Easter going-ons

Hi and hope you had a happy Easter! Ours was quiet but nice. I'll get on to that in a minute.

First, I want to share a picture or two of my berry pie that I made on my day of freedom (aka day off from clinical training) last Thursday. My lovely friend came over and we made a ham and potato casserole for lunch followed by this pie.

Such a pretty pink! I got the recipe from here.

Here is how I made it (I never follow recipes exactly) and a quick translation of the recipe.

150g margarine/butter (US folks, that is 1 1/2 sticks)
1 1/2 dl sugar (about 1/2 cup)
2 eggs
2 1/2 dl flour (about 3/4 cup)
3/4 dl oats (about 1/4 cup)
1 tsp baking powder

Beat the butter and sugar together in a bowl. Then add the eggs and beat some more. Mix the dry ingredients together and then add to the egg-butter-sugar mix. Spread into a pie dish. The foil one in the picture was a bit small for this recipe, I ended up having left over dough and filling with which I made little tarts by spreading the leftovers into muffin cups. (also really good and pretty).

Bake in the oven at 200C or 375F for 5-10  minutes so that the crust can set a bit before the filling. 

The filling:

2 dl sour cream (1/2 cup or so)

1 egg

1/2 dl of sugar (a little less than 1/4 cup?)

a pinch of vanilla sugar or a drop of extract, depending on what you use ;)

2-3 dl frozen raspberries (what I used, but you can use really any fruit or berry!)

Mix everything together. Spread on the half-baked pie crust and for looks I dropped some whole raspberries and blueberries on the top. Do whatever your heart desires. 

Bake for about 15min or until the crust is golden and the filling has set. 

Here is a picture of our ham and potato casserole:

Take a bag of frozen hashbrowns or potato pieces like we have in the frozen sections of Finland. This amount seen here was about 1kg (I think the bags are 500g each)...

Add some chopped onion.

Layer some ham pieces (as much as you like, we used a bag of chopped ham that was about 300g *hammy!*) in between layers of potatoes.

Mix 2 dl of cream and 2 dl of milk or 4 dl of cream or milk to an egg (we didn't use one but should have) and add salt and pepper to your liking. 

Pour mixture into casserole dish. Grate some cheese on top and bake for about an hour at 200C or 375F. Tasty delicious and super easy to make. :)

So that covers the food part for this post. lol.

Easter as I said was quiet and sadly we forgot our camera so all the pictures (ok, I only took a couple) are on my dad's camera. Once I get a hold of it, I have some other photos to share, pictures of our garden! I will try to get around to uploading them from his camera this week... We'll see...

Kissa has the best grandma ever! My mom grew some Easter grass (tradition in Finland) especially for her. :) She loved it. Her new hobby is mowing the lawn, lol. 

As for crocheting... I have ended my plight with the wraplet. I am so sick of it, it's better for us both if we take a break from each other. If that break becomes permanent, I might not mind. 

I spent hours (I think) on Ravelry yesterday, favorite-ing every crochet pattern that tickled my fancy. I figure I can always go visit my favorites when I want an idea or a new project. I think Ravelry is one of the most inspiring websites out there, just a collection of patterns and projects and shared with other yarn obsessed folks. If you don't have a Ravelry account and you knit and crochet, get one. I recommend it. 

Anywho, off the tangent we went on, I have given up on the wraplet and am moving on. I feel like I might finally like to start a blanket. I have been keen on granny squares for a while, but sewing in the ends (my crocheting over them is haphazard at best) and joining the squares (I don't really understand joining squares as you go) and then changing the colors in every square seems just too tedious. I have been working on those circles in a square for that pillow (posted about them here) I was going to make for a friend. I ended up running out of time and bought her a gift, but on I trudge now. I will complete this pillow!!! So far I have 16/25 squares. Woohoo!

And now that we've fallen off the topic again, I'll go back. I want to crochet a blanket. Not a granny square blanket. Ripples are pretty but I don't have patience for that at the moment. So I think I might try my hand at GRANNY STRIPES! I got the idea from this blog/website The Purl Bee. I love this blanket. Well not really the colors, but I love how modern and elegant even a granny stripe blanket can look. I found inspiration to make my own. So, the new dream project is a granny stripe blanket/afghan/whatever, out of all the old bits of yarn I have. It's mainly thin wool so we'll see how it goes, but I am going to try to use up all of the blues, greens, browns and some yellow that I have. I was even thinking of throwing a few rows of black in it, kind of like how the Purl Bee uses the lime green. 

New dream project. I could barely sleep last night. Go figure I come up with it when I have a full week of work ahead of me. Lol!

Well that's it for today, thanks for reading! =)