A Long Weekend in Riga

I sincerely hope that the times, when most of the western Europeans thought that Lithuania is the capital of Latvia, are long gone and that by saying ‘I went to Riga for a long weekend’ I won’t confuse you and you’ll know where on the map to look for this beautiful city.

(Just in case you are not so sure – it’s the largest city in the Baltic States, the capital of Latvia, based on the coast of the Baltic Sea.)

Sometimes being called ‘the little Paris’ it has many places of interest, that will definitely catch an art lover’s eye. The Historic Centre of Riga has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the city is particularly notable for its extensive Jugendstil (German Art Nouveau) architecture, which UNESCO considers to be unparalleled anywhere in the world!

I certainly enjoyed examining the narrow streets of the old town, not sure what each of them would bring…

A perfect view of the colourful ‘toy’ houses?

A tired cat and one brave pigeon?

A church, housing a magnificent organ, where ceiling reaches the sky?

Maybe one of them would lead me to the castle, which is the president's official residence?

Or offer a tiny cafe with a stunning 'cappuccino'?

If you are thinking that you deserve a short brake, why not try and get a cheap flight to Riga? I'm sure you'd bring lots of nice memories, like I did.

Curd Pudding

This is the recipe that I’ve been trying to obtain for a very long time… Once I got it from a friend, but as all of the instructions were sent in an e-mail, of course they were accidentally deleted – electronic information doesn’t last long, I prefer words on paper!

I wonder how long it will take me this time to loose the tiny newspaper clipping with a version of the Curd Pudding recipe… My mum cut it out for me; she knows how much I like it!

You will need:

500g of curd
3 eggs
3 spoons of sugar
Half a glass of raisins
A glass of rice
A tea spoon of baking powder

Boil the rice. Stir the egg yolks with the sugar. Mix in the curd, baking powder, boiled rice and raisins, which have been washed and drained. Whip the egg whites and add them to the mix. Stir carefully.

Place everything into a preheated baking tray and bake your pudding for about 30 minutes, till it gets lightly brown.

Enjoy while it's hot!

April is for...

1. Crazy Magnolias!

The white blossoms seem to cover the whole tree and it becomes the center piece of the garden. The scent is really great too, shame it can't be captured...

2. 'Plastic' strawberries, the ones that turn up in supermarkets before you can get any from local gardeners. They aren't too bad, still not as nice as the ones that are picked from your own patch a little bit later, well, in July ;)

3. Little seedlings that have the potential to turn into something biiiiig.
(The top one grew that much just in one day - in the morning I saw that there was something happening beneath the soil and in the evening - there it was, spreading it's huge leaves. Some time in autumn it should produce those orange pumpkins that would be gladly carved by Americans for their Halloween celebration.)