A Postcard A Day - Friday 13 September 2019 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely ladies, How are you today? Feeling OK? Have you had many smiles this week?

I smile every time the postman brings me some postcards. This week I received this one:

It's from Russia, from the Kola peninsula. It features a Russian dish with the recipe on the back. I don't usually show the written side of the card, but I am making an exception today as the recipe is on the back. I hope you can read it.

 This is the stamp. It belongs to the Russian Kremlins definitives series, issued on 1st October 2009. Kremlin is the Russian word for "fortress", "citadel" or "castle" and refers to any major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities.

This one is the Vologodsky Kremlin.

What have I been up to this week? It is week two of our three week vegan eating regime, and we are still enjoying the most wonderful recipes. This week I made a vegan pesto. I chose to make this mild version. I used half basil and half parsley, and also half pine nuts and half walnuts. Nutritional yeast gives the cheesy taste.

We had it with wholemeal pasta. Delicious!

The other thing I'll show you is this hot bean chili. As we are not allowed active yeast, I made this spelt chapatti to go with the chili. Later in the week I learnt to make sweet potato rotis, much nicer and softer.

We are having some atrocious weather here at the moment. It started Monday with these two clouds in the sunset. They were unusual in that they had lightning in them. I didn't manage to capture the lightning unfortunately, but that was the start of all the bad weather.

It is raining buckets! And has done all day. The streets are like rivers . The farmers will be happy as this is the first rain we have had in six months. And the temperatures have plummeted. Normally we would still be in t-shirts, but I have had to put on my track suit and socks.

That is all today. There will be some funnies at the end as usual.

Annie is on holiday, but I will link up with Virginia at Rocking Your World Friday for sure.

Have a lovely weekend,

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 10 September 2019 - T for chocolate sprinkles, blueberry pancakes and stout.

 Hello lovely ladies,
It's Tuesday and time to share a beverage to join Elizabeth and Bleubeard's T-Party. I will get to my beverage later.

First a lovely postcard I received from Halle last week. Beautiful images from Yellowstone National Park. Thank you Halle! You made my day! It arrived on Tuesday, but I had already posted my blog by then.

I love those photos from the Yellowstone National Park. Isn't it beautiful? Fascinating natural (geological) phenomena. This park is on my bucket list. I suppose Iceland is closer, but Yellowstone is definitely more beautiful. (Erika will have an opinion on this)

The stamps are great too. The forever stamps show (I think) Little Red Riding Hood. I have no idea what the significance of the star is in the 3c stamp. I have an incling that Elizabeth might know this. The 2c stamp is about Navajo jewelry. Beautiful. Halle you have spoilt me.

My second postcard of today is one that comes from the Netherlands. And from the city of Zwolle. It shows an old map of the moated city

Here is an aerial photo of the same town and you can see it hasn't changed shape.

The stamp is about 'Hagelslag', the chocolate sprinkles that the Dutch have the habit of putting on bead and butter.

 

Our eating habits have changed drastically since last week. We are doing a 21 day fast. It's called the Daniel Fast (After the Daniel in the Bible). It means eating a vegan diet, and also omitting yeast, sugar, alcohol and coffee & tea, and processed food. We started on September the first.

Here is one of our breakfasts. Pancakes made from oatmeal without yeast. Served with blueberries. We should also have used Maple Syrup, but I couldn't buy it anywhere. None of the three major supermarkets in town had it. We couldn't use honey as it is an animal product, so in the end I used a smidgen of Agave syrup. It was delicious.

I am making the most delicious meals. Hubby loves it! I didn't know eating vegan could be so nice. And we are feeling so much better on it. 

Now for my beverage reference and ticket to the T-Party:

 It is a beer (stout) called Steam Brew. I was attracted to the pretty can. And the beer itself was delicious. 

 Needless to say we had this beer before we started our fast!

Another beverage reference is this tea. It is pineapple tea (Té de piña).

I don't know what this one tastes like as we can't have it until after the 21st. But it looks (and smells) nice. I will let you know.

That's it from me today.
Happy T-Day everybody,
Hugs,
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 6 September 2019 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely ladies,

How are you all? It is Friday again and time to remember our smiley moments of this week.

A postcard in my postbox always makes me smile, and this week there were many (my postman is back from holiday and I got the backlog of post this Tuesday).

The first one comes from Kimberley in Gent in Belgium. 

I found some info about this shipping company:

The Red Star Line was an ocean passenger line founded in 1871 .The company's main ports of call were Antwerp in Belgium, Liverpool and Southampton in the United Kingdom and New York City and Philadelphia in the United States.

The company declared bankruptcy in 1934.

About a quarter of the some two million Red Star Line migrants were Jews, largely from Eastern Europe until the exodus driven by the rise of Nazi Germany. Among them were many famous persons, including regular passenger Albert Einstein. On learning of the Nazi confiscation of his possessions, Einstein chose not to return to Germany; his letter resigning from the Prussian Academy of Sciences, written on the line's stationery, is a part of the museum exhibit. Other notable emigrants included the five-year-old Irving Berlin.

