A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 16 June 2020 - T for lots of food and an eagle

Hello lovely ladies,

How are you all? Doesn't time fly! The week has gone by so fast and again we have arrived at Tuesday. And Tuesday means: T-Party! Let's join Elizabeth and Bluebeard with a nice beverage. 

I have got a beverage plus a lot of food.

Starting with my first postcard there is food. This card comes from India and was sent to me by Han-Su. The meal is called Daal-baati-churma. On the back of the card is some info on this dish: Baati is a hard unleavened bread cooked in the desert area of Rajastan, in Ultar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. It is prized for its long shelf life and high nutritional content. It is traditionally prepared by coarsely mashing baati and pouring ghee on top of it. It is served with dahl (lentils) and spicey garlic chutney, or with besan (gram flour). It is commonly served at all festivities, including religious occasions, wedding ceremonies, and birthday parties in Rajastan.

Churma is basically a sweet side dish, eaten with daal-baati and is made sweet by adding sugar or jaggery to it. To make it tastier and healthier, ghee is added to it. Additional ingredients could be dried fruits and nuts like cashews, pistachio, almonds and raisins.

 It sounds very nice. (I do love Indian food). 
The stamps are spectacular. Again on the theme of food. The stamp on the left shows Pongal. Pongal or Huggi is a popular South Indian rice dish. In Tamil "pongal" means "bubbling up". In Telugu and Kannada Pongali is a dish of rice mixed with boiled milk and sugar.

 The food on the right is Malpua: Malpua is a pancake served as a dessert or a snack originating from the Indian subcontinent, popular in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Here is an image I found on the Internet:

My second card comes from Russia. Sent to me by Anya. She lives in Izhevsk (population 700,000), the capital of the Udmurt Republic, which is located to the west of the Ural mountains.

The information on the card was in Russian, which I don't understand. (But I do have Google Translate app on my phone which reads Russian. I have to use the phone's camera and it will read it. Very clever!). The info reads: V.A.Vatagin, Kamchatka eagle, oil on plywood.

These are the stamps. You can tell by the date stamp that this card has been a long time traveling. With the Corona restrictions, very little mail has come through. Now that the restrictions are a bit more relaxed, cards start coming in.

Enough about cards. Back to the food! For the first time in months, we have been out for a meal with our best friends. On the photo you see what we call the Paseo, and on the left you see a small restaurant/bar with lots of seating outside. That's where we went as it is just two blocks away from our house.

 We went on Friday evening, and that happened to be a blustery cold evening. Luckily we found seating inside. Of course they were only allowed very few tables inside, so we were lucky.
The first tapa was baked potatoes with aioli (not visible). My drink (on the right) was Bitter Kas, a sort of Campari soda. 

 They have a traditional pizza oven, so we ordered pizza. Thin and crispy, just like we like it.

I just have to show you this desert: it is their famous tarta de whiskey. The bottom layer is ice cream, the yellow layer tasted like it had egg yolks in it. I don't know which part contains the whiskey, but the owner came round with a bottle of whisky and poured a generous glug over each tarta.

Last but not least, I have been to the hair dresser! Oh joy of joys! I think for most women this would have been the worst part of the lockdown. But hey, she managed to fit me in and I have a super short hairdo.

 This is Isa, my hairdresser sweeping up some locks (obviously not mine).

 Now for my drink: I had to talk to my dentist about something, and hubby had to go into town as well to get a particular tool. So he drove me and dropped me off. 

 I didn't take long, so I stopped at the bar next door for a coffee, while waiting for hubby. As you can see in the above photo the dentist sign that says Clinica Dental Baza. But the coffee is not very clear. So here is my coffee below. I drink what we call café cortado (espresso with a tiny dash of milk).

That is it from me for today.
I wish you all a very happy T-Day,
Blessings,
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 12 June 2020 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely girls,

Here we are again on Friday. This week has flown by. Restrictions have been relaxed once more and we can do more things now. 

But the one thing that I like doing is sending and receiving postcards. That has hardly changed. 

Today I want to show you this card which I like very much. I have a thing about doors and windows. And this door is beautiful and it is in a wonderful house with a thatched roof. It comes from Germany. 

The writing underneath reads: Reetdachhaus (= house with a thatched roof), im Nordfriesischen       Suderdeich.  (in a place called Suederdeich which is in Nordfriesland, the most northern region of Germany).

