Sunday afternoon. Vanja is in Zagreb for EuroBasket 2015 (!?!), Mjumju and me relaxing, thinking “let’s enjoy those last warm hours of the summer 2015”. By looking at the sky.
Little did we know that the summer will keep going on and on. It is glorious.
The two pictures above are me walking by these scenes, grabbing the phone and snapping – light is really too perfect for words. My pictures being this nice, I cannot wait to see the results of two very exciting events that happened here last week. We had two photographers visiting – one from a magazine so we may be famous soon. Another was our friend who spent three lovely days here taking photos for the new website (it is embarrassing we are not yet mobile friendly 🙂 But who can do web development with so much going on ALL the time.
So update with some (more) amazing photos I hope in the next installment!
In the meantime it is all about food. Food for winter. Food for next Pruga season. Damson jam. Very delicious. Very tedious to remove the stones.
Ciburin jam. Tiny yellow plums that are probably direct cousins of apricots because it is not that easy to tell the jams apart. Also tedious to remove stones. Otherwise very easy. I run out of the last year’s batch very soon this summer, so hopefully I now made enough to last the whole next season.
Pickled beetroot. From our garden!
The most important thing that we both could eat most days. Tomato sauce. Pasta and tomato sauce. If you don’t have your favourite recipe try this one:
700g tomatoes (peeled, deseeded, roughly chopped and then weighted)
3 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves
1/2 tsp salt
fresh basil
Fry garlic in the olive oil briefly, add tomatoes and salt. Cook on low until it tickens and oil separates. The longer, the better.
We ate a LOT of tomatoes from our garden this year (this photo is not this salsa – it is a variation of – just very quckly frying tomatoes, without them turning to mush with garlic, olives, capers in this case). Few of the tomatoes are still hanging onto dry vines. Seeds are saved for next spring.
That was me cutting a huge branch by mistake so left a few to ripen on the windowsill. They did ripen! And they looked pretty in the meantime.
Summer being as glories as mentioned many times already – we are still having strawberries in the garden (!!!) – amazingly sweet and tasty ones.
We bought new chairs for our terrace. They are very comfy. And good looking I think. The only thing is that the white, while obviously very stylish, is not particularly suited for Mjumju sleeping on different one every day, especially when she comes from the woods in the mornings, only slightly “bright red soil” muddy. Will have to make some soil coloured cushions next year.
You see, I am not even mentioning cat hair – it is amazing what one gets used to in the name of love.
We (finally) visited Višnjan. It is a village on our way to and from north-western part of Istria that for some unknown reason we never stopped at. As most Istrian villages, it is very charming.
There is a church with the tower.
And just behind the church one finds this.
And this.
And one wonders why is it not all repaired and lived in.
Or perhaps it is cuter and more “authentic” this way.
Or maybe not?
On our way back via Rakotule we drove by a perfect house. The view from the back, was quite something. (We didn’t tresspass, the road was going in such a way that we could see that view 🙂
Back at home Miki and Biba are always waiting.
And if it is only two of them around, Mjumju is sleeping, happily.