Season Greetings

I want to wish you all a great time during these holidays.

We spent Christmas week with my family in Malta. I hadn't been over at Christmas time for around 4 years so I was looking forward to it. I had been waiting to spend some quality time with my parents and enjoying Mediterranean home cooked dinners. That wasn't just it though, living in a cold country I had been waiting to spend time outdoors and feel the mild winter sun on my skin.

We spent most of the days outside going around the islands, doing the final Christmas shopping and filling our tummies with pasta! The weather was mostly good so we managed to go jogging as well, as missed that at home since I have stopped once it got colder. On Christmas day we had family over and stuffed ourselves with more food! It was great fun especially since it's not often that I get to see my dad dancing to the Gangnam Style song.

I was also very lucky on the gifts I received, having satisfied my girly side with receiving 2 hand bags and my techie side with a tablet. Maybe the tablet will help to post more regularly because lately I haven't really been giving a lot of attention to this blog!

Jogging around

A few months ago I started jogging after work. I'm using the RunKeeper application on my phone, which is a great application to help you to track your progress. I found a training program and every week I am seeing some improvement. On my first week I couldn't even jog more than 1 consecutive minute. Now I can run 2.5km per session. I'm so happy with my improvement. I'm still far away from running 5km without any walking breaks but suddenly I feel that I might be able to reach my goal in a few months.

I'm now seeing the neighborhood where I live in a different manner. I keep checking the map to see which parts are green and contain foot paths or parks for me to run at. Am I becoming a fitness freak? Surely not since before going for a run this weekend I was in the kitchen prepare lemon sorbet! I guess my love of good food will never diminish. At least now I'm exercising, so eating sweets won't make me always feel guilty.

I'm more of an ice-cream person but this sorbet is so really smooth and soft that I can't get enough of it! Check the recipe out on my other blog.

Greece revisited

These past couple of weeks have been quite relaxing. Wouldn't mind if life offered more of these type of weeks. The vacation was great and was just the enough amount of summer I needed to be able to handle a northern European winter in the coming months.

Here's some pictures of the trip, because I'm sure my words cannot describe the colours and tastes of the trip better than pictures.

Beaches

Each morning we tried to head to a different beach than the day before. We got to see quite a number of different beaches.

Food

The food was really tasty, I loved being able to eat all different types of fresh seafood and fish. The big range of grilled meats was also fingerlicking good. After 10 days though each menu looked the same as the previous one and I was starting to want to taste something different.

Travelling

During the trip we went to a different island, Patmos, with the catamaran. We were slightly unlucky since it was very windy on the day and I was really sea sick. It was basically 3 hours from hell for me. Luckily going back the sea was calmer and I really enjoyed the trip. On the islands we decided to rent a moped and a quad bike. It was enough to go around to different beaches and to explore all the little towns on the islands.

Diving

On every trip at the sea we try to go Scuba diving. This year we went for an afternoon on a sailing boat from which we dived from. The dives were not the most impressive, but what can one expect if the previous dive was done in the Carrebean sea!

Making limoncello

This evening we are going to start the process to prepare Limoncello, which is a liquor made of lemons. It's our first try in preparing liqueurs, so wish us luck! We'll know if it's a success in around 3 weeks, just in time for the BBQ on my boyfriends birthday.

We first got the idea to make our own Limoncello when we tasted a great home made version from a restaurant we visited.. Our cooking appetites were woken and a trip from the in-laws to Italy provided us with the required bottle of 94% alcohol!

If the result is decent I will share the recipe used.

[Image Credits: Kris Kookt]

Back to business

My vacation to Malta has been over for a couple of weeks already but my blog stayed on vacation for a little while longer. It was decided to spend my free time away from my laptop.

This is what I have been up to a month ago on my trip to Malta.

Quality time with family.

Mostly with my niece who was the spotlight of this trip

The weather wasn't always what we expected but we did manage some days at the beach.

On the days when the weather was not perfect we spent our time finding places which offered good Mediterranean food.

My cooking

My mum is a housewife, a proper old-style traditional Mediterranean mum. She loves to cook and spends endless hours in the kitchen. I seem to have inherited this cooking gene and each year passing I’m finding myself spending more time cooking new and different recipes. Nowadays it isn’t only clothes and shoe shops who make me stop when I’m shopping; household shops seem to magnetize me as well.

So here’s some shameless advertising to my food blog Cola’s Kitchen.

As a kid I used to help when my mum was preparing deserts. The help consisted mainly of licking all the extra cake batter that was left at the end! I think every chef has to make sure that the food he’s making tastes good!