Week 7 - A sunny winter week here in Rome

This week I used my camera quite a few times, also thanks to the nice weather that we had all week, except on Monday when the rain poured down all day long. Carlotta was at home from school on Monday as she had some fever on Sunday and was very tired. I found out that there were only about 5 children in her class out of 23, all the rest of the children were ill. On Fat Tuesday they had the carnival song exhibition at school and she wanted to go there. From her class there still were very few children, but she was very happy to participate.
On Tuesday and Wednesday I didn't go riding, because that meant to take Carlotta there, too. It was sunny, but quite cold and I didn't want her to get ill again. I went with Carlotta and Sofia to the hairdresser's instead. Sofia thought she got her hair too short and I wasn't so happy with my haircut either. They could have cut Carlotta's fringe a bit more instead. Sofia wanted her hair done with the hair straightener and so did Carlotta, although her hair is very straight already. I took a photo of them when we got out from the hair dresser's and as I saw the nice light by the sea on our way home, I stopped to take some more photos. But for some reason Carlotta was angry and didn't want any photos taken of her, so the only one I got of her was the one taken from far away where she is watching the sea. Well, she isn't actually watching the sea, she is angry at the whole world and doesn't want to get into the car with us.
Thursday was Valentine's day and we went riding in the afternoon and then came home to make dinner and eat chocolate and make buns. On Friday me and Carlotta went to the dentist's.
The nice weather continued on the week-end, but then it was Sofia's turn to catch the flu. She had some slight fever in the evening and was tired, but she wasn't ill enough to want to stay at home all day. On Saturday we took a walk with our friends through the pinewood to the sea. It's a really nice walk, especially in good company. On Sunday morning I went riding, Sofia didn't feel like riding, but she and Carlotta came to the stables anyway and we spent a few hours there. In the afternoon a friend of hers came to our house and I did a new attempt to make the Finnish buns with cream inside them. Well, I guess someone is trying to tell me that I should stop with these baking attempts, which actually would be very wise if I want to loose some weight. But I had promised the children to do these buns. This time I knew how much flour I had to put and also which program to use in the bread machine. Well, after an hour Sofia said to me that it doesn't seem to happen anything in the machine, that the dough wasn't quite ready. I said, that it just has to grow now. No, said Sofia, it hasn't happened anything in the bread machine. Well, I had a look a the dough and, actually, the bread machine had tried to do it, but I had forgotten to put in the blades that are quite fundamental to make the dough. Ok, so in with the hands into the flour-milk-yeast mixture and trying to get the blades on place and then restart the dough program. The final result was very good anyway. Now we have eaten the buns and a healthier life can begin!

Carnival, Valentine's day and my baking attempts

No sugarfree week this week for me. Maybe next week. One has to follow traditions at least a little bit. And this week it was both Carnival Tuesday and Valentine's day. At Carnival you eat something called frappe in Rome, elsewhere in Italy I think they call them chiacchiere and they also have other names, depending on the region. Armando had promised the children that he would make them himself and so he did. I was a bit skeptical about it and about all the mess he would make frying them, but to my surprise they turned out very good and he also cleaned up the mess. They tasted better than the ones you buy.

I haven't been so successful with my baking lately. Last week when I was baking a cake, the oven temperature accidentally had gone up to 300 and when I noticed it, the cake was black outside and still uncooked inside. Then the cake I took to Carlotta's carnival party - one egg was missing, so it was too friable. Today I got the brilliant idea to let the bread machine do a dough while we went riding. I thought I could quickly make buns out of it when we came back from the stables to celebrate Valentine's day. But I think the program I used wasn't good for bun dough, because it was far too liquid and hadn't grown. I hate to knead the bun dough that sticks everywhere, so I chose another bread machine program. The bread machine's manual didn't say anything about it, but it was called "pasta" and I thought that would mean dough. Well after a while I started to feel a scent of baking bread and when I looked, I saw that the machine had started to bake the dough. Help! I quickly took out the dough, started mixing it and added some flour because it still was too liquid. I let the bread machine knead it some more and in the end I managed to make the buns, but only in the evening when Carlotta already was in bed. Actually I wanted to put whipped cream and almond paste inside them and eat them as we eat them in Finland on Shrove Tuesday, but I think I will do it on the week-end when I have more time. The buns turned out good anyway. Fortunately we had bought Baci Perugina chocolate when we came home from the stables, so we had a little Valentine's dessert for everyone. That was Sofia's idea, she likes these sweet traditions.

So my baking attempts seem to be bound to fail, but there are so many inspiring blogs with lovely pictures and nice recipies and they make me want to try them. I have a lot of work in this period and it's nice to take a little break from the computer and bake something that I know my children appreciate and sometimes they are also willing to bake together with me. If they have something better to do, at latest they appear in the kitchen when it's time to put the cake into the baking pan, so they can argue about who gets to lick the dough from the pots.

Week 7 and 8

I'm late again, so I here are both the weeks 7 and 8 for  the 52 week project. On week 7 me and Sofia both partecipated in a show jumping competition. For Sofia it was an important day because it was the first time in the 90 cm class. The pony she rode, Flicka, refused once, but other wise they did really well and our riding instructor was very happy with her. As I couldn't choose between the photo of Sofia jumping with Flicka and a carnival photo of Carlotta chasing her big brother and sister in the park, I included both photos for this week.

For week 8 I chose a photo of Carlotta watching the glittering sea and wishing summer would come quickly. My husband run a half marathon for the first time and we went to see him arrive to Ostia, which is by the sea.

 

Carnival period

Now it's the carnival period. We haven't been to any carnival celebrations yet, but on Sunday Carlotta wanted to dress up. The weather was nice so the children played quite a lot out in the garden and then we went to the park.

What else have we been doing here since we came back from Finland? Well, me and Sofia have made the decision to move to another riding school as there had been quite a lot of problems with the organisation in our old one. Problems, I think, that would be absolutely unacceptable in Finland, but here somehow you accept them. It wasn't an easy decision, but we hope it was the right one! At least I'm very happy with the riding instructor and also the horses. Sofia misses her friends in the other riding school, but hopefully she will soon make new ones.
Beside school and work we spend a lot of time with the horses and Daniele playing football and seeing friends during the week-ends. He often sleeps over at his friend's house on Fridays and usually he has his football match on Saturday afternoon when me and Sofia go horse riding. Carlotta takes riding lessons on a small pony Saturday mornings and she likes it a lot.
Januray and February has been much less rainy than last year, which is very nice for our outdoor activities!