This week [17.12-23.12]

Last week started with all the preparations, covid tests, packing and tidying up before leaving for two weeks with a very excited Toddler who had been looking forward all week to catching a plane to see her grandparents, aunts, uncle and cousin. As she is now over 2 years old, she now has a plane seat to herself, which is a huge relief. We just need to keep her busy, which we do with colouring and sticker books, stories, and a few nice passengers who don’t mind playing some rounds of peekaboo.

Coming home for the holidays is all about seeing our family and friends, and making time for Toddler to hang out with them. Watching her interact with them is priceless, but it is also very costly in terms of energy for us. All the changes, the interactions, the to-do lists for Christmas celebrations, the lack of routines had us dealing with some epic toddler meltdowns and, by the end of the week, we were more exhausted than before the holidays. The summit of the toddler meltdowns was definitely when she pulled a 10-minute-shrieker in the middle of the busiest streets in the city and a lady pursued us, worried that we had kidnapped her and stating that I was definitely not her mother because, if I were, she wouldn’t run away from me screaming like that (it didn’t help that she was screaming mamãaaaa)!

Just before coming, I was excited about holiday baking and ordered some flour that arrived just in time for me to… open a bakery at home. As if we didn’t have enough on our plates. Oh well. So, what did I bake?

• Sourdough bread: at home, I make the bread as quickly and practically as I can, which means that I skip a few steps (no autolyse, no proofing in the basked or shaping the bread). This time around, I decided to take the time to make it properly, using this recipe. It turned out very good, especially toasted with salted butter, but I wish my bread was taller and had less crusty area. Something to fine tune next year.
• Bolo Rainha: using the same recipe I found and tweaked a few years ago and using my sourdough starter, as I have been doing for the last two years, I baked seven of these babies and gave them to family and friends.
• Broa de milho: a Portuguese table cannot be missing the broa de milho, a bread made mostly of corn flour, with some rye and wheat mixed in for structure. I made them for Christmas for both our families, and they were used for making migas de grelos (turnip greens sautéed with bread, garlic and olive oil) as well.

The weather was quite rainy for the whole week and so there was no running (or any kind of sport for that matter) and not much time spent outdoors, which was quite hard for me. There was a lot of time spent eating and being by the fireplace. I guess this week was mostly about enjoying the good things we don’t have the rest of the year, despite all the fatigue.

This week [10.12-16.12]

This one is quite late, because… life. But last week, on Friday, Suisse Romande woke up in the middle of a snowstorm. I wasn’t quite prepared for how much snow was going to fall, precisely during the crèche drop-off, and I headed out on the bike. The picture above was during the ride, which wasn’t even slippery because the snow was still soft and we were the first people to tread it. The bike ended up being the best option, even if it meant being almost blinded with large snowflakes hitting my face during most of the ride.

In the weekend it was my birthday and we celebrated in the snow, with sleds, friends and a birthday cake made by them. I also spent the afternoon making a cake for myself, and I chose Nigel Slater’s carrot cake with mascarpone and orange frosting. The recipe is in his book that I’ve been reading, but it’s also online. I tweaked the recipe a little, taking out almost half of the sugar in the cake, and making the mascarpone frosting with only mascarpone, cream cheese and grated orange peel. It’s delicious and moist, and the orange peel makes the cream really tangy and fresh. I don’t have pictures, I forgot to take any.

This week was so cold in Lausanne that, a week later, there was still a lot of snow hanging around. It was too cold to be out for long, but even so, we managed to ride on the giant wheel and see Lausanne lit up from there, and went to see some of the lights in the city.

For my birthday, I got some wireless headphones, a gift I wasn’t expecting and actually didn’t know I wanted. Three days later I managed to drop them in a sewer grate in the city centre. A few weeks after teasing J for losing hers in the bus, I was sighted looking for mine with a phone torch in a grated pit. I was lucky that a nice passer-by helped me lift the grate and jumped in himself and actually managed to find them!

It was another hell of a week workwise, but on my day off, I made some chocolate-hazelnut toffee to give to the crèche professionals that take care of our Toddler. The result was quite nice, but I have some tweaks in mind for next time, such as making a thinner layer of caramel, using really dark chocolate and chopping the hazelnuts by hand.

This week [3.12-9.12]

I have very little to say about last week, which was mostly spent back in normal routine and catching up with everything after almost a week off sick.

Most importantly, I had my booster shot in the beginning of the week. The virus is definitely not on a break around here and we are happy that we have the possibility of getting vaccinated.

I got Nigel Slater’s new book as a gift in our family Advent calendar. Growing up, we didn’t have this tradition at home, but I saw it in a family we’re friends with and since then thought we would do the same once we had children. The concept is to buy or make little symbolic gifts to open by one family member on each day of December up until Christmas day. Now, Nigel Slater’s book is not a good example of a symbolic gift, but I’m really not complaining. I’ve been reading it since I got it. The recipes are simple, to be made with good local produce and written about in a way that quite resonates with how I feel about food. Not to mention the photos, which are simply beautiful. It’s definitely one of my favourite cookbooks now.

Other than that, I spent most of my evenings making my gift for a Secret Santa exchange with friends, which has an only rule: the gifts have to be handmade. I made some wrist warmers in crochet and sewed a stuffed toy for Toddler to give to a younger baby.

During the weekend we saw some friends, who we’ve known since Z arrived in Switzerland. I babysat for their kids at the time, and now they are both grown adult men. Suffice to say, I felt a little old. Toddler even played with some books they brought up from the basement, which had a little handwritten note from me, from that time. She was mostly happy about feeding the rabbits and guinea pigs in the community garden.

Finally, it’s been really, really cold. It’s night very early, so we haven’t been spending as much time outdoors as I would like. We are now counting down the days to the holidays!

This week [26.11-2.12]

Do not be fooled by this apple tart. It was a hopeful attempt at regaining some normality and action in the kitchen after three weekends with a sick Toddler but, alas, Dad ended up eating most of it, while Toddler and I went down with another round of stomach flu, which lasted most of the week.

Despite spending most of the week moping around the house, barely mustering enough energy to move, some things were accomplished.

The apple tart, of course, which is just a slab of puff pastry, with 5-6 finely cut apples sitting on top and enough minutes in the oven for the pastry and the apple to cook. No recipe from me, but this one here seems to be the one that comes closest (though I didn’t make the puff pastry from scratch. Remember? I have a toddler.)

Also because I have a toddler, sick days are no longer just lounging around and binging on Downton Abbey, which I might have or might not have done a tiny bit, thanks to the fact that Dad took over all the cooking, vomit cleaning, laundry washing and folding. But, unless toddlers are really, worryingly ill, they manage to keep a intriguing amount of energy and still need attention and activities when they are sick.

Our list of sick Toddler activities for this week was:

• Hand painting
• Making a plasticine pizza party and animals with pastry cutters
• Putting up the Christmas tree and getting the Toddler to help with the decorations
• Making a star for the Christmas tree by cutting out a star from a cardboard and covering it with chocolate foil
• Dancing in pyjamas and making up silly moves (plus points for Toddler giggles)

After a week in double sick mode with a Toddler, it was refreshing to go back to normal life whilst listening to Neil Gaiman being interviewed on Desert Island Discs.