The second one comes from Germany from a lady with a beautiful name: Edeltraut. She lives in a small village in the Black Forest, near the valley of the Rhine and near France (Strasbourg). The village on the card is Sasbachwalden. I assume that is her village. I love the flowers and the window boxes. 

She writes "No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted".

The stamps are beautiful. The left one is a flower: Wiesenschaumkraut in German. I looked it up and apparently it is called Lady's-smock or cuckoo flower in English. The stamp on the right has a moon stone on it. Fascinating.

I might have mentioned that we have gone vegan (temporarily). It's for three weeks. Not only vegan but cutting out sugar, alcohol, coffee and real tea and yeast. It has been a challenge but we are both enjoying it. One of the first meals I cooked was this spiralised sweet potato and broccoli stir-fry.

We've made oat pancakes, I've made hummus and also overnight oats, and we are both feeling very on it (of course). 

Monday I went to my friend Antonia's house. She is my prayer partner and Monday is the day we pray together. When we had finished, I asked her if I could pick up some herbs. We went outside and cut some rosemary and basil. She also had marjoram that was already dried. And the figs were ripe on the tree, so I got a few of those too.

 Tuesday was market day.  I spotted these  and immediately bought them. I thought they were borlotti beans (fresh ones) but the pods were mostly empty and they look a bit like runner beans. I confess I was disappointed. I haven't cooked them yet.

 That was (some of) my week.

Now I'm off to Annie at A Stitch In Time and Virginia at Rocking Your World Friday.

As usual I am adding some funnies at the end for you to chuckle over.

Wishing everyone a great weekend,
Keep smiling,
Hugs,
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 3 September 2019 - T for sardines

Hello lovely ladies (and the occasional man),

I'm going to join Elizabeth's T-Party where we share a drink related item in our blog post. 

I will leave that for later as I can't wait to take you to a museum. Elizabeth takes us often, but today I would like to show you the museum we visited in Portugal. 

We were in the little port of Portimao, on the south coast and it was very hot.

So with three children in tow, we opted for an airconditioned museum. This is the photo from the brochure take from a boat I think.

The museum was right on the water front/ harbour. And we found this dolphin sculpture right outside the entrance to the museum. 

 Perhaps you noticed that it is composed of empty plastic bottles (in a net). A protest to how we pollute our oceans.
This representation of a fishing boat also sat outside the museum. 

This little pier was part of the museum, as the main exhibition is about sardines, and how they processed and canned them.

The fish got hauled into the plant by a basket conveyer.

The baskets got emptied into trays

on benches in a long hall. Can you imagine the smell?

Hubby was fascinated.

The hall is called the 'heads-off' hall as women would do nothing else all day but cut the head off the fish. The girls doing this would have been promoted through the system of all sorts of jobs. Only the best were allowed to cut the heads. It was the best job.

The fish then went into the large oven. The door to the oven is on the right of the photo and you see it side-on.

My step-son, who is an engineer, spent quite a bit of time looking at the boiler.

The workforce was mainly women and there was even a creche for their babies. A video was playing that showed an older woman (Evidently an ex sardine worker) talking about her experiences in the processing plant. But it was all in Portuguese, so I didn't understand it.

Then the sardines get packed into the tins.

I can't quite remember what this machine did, but I think it is where the olive oil gets added to the tin.

This part of the museum shows how the tin sheets got printed

Underneath the museum were pools where the fish awaiting processing, were being kept. Nowadays the pools are empty and dry. A walkway was made and at the end was a fun feature for children

(And the young at heart). It was a pretend submersible with video scenarios and 'real' instruments and buttons to press. Grandad and the children had a whale of a time.

I hope you enjoyed the museum visit.

Finally here is my beverage:

I had brought a kit from Holland to make Nassi Goreng, an Indonesian rice dish. I only had to provide the main ingredients, and the kit had sachets of herbs and spices for the rice and a sachet to make the saté sauce. I made it last week and enjoyed it immensely. The beer was lovely too. We had Steam Punk Red Beer.

You might have noticed I have no postcard this week. I didn't receive any. I think I didn't receive any because the postman is on holiday. The replacement doesn't know the neighborhood (lots of higgledy-piggledy little walkways that don't have names).
I hope he comes back soon.

Hubby and I have gone vegan for a month. So far we are loving it. 
I'm sorry but I have forgotten to take any pictures of our meals. Today we had One Pan Mexican quinoa (with black beans) and yesterday a chickpea curry with brown rice. We made oat meal pancakes with maple syrup one morning and banana, oatmeal and cinnamon overnight oats the other.

I'll leave it at that. 
Wishing everyone a happy T-Day,
Hugs,
Lisca