Scrapping Cavewoman

Friday, 17 June 2022

A Postcard A Day - Friday 17 June 2022 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely ladies,

How are you all? Here things are much better. Hubby has had a good week, so we're both smiling.

My postcard for today made me smile for two reasons. The first is the subject matter: Tiramisu!

Tiramisu is my favorite dessert. I have lived in Italy for many years so I have eaten it the way it is supposed to be made. Yumyum! The card was sent to me by Marie in Canada. I belong to Postcrossing, an online worldwide organisation for exchanging postcards. My username there is Olddutch. Real name and address are only given to the person sending the card.

What she wrote on the back is the second thing that made me smile: she wrote that in Canada, my Postcrossing username (which is Olddutch) is a brand of potato crisps!

The stamp is tiny but very nice:

It is the Cabot Trail. Looping nearly 300 kilometres around the northern part of Cape Breton Island, the Cabot Trail offers you stunning coastal views, rugged highland panoramas, and this world-famous tourist destination that turns into a spectacular fall scene as the leaves of old-growth forests turn beautiful colours.

This post is about the things that made me smile, so here goes:

As I mentioned above, we are doing really well. Hubby is feeling better and is able to eat more. And of course I am making him nice things. He is still on the Ensure drinks. He has chocolate flavored ones but they still taste a bit 'artificial'. I have now dug up my little ice cream maker and I turn the Ensure drink into a nice ice cream (I add some whipped cream too).

On Sunday I went out with some friends from the Photoclub. (I wrote about it in my previous blogpost). Here are a few more photos:

The place was called Cueva del Agua (Water cave).

There were water falls.

Caves and water.

One of the things I have been making is a pineapple upside down cake. Hubby requested it the other day. The top of the cake with the pineapple goes in first. So this is what the beginning looks like:

Then the cake layer goes on top and the cake gets baked. When ready, I turn it upside down and, hew presto, we have a pineapple upside down cake!

It is so dark because I use brown sugar which is caramelized in the melted butter. Yumm!

I also made some crumpets. Hubby still can't eat bread for some reason, but he can eat crumpets.

I should have turned them round so you could see the holes.

It's very hot here at the moment. Unseasonally hot. It is not even summer yet and we have had temperatures in the high thirties. The other morning hubby went to have a blood test, and even in the morning at 8:30 it was already 24 degrees.

It means we are staying indoors as much as we can. We don't have air conditioning but our downstairs flat is very cool. (We built it ourselves and it is super insulated!)

That is all I can tell you this week. Of course I am adding a few funnies and thinkies at the end. I'm going to link up with Annie at A Stitch In Time.

Have a lovely weekend.

Keep smiling,

Hugs,

Lisca

Tuesday, 14 June 2022

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 14 June 2022 - T for pork, towers and caves

Hello lovely girls, How are you all? I must start to say that my husband and I are both a lot better. We have both suffered from Covid and although hubby has lost 3 kilos in the process (which he can't afford to lose really), he is now 'up & running' again. I lost one kilo and that was very welcome actually.

Now for my postcard today:

It's very hot today in Spain and the sight of this cold lager makes my mouth water. This card comes to me from Germany. Reinhold, who sent it to me, describes the dish as 'fränkischen Schäuferla'. He explains in German all about it but I have found a Wikipedia description in English:

Schäufele (also "Schäuferle", "Schüfeli", "Schäuferla" or "Schäufelchen") is a traditional dish from the south of Germany. It is made from the pig's shoulder meat, which gives the dish its name, "Schäufele", or the pig's scapula. Depending on region the recipe for the dish differs a bit:

In Franconia the meat, the pork rind and the bone are roasted together as a whole. Before that, the pork rind is scratched in a criss-cross pattern, seasoned with salt, pepper and caraway and put in a casserole dish with diced root vegetables and onions where it is doused with beer and roasted in the oven for about two or three hours. The roast is ready as soon as the meat is easy to separate from the bone and the pork rind is crispy and golden brown. It is then served with various side dishes including gravy, Kartoffelklöße, salad, sauerkraut, red cabbage and savoy cabbage.

The stamps are interesting. There is the usual (beautiful) flower and then there is

The stamp on the right which has a quote from Cardinal Julius Döpfner.

