Passion for baking

My passion from baking have come up during my childhood where I always use to see my moms mom bake a lot. When ever we visited there would always be something home baked on the table. Be it cookies, bread, sponge cake etc.

When I visited in school holidays I use to help her out baking as i grew older I would be allowed to help with more and more. I have spend a lot of great hours with her in the kitchen baking or watching her cook.

Also my dad used to bake not as much but he would make a chocolate cake, bread or something like that in weekends, holidays or when guests were coming. Because I was use to this culture of baking, it was hard for me to live in India without an oven, so finally in mid 2012 I got my own oven. I can not say I have baked something every week since but I do try to bake something from time to time.

The latest things I have baked is :
Chocolate scones
Danish cookies called Finnish bread
Carrot cake
Cinnamon buns
Bread

I will blog about some of these things later with pictures.

/ Amalie

Learning how to cook Indian food

Learning how to cook Indian food has been a journey for me, in the beginning I thought it looked very confusing with all the different spices that have to go in the oil at different timings to fry them.
To be honest it took me a while to get over the "fear" of mixing up all of these spices.

But after being lucky enough to look a friends mother in law over the shoulder for a few days and getting some recopies written down in a book so I could experiment myself it helped a lot. It also helps that the better half of mine encourages me to cook food and asks me to cook different things, because I tend to take this is a challenge and get a bit competitive along with wanting to do a good job.

A lot of the food I cook is inspired by south of India and especially Andhra Pradesh but I also do cook a north Indian things, and foods from that I would cook home in Denmark.
In Denmark we use a lot of beef and pork meat, but since that is not easily available here I normally use mutton(goat meat) or chicken meat.

Some of the things I have learned to cook is.
Chicken fry
Aloo gobi curry
Chicken curry
Sambar
Aloo drumstick curry

I will try and put some of the recopies on the blog with time.

/ Amalie

Visiting quilt stores

I am home on holiday, home is what I call Copenhagen, Denmark. Here we actually have quilt stores, so of course I decided to to visit a few quilt stores while I am home. I went with a friend that also like to quilt. It is fun to go with this friend because she share my hobby and we can talk about fabric and other quilt accessories.

We went to these two stores:
http://www.speichdesign.dk/
http://stjernestoffer.dk/

I bought this glue pen, the one in the middle.

It is a glue pen that is used for English paper piercing, instead of sewing the fabric to the paper you can clue it. This will save you a lot of time. So when my friend told me about it and that she had had good use of it. I had to try it out.
Things like this I would have no idea of where to get in India.
We get amazing fabrics in India, but almost no pure quilting accessories, so being home is mu chance to buy a few things like this glue pen, rulers etc.

/ Amalie

Desi Quilters

Desi Quilters is a group of wonderful ladies in all ages that have one love in common - quilting and all what goes wit it. Think fabric shopping, discussing quilts, showing their work of to inspire others etc.
The group have a blog that can be found here
The members is primarily Indians that live in India or abroad or people like me that currently live in India and have been allowed to join the fun :-)

It is great for someone like me that are still a bit new to quilting to have this group of ladies where I can ask questions, get inspired and just talk to others that share my nerdy hobby of quilting and can spend hours just like me talking about fabric and shopping fabric...

The group also have a Facebook page where we share pictures, tutorials and all the other stuff. I use to a lot to get advise about where to go shopping. Because coming from a place where there is quilting stores and hobby supply stores that sell everything I need. I at times get confused about where to look for things like zippers or sewing thread.

If you are into quilting I would suggest you to hop over to the desi quilters page, we have some lovely tutorials that can inspire you.

/Amalie

The beginning also called introduction

I wanted to start a blog where I can share everyday things with friends and family that live far away. as the title says Amalie's food and quilting this blog will mainly focus on my two hobbies cooking and quilting.
I love cooking and I am trying to learn to quilt, I am not that experienced yet but I find quilting very fun.

This blog will also be about how to find supplies in a foreign country where I do not speak the language that are used on the street. The frustrations, the victories when I finally find what I need and all of the fun experiences that come with going shopping in a country where I do not always know what to ask for.

The first thing that was very strange to me when moving to India was that no kitchen had an oven, then I got thinking that of course it would not have an oven since more or less no Indian food is made in an oven.
So I finally got around to buying this beauty.

I do not use it every day but I do make bread and have baked a few cakes in it. But ost of all it helps me to get that feeling of home, when I have an oven.
In Denmark every single household in the country have an oven and most of my friends have looked at my strangely when I told them that there is no ovens in Indian kitchens. I would call myself an aspiring cook because I know I have A LOT  to learn.

As for my other hobby I would call myself a wannabee quilter because I have even more to learn in the world of sewing and quilting then in the world of cooking.
For now I do all of my quilts and quilted items by hand, but I am hoping to get around to buying myself a sewing machine in the near future.
Here is my first quilt, a gift for a friends baby.

/ Amalie