Old car, dogs and movies

Today was one of the milestone for our family... We finally donated our old Subaru, which was waiting patiently in the garage,  to a radio station. While I was cleaning the car I realized that there was still a lot of little things which remind me of our old lazy doggies Kaja and Majka. Their toys were hidden in different places, the old sticks and of course the pieces of old tennis balls under the seats... Even the dirty windshields. Yes, we did not clean our car too often. So these lazy dogs were the Subaru dogs and today was the end of the Subaru epoch.  Aki and her future sister will be the bmw dogs. In fact,  Aki has been already spreading her toys all over the bmw :-)

Of course the departure of the Subaru was not without a drama. Remember the movies when you say "No, it is impossible! this cannot happen". Well, it can happen! Tom signed the car title and then placed it at the edge of the table... so Aki would have had a perfect opportunity to grab it. Fortunately Tom noticed and moved it to a secure place.... It was in fact really secured place at the back of the cabinet's counter-top standing by the back wall. He was very precisely placing the title there making it clearly visible to everybody, however, he did not notice that the back of the counter was not sealed and after a precise adjustment the title disappear behind our build-in cabinet. Tom looked at me and said "the title is gone!" This is the movie moment!  The title was really gone, hidden back behind the build in cabinet.... How can we get it out? We did investigate many options: used the mirror to look into a very tiny opening between the wall and the counter-top; placed the wire from a hanger behind the cabinet - did not really fit there; vacuumed to pull it out; considered calling the contractor, or cancel the car transfer etc. The final option was to dismantle the cabinet, lift the granite counter-top (heavy!), take all the screws out and lift the cabinet up. Yes! We found the title sitting at the bottom of the hole and rescued it. So, the transfer of the car could be completed today and the garage is empty tonight. All this time I had a feeling that the Subaru did not really wanted to be gone today. The end of the era...

The Blizzard and cooking

What to do when it is snowing with bitter cold and strong wind outside? Cooking is one of better options, as you can keep warm at the stove with nice warm outcome of the activity.  This morning I tried a recipe from Nigel's Kitchen Diaries which I have never cooked before. I made  ricotta raspberry pancakes - the recipe is in the book, but you can also find it in the lower part of his 2004 guardian entry:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2004/oct/03/foodanddrink.recipes

The pancakes were delicious and we ate all 8 for our Sunday branch.

I guess this is the Nigel's cooking weekend. Yesterday, I made the chocolate pudding with my modification to his recipe - replace hazelnut spread with a shot of good whiskey. Today I will also make a lamb stew for dinner. It will be cooking nicely for a few hours keeping the kitchen warm.

Then I have to decide what to cook tomorrow, so plan to check the two volumes of Tender that are piled on the side table in the kitchen hidden from Aki's teeth.