Julius August Döpfner was a German Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1961 until his death in 1976, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1958. Wikipedia

The quote reads:"Die Kirche liegt nicht auf der Sandbank der Zerstörung, sondern auf der Werft der Erneuerung". (Read on for the translation)

The design is by Iris Utiak and Michael Gais. At first, they had considered using a portrait of the church's chief pastor.

But then they came to the conclusion that the Döpfner quote from 1973 "the church is not lying on the sandbank of destruction, but on the shipyard of renewal" – better represent the priest and his work. That's why they made it the main element of the stamp.

Cardinal Döpfner, who was both controversial and close to the people, was a great figure in shaping the life of the church, said secretary of state Koschnyk in his detailed eulogy. With the stamp, the ministry of finance wants to contribute to keeping his memory alive and to remember the work of this extraordinary churchman. A postage stamp is also an ambassador of a country, its culture and its self-image.

The politician acknowledged the role of Döpfner before and during the II. Vatican council. Here the cardinal had become a spokesman for the progressive majority. He had promoted a renewal of the diaconate, a positive statement on birth control and an improvement in ecumenism. Cardinal Döpfner had emphatically demanded a commitment to peace and respect for wars and armed conflicts.

So, what have we been doing? Nothing much really as hubby is resting a lot. Eating is getting better and I can almost cook normal meals (but he still can't eat bread, strangely enough. It gives him painful abdominal cramps).

I felt I could leave him on his own for a day and Sunday I joined a few guys from the photoclub on an outing to the mountains. It was an hour's drive away.

We saw this medieval tower: the watchtower of Infante Don Enrique. A spiral staircase was made so that we could actually go inside the tower.

Built at the end of the 13th century by order of the Infante don Enrique –son of Fernando III el Santo and brother of Alfonso X el Sabio– its function consisted mainly of controlling troop movements on the way to the kingdom of Granada.

After its restoration, a metal staircase allows us to access its interior through the original door, located 3.5 meters high.

Inside there were more steps, and then this was the view from the top:

There was a fantastic view 360 degrees. I can imagine how strategically important this would have been back in the day.

From its privileged location – it is located at 1,183 meters above sea level – it allows us to see municipalities such as Baeza, Torreperogil, Úbeda, Santo Tomé, Villacarrillo or Iznatoraf.

We also went to see a beautiful cave called La Cueva del Agua (water cave).

Inside the cave, which was huge, there were what felt like hundreds of swifts flying around and popping into their nests in the cracks of the cave wall.

At the far end of the cave were several waterfalls on different levels:

It was really beautiful.

Here I am having my picture taken (going out with the photoclub gang means there is always someone willing to take your picture):

I think I'll leave it at that.

Now it's time to visit Bleubeard and Elizabeth at their T-Party. My contribution is my postcard, which has a glass of lager on it.

Have a great week!

Keep smiling!

Hugs,

Lisca

Friday, 10 June 2022

A Postcard a Day / Friday 10 June / Friday Smiles

Hello lovely ladies,

Here we are again at the end of another week. It-s not been an easy week for me. As you know I have had Covid and then hubby, who is ill with bowel cancer, also caught it and was very ill indeed. But luckily we got over this. Hubby is recuperating and has been outside for the first time this afternoon (we just went to do a bit of shopping, but it was okay).

My postcard comes from Finland. It is a lovely poster of Imperial Airways:

It makes me think of old fashioned long-haul flights to exotic destinations. Wikipedia writes this:

Imperial Airways was the early British commercial long-range airline, operating from 1924 to 1939 and principally serving the British Empire routes to South Africa, India, Australia and the Far East, including Malaya and Hong Kong.

Passengers were typically businessmen or colonial administrators, most flights carried about 20 passengers or less.

Accidents were frequent: in the first six years, 32 people died in seven incidents. Imperial Airways never achieved the levels of technological innovation of its competitors and was merged into the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) in 1939. BOAC in turn merged with the British European Airways (BEA) in 1974 to form British Airways.

They seem to advertise 'reliability', but the Wiki article mentions many accidents....

The stamp is really nice with a lot of sky and clouds which tie in nicely with the aviation theme.

As we have not been well, I don't have many photos from this week, but of course there have been highlights.

Hubby baked some pancakes the other day

(and promptly was ill the next day because he probably ate too many!)

He also loves going to our plot, a five minute drive cross country and through a riverbed. We have two greenhouses/polytunnels, but this one in the next picture is not being used yet.