last year. Since we had invited a few kids we had decorated the flat and also had special "Halloween"food. :-)



I was especially proud of our window treatments. It did look really quite spooky.


For dinner we had pizza, mashed potato ghosts and mummy dogs. You are actually supposed to wrap the dough around the sausages that it looks like little mummys. Unfortunately our dough - we used pizza dough - wasn't really cooperative and kept sliding away. No matter how much you wrapped it around the sausage - as soon as you turned your back it would just slide away again ...