ETSY BOON: MOOKA SOAPS

A few days ago I've gotten /have I, really!?/ a parcel from MOOKA SOAPS! 
Looks like it has being delivering by a Snail Mail or an Australian Sloth Mail or a kind of, since the shipping took them forever - about a month and a half, when it normally should have taken 2 weeks as a maximum!!
Well, now all worries are behind and I've just thought that why not to share my liking  with you!
Mooka is a Canadian brand of delicate natural skin care products run by an amazing woman Carolyn - I'm highly pleased with her customer service and her hearty attitude!
All the products are handmade with vegan ingredients  in Carolyn's studio/boutique in Montreal, Quebec.
I am loving my new body butter "Brown sugar" /I'm simply obsessed with this aroma!/ which has a texture of frozen ice cream but coming into contact with skin it's immediately getting melted into a very refined substance.
A raspberry-cream lip balm, indigo-cedar and satsuma-guava soaps and 2 delicious-smelling oil based perfumes "Brown Sugar" and "Jasmine and Calendula" are fantastic!
Well, that's what I have personally tried and since then am in love with. May be now some of you would like to treat your dear self too :)

Here's what Carolyn says about her porducts:

"...After searching for years for beautiful, sustainable soaps that my skin could tolerate, I gave up and decided to make my own. It was the best decision I could have made. Mooka was born and it's been the happiest 4 years of my life. 

My goal is to make truly decadent bath and body confections that stimulate the sense of touch, smell, and sight. I'm always experimenting with interesting scent combinations and unique ingredients with the hope of creating intriguing and truly beneficial products that will tantalize both soap connoisseurs and the unsuspecting Ivory-user."

THE MOOKA BOUTIQUE is located at 3412 St-Antoine O.(corner Greene Ave.) in the St. Henri area of Montreal, Quebec.

STEWED PEPPERS

Another appetizing dish I've recently tried from my Gypsy Feast cookbook - stewed peppers sprinkled with toasted pumpkin seeds, now has all my sympathies!

I usually prefer the second course should be served hot or better very hot, but this one has surprisingly been really good cool accompanied just by green salad and bread.
Now I think of making this light and nutritious meal on some hot summer day when it promises to be especially savouring...

Serves 4 to 6   

Ingredients:

• 6 plump bell peppers (red or yellow), halved, cored and quartered
• 2 tbsp toasted pumpkin seeds
• 2 tbsp tomato puree mixed with 5 tbsp water
• 7 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced
• Salt to taste

Method of Cooking:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C (350F).
2. Toss the pumpkin seeds in a little salt and put into a roasting pan wit a tablespoon of the oil. Roast for about 25 min. Remove from the oven, drain on paper towel and leave to cool. (you may avoid this step buying toasted pumpkin seeds ready for use)
3. Heat the oil and fry the garlic gently until soft (I instead, made it crispy).
4. Add the peppers.
5. Pour over the diluted tomato puree and season to taste with salt.
6. Stir, cover and simmer for 15-25 minutes or  untill the peppers are soft.
7. Cover and leave to stand until ready to serve.
8. Arrange the peppers on serving plate and sprinkle with the pumpkin seeds.
9. Serve at room temperature or cold with bread and a green salad.

MICHAEL QUINN's BROOKLIN APPARTMENT

I've decided on coming up today with an extra post and at first, I'd like to apologize for I've just insolently copied the stuff from DesignSponge blog; I hope no bloggership ethics violated with this action. And the reason is that I badly wanted to display it here for you could join me in this exceptional design hunting tour!

I can completely relate to the-more-the-better design aproach, - I can't help but love interiors full of darling things and details, yet the general look has to be harmonious, of course. I should confess that when decorating my own spaces I should always be alert with myself for not to turn my house into a "trash for treasures" as I may really go wild with my passion for things;)

And this beautiful house seems lovely balanced on the brink of the overrichness of colors and details - to me it looks gracefully overloaded, probably kitschy (but by no means in a pejorative meaning) and possesses very welcoming atmosphere. 

No doubt, the famouse Alice would have discovered another Wonderland in this fantastic home!

Below is an interview with Michael Quinn:

Photographer Michelle Talan

|Living with so much for so long feels a bit like wandering off into a woods of my own making. I have been collecting things my whole life, but I came to New York after school without too much stuff, and worked in publishing, so money was tight. I used to stay late after work and my friend in the art department would help me make things to hang on my barren walls. It seems laughable now, but it was also really formative, in a way; that time, that devotion, was a certain genesis for something great. Like a lot of other people, I started off with a lot of my family's castoffs, but that tendency to shelter has come to include a huge variety of things, animals, even people. Many people have called this place home over the years, if only for a short while, and I think the place absorbs and reflects those energies. By and large this apartment has become something of a refugee camp for Things That No One Else Wants. I am one of those people who thinks if you love something, you can find a way to incorporate it into the mix; if something speaks to me, there is always room in my inn.|

|photo above: This is more of a Platonic ideal of a desk than a place where I actually do work. I grew up in a really small house, then a series of tiny apartments, so I have a lifelong habit of working, always, at my kitchen table. One of my prized possessions is my father's high school classroom copy of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. The chair is one of the first things I got when I moved to this neighborhood. I thought it seemed so 1940's Private I, but it has mechanical bull tendencies; it has bucked nearly every person who's ever sat in it. Its patchwork cushion is one my mother made in the 1970's; the pattern is, I believe, "Log Cabin."|