The stamps are beautiful too. I like the Beethoven one on the right. (250th anniversary of his birth).

I told you last Friday that it was my mum's birthday. Well here is a photo of my mum while talking to me on the phone.

 We have been cleaning and preparing the downstairs flat. Our house is over 4 floors and in winter we live upstairs where we have large windows which let in much needed light and there is heating. In summer, when it gets very hot, we move to the downstairs flat where it is much cooler and the windows are smaller.
We have suffered grief from weevils in our flour and other products. The pantry has been cleaned, disinfected and re-painted.

 I entered a nice photo into the league at the photoclub. (Theme was: 'Sea'):

I thought it was a rather nice photo, but I got disqualified, because I didn't get the size right.  I'm quite annoyed with myself for that. 

 On Monday we had our first cup of coffee at a bar since the beginning of March. Only outside seats allowed. But it was lovely. Hubby had shoved his mask onto his forehead to be able to drink. Silly man!

I'm starting to frame my jigsaws. This is the first one. We found a large frame at the Chinese bazar.

 More cleaning. I cleaned the fridge and put stuff back onto the pantry shelves.

And yesterday I finally had a haircut! Bliss!

That was my week. Full of exciting moments. Lots of things to smile about.

How has your week been? Have you also had many smiles? Do share them with us at Annie's A Stitch In Time.
I'm also going to call on Virginia at Rocking Your Week Friday.

And of course I will find you some funnies to add at the bottom. I apologise if you have seen some of them before. They usually do the rounds on the Internet before I pick them up.

Have a lovely weekend and a good week to follow.

Keep Smiling,

Hugs,

Lisca

 Text reads:

Wrestlers in action, 2020.
Eli Williams (b. 2016)

Crayola marker on wooden closet door.

Williams, a fledgling artist with a reputation for drawing how he sees it, has honed a style that hearkens back to the Realism movement.

In the latest addition to Williams' Quarantine series, the subject is WWE wrestlers in action. Williams rejects Romantic conventions and delivers the raw emotions of wrestlers Rey Mysterio and Jeff hardy in the ring.

Critics agree that Wrestlers in Action is a thought-provoking composition that challenges the viewer to reflect on their own emotion stemming from being a prisoner in their own home during a toilet paper shortage.

Gifted to the artist's parents, 2020

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 9 June 2020 - T for streetcars, sacks and broom

Hello lovely ladies,

Here we are again, joining Elizabeth and Bluebeard for the T-Party. I have a drink, which I will show you a bit further down. 

First I'd like to show you two postcards. The first comes from Russia and shows Emperor Nicholas II. He is a fine looking young man, who came to a sticky end. 

Wikipedia writes: Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov (18 May 1868 – 17 July 1918), was the last Emperor of All Russia, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. During his reign the Russian Empire fell from one of the foremost great powers of the world to economic and military collapse. He was reviled by Soviet historians as a weak and incompetent leader whose decisions led to military defeats and the deaths of millions of his subjects. By contrast Anglo-Russian historian Nikolai Tolstoy, leader of the International Monarchist League, said in 2012, "There were many bad things about the Czar's regime, but he inherited an autocracy and his acts are now being seen in perspective and in comparison to the terrible crimes committed by the Soviets." 

The stamps are beautiful. In particular the large one 
on the right

It was issued on September 05, 2014, in a series of World Cultural Heritage of Russia - It is the Church of the Ascension of Christ in Kolomenskoye,  the exceptional Ascension church (1532), built in white stone to commemorate the long-awaited birth of an heir to the throne, the future Ivan the Terrible. Being the first stone church of tent-like variety, the uncanonical "White Column" (as it is sometimes referred to) marked a stunning break from the Byzantine tradition.

Kolomenskoye  is a former royal estate situated several kilometers to the southeast of the city center of Moscow, Russia, on the ancient road leading to the town of Kolomna (hence the name). The 390 hectare scenic area overlooks the steep banks of the Moskva River. It became a part of Moscow in the 1960s.

My second card comes from the USA. It was sent to me by Ernesto, who lives close to San Francisco.

I love the old posters. This one is an original poster by Lantern Press. (No date given).

