The noblest gesture

Until this year, in my entire life, I personally knew two families which adopted children. In 2010 my list doubled. Two more families I know, opted for adoption.

It's hard to think about the sin or drama of a mother that chose to abandon her baby. It's also hard to think about the drama of a child which one day founds out that he/she has no natural parent alive or he/she was not loved from the beginning...

A part of those wronged by fate children are luckier than the others. They grow up in families, with parents and siblings that love them a lot. They feel the warmth of a family, the power of love, the joy of giving.
In my opinion, adoption is the noblest gesture people can do in this world!

Thinking on this subject lately, I've found out a beautiful poem written from an adopted child's point of view.
I don't know if I'm allowed to quote on this blog anything I found on Internet, but, as long as poem's author doesn't contact me to delete it :-), here I share those wonderful verses with you.
They've touched my heart!

Life givers

You did not give me the gift of life,
but in my heart I know
the love I feel is so deep and real
as if it had been so.

You did not give me the gift of life,

but rather the chance to live...
to love; to learn; to laugh;
to cry; but most importantly, to give.

You did not give me the gift of life,
and that's ok with me.
For no matter what, you're my parents
for all eternity!

For us to have each other
is like a dream come true.
No, you did not give me the gift of life;
Life gave me the gift of you! 

by Jaime Frodyma

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Time for a change

There was a time when we thought that parquet was the best option for Ilaria's room's floor. As she was pretty static and the weather was warm until now, we didn't think too much about comfort, having in mind just the cleanliness control. And the truth is that a short look at parquet is enough to get information on everything-is-OK or there-is-something-to-be-done.

the "before" picture

But things changed - Ilaria became active and the weather turned cold, so the parquet didn't fulfill our expectations anymore. We decided it's time for a carpet.
Last week-end the plan turned into reality.
The main beneficiary was pleased to test the carpet's capabilities:

the "during" picture

 

She made great progress in walking since then:

the "after" picture

She is still testing and didn't complain about any inconvenience until now ;-)

Thanks, Bogdan B.! You were of great help, as usual!

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Apple / Pumpkin pie

This recipe was originally with apples, but this fall I adapted it with pumpkin instead of apples and it proved to be delicious too.

What you need:

You start dough's preparation in 2 different bowls (in 1st - intermediary dough and in 2nd - the paste):

Mix the ingredients. The intermediary dough should be not-sticking (maybe some extra flour is needed)

Lay flat the intermediate dough and then on the top of it, on all it's surface, lay flat the paste:

Roll the resulted final dough:

Cut it in 2 pieces of the same size. Prepare them (lay flat).

Prepare the pumpkin (scrape the pumpkin and mix it with the ingredients listed below):

Put the 1st layer of final dough in the tray and add on top of it the pumpkin. Here you have to be fast, because once you've mixed the pumpkin with sugar, the pumpkin become juicy.

Finish by putting on top the 2nd layer of final dough, build the margins and prick the dough with a fork.

Cook it until it become golden:

Pofta buna!
(Bon appetit!)


P.S.: I never imagined that posting about cooking is the hardest for me.. I don't know the English words related to cooking. But I know how excited you are to become one day a cooker as good as I am :-)), so that's why I'm doing my best to improve my English vocabulary with new cooking words.

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Happy Halloween!

(project inspired by Country Living magazine. See here: Pumpkin Decorating Ideas)

This blog turns to be helpful in knowing each other better ( me and... Adrian :-) )

He was surprised to read here that during my childhood I was carving pumpkins; and I just found out from him that this tradition wasn't popular everywhere in Romania!

I think, in my native countryside this custom was borrowed still from Americans, but long time ago. Many Transylvanians from my grand-grandparents' generation have worked in America in the beginning of the 20th century. They turned back home with money for purchasing lands and even with names for their children - my grandmother (84 years old) is named Virginia.

@Adrian: thank you for driving so far (Hornbach), just to buy the black acrylic for my project.

(That's one of the reasons why I lately call this guy "our local hero" - since we have Ilaria, he started to love shopping for us, girls ;-).... OK, maybe lot love, but at least his shopping headaches are gone)

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Decorate this!

This happened in the morning when I asked Adrian that, additionally to the common shopping list, he should buy from the market also a pumpkin to be decorated for Halloween. My bad, as I specified on the list only "pumpkin big and round" and this one fits exactly my request.
Tough job to decorate such a pumpkin, isn't it? :-)

In Romania, Halloween is a tradition recently taken from Americans. We do not have in our calendar such a Holiday. There is something similar: when we were children, at the end of our summer Holiday (middle of September), in countryside, we were decorating pumpkins with classic scary faces

and we were putting them on the gate's pillar to thrill people on the street. But that was all. We didn't know that in some other part of the globe this custom has a name.

