Friday Find - Nuala O'Donovan

The wonders of porcelain, I love this material 

and was in awe when I saw these creations from Nuala O'Donovan.

All her work is built by hand over weeks or months bit by bit, not jiffed from a 3D printer. So they have the natural imperfections of hand made items, one of a kind, as everything in nature realy is; one of a kind. She uses no tools but her hands to create these objects. I'm in love........

Head over to her site to smother yourself in more of this awesomness

Sweet Saturday - Rhubarb and Custard tart

Finally I have another sweet Saturday recipe for you. As hubby and myself are trying to eat less and so loose some weight, we have been staying away from desserts. But it's our holiday, so we're skipping our rules. I made a rhubarb and custart tart. The recipe I found in one of my AVOCA cookbooks. As usual I slightly altered it, so here's my version.

I started with baking the base in shortcrust party blind. The baking pearls from Artmind are perfect for this job. But the rubarb you can do even the day before if you want, just simmer it, see below.

This is the recipe for the pastry:
225gr plain flour
150gr salted butter
25 gr sugar
1 egg yolk
vanilla essence

Sift the flour, rub in the butter. Once it looks like breadcrumbs add the sugar and the egg yolk and mix into a dough; add some cold water if need be. Leave the ball of dough to rest for 20 min in the fridge wrapped in cling film.

While the dough was in the fridge I made the rhubarb and the custard for the filling.

750g rubarb - just simmer this till it's soft

Custard:
100ml cream
125ml milk
vanilla essence
3 egg yolks
55gr sugar
tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon butter

Bring the cream and milk to the boil, take from the heat. Mix the eggs with the sugar until it's pale. Add the tablespoon of flour. Than add the egg mix to the milk/cream, stir well and bring back to the boil, simmer for a couple of minutes and add  1/2 teaspoon of butter. Take from the heat and mix the rhubarb and the custard.

Take the dough from the fridge and roll the ball into a sheet to fill a base with a diameter of approx 23cm, bake blind at 180 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes.

Fill the baked base with the custard rhubarb mix and bake all for 45 minutes at 140 degrees Celsius.

What to do with all those left over egg whites? Make some pavlova :-)  Bon apetit!

Marché Bricolé with Zsazsazu

Last Saturday I went to Bruges, the weather forecast looked bad, so with fingers crossed I hit the road and arrived in a dry Bruges.

When I arrived I spotted Sandra form Zsazaszu straightaway and luckily she had kept a boot for me besides hers, so we could chat all day :-) When we not busy with clients that is and lots turned up as the weather stayed dry and the other happening in the park, a concert, pick-nick and more drew in a good crowd.

My boot in the picture below, to be safe I covered it with plastic which was nearly not needed. Kept thinking if I had not done it, it would have rained more. Just like when the one time you don't bring your umbrella, it rains.

Sandra crochet jewelery is really fine and now I know why, she wears two glasses when she is crocheting

Since Saturday I can say I'm the proud owner of just such a fine piece of jewelery.

A necklace with 2 crochet sections set in lovely green semi precious stone beads. I love the way there are so may colors of green in the crochet parts. It will go with much of my cloths, so I know I' wear it a lot.

She wraps her jewelery real nice, a real gift :-)

Sandra wrote a blog about the fair too, with many more impressions and a link to a nice video, so head over here to read and view it.

Happy Stats

Holiday time :-)

• weekend in South of Belgium, great food, great B&B 
• interesting temporary exhibition with work from Andy Warhol and other pop-artists in the abbey of Stavelot.
• from the ceramics market I'll always remember this one couple, they came to my stall and watched everything in detail, I had a lot of my story bowls on display. They were whispering to each other, telling each other the stories that they imagined with each bowl. In the end they took the little hippo who found a flower home. She was even petting the little hippo. I know it's going to a very good home and that just makes me so happy, still brings a smile to my face.

• a hummingbird hawk-moth in our garden, hubby saw it too and was just as amazed as I was when I saw it first.
• 4 day trip on the motorbike to Picardy, France
• market in Bruges, where I got this wonderful necklace from Sandra from Zsazsazu, she was in the stall next to me. I will show it to you later, as I still have to unpack all the boxes from the fair and it's hidden in there somewhere.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Friday Find - VÍK PRJÓNSDÓTTIR

Since the summer is staying away, I real feel like snuggling up on the sofa with a good book. These blankets, if one may call them so, they really are much more than blankets, will do just the job. Made by a local company from Iceland using wool from Icelandic sheep, inspired by myths and stories from the past and the present.

Shield of Wings

Black or White

the Baby Seal

They got the seal also in an adult version, just what I need ;-)

Do go have a look at their website for more products and awesome product pictures and stories.

New Blog Name

My blog has a new name: http://twotreesblog.blogspot.com/. As we plan to move from Belgium, (just no luck so far in finding a house or some land) I thought it weird to have Belgium in the name (was twotreesbelgium).

We're looking for a place in the area called Zeeuws Vlaanderen (marked with a cross on the map below). Zeeuws means from Zeeland, the county Zeeuws Vlaanderen is part of and where I was born and raised. Vlaanderen is named just like the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, where my hubby is from, Brugge (Bruges) to be exact.

It's part of the Netherlands but if you look at the map you would think it to be part of Belgium. The perfect middle ground for a Belgian-Dutch couple like my hubby and me.

Even the flag is a perfect combo of the Flemish flag (black lion on yellow) and the Dutch flag (red, white and blue stripes).

All I have to do now is change the header to say just Two Trees too.

Dutch Plums

My brother has an orchard and is one of the top 10 plum growers in the Netherlands. Last week they started picking the first plums of this years harvest.

This year he will be one of the selected sellers by GIJS, they select the best of Dutch fresh fruit, vegetable, dairy, ... suppliers. The website promotes their wares which are sold through the supermarket chain named PLUS in the Netherlands. They already came to interview him and take pictures, but his profile is not online yet.

Anyway if you see plums in the PLUS supermarket with this card on the crate you know they come from my brothers orchard :-)

Looking for something to bake with plums, there's several recipes on my blog, here's a list:

• Plum Sauce
• Plum Cake
• Lavender Plums
• Plums in Puff Pastry

And here's another blog I wrote about plums last year.