Magda M. Olchawska's Blog, page 6
February 6, 2017
How to Make Shortbread Christmas Cookies?
Recipe
400 grams of self-rising flour
100 grams of sugar (we use brown sugar)
1 tbs of baking powder
150 grams of butter
80 grams of double (we use natural yogurt instead)
1 egg
2 yolks
You can also add vanilla essence if you like.
How to Make Polish Christmas Eve Beetroot Soup?
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How to Make Polish Christmas Eve Beetroot Soup?
Ingredients:
1kg of beetroots or 1l jar of grated, slightly pickled beetroots Juice of 1 lemon or few drops of spirit vinegar
1/2 – 1 teaspoon of sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
optional: few garlic cloves
Vegetable broth:
2,5-3l of water
1 medium leek
1 medium celeriac or few stalks of celery
1 medium parsnip
2 medium carrots
1 table spoon of salt
Few bay leaves
Few allspice berries
First we need to prepare a vegetable broth.
Put the water on a medium heat in a big pot and prepare the vegetables. Peel celeriac, parsnip and carrots, clean a leek (and celery stalks if you use them). Once ready, put it all into the water along with salt, bay leaves and allspice berries, and let boil. Once boiled, turn the heat down and simmer for 10-15 mins.
In the meantime wash and peel your beetroots (if you use fresh) or open the jar .
After about 15 mins of simmering your broth put in the beetroots. Remember, once beetroots are in, the soup cannot boil hard or else the soup will darken. It will lose this beautiful dark carmine colour. Also to prevent that (and if you use fresh beetroots) right after you put your beetroots, you need to acidify the soup with whatever you use (lemon juice, vinegar). To enrich the taste sweeten the soup with sugar.
Cook for another 10 mins on a low heat and remember that it cannot boil or else it will discolour. Turn the heat off and wait around 10-15 mins for the soup to cool a bit. Strain the soup into another pot to get rid of all your vegetables.
Serve with Polish ravioli or boiled potatoes.
Bon Appetite
How to Make Traditional Polish Cold Beetroot Soup?
The post How to Make Polish Christmas Eve Beetroot Soup? appeared first on Dedicated to Fun Loving Parents and Children..
How to Make Traditional Polish Cold Beetroot Soup?
Ingredients:
1-2 small to medium young beetroots with stalks and leaves + some extra beetroot leaves
Juice of 1 lemon or few drips of spirit vinegar
300ml of crème fraiche or natural yoghurt
few cloves of garlic
optional: 1-2 gherkins diced, few radishes diced, dill chopped finely
1/2 – 1 teaspoon of sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
Vegetable broth:
1l of water
1 medium leek
1 medium celeriac or few stalks of celery
1 medium parsnip
1-2 medium carrots
1 teaspoon of salt
First we need to prepare a vegetable broth.
Put the water on a medium heat in a 2-3l pot and prepare the vegetables. Peel celeriac, parsnip and carrots, clean a leek (and celery stalks if you use them).
Once ready, put it all into the water along with salt and let boil. Once boiled, turn the heat down and simmer for about 30 mins.
In the meantime prepare your beets and optional vegetables (gherkins, radish, dill, etc). Wash the beetroot, stalks and leaves and dice the root and chop all stalks and leaves.
Dice gherkins and radish, chop the dill.
After about 30 mins from the point of boiling put in the beetroots to your broth, and after another 5 mins put in stalks and leaves. Squeeze in lemon juice (or pour in bit of spirit vinegar) and add in sugar
Cook for another 10 mins and turn the heat off. Put aside to cool.
Once the soup is cooled, take out all broth veggies (celery/celeriac/carrots/leek/parsnip), press in the garlic (or cut in fine into flake-like pieces), throw in your optional veggies (gherkins, radish, dill, etc) and mix in crème fraiche or yoghurt. Salt and pepper to taste. Such prepared soup put into the fridge for at least 2.5 hrs as it needs to be served very cold.
Serve alone or with the boiled egg cut in half.
Bon Appetite
How to Make Healthy Homemade Vegetable Salad?
The post How to Make Traditional Polish Cold Beetroot Soup? appeared first on Dedicated to Fun Loving Parents and Children..
September 8, 2013
New Freedom project.
Dear all,
I’ve just started work on a new project and it’s going to be time consuming. So for the next several weeks I won’t be able to keep up the blog running. I’ll be back as soon as I can get my head around the Freedom project.
For now please scroll down and enjoy my previous blogs.
Hugs,
Magda
Filed under: London stories, Magda Olchawska, Novel, Olchawska, Parent stories, single mom, single mum, single parent, South East London, Woman books, Women books, Women stories
August 23, 2013
I’m away.
Just to let you know I’m going to be away and I’m back with my next blog post on the 8th. Sep. 2013
Enjoy my previous blogs 
Filed under: London stories, Magda Olchawska, Novel, Olchawska, Parent stories, single mom, single mum, single parent, South East London, Woman books, Women books, Women stories
August 18, 2013
AM I IN A GUY RITCHIE’S MOVIE?
