Foodie Pen Pals - July 2013

After a bit of fretting and waiting, due to my pen pal Lucy being whisked away on a sailing trip unexpectedly, I finally received my Foodie Pen Pal parcel for last month. And it was all good. 

In a pretty box came a lovely selections of goodies that were right up my street. I also liked the card that Lucy chose, very cute!

 This is what I saw when I took a first look at the contents.

My box contained contained a chickpea curry mix for one from the Simon Rimmer range. I did not even know that he had developed these vegetarian meals in a bag, but I do own one of his cook books and enjoy the recipes, so I have high hopes for this. I will save it for lunch on a day when I am working from home, I think.

Lucy also picked some healthy-ish snacks (yay!), namely popcorn grown in Norfolk, some fruity licorice, a Norwegian cola lolly and Tyrrell's fried broad beans, which I hadn't seen before. They were quite nice to munch on.

The postcard suggested that this pretty package would contain homemade Belgian biscuits, and revealed these butter almond thins. As the postman timed his delivery perfectly, these were shared with Marco right there and then, together with an iced coffee for Kaffee & Kuchen.

I liked everything I have tried from this parcel and am looking forward to sampling the remainder. Thank you to Lucy for putting it all together for me!

Foodie Pen Pals is organized by Carol Anne from Rock Salt, and you can find out more about it here or by clicking the link on my swaps page. The whole idea originated in North America, so if you are a stateside or Canadian foodie, you can sign up there.

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Foodie Pen Pals - June 2013

This month I got an amazing foodie parcel from Berni in Leeds. I always get excited when I receive home-made goodies, and Berni gave me three different spice mixes that she assembled herself. These made the parcel smell delicious. She also included an easy recipe for spiced roasted seeds to use with the the pumpkin and sunflower kernels she sent.

There was a pot of honey granola that I have yet to try, but I will take it to work with coconut milk yoghurt and berries one of these days.

Berni packed a few herby oat cakes, which I had not tried before, some girly cupcake liners with a shoe-and-handbag print, and some of her favourite apple and blueberry tea, which I've been having over iced mixed with a bit of apple juice. I turn into an ice tea fiend once the weather gets warm, and this one is delicious. I liked the card that came in the package, because beach huts and the seaside are one of my favourite sights!

Here's the aforementioned seed mix and some hot chocolate and lime-infused raisins, which I am saving for a snack attack.

There was also a homemade flapjack, which was lovely and did not make it through the first 24 hours with me. Thank you, Berni, for your thoughtful and tasty food gifts, it was a joy to unpack your parcel!

Foodie Pen Pals is organized by Carol Anne from Rock Salt, and you can find out more about it here or by clicking the link on my swaps page. The whole idea originated in North America, so if you are a state side or Canadian foodie, you can sign up there.

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Foodie Pen Pals - May 2013

For this month, I got pen-palled up with Joan from Glasgow. Usually, I give my pen pals free reign with their parcel, but I am slowly starting to change my diet a bit, so I asked Joan to send me more or less healthy stuff and to go easy on the dairy, refined sugar, caffeine and a few other random things that I am trying to cut out. 

Here is what I got:

First up, a quintessentially Scottish postcard with a cute highland cow.

Then , and I was pretty thrilled by this, Joan baked for me! I got some apple sauce muffins and a carrot-and-ginger cake, all made with pretty healthy ingredients. She also included the recipes for both. The cake was really nice, with a big citrussy hit from the orange, and the muffins were just the right mix of sweet and wholesome. I will definitely make them again myself.

I also got some delicious Lindt chocolate, again with orange notes and some almond pieces, which I really enjoyed. And don't you tell me that chocolate is not healthy. All I'm saying is superfood! 

I think Joan laughed when I asked her if there were any good-for-you Scottish delicacies (and in the light of deep-fried everything, whisky, and buttery shortbread that is probably a justified reaction), but she found one and included oat cakes in the parcel. I think I will need to eat those quick, before I give up cheese...

Joan gave me a silicone cooking liner, similar to ones I am actually already using, so this will be good when I've worn those out. I can really recommend these sheets, I use them for baking and oven-frying. They really work, you can omit any oils or butter for greasing as absolutely nothing sticks to them, and they can be cut to size and used over and over again. 

The second non-edible item I got were toastie pockets, which I have been forever curious to try, but was always too sensible to buy. I've tried them now, and I think my toaster is not made for these. Instead of 'use up to 100 times', I used the first one exactly once and already melted a hole through it. Sorry, Joan! 

Last, but not least, I got some rice paper cake decorations. Joan was really sweet and wrote that these were  meant as a reminder to show myself some love. I really appreciate the care that Joan took in assembling my parcel and loved unpacking it. Thank you!