|photo above: Believe it or not, that peel-and-stick tile floor was the selling point. I had always wanted to live in a place with a black-and-white checkered floor. I have an almost pathological tendency to focus on the merits of one single (read: dangerously inconsequential) detail at the expense of the oft-lauded "big picture." (Here that picture included a toilet lurching dangerously towards the tub; a crumbling plaster ceiling; doors that swell like melons in the summer and fly open at a touch in winter).|

|photo above: This mantle is one of those gorgeous built-ins that can only be experienced by living in an old apartment. It's so wonderfully ornate and grand. The mantle features my nativity collection, inspired by one my grandparents had; even with the years' inevitable casualties, they never took away, they only added, so there was about a 5 to 1, Mary to Joseph ratio. There is something about this idea that feels so right to me. Here, we have an abundance of kings; the shepherds are not very well represented.|

|photo above: Considering my catch-as-catch-can approach to decorating, it seems appropriate that there is a lot of patchwork here. The vinyl furniture is from my grandparents basement on Long Island; they had a complete room set up down there, little regarded, like a memory. If there is a blue-ribbon prize for ferns, I would like to award it to myself, although truth be told the light coming in is of the forest-floor variety. This is one place where ferns and the notoriously finicky African violets thrive.|

|photo above: This was my grandfather's organ; he couldn't read a note of music but he could play anything after hearing it once. Alas, this is not a gift I share. Once a year I like to bang out some carols at Christmastime; the "vibraphone" setting hides a multitude of sins. It's like all reverb, all of the time. The Liberace songbook was in my grandmother's library, as it is mine, with no visible trace of irony.|

BLUE DREAM INTERIORS

On such a cloudy and rainy day as we have it today around here, I got inspired by some interiors in blue (but no way feeling blue;)  
The author of these stunning images is a famouse italian photographer Massimo Listri who snaps the most gorgeous and unusual interiors of palaces and private celebrity houses worldwide.

A sneak peek into one of the rooms of D&G house in Stromboli island featured in a book Casa Mediterranea: Spectacular Houses and Glorious Gardens by the sea.($30.35 at amazon.com)   (photo sourced from here)

Riad Obry (Marrakesh)

I'm planning to post more Massimo Listri's works soon, as I have a few magazines featuring his photography of some absolutely bewitching interiors that I would be so happy to share here with you. Just give me some time and I hope already the next month I could finally realize this big little dream of mine and buy a scanner;)!

GYPSY MAZUREK

On Saturday I started to explore my gypsy cookbook and dropped there across a recipe of a festive gypsy cake that is also said to be traditionally made at Easter. It's a flat cake filled with raisins, figs and dates with a good handful of grated orange rind. It's very similar to the one my granny used to prepare.
As figs are not seasonal yet at this time of the year, so I've just substituted them for prunes and they even added to the richness of flavour!

And, here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

6 eggs, separated
1 1/2 cup unrefined milled golden cane sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup chopped figs
1 cup chopped dates
1 cup raisins
peel of 1 orange
1 3/4 cups crushed walnuts
3 tbsp grated lemon peel
6 tbsp cornstarch

Method of Cooking:

1. 
   
   Preheat the oven to 160C.
2. 
   
   Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks, then gradually add the sugar, whisking all the time until the meringue forms firm peaks.
3. 
   
   Fold in the lightly beaten yolks and vanilla.
4. 
   
   Combine the figs, dates, raisins, orange rind, walnuts and cornstarch.
5. 
   
   Gently add the fruit mixture to the egg white mixture.
6. 
   
   Shape into a circle on a greased and floured cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes.

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And here is the cookbook I've taken the recipe from! I even couldn't imagine when I typed "gypsy cuisine" in the search bar of amazon.com that I might get any positive result! Since you know, there are some books written about gypsies but I never met not a single one dedicated to the culinary traditions of the Roma people. And now it seems to be the only one published gypsy cookbook in the world!    The book is really enchanting and features lots of old gypsy recipes accompanied by lovely drawings along with the description of some of the main gypsy feasts, healing properties of herbs, a bit of history and some observation of everyday life. This book is defenitely a precious research lively written and I'm very happy to have a copy of my own!

* Photos by me

GREEN in the GARDEN

And something more from the Danish company DAY about which I've written in my previous post. Now it's a romantic garden corner for recreation arranged with the help of the beautiful cushions!

And I'm also glad to announce that with this post I am starting a new section here in my blog which is called Gypsy Garden where I will write about what's happening in our own garden and we'll tour around the most beautiful and unusual gardens of the world as well.

I'm going to write about gardens which  have the so to say, gypsy spirit. And for me it means a sensual garden with a mystic touch, full of different plants, flowers and herbs, lot's of romantic accessories made of glass, textile, wood etc, with prevailing shabby textures.
It's a bewitching Secret-garden that intrigues and lures, where you never know what to expect with the next turn of the path... I may go on and on but you've probably caught the essence of the idea;)

And I will especially focus on arabic (islamic) gardens and those of Italy and Spain which are an ocean without shore of inspiration! Hope you will like it too!