I personally can’t stand weddings and hate anything to do with them. In fact, in my very personal opinion weddings have nothing to do with celebrating someone’s love. Besides, weddings and love not necessarily go together, not only in movie scripts but in real life as well.
It’s a commonly known fact that weddings are financially straining for both, the couple getting married and the guests attending the party. To attend a wedding a guest needs to buy a gift or give the money as a gift (giving money usually brings pressure ‘cos it’s always hard to asses on the right amount), then there is a card, travel, flowers, a new dress if you don’t have one, shoes, doing your hair, nails etc. In short: wedding = £+£+£
A lot of people are going to argue with me but I don’t mind. It’s a free country we live in, or at least I hope so and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. These people would try to convince me that weddings are perfect occasions to meet other people and enjoy a great meal, at the very least. Well, I’m going to dispute that statement. I cannot remember one wedding I went to that had fantastic food. Most of the food is non-vegetarian unless someone considers fries, rice or wedged potatoes the only vegetarian options.
So, couple of weeks ago I was invited to a wedding my ex was going to attend, too. Obviously I needed to look super sexy, stunning and breath taking. So the little thing who broke our marriage and family would feel like nothing and my ex would have to eat his heart out.
Why didn’t I decline the invitation? Well, for several reasons:
I wanted my ex to see how well I have been doing without him. Since Little O. had been away for most of the summer we didn’t see each other for weeks.
I wanted to show off the man I was dating. He is hot, charming and funny but I’ll talk about him later.
I wanted my ex to see how self-sufficient and together lady I was after our break up.
I also wanted “her” to see that I was not competing with “her”. I’m better than “her”. Why? ‘Cos I don’t need to steal someone else’s hubby to try to build a very shaky happiness on the grounds of the broken home.
I know these are all selfish reasons but you know what. I never said I wasn’t selfish.
Let’s get back to the wedding. It was organized in East London and before I managed to get drunk and let my ex admire “new” me I discovered that I was at the wedding from one of Guy Ritchie’s movies.
It was truly spectacular. The ceremony took place in a small local church in East London, and the reception in another small local East London church with a nice graveyard attached. I’m just guessing that the dead didn’t mind the party.
If you have not seen any of Guy Ritchie’s movies I would advice you to go and rent: “Snatch” or “Rock’N’Rolla” and you will immediately know what I’m talking about. Most of the guests were Londoners with sweet East London accent that takes a bit of time to learn to understand and the opinion that political correctness can go and fuck itself.
While standing in the middle of the graveyard, sipping my cheap sparkling wine I was in heaven just watching those people talk, behave and interact with one another. It was a paradise for my literary mind. I did feel very special and I was not afraid at all, although I was almost certain that at some point someone was going to pull a gun and start shooting (2 days after the wedding in that area a 16 year old boy was stabbed to death).
The experience was so good & unlike anything else I had done before that I’m even thinking of putting the wedding scene into my next script.
As always the food was not even average (from the vegetarian POV at least) and, since it wasn’t a Polish wedding where there is more food than anyone could possibly eat, everyone got drunk pretty quickly. On the top of that, I just had a small reminder (two actually) that some people should not drink alcohol. I’m one of them ‘cos it doesn’t matter how much alcohol I drink I usually end up feeling sick the next morning (first reminder).
The other reminder came from some high profile guests who proved that no matter who you are to the bride and the groom, you can still get drunk and do some real crazy shit. I say no more, not to embarrass anyone, especially the close families of the bride and groom.
As much as I complain about the weddings, this one turned out to be successful on few levels. First of all, I got inspired by some of the guests. Secondly, my date (I didn’t have to pay him. We are actually having fun together in real life if you know what I mean) adored me. Thirdly, my ex couldn’t take his eyes of me. And last but far from least, I put the little home wrecker where she belongs.
My date and I left the party much earlier than my ex. Of course we had some urgent business to attend to, just like the main character from Guy Ritchie’s movie would do.
Filed under: London stories, Magda Olchawska, Novel, Olchawska, Parent stories, single mom, single mum, single parent, South East London, Woman books, Women books, Women stories
August 11, 2013
AM I TOO SOPHISTICATED FOR TV?
Some of you already know that I don’t have a TV set at home. If I watch telly, it’s either at my parents’ house or a friend’s house. The truth is that I haven’t had a TV screen in my own house ever.
I bet most of you agree that TV is rubbish, there is virtually nothing on it. Moreover, some of the modern TV screens are so sharp that my favorite shows, such as Friends, look hideous the least.
Little O. is not allowed to watch TV either. However, same as me, he does watch it when he is away with his grandparents, although I don’t really approve of that. My ex. loved TV and at times was so bloody hype that could watch three or more things at the same time. I didn’t approve of that either. But now, my approving or disapproving days are finally over for him.
Anyway, I promised to myself not to talk about him too much and besides, he has always been a distraction so let’s not carry this on for eternity. Subject closed for today.
