Groundwork for a Creative School

Getting Ready for Take-off

 

This is it, the lease is signed (albeit with shaky hands!) and the renovation of the premises for The Createry has begun. It is very exciting - it is going to look and feel just as I had imagined, thanks to the support of my wonderful family!



 

 

The place was an absolute junk yard when we started, walls painted candyfloss pink (!), but thanks to Norman (backpacker relative from Germany), who was staying with us, walls were fixed and changed to white in no time. Furthermore; unsafe electrical installations, and a rotten kitchen with dead cockroaches and dust galore, floor tiles only conveniently laid in the middle of the room and missing along the sides, wobbly partition walls. Most of it is gone now. I am very very grateful for the incredible help from my mum, who looks after our home and ensures we all get food each day (including lunch delivery by bike) and not least my dad, who can repair absolutely everything – he is an ideas man with an amazing talent for fixing anything broken. And they are here, escaping the Danish winter, on their holiday!! What a holiday….

 

The planning of an exciting and very creative space has begun! If you are in any way interested in following the development of my creative school, please feel free to follow here or via Facebook.

xo Sarah

Snapshots from an Australian Summer Holiday Extraordinaire

Woodford Music Festival

We have had a summer holiday extraordinaire. The kids had two months of school and I only worked a few days here and there. Before the holidays started I must admit I thought OMG two months – how on earth am I going to entertain them?! So I started making all these plans in my head, but as it turned out things just happened, as they do with children, and there was no need for any of my planning. The days went so quickly, but now when I look back at the photos I can see that we did so many things and had some fantastic time together as a family. Time has flown, the holidays are long over, but what a fun time we had!

It was a holiday with great variation from family camping, lazy days at home, day trips, to a 4 day sailing adventure for only my husband and I. Up to Christmas we worked a lot in our little workshop creating fun things from recycled materials for Christmas decorations and gifts, you might have seen the post about that here. After Christmas we spend a week camping at the coolest music festival, the Woodford Folk Festival (at Woodford not Woodstock). On offer was world music from every corner of the globe, art and craft, children’s festival, interesting talks and yoga stuff. Not the alcoholic kind of festival, but a very family friendly one. Loved it! The pictures above are from the festival. Summer and music festival is such a great combo don’t you think?

Below are some snapshots from the rest of our holiday, the beautiful beach ones at the top are from Byron Bay and the ones at the bottom are from Hamilton Island. What stunning places! I hope you enjoy the pictures.

xo Sarah

 

First of December and Snow in Australia

Frangipani Snow - it has a beautiful scent.

It is December and my family and I have begun all the traditional Danish Christmas preparations - now under warmer conditions. On the first of December as we were putting up Christmas decorations I looked out the window and could almost convince myself that I saw snow – blue skies and 25 degrees… yeah right! I took this photo and if you concentrate really hard and squint your eyes a bit it almost looks like patches of snow; a white cover of Frangipani flowers on the deck around the pool. December makes me really homesick; longing for my family in Denmark and the cold!

 

ox Sarah

Mini Loaves with Pumpkin Seed and Cracked Wheat - Daily Bread #3



Mini loaves for school lunches

Here are some healthy mini loaves waiting to be baked. It is sour dough with pepita seed and cracked wheat. I made the dough last night and put them into a tin and in the fridge where they have been sitting overnight doing their thing. Got up at 5.30am, sun is up at 4.30am as it is summer and we have no daylight saving in Queensland... and I have a child that wakes as soon as the slightest light shines through the blackout curtains. So they were baked well in time for school.





Sour dough with pepita and cracked wheat - and the baked loaves



Pepita seed are a great source of zinc, magnesium and other trace minerals. I use them in lots of bread recipes to add a bit of health. I put a whole mini loaf in both boys’ lunch boxes amongst other things and they can gnaw off them during their breaks.

Food for humans and teddy bears

 

They are also really cute sliced and made into tiny little sandwiches for kids and teddies. Having a family tea party with teddies is lots of fun for kids and is occasionally a favourite activity here in this house.

 

 

 

 

Sour Dough Mini Loaves with Pumpkin Seed and Cracked Wheat

 

8-12 mini loaves, depending to the size of tin you use.

 

Ingredients

5 dl cold water

¼ tsp dried yeast or 10 g fresh

1 dl sourdough starter

150 g cracked wheat

100 g pumpkin seeds/pepita

150 g wholemeal flour

650 g wheat flour

15 g of sea salt

 

Day 1:

 

1.       Soak the cracked wheat in cold water overnight. Once soaked, drain water away.

 

2.      Pour the 5 dl cold water into a bowl, add yeast and sourdough and stir until dissolved. Add the salt and wholemeal flour and most of the wheat flour; just hold a little of the flour back while you mix until you are sure the dough can take more flour. Before you add the seeds - now is the time to take a bit of the dough and put into your jar of sour dough starter for next time. Add your soaked cracked wheat and the pumpkin seeds. Now you need to stir and knead until the dough does not stick to the sides of the bowl anymore. If you have a mixer this is easy – if you do it by hand it takes some kneading... but don’t fret, it is actually quite therapeutic… or at least it helps to think so. Keep going, your dough needs to be very elastic, which means when you pinch it and pull, you should be able to pull a fair bit; it thinning to almost see-through before it snaps. If not, knead 10 more minutes.