If you want to find out more about Foodie Pen Pals, you can click here or the link in my sidebar. The swap is organized by Carol Anne from Rock Salt. The whole idea originated in North America, so if you are a state side or Canadian foodie, you can also sign up over there.

Oh, and my parcel went to Lithuania.

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Foodie Pen Pals - April 2013

April was my second time participating in Foodie Pen Pals. Last month's food parcel came from Miriam Nice. And I must say this gal lived up to her name! I sent mine to this lovely lady.

When I opened the parcel, I first found this card with an explanation of the contents and some cute illustrations:

The food I was sent was very much to my liking, and mostly disappeared within a week. The first to go was the chocolate, obviously... I also had all the ingredients for making lentil and feta pastry parcels like suggested, so that was my dinner and lunch for one day.  

I've just learned how to make marshmallows myself, and I'd been meaning to make some for days before I got this parcel, but in this case was rewarded for being lazy. Marco and I had Miriam's mallows for the last few hot chocolates of winter.

I was really inspired by the recipe recommendations and made a chicory, pear and blue cheese salad. I had actually been wondering if it might be okay to send fresh food, and this was my answer!

I was happy to receive a jar of smoked paprika. as it is a good friend of mine already. I like it in chilli, on potato wedges or in pasta sauces. So I will finish what I have at home and then go right on to the new container.

Foodie Pen Pals is organized by Carol Anne from Rock Salt, and you can find out more about it here or by clicking the link in my sidebar. The whole idea originated in North America, so if you are a state side or Canadian foodie, you can sign up there.

Thank you, Miriam, for getting last month's mystery foods exactly right!

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Foodie Pen Pals - March 2013

Last month was my first time being a Foodie Pen Pals swapper. I found out about it while reading Thrift Street and it was immediately clear to me that I needed to sign up. Basically, the swap involves packing a delicious care package for somebody and receiving one from somebody else in return. Yes, please!
The swap is organized by Carol Anne from Rock Salt, and you can find out more about it here or by clicking the link in my sidebar. The whole idea originated in North America, and I am glad I found out about the European version!

So here is what I got from my partner Maya. I pretty much gave her free hand with her choices and her parcel turned out to be a very sweet one. No complaints here! She packed some lovely dark chocolate, which I am saving for a rainy day. I got a lollipop and some pick-and-mix candy. The pastel coloured sweets are melon- and berry-flavoured and are not going to last very long. I also really like sunflower seeds, I have had a bit of a thing for them lately. I like them in salads, over muesli or just as a snack. Thank you, Maya!

I sent a parcel to Switzerland myself, and cannot wait to see who I'll be paired up with for April. It's a lot of fun to go food shopping for another enthusiast and to open a mystery package full of goodies once a month! 

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Pay It Forward - 1st Installment

Know that Pay It Forward button that's been sitting in my sidebar for way over a year? Go click on it to see what it's all about if you don't already know.

Finally, here is the first (*hangsheadinshame*) actual Pay It Forward gift I made:

 

I made this for Julia from Blue-J Cottage and I took her blog header as inspiration for the embroidery design. I really hope she liked it! Fiona and Shelly, please bear with me! You haven't been forgotten, I'm just a really, really rubbish pay-it-forwarder... SORRIES!!!!!

    © Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Tea Time

Quite recently, Erin from My Beautiful Disaster organized a tea swap that little ol' tea drinker me immediately signed up for, and on Saturday I received a very exciting package. My goodies from swap friend Amy of Fate Filled Times had arrived from across the Atlantic! Amy and I had already been emailing since we were partnered up, and I must say that Erin did herself very proud in matching us. 

The first thing I found when I opened the parcel was a beautifully stamped envelope. Inside the envelope there was an equally beautiful card with a message from Amy. She had carefully picked 6 different teas for me, all of which she loves herself. So with her card came personal notes on how she likes to drink each one, which was really thoughtful.

The teas Amy sent me are such fun! They are six different mixes with creative names and I can see myself liking them all. The very first sachet I unpacked contained a tea called 'Oh Canada', and if you read my blog, you will know that I have a wild love for this country, but am feeling a bit mopey about the fact that my husband is spending time there without me at the moment. So this tea brought a little bit of Canada to me that morning. Another blend contains cocoa, and yet another golden sugar balls. Amazing! I wanted to try them all at once!

I took some pictures of the tea to show on the blog, and suddenly the tea shoot turned into a cat shoot. My sweet, curious Mae came to see what I was doing, lured by the sound of tissue paper.

Mae took her time to sniff at every bag and would not let me take one more photo without her in it. So I decided I might as well make some tea! It will not be hard to guess which bag I ended up opening first. With the smell of syrup and caramel came tiny sugar maple leaves! I could not have been happier!

