January 03, 2015

Happy New Year 2015



Happy New Year
Goodbye to 2014 & Welcome to 2015

to all of you from Hannibal the Cat and I. We hope you will get an exciting, promising and healthy New Year here in 2015 with plenty of sunshine, some white snow to bring some light into a dark Winter season and less wind during the rowing season !!!

The biggest thing for me and my little kitchen here in 2014 has for sure been the replacement of the old HTH kitchen with a brand new Svane kitchen incl. new tiles on the floor and new white goods.
From the end of October to mid November I had to live out any kitchen at all.
However, it has been one of my best decisions ever to invest money in a new kitchen as I spend so much of my free time here.
With the amount of light available make it an inviting place to be even during the dark evening of Winter time, as I can actually see, what I am doing.
The tiles for the wall still needs to be finished, so they can be put up. This will be done here in first part of 2015.



In July I participated in a jam competition, where my jam on apricot jam with lavender became one of the five best home-made Danish jams, so I have started to think of myself as a "jam createur" :-)



I have also got a new best kitchen friend the Juicer as company Christmas present, which I am really looking forward to make any excellent tasting juice from fruit and vegetable in the coming future. In order to get me started, I have signed up for JuiceSelvKasse as a frequent weekly box from Årstiderne.








Well my way of baking through the entire bread book called "Hjemmebagt" has been moving slower during 2014, where I managed to bake a total of 2 recipes. If I maintain this baking speed during 2015, I will be finished baking in around 20 years time, around the time, when I will be retiring from work !!!!  Could be that 2015 will bring more baking momentum.

Again 2014 was a year, where I used my baking capabilities for some fund raising activities involving both work colleagues and friends turning the month of October into PINK month (PINK afternoon tea 2014) collecting an amazing 797 DKK to support the fight against breast cancer. 2015 will be bringing similar activities in the Autumn month of October.




As usual I am still participating in the monthly virtual tea table called Tea Time Treats hosted by two food bloggers in the UK. It is great fun for me to work the various theme selected for these monthly tea tables. And I will continue to participate in these monthly virtual tea tables here in 2015, as it bringing me a lot of inspiration to both me and my little kitchen.


As usual the month of December has been a very, very busy month for me in my kitchen, as I am working on selecting interesting Christmas recipes as well as actually making the Christmas stuff, so I can share an daily blog post with a Christmas recipe with you in the count down for Christmas !!! For me this process is a little bit like mood therapy, a way of keeping up my mood during a long, dark, gray and rainy Winter season, as it keep me busy inside of hiding under my duvet like a little sleepy brown bear !!! So therefore I will already now promise, that you will get Christmas Calender again in 2014 :-) Traditionally I invited various friends living in the area of Vejle for a gløgg evening, so they can taste some of my Christmas creations.


As regular theme blog posts during every single month I have shared the following type of blog posts with you:
  • blog introduction to each month with focus on a specific theme (starter in September 2013)
  • recipe on cocktail and drinks (started in 2011) - been less regular in 2014 - so room for improvement here in 2015
  • contribution to Tea Time Treat (started in December 2012)
  • recipe on ice cream (started in October 2013) - quiet seldom in 2014 - so plenty of room for improvement in 2015
So how did I get get along with my TO-DO-LIST of 2014 ??? Well I managed to do 50% of my list, which means I will have some interesting thing to do here in 2015 :-)

      TO DO LIST 2014:
  • making rye bread from a real sour dough - DONE
  • collection of sloe during Autumn 2014, so I can make my own sloe gin
  • collection of ramson during Spring 2014 - DONE
  • collection of elderberry during Autumn 2014
  • making macaroons
  • making caramels, which is NOT floating together during storage - DONE
  • making a ginger bread decoration for Christmas 2014
  • making my own marzipan from almonds for Christmas 2014
  • making mince meat for Christmas 2014 - DONE
  • baking mohn back (poppey seed) cake - DONE
Coming to the end of this very long blog text I would like to share a "TO DO" list with you of the things, which I would like work with in my kitchen during 2015:

     TO DO LIST 2015:
  • collect sloe during Autumn 2015, so I can make my own sloe gin
  • collect elderberry during Autumn 2015
  • make macaroons
  • make a ginger bread decoration for Christmas 2015
  • make my own marzipan from almonds for Christmas 2015
  • work with more sugar candy type such as nougat and marshmallows
  • make more ice cream
  • enjoy more drinks and cocktail
  • enjoy home-made juices from both juice and vegetable
  • use the herbs from my kitchen garden more actively
So let´s how many of these "TO DO" points, which I managed to cross during the brand new year of 2015, at least I have 362 days in front of me to do something about it :-)

Kitchen status on 2014:

Review day: 1 January 2015
Recipes baked during 2014 from "Hjemmebagt": 2 (34 accomplished at 31 December 2014)
Amount of new cooking books in my kitchen: 19 new cooking book (77 books at end of 2014)
Page views in 2014: 121.179 (total page views of 187.074 at 31st December 2014)
Publish posts in 2014: 239 posts (total posts of 985 at 31st December 2014)

Top 10 of the most popular blog posts published during 2014:
  1. Blood orange jam - published 6 March 2014
  2. Hindbærsnitter "raspberry cutting" a la Mette Blomsterberg - published 23 March 2014
  3. Knitted plaid - published 12 January 2014 
  4. Knitted plaid after 4 weeks of knitting - published 8 February 2014
  5. Tapas menu from Hotel Hedegaarden, Vejle - published 18 March 2014
  6. Walnut cream cake a la Svinkløv Badehotel- published 8 June 2014
  7. Cake lunch at conditoriet La Glace - published 14 July 2014
  8. Stressful afternoon tea at Perch Aarhus - published 7 July 2014
  9. Barbecue evening of 2014 - published 4 August 2014
  10. Burger at Fur Strand Hotel - published 29 June 2014

2 comments:

  1. Hey Kiki, happy new year! I didn't realised you only started joining us for Tea Time Treats in December '13, that was just a month before I started hosting it with Karen. Thank you so much joining us, it's been great to have you join in every month :)
    Janie x
    PS LOVE the new kitchen too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Jane,

      I have actually participating in Tea Time Treats since December 2012. And I find it to be great fun doing this. Thank you for hosting this virtual tea table together with Karen.

      I can seen the end of my kitchen project. The tiles for the wall are in the ceramic´s oven.

      Kirsten

      Delete

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