Blueberries

These little berries are normally called blueberries in Finland but they are different berries from what you would get in  a supermarket in the UK or USA when you buy blueberries. In English speaking countries these little berrie are normally called bilberries or even huckleberries. Whatever you want to call them they taste delicious.

There are so many tasty ways to eat them. Lily likes to pick then in the forest and eat them as she walks home from school or to eat some on her porridge fo breakfast. But my favourite way to eat them is as blueberry pie.




Here is the recipe that Lily and I used to make Finnish Style Blueberry Pie:

Ingredients:

Base:
200g butter
100ml caster sugar
3-4 eggs
1tsp vanilla sugar
2tsp baking powder
600ml flour (Lily's mum likes to use 400ml plain and 200ml whole wheat)

Topping:
500ml (or more) blueberries 
50ml caster sugar

Instuctions:

Heat oven to 200 degrees C.
Beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs.
Mix together flour and baking powder. 
Combine all the base ingredients and spread into a greased pie dish.
Bake for 10 minutes then remove from oven. 
Mix the bluberries and sugar. Cover the base with blueberry mixture.
Return pie to oven for further 15 minutes.


Can be eaten hot or cold but is alway best served with vanilla cream

There are also lots and lots of lingon berries in the forest but Lily, Ernest and I all like the blueberries best.




Next time I will tell you about the fun we had picking something a little bit bigger than berries.

A Day in the Life of Lily

This is Lily's school. She is in first grade.

Lily really likes school, she has lots of friend there and has lots of fun. Lily thinks her teacher, Eszter, is wonderful.

It is a Waldorf-Steiner school so it looks and does things a little bit differently from most schools around here. Most kids Lily meets here are surprised to hear they don't do reading in school yet.



The classroom is very pretty, the blackboard always has a beautiful picture on the front. Now there are the four Manós (forest efls) who help with numbers. New buds and flowers appear on the picture every day, just like the plants and trees outside. In the corner there is the season table. The children can bring in natural things they find to put on it.

Everyday Eszter makes all the children tea to drink with their snacks. All the children have their own cup with their name on it. We do watercolour painting every Tuesday. The paintings on the wall are of a Farsang ball where the Manós are playing together.


Eszter gave these rainbow strings on the very first day of school. We use them to play games, like cats's cradle, and make characters and scenes from the stories Eszter tells. In the picture Lily is making a butterfly. The children draw pictures of the things they learn in their drawing books.

Lily enjoys knitting at school. She is making a teddy bear and has made a case for her recorder.



After school we go to the market to do some shopping. It is very colourful and busy at the market.

We can buy almost everything we need from the maket and the vendors are very friendly.

We can get very nice and fresh meet at the butchers, as well as yummy szalámi and kolbász sausages. Gábor even likes to buy bones to make meat stocks from.

On the milk market we get fesh cheese, yogurt butter and milk. Turo (cottage cheese) is used a lot in Hungarian cooking. Jen like to buy raw milk to make yogurt Lily thinks the cheeses are not just tasty but they are beautiful too.


 







Lily's favourite part of the market is the flower market. The smells are wonderful and sometimes the vendors give her a little bunch of flowers for free. The market is full of lovely spring flowers like these daffodils and hyacinths.

Once we are finished at the market we have all the ingredients we need to make Goulyas Leves (Goulash Soup) for dinner.








But before that we go to Kárász Utca (the street that was on the postcard) to get some ice cream and to play on the square in front of the town hall. Lily loves to climb on the trees and the statues. While we were on the the square we saw folk dance troup on a parade.

Now it's time to make dinner.

Jó Étvágyat


Coming up: Szeged Sights