Thank you, Amy, for the wonderful new teas you gave me to try. I am looking forward to drinking each one of them! I am very glad that we made a connection through this swap and happy to discover that our love of tea is not the only thing we share. Thank you, Erin, for being a genius and organizing this! And if anybody is curious about what I sent Amy, you can go have a look here.

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - Link Up Until The End of January

Alright, Winter Warmer Recipe Folk.

This is important. As I mentioned before, not everybody has received their recipes yet, which may be partly due to the postal service going mental in the run-up to Christmas. So here's the deal: the opportunity to link up you swap posts is now open till the end of this month. Link below if you have written about the swap and would like to be included in a round-up post in February.

If you have not received any mail, please let Fiona and me know at fiona.and.annika@gmail.com. If we don't know, we cannot do anything towards sorting out the situation! If you have sent your recipe but have not heard back from your swap partner, please contact them through email or their blog to ask if everything is fine and dandy at their end. If your letter got lost, maybe you could send them the recipe in an email, so that everybody can still take part. Won't be ideal, but sugar happens...

Please be gentle with us, as this is both Fiona's and my first swap, and we would love for everybody to be happy in the end!

I will keep the button open in my sidebar and if you click on it any time during January, it will take you to the link list, okay? You can also link up here at Fiona's blog. Fingers crossed for everybody to finally get cooking and baking as they should!

Lots of Love,
 © Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).  

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - Last Day to Share Your Posts

Hey Swappers.
Remember, today is the last day to link up the blog posts that you would like to be shared in the Winter Warmer Recipe Swap round-up!
You can add your recipe swap posts by linking either here on my blog or over at Fiona's Corner Of The Internet...

We'd love to include everybody's swap experience, so get linking!
Ta!

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - Aunt Vera's Sugar Tarts

I got my swap recipe last week! It came all the way from Canada, from Jessi, who is one half of Sparrows & Arrows. I have been following Jessi's blog for a while, and she even guest-posted here in September, so I was very happy to be paired up with her!
Jessi sent me a recipe for sugar tarts that has been in her family for a long time and are a staple at Christmas. I loved the little lace trim on the recipe card, that was such a cute touch.

Aunt Vera was Jessi's great-grandfather's sister, in case you were wondering. I made her tarts on Sunday.

I could not find any frozen tart shells here in Britain, so I just bought some ready-rolled dessert pastry and cut out rounds with the scalloped side of a cookie cutter. 

I placed them in a muffin tin and pricked them with a fork before I poured in the filling. In the end I had 12 tarts and a bit of leftover filling. Because I also had some pastry left, I made one big tart out of the remains.

Marco and I had the tarts for Kaffee & Kuchen and liked them a lot. They had formed a lovely sugary crust on top of the sweet gooey filling, which reminded me of crème brûlée. Marco said they tasted almost like the butter tarts he used to buy when he still lived in Vancouver. He got fairly excited!

Thank you, Jessi! I would call these tarts a definite success and they will be made again!

P.S.: Swappers! Don't forget to link up your recipe posts HERE or HERE! It would be lovely for everybody to see what you've been up to and Fiona and I will do a round-up some time after Christmas to showcase your creations.
© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Winter Warmer Recipe Swap - Link Party

Hey Swapperoos!

How's it going? Have a lot of you received their recipes yet, or are you still waiting for the postman? Some of you might have to be a bit more patient than others, as this swap drew an international crowd and the intercontinental mail will take a little longer to reach its recipients. If you are still waiting by the end of this week, maybe let Fiona and me know, and we'll investigate.

Because I know she has received her recipe, I can now reveal that my swappy partner was Jess from Peonyfish. I sent her a recipe for Chicken & Artichoke Pilaf, which is one of my favourite quick dinners. I found it in a magazine and have been cooking it for over 5 years, tweaking it until it was perfect in my eyes. Jess wrote a lovely post after she received it. Her kind words made me feel all happy/embarrassed! Thank you, Jess!!!

Here is what the recipe looked like on paper:

I used patterned paper and a sticker maker for the letters and silhouettes, which I drew freehand on the back of the paper before cutting them out. I actually have veg box leeks in the fridge right now, so I think I will make this for Marco and me one evening this week. 

I've also made my first ever linky thing for this swap, so if you have anything Winter Warmer related going on on your blog, you can link up below and let the world see. You could also link up anything that you have added to the flickr group. You will always be able to get to this post from the Winter Warmer Recipe Swap button in my sidebar. Links will show up here and on Fiona's blog and you can upload your posts until 23 December. Extended until 31 January! After that, we will showcase your creations in a big round-up for everyone to marvel at.

Happy cooking!

SEE OTHER POSTS ABOUT THE SWAP  © Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).