Author: Oana

Christmas Baking: Melomakarona

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For me, Christmas in Greece equals two desserts: Kourabiedes, which featured on my blog last week and got me an order from as far as Greece (!!) and Melomakarona, or walnut syrupy biscuits. So this week I decided to try my hand at the latter, to the delight of my Greek hubby. I had made them before, the first year we were married but must have used the wrong recipe as I found them hard to get right and stopped making them! This time I used this recipe from taste.com. I found it pretty straight forward, once I managed to convert my cups into grams, that is :-). I did make a couple of silly mistakes, like using brown sugar instead of white and ended up with a runny mixture instead of a creamy goo but hey, all is well when it ends well, right? And it did, as you can see from the picture: Kali orexi, as the Greeks you say!

What makes you happy?

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The other day I got a message from a friend who had just discovered my blog and who asked me exactly this question: “How do you manage to be so happy?” I attempted an answer but then I thought that this would make a good blog post entry as I can expand on it… I suppose happiness is something you choose to feel, to a certain degree. I do realise but there are circumstances that are out of our control (I take the extreme case of domestic abuse, for example) from which I would advise anyone to remove themselves, first for their own safety and then for their sanity and happiness. But under “normal” circumstances, whether you are a stay-at-home mum, a successful in everybody else’s eyes businesswoman or a jobless student, one can be happy, I believe. It has everything to do, for me, with setting goals and achieving your dreams, whatever those dreams are: building a business, getting a job, having a clean home and tidy children? Goals are as individual as we …

Kourabiedes(Greek Butter Cookies)

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It’s December and I have started getting the Christmas buzz! I decorated our living room on Sunday and today I decided to make some Greek cookies. I was introduced to kourabiedes as an Erasmus student in Thessaloniki and am, let’s say, slightly partial to them :-). I have used this recipe from Food Network but instead of walnuts I went for almonds, as Greek hubby recommended. Tips when using the recipe: Use icing sugar instead of confectioners’. I don’t have an electric mixer so I used my hands to rub the butter and the icing sugar together. It worked a treat. Make your cookies slightly small as the baking powder will make them puff up. Mine came out a bit chubby, I will know better for the next batch. DO convert the cup measurements into grams if you live in Europe, it helps getting things right  and your dough nice and crumbly, as it should. As soon as she sniffed them, Emma couldn’t be chased from the kitchen until she had her fill :-). This …

Pregnancy Update

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I can’t believe it but there are only 6 weeks left of this pregnancy according to the calendar! I have had an uneventful but sort of stressful pregnancy: diagnosed again with hypothyroidism then antenatal depression. Struggled for nearly six months with insomnia and the crankiness and tearfulness that resulted from the lack of rest. Then a spell of lack of iron that left me lethargic. For the past two weeks I have been feeling exhausted most of the time, no matter how much sleep, vitamins and iron I get and heavy, although this baby isn’t massively bigger than Emma. Climbing stairs, walking for any length of time and standing are challenges that leave me breathless for minutes. I have had a “funny” midwife who seemed most times more interested in her watch than me and who has obsessively insisted that this baby is laying transversally and then breech, despite him hiccuping close to my pubic bone during the checkup visit and talking rubbish like moving my baby inside my womb a month before his due …