Homemade pastry and pasta

Two easy recipes! One for the sweet tooth, and one for the healthy ones!

For the "petite tarte avec des fraises et crème fraîche au citron" (sorry, it sounds so much better in French) you will just need the puff pastry you want to use, depending on how many pieces you want to make. Cut the pastry into squares or whatever figure you want to make and make sure to cut the edges and "paste" them on to of the base pastry with a little bit of egg yolk. Once you have all the little pies ready, put them in the oven (220°C) for about 20 minutes.

While there are in the oven or cooling down you have enough time to make the whipped crème fraîche make sure it is well chilled, use a chilled metal bowl and beaters or whish and simply whisk or beat until soft peaks form and it attains a thickened yet lightened texture that allows you to dollop it nicely. You can add some powdered sugar, add the quantity that you like. You can add, just as I did, the lemon zest of one or two lemons to give it an extra fresh taste.

Just put it all together, adding on the top a sliced strawberry and you will hopefully enjoy this small pastry with a cup of tea or coffee!

This week I had the time to cook a very easy-to-make pasta dish with green beans and soy sauce. It is this easy to make:

While the pasta is being prepared, cook the beans until they are soft. Drain them and fry them with some soy sauce and garlic until they are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. You can also just fry them without cooking, that is totally up to you! Once the soy sauce has been absorbed by the beans, add a complete egg and stir fry it (just like a scrambled egg). Add the cooked pasta, some philadelphia cheese and cream, to make it, well, creamy...if you are a sesame seed lover you can add some of those, fried or just raw, which will just give that extra taste.

Easy? I think so! 

I hope you enjoy this two very easy recipes!

10 tips to lessen impact on environment

After seeing "No impact man" on Facebook (yes, the maternity leave has begun, so I finally have time for those kind of things), I started to think about what we, as an individual, can do to lessen the impact on the environmental. I think it is a question each of us has to ask his-/herself once in a time...just little details in your day-to-day life can help!

Let me share you some tips you can use at home!

1. Use CFLs, Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs, instead of the traditional incandescents.
2. Tighten the gas cap of your car until it clicks three times. Apparently gallos of gasoline literally evaporate into the atmosphere because of loose, damaged or missing caps. This is not only better for the environment but also for our economy!
3. This one I had to read two times to actually believe it. Scrub your wheels at a car wash, not at home. A drive-through uses less than half the water per car than the typical do-it-yourselfer and many of the establishments re.use there soap water.
4. Eat meet-free at least once a week, as producing a pound of beef consumes 145 times more fossil fuels than a pound of potatoes.
5. Use bar soap instead of liquid soap that comes in plastic packaging. Before I married a Mexican man I really wasn't used to use bar soap in the shower, I had no clue how to wash my body with it, but, as many ne things, practice solves that problem!
6. Use cloth napkins, eliminating disposable napkins. Something that we really need to learn in Mexico where the use of disposable plates, glasses and napkins is very normal.
7. Recycle. Recycle, recycle, recycle, what more do I need to say?!
8. Read your water meter. Check the meter, then wait an hour without using your faucets or toilets and check again. If the number rises, call a plumber!
9. Switch your computer display to go to sleep mode after 5 minutes of inactivity, as the sleep modus consumes 90 percent less energy than an animated screen saver.
10. Use reusable bags. Always have a reusable bag in your car for errands! In a lot of countries plastic bags are no longer free in supermarkets, which is a very good beginning but we really have to get used to bring our reusable bag everywhere we go!

10 simple tips to introduce in your household! Good luck!