Tortano, picnic bread of the year!

Ha! As I told you in my last post; it is a summer filled with picnics in the park for us. And I love to share what is the best picnic bread for us this year: the tortano.

Soft, moist, delicious and filled with what ever suits your taste of the moment. It is a bread made with normal flour and durum flour, which makes it rise perfectly. You can fill it up with what ever you have left over in your pantry or in your fridge, so budget wise it is a real topper. I found the recipe for the tortano in: "One more slice." by Leila Lindholm.

I think this bread will make it through the summer into the next seasons, because it is an easy bread to make with a healthy filling and it is toddler proof. Miss E. eats it to the last crumb, filling and all, because it is bread and she loves bread!

This tortano I filled with mozzarella, roasted courgette, red paprika, basil and sun dried tomatos on oil.

What has been your favorite picnic recipe this year?

Summer break

Well, it wasn't my intention to take a summer break in blogging, but it just happened. The weather lured me into picnics in the park, which meant a lot of baking and salad making. Picnic breads and quiches ruled our days, covering the kitchen in a cloud of flour dust. And then there was this other little thing that turned my living space upside down and covered everything with a white cloud of something totally different: knauf...stucco...plaster...

Let me introduce you to my favorite demolition team:

On a quiet pre-summer day there was silence in the house. Being a mom I should have know that silence means trouble, but I never imagined it coming in pairs...
The silence was soon disturbed by a ripping sound. By the time I discovered where it came from half the wall had lost its wallpaper. Now I agreed that we wanted to change it some where in the near future, but this was a little nearer than I imagined. The excuse: " I (my love) wanted to know what was behind the paper." It took him half the wall to find out... No turning back now and I must confess it is turning out beautiful!

So there you have it, our summer project: redoing the upper hallway of our house.

Some desperate needed knitting on the way

I have this strange need to knit socks, especially in the summer. As soon as the temperatures rises and the sun comes out to play you can find me in the park or on the playground (most of the time bare feet in the sand, I am often quicker with putting my toes in the sandbox than my daughter is). In my hands there will be some knitting needles with part of a soon to be sock dangling on the ends. I think socks are the ultimate knitting project on the go. They fit easily in my handbag and accompany me on most adventures miss E. and I undertake.

My most recently finished project is my "Hollandse Nieuwe", a herringbone pattern sock with a Dutch heel. And on the needles there is the second leg of the legwarmies, favourite to miss E. Her first pair is worn grey, and now she walks through the house with just one polar leg 'cause mom hasn't finished the second yet.

So I'll be busy finishing that second polar leg this night, so my little bear can growl contently through the house tomorrow.
What are your favourite summer knitting projects?