 

3.      Brush your tin lightly with oil and place you dough in it. Brush oil on a piece of cling film and cover your tin. Refrigerate for 12 hours.

 

Day 2:

1.       Take your tin out of the fridge and let it sit on the kitchen bench to “wake up” – prove a bit longer. I usually place mine in a sunny spot to help it along. This can be anything from maybe half an hour to say 6 hours depending on how strong your sour dough starter is. Once you are happy with the state of your risen dough, put the oven to 200 degrees. Place an empty baking tin in the bottom of the oven and when you put the breads in the oven, throw a cup of cold water in the hot tin. The steam gives the bread that crispy bubbly crust. Enjoy!

Cooking School

Crispy Fish waiting for the tamarind sauce

 

 

My dear brother Thomas is visiting us from Denmark. My dear husband said my brother and I could go away and spend some quality time together; he would look after kids – yeah! No need to think twice. Thomas and I went up the coast, stayed in my friend’s lovely house in the forest at Yandina; we booked cooking school (and a spa experience).

The cooking school was held at Spirit House, a Thai restaurant located in beautiful lush rainforest surroundings at Yandina. They have lots of different cooking classes to choose from, we just hopped on the “Essential Thai” one for that day and it was great! The restaurant has been cooking their famously delicious Thai cuisine for 21 years; they have published several cookbooks and sell their own brand of sauces and condiments plus have this cooking school – respect!

We had the best day! From 9.30 til 2pm, we were occupied in a very professional cooking environment, a newly renovated beautiful and generous kitchen with a very competent chef handing out the know-how of Thai ingredients and the 4 essential tastes of Thai cooking: salt, sweet, sour, heat.

From the moment we stepped into the kitchen, the fragrant scent were all around us and the fresh fruit and vegetables laid out ready for chopping were displayed beautifully.

By the time we finally got to sit down and enjoy the meal we had cooked, the build-up for that first mouthful was immense – but we were not disappointed, the flavours were fantastic; Tom Yum, the chicken green curry (Thomas did a great job of beating the crap out of the green curry past in the mortar), the totally crispy fish and salad of pawpaw and caramelised pork – all delicious and best of all we had a great time making it.

xo Sarah

No Fuss Ginger Biscuits



My oldest son Johannes loves these, so he is happy to help.

 
 

 

Lately I have been visiting old recipes, looking for something simple from before chia seed, Rapadura sugar and gluten free. Not that I mind those ingredients at all, I use them too, but I just wanted old-fashioned and simple.  A crunchy sweet biscuits to put in lunchboxes as a treat. I found these ginger biscuits in an old cook book of mine. I have made them several times now; my kids love them and my colleagues love them.

 

 

 

I like them really thin and crispy; and for this I use the bread cutter that I have (I talked about it in this post Retro Kitchen)… but you can of course slice them with a knife. The recipe says to roll them into little balls and bake. I tested this, see picture to the left below, the left biscuit is sliced, the right biscuit is rolled. So depending on how you like your biscuit – choose your method.

 

Also you can replace powdered ginger with fresh grated ginger, one table spoon, to make them healthier.

 

Ginger Biscuits

Makes about 60

 

Ingredients:

250g wheat flour

125g butter

225g brown sugar

2 tbsp. powered ginger or 1 tbsp. fresh ginger finely grated

1 tsp. powered cloves

Pinch of salt

½ baking soda

1 egg

 

Directions:

1.       Chop the softened butter and flour together until it resembles breadcrumbs (I do this with a knife). Stir into the mixture the brown sugar, ginger, cloves, salt and baking soda. In a separate bowl beat the egg and add this to your dough mixture. Now knead until you have an even dough.

 

2.       Decide how you want your biscuits. You can immediately roll them into little balls, place them on a baking tray and bake them in your oven. This gives you a thick biscuit. Or you can roll your dough into rolls/logs, wrap them in cling wrap and refrigerate them for 1-2 hours or so, or even freeze the dough for baking later. The ones I make are about 5 cm in diameter. If you want them nice and round you have to turn or roll the rolls of dough a few times while they are cooling, otherwise they go flat on one side. Once the dough rolls are hardened you can slice them to your liking.

 

3.       Bake in the middle of the oven at 200 degrees C/400 degrees F for 12 min or until edges are browned.

 

 

 

 

Retro Kitchen

This is my bread cutting machine. It is an original from the 1970’s, and it is still great for cutting and slicing. I love it - I love that something old like this still functions, because it is so simple and sturdy!

It works with a handle that you turn manually, no need for plug-in power here. Attach it to the table, turn the handle and away you go. You can adjust the width to whatever suits you. I use it for the heavier breads that I bake, I slice vegetables, but best of all I can use it to make wafer-thin crispy cookies. It is done by rolling the dough into thick sausages, put it in the freezer, take it out 1 hour before, then slice it while it is partly thawed and bake. Easy!

Ginger Biscuits

 When I was growing up, we always used this "bread machine" as we called it. Back then in the 70ties, there were only two kinds of bread, ryebread and white bread and not much variations over these two types. The bread was not sliced and therefore most households in Denmark, where I grew up, had one of these. One day I was slicing some salami and my little brother Simon came over and stood beside me. As soon as I had cut a slice of salami he snatched it and ate it. I now did what most big sisters would do (?!); I took the salami and hit him hard over the head… and he went all wobbly and almost fainted. Knocked out by salami! Sorry Simon!

xo Sarah