Nuts seed-fruit bars

The best travelers bite I found out so far! And when you make them by yourself you can add whatever you need in your morning mysli to make it a healthy breakfast to enjoy with a refreshing cup of green tea if you find some hot water along the road. The bars are also a great snack on the road to share with the rides you hitch or the friends you meet.
I’ve made many variations so far and every time they found their way into someone’s mouth too fast. Funny thing, but actually my mom was the only one who didn’t like them so far.

My bars:
Six table spoons of liquid honey
Three dl of sesame seeds
Three dl of tried apple crunches, sunflower seeds, raisins, tried cranberry flakes and crunched almonds.

Roast the dry ingredients just so that the seeds are a bit darker.
Boil water and add the honey in a bowl to the hot water so that it gets liquid.
If heated in too hot temperature honey turns toxic so better to dissolve it with low temperature.
Then mix the dry ingredients with honey. Put it inside of a baking paper and mold into a flat square inside of it. Let it cool down until it’s firm enough to be cut into bars.

Hot mint chocolate in the Finnish nature

Some rides on the dark roads in Finland later I ended up in Vaasa visiting the local couchsurfing team who actually happen to be like my family away from family in Finland. I surfed and lived with them back when I lived there.
My unplanned visit reached all the way to Ikaalinen, where our gang went to spend a nice, relaxed cottage weekend with loads of other France exchange students.
Of course a lot of effort where put on planning the food and not so much effort on the sweet, but even more delicious hot chocolate in the white wild wilderness.


A hint of original mint vodka with boiled rice milk, cocoa powder and whole grain sugar makes the best hot chocolate I have ever drank! It’s awesome in the middle of the pure white snow piles in the country side on your skis.

Thus went a great weekend in the best company that followed a great ride back to mom's kitchen.

Honey gone nuts with the salad

A good company, hitching and a warm kitchen makes the ideas fly in the mind of a hungry traveler.
While thumbing a ride between Oulu and Denmark I decided to rest a day couchsurfing in my old couchurfers friend kitchen in Stockholm. A day turned into four relaxing days and among other cookings a composed salad was created and eaten with pleasure while making jokes about my almost obsessive use of nuts and honey.
Still, I thought the salad was missing apples; only cinnamon was something I didn’t think of using amongst other spices.

This is what I used:
Half of head lettuce
Half of cucumber
Two garlic cloves
One onion
Two carrots
Sesame and sunflower seeds
Almond
Salt, pepper and lemon pepper
Thyme, fennel seeds and oregano
Lemon juice
sesame oil
Honey
Vinegar

Chop carrots, onions and garlic and cook them in a pan until carrots are a bit soft. Then add almonds and seeds and roast a bit. Let them cool.
Wash and chop salad and cucumber and mix them together.
Make the sauce for them mixing sesame oil, just a hint of vinegar, all spices and some honey.
Mix with the salad and enjoy with every bite. But don’t go nuts, honey ;)

The perfect composed soup ever!

And the name is not a joke! It got right on top of my favorite cookings even if I yet don’t know how much of everything I’ve put, but I had to post it since I already ate three plates just because it was delicious! Maybe I should start to make terrible food to just eat what I have to, to keep my engine running so I can dance dance dance!

Well, I’ve grown to watch my granny cook and I composed something similar to what she did couple weeks ago, but little hint of me in the soup. It's a bit sweet soup also because of the raisins I used, but I loved the variation! Plus it was composed out from what I found in my mom’s kitchen. And I dare say it’s better than my granny’s cookings, and that’s a lot to say!

So, here’s the ingredients I used, but not the exact amounts:

2 carrots
Half of zucchini
2 onions
2 garlic cloves
Half of paprika
About 10 cherry tomatoes
Some rice and red lenses or quinoa
Raisins
Spices:
Salt and pepper
Ginger
Curry
Nutmeg
Oregano
Thyme

And of course water
I also added some honey and some (coconut) cream to the other portion and I’d say the cream version was just perfect! It gave a smooth, rich flavor to the little bit sweet soup. Of course cream makes everything good =D

So here’s what we did with my mom:

Boil rice and lenses. Cut all the veggies, smash the tomatoes a bit and throw the carrots and zucchini in boiling water that we had about 1 liter. Then I added all the spices and let them boil some minutes. After I added all the other cut veggies and couple minutes later the raisins and the tomatoes. I let them boil all together until the carrots were soft enough and then I added the boiled rice and lenses. Of course you can boil the lenses and rice together with the carrots, but we had cooked them before.
Then add honey or cream and vola, it’s done! Bon appétit!

Quinoa and pumpkin seeds

GINOAAAAA!!!

Half of quinoa
Half water
Small spoon of butter
Salt and pepper
Lemon
Herbs

I guess you already know what you have to do. Boil quinoa for about 15min. Add butter, salt, pepper and lemon. Decorate with herbs as well.

For roasting pumpkin seeds (basically the same as roasting sunflower seeds):

Some seeds
Olive oil
Salt

Roast seeds about 10min in olive oil. Add salt and sprinkle some on top.

And enjoy every bite!