First real summer meal

The first days of July always bring back memories of the days of first days of summer vacations. School was out at the end of June and suddenly two full months of summer laziness would begin. Waking up in a summer cottage and having a full day of tranquility ahead of me. The only must was a trip to the bakery to get a couple of loaves of warm, crusty bread - of which one would disappear before we made it back to the cottage. Swims in the lake, sunbathing on an old wooden lounge chair, afternoons with a book, and definitely picking a few jars of fresh blueberries. That was called a real summer vacation!

(a long long time ago - blueberry picking)

 Berries are definitely my favorite type of fruit, that can serve as breakfast, lunch, quick snack or dinner. The dishes are usually not too complicated - simply add some berries to rice, cottage cheese, oatmeal and there you have it - full of valuable nutritious juicyness, that has summer written all over it.

So it's really no wonder that I also like blueberry pierogi, a very Polish dish, although a bit more time consuming, but definitely worth every minute. As a child, I usually just helped and watched, but this time, for the first time in my life I've decided to try to experiment with it myself.
Here are the results:

Blueberry Pierogi
prep time: 20min + 5min boiling, makes abt 40 pieces

3 cups flour
1 cup of warm water
1 egg
pinch of salt
tbl spoon of oil

+ 2 cups of fresh blueberries sprinkled with 2 spoons of sugar

sugar and/or sour cream for serving

1. Prepare dough: mix all ingredients (except blueberries) until soft and smooth (if too sticky add more flour).
2. Sprinkle flour on a pastry board to avoid the dough sticking to it. Roll up the dough on the table or pastry board, to a thickness of about 3 millimeters.
3. Cut circles in dough using glass rim. In the middle of each circle arrange a (table) spoon of blueberries, then fold the filled circles into half moons, sealing the edges and pressing shut with your finger.
4. Bring a large shallow saute pan of water to a boil, add a spoon of oil (to prevent them from sticking together) and gently boil the pierogi in batches for 5-6 minutes (a couple of mins after they rise to the top of the surface), then remove carefully using a wooden spoon.
Serve warm, sprinkle with some sugar and/or sour cream.

I haven't found too many variations of the actual dough recipe, but maybe next time I'll experiment a bit adding some vanilla sugar to make it a bit more dessert-like. The batch of pierogi disappeared very quickly, I enjoyed it for dinner, a friend at work had it as a snack and there are some left for tomorrow's lunch. Definitely summer like!

Good weekend brunch.

Mid week is just perfect timing to start preparing weekend plans. And weekend meals of course!

The idea of brunch was on my mind for a while - and then there was this perfect Sunday to try a new recipe for the delicious little pancakes. Brunches like this make all Sundays sunnier - and then start the week in a very positive way.

So, how about some brunch this weekend....?

Ricotta pancakes with blueberries.
prep time 10 min + frying, serves 4 people

200g blueberries
2tbsp sugar
for the pancake batter
3 eggs
250 g ricotta cheese
50g sugar
2tsp vanilla sugar
25g melted butter
50g flour

1. Warm the blueberries very gently with the sugar, until they begin to break open. Cool a little while you make the pancakes.
2. Separate the eggs, and whisk the white until stiff. Mix all the other pancake ingredients together in a bowl, then gently fold in the whites.
3. Fry pancakes on a large, thick bottomed frying pan. Make sure you don't tip them over until they are properly set underneath.
4. Eat hot with warm blueberries

This perfect inspiration comes from Camilla Plum's book 'the Scandinavian Kitchen'. I must admit that it was the very first recipe I tried from this book, and now I'm very excited to try more delicious meals from it. The pancakes are very fluffy and reminded me of lazy summer mornings and eating late breakfast on the balcony.

Lazy weekend and some berries

It's just this kind of weekend here. One short trip for groceries, minimum time spent outside - to avoid the allergies, then books and tea. Love it!

Cats are also taking a day off. They took over our bed, taking only quick food breaks, then back to sleep. Oh, it's good to be a cat on a day like this.....

I'm also on a slower mode today. I tried to stay away from the kitchen as much as possible, but then as I put my dinner fish in the oven and set the clock to 20min, I thought '20 minutes to spare...'. And there was an idea - a big bowl of berries in my fridge, and a recipe that has been hanging on my cork board for the past couple of months. 20 minutes to prepare, oven will be ready - perfect!

Blackberry & Coconut Squares
prep time 15min, baking time 75min

250g self raising flour
100g of oats
300g brown sugar
200g of cold butter, cut in pieces
75g desiccated coconut
2 medium eggs, beaten
350g of blackberries (fresh or frozen)


1. Heat oven to 180C. Mix flour, oats and sugar in a big bowl. Rub the butter into the flour mix using fingertips until small pea-size pieces remain. Stir through the coconut, then fill a teacup with the mixtures and set aside.
2. Stir the eggs into the bowl, then spread over the bottom of a lined baking tin. Smooth the surface with the back of a spoon, scatter over the berries. Scatter the reserved cup of crumbs. Bake for 1hr-1hr15min, or until golden and cooked through. Leave to cool a bit, then cut into squares and serve!

The recipe comes from 'renew your subscription to Good Food magazine' leaflet. It has a post-it note which says 'I found this and thought of you'. Well, it must be a miracle because it really looks like my kind of dessert... Berries, oats and coconut is a combination to die for! I'll better grab another piece.....