Since the Little O. is away and, for a change, I have had a month without any traveling this summer (this doesn’t happen often), my friends asked me to do house and a guinea pig sitting for them while they went away. ‘What the hell?’ I thought to myself. Change of location and environment always does me good. As a bonus, it turned out that they have a lovely house with a big garden and a huge telly.
Since I work most of the days I treat myself to little breaks during which I read or meditate and sometimes even eat, if I actually remember that I get hungry (usually the headache is the reminder that my body needs food). When Little O. is away I’m always too lazy to cook.
Anyway, one evening after solid 6 hours of writing I decided to indulge my overtired and overworked brain in some telly. It’s not at all surprising that amongst all the hundreds of channels I wasn’t able to find anything up to my standards. I finally settled down for a program I thought it would be fun to watch. It was an American version of “Hell’s Kitchen”.
In short, the show was horrible. Not only the participants didn’t have anything to give, not to mention, say to the viewers but it also seemed that the famous chef running the show (his name shall remain undisclosed J) completely lost his magic, touch, interest, (pick as many as you want) and all he did was just screaming and treating everyone like shit.
His lack of respect for anyone simply stopped being funny. Quite the opposite; for some reason I felt compassionate towards this angry dude who seemed to get excited by screaming at people.
So, the host’s behavior plus the outdated format of the show made it all rather painful to watch.
All in all, I feel that TV has passed the times of creating quality shows that could actually enrich one’s life, show different life perspective, beautiful places, etc.
Instead, now TV just seems to be a vehicle of adverts and stupidity with reality shows dominating above everything else.
How can we expect to have a well-educated, self- sufficient society if the society is bombarded with crap from the moment they open their eyes? Granted, the TV is the cheapest form of entertainment but does it have to make people stupid.
The “Hell’s Kitchen” experience got me wondering if perhaps I’m too sophisticated for TV. Or maybe, the TV is too stupid for me, or I’m simply not the target ‘cos I demand something valuable.
If I ever come to any conclusions I’ll let you know.
Just to make it clear I have nothing to do with this horrid TV shows. I don’t write scripts for them. Maybe if I did and more women like me wrote scripts for both, TV & film the entertainment business would be more diverse.
Filed under: Hell's Kitchen, London stories, Novel, Parent stories, reality TV, single mom, single mum, single parent, South East London, TV, TV shows, Woman books, Women books, Women stories
August 4, 2013
JAMIE OLIVIER – GREENWICH EXPERIENCE.
Last Friday I decided to check out Jamie Olivier’s new Greenwich restaurant/hang out place. Ok, it’s probably not that new. It was open in April but for a busy single mom who hardly ever finds any time to go out for anything that is not work related it is new. Ok, I can be persuaded to settle for newish.
For those of you who don’t know Jamie Olivier (is there still someone like that), he is a very successful English chef. He started his career with a program on BBC called “The Naked Chef” and went spiraling up from there. He was young, he was different, even a bit weird in a good way and people dug that. I was amongst them.
I have to say I was looking forward to checking out his new dig ‘cos I’ve never been to any of his restaurants before. That particular evening I was in the mood for something very small and very simple. I wanted a place where I could just chill out, eat, read a book and go home early.
The place looks really nice from the outside and it seems enormous as it is spaced across two building having two or three separate entrances and stretches far back in the garden area. I liked the menu I read on the front door, too.
Having in mind all the above you should have seen my disappointment when the staff at Jamie Olivier’s confused me totally & utterly the moment I walked in. I was bluntly told that I could only eat in the restaurant section. What the…? I didn’t want to go to the restaurant section. I was told that I couldn’t order food and eat it, neither in the lounge nor at the bar (even though there were other people eating at the bar). I could buy the food from deli and eat it in the lounge section.
In an attempt to give them a chance I went to check out the deli, only to find it to be nearly as disappointing as the no food at the bar rule. They had nothing vegetarian without carbs on offer. Come on Jamie, a little bit more imagination. We, vegetarians like food as well. Please don’t make us only eat sandwiches, or pasta.
And beside, let’s be straight here. It was Friday 6.00 pm and the place was far from being packed.
So, I left and I have to say I was rather surprised that they let me go so easily.
My advice to the management and to whoever runs Jamie’s empire: be realistic!!! Not serving food at the bar is simply silly. Why do you think pubs serve food now? So people don’t go to other places to eat and drink. Not always people want to eat in the restaurant. This advice is free of charge. For any further consultation I will invoice you.
I do understand that Jamie Oliver has certain status. However, everyone needs customers, even he does. Why would you turn your customer away? Just because of some set of rules you are not flexible enough to bend a little? Am I going to come back? No idea. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.
But you know what I did instead. I grabbed a small can of gin & tonic from the grocery shop and order a take away veggie burger from some other place, just around the corner. Granted, a waiter at the place spoke hardly any English but the burger was delicious. Yum, I am mentally drooling even now, thinking of it.
I ended up going to the park, saving myself not only nice amount of money but also spending the evening just the way I wanted from the beginning: simple and without any fuss.
Filed under: London stories, Novel, Parent stories, single mom, single mum, single parent, South East London, Woman books, Women books, Women stories