My mum celebrated her 96th birthday on the 5th. There are still travel restrictions so neither my sister nor I have been able to visit her. But we spoke on the phone (no she doesn't 'Zoom'. Her eyesight is too bad to be able to find it on her computer). One of my cousins was visiting her when I phoned and took a picture as I was talking to her. 

Note her large talking wrist watch (as she is practically blind).

Last week we went to a place in our village that sells hessian sacks. (The big heaps are almonds)

 They are old coffee beans sacks from Ivory coast and Colombia. 

They look new but they must have been used at some stage as these raw beans fell out of one of them.

A few days later hubby and I went to a friend's farm to collect horse manure (dried). It was a question of digging it up with a spade from the paddock. 

Then we went to his carpentry workshop to fill some sacks with saw dust, which is going to be used as mulch.

 We collected three sacks of manure and five of saw dust.

The broom in in full flower. Yellow everywhere you look. I looks very bright. 

This plant is called broom for obvious reasons: they used to make brooms with the dried bush. It is better visible on the next photo.

 In the USA it is an imported species and as such very invasive. So if you live in the USA and see these shrubs, it means bad news, as they are difficult to get rid of.

Yesterday, I have been able to source a large picture frame. One of the large Chinese hypermarkets has opened again. And voilá, I have been able to frame one of my jigsaw puzzles. Needless to say I am very pleased. I would like to buy one frame a month (funds permitting) as I have many jigsaws ready.

Now for my T-Party qualifier: It's a 'tea' called Noches Magicas, which means Magic Nights. 

 Ingredients: Redbush, green anise, camomile, Penny Royal mint, Rosemary, Rose Petals, Liquorice and Ginger.

We bought it at our local Lidl supermarket and we like it a lot. So yesterday we went to buy more, but they had sold out already. I should have bought more at the time!

That's it folks. Wishing you all a very happy T-Day.
Hugs,
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 5 June 2020 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely girls,

Today is Friday Smiles and we join Annie at A Stitch In Time with whatever made us smile this week.

I've had a lot to smile about. And one of the things that always makes me smile is a postcard in my mail box. This week I feature this card from France as it makes me think of holidays. It is a map of a part of France that we know well. It is in Western Brittany and some of you might have been there too. Brittany is very beautiful.

 The card was sent to me by Stephanie, who lives in that area. She tells me that she likes books by Joel Dicker, Gillian Flynn and Liane Moriarty. 
The stamp commemorates the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Paris at the end of WWII.

Last week we had bought a gas water heater, and hubby has been busy installing it. He is allowed to do this as we don't have natural gas, but only butane bottled gas. This type of water heater is especially made for bottled gas.

 The water heater is an outdoor one (cheaper and besides, there is no room in the kitchen) and he installed it next to the front door.

 Sunday is the Lord's day and most of the day is dedicated to Him. We watched Kings Church Windsor on live streaming for their Sunday morning service. In the evening we joined a local group as we are now allowed to socialize more. We stayed outside, with a bit of distancing too.

On Monday hubby made a little door to hide the water heater and put a lock on it so it doesn't 'walk'. I had lots of smiles hearing (and seeing) the goats from our terrace. They come round every evening, but this evening they were much closer.

Normally when I have my oncology appointment, I go  straight from oncology to the appropriate departments to make the appointments for next year. This time I had a telephone consultation with the oncologist so they sent me all the paperwork by post and I had to then go to the hospital to make the next appointments. I didn't want to do that during the lockdown, but decided that now would be OK. So I did that on Tuesday. 

Another big smile was a great photo of my son and grandson, who are enjoying time on the beach. They live in Italy not far from the beach, so they always rent a spot (Plus parasol and chairs) for the whole season.

We are nearing the time that we will move downstairs to the summer area of our house. So the big spring clean has started. Our biggest problem are the weevils that get into the flour. So the pantry gets disinfected completely and re-painted. In the photo you see two tables with all the items that were still in the downstairs pantry. Hubby was painting, while my job was to check dates and throw away what we don't want or what is out of date.

On Thursday I finally got round to taping my jigsaw as we are now going to find someone who can make a frame (I wish I lived nearer to an Ikea, they have ready-made large picture frames)

That was my week.  I will try to find some funnies to put at the bottom, but for now I will sign off.
Bye for now,
Hugs,
Lisca