After around 15 years since I left behind the tradition of carving pumpkins, this year I want to revive it for Ilaria. I was having in mind to do something like this:
 

but with the pumpkin chosen by Adrian, I think we are forced to be a little more stylish :-)
Until now I have found this model and I think it goes right even with little stars.

Or maybe it would be good to eat this one and to invest again in a more decorable one!? ( yesterday I've cooked a delicious pumpkin pie and maybe Adrian tries to be discreet and still send the "I want some more" message :-) )
Do you have any other ideas how this can be decorated? Or you agree with the idea that it should be turned into pies, without regrets?

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The parcels now and then

I have a special weakness for parcels. I can't wait to receive them; then I can't wait to open them. Sometimes, when I have lots of chores to be done, I settle a specific number of chores to be fulfilled until I allow myself to open a parcel that I just received. The truth is I'm crazy about them. And it seems the gene was successfully inherited by Ilaria.

One of those days we went together to the post office to pick up a parcel containing winter clothes for Ilaria, ordered over the Internet. It was one entire parcel only for her! As if she knew it, the most part of our way back home she insisted for "carrying" it. I agreed with that and then I had to face people's look "saying": "poor little girl. She's exploited from such a young age!". But she didn't care about anything and she was happy, "talking" all the time, from behind the parcel. 

Seeing her cherishing that parcel, I remembered us, children before '89, cherishing my grandmother's parcels.

Before '89 Transylvania was full with Saxons. They were friendly, focused, laborious, organized. Romanians had a lot to learn from them. After the revolution of '89 and the fallen of the communist regime, an overwhelming majority of Saxons left Transylvania. They left behind them impressive churches, beautiful houses, plants and fruits not existing in other parts of Romania, tasteful recipes, lifetime friendships and a lot of memories...

My grandmother has a very good friend, Helmine Girscht, which, for many years, was her beloved neighbor and now is living in Mettmann, Germany. We were lucky, as she was leaving Romania long before '89, around '70. And, as many Saxons, she is a generous person. She was writing letters, especially at Easter and Christmas and many of those letters were notifications for future parcels. We, children, learned our lesson: when our grandmother was receiving such a letter, we were quickly opening it and we were not reading it to our grandmother, as she would had wished, but we were scanning the whole letter, looking for the wrongly spelled word "pacet" instead of "pachet", to know if some parcel will be or not on it's way toward us. And many times it was. And it was full of goodies which you couldn't have dreamed you would ever find in Romania: good chocolate, chewing gum, candies, margarine, pudding powder, coffee, cocoa, cubic sugar, vanilla extract, baking soda and so on.

We were devouring those goodies in few days and then cherishing much longer their wrappers. You know, when a person has one sense less developed, another sense is better. In our case the taste was the not so developed one - we didn't have much to taste - and it was successfully replaced by smell. We were able to feel and to enjoy the smell of almost any wrapper, long time after the yummy thing which it once covered has disappeared. I remember myself smelling for years a metal box of peppermint candies, a dates' carton and uuups... a cigars Virginia Blend Tobacco plastic purse.

Someday I will relate to Ilaria such stories from my communist childhood. Will she be able to understand something? Will she be able to imagine how it was back then when parcels reached us ALWAYS opened and RARELY complete? And what joy was for my grandmother to share all those goodies with her children and grandchildren?

Speaking of violated parcels, I remember myself once being frustrated and asking my mother "why do they open our parcels?", her answering: "because Ceausescu ordered so" and me replying: "oh, I understand now! He wants to wreak vengeance on us. He is spiteful because he doesn't receive any". :-)

Ilaria is lucky, being born in a free country, where you can receive your parcel -  one entire parcel for yourself - complete and sealed.

But we are also lucky, as we lived in both worlds and we felt the difference!

I'm happy for that. For us, children of 80s, it was OK even back then, but don't ask our parents how tough was for them...

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This sweet mess of mine

Just in case you don't know what mess means, let me show you some. This is how my kitchen looks like, at this very moment:

This time it happened partially because of my cooking and partially because of this sweetie:

(old picture)

which now sleeps like the most innocent angel.
But there are some other reasons/persons in the house responsible for something similar..

Thanks God for my daily sweet mess. I'm grateful that I have people around me to make it (mess) for me and I have the strength to clean up (almost) every time :-)

Kisses! 
P.S.: I've cooked chicken-breast Viennese schnitzel + red beet salad

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