Downtime

Whenever I am down or stressed out, I do a couple of things:
I read
I eat
I drink tea
I bake
I cook
I wear comfort clothes
So that’s how I spent last week when I was back home in Holland.

I read three books in the last week or so. I finally finished The Lord Of The Rings. I read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak in one day and I read The Girl with the Red Hair (a Dutch book about a girl working for the Resistance during WWII). I'm planning to post book reviews/recommendations on this blog soon! So I'll get back to this.

I love tea. I drink liters and liters of tea a day. Because filling up and downing regular sized mugs would be too much trouble, I have a mug to match my appetite for tea. Back home we have fresh mint so I love making fresh mint tea.

I made Rachel’s Greek dinner for MrBee, my dad and my brother. I used pork for the souvlaki but also made some skewers using tempeh since I’m a veggie. I also added a side dish of white cabbage with vinaigrette and a big salad with radishes. I also made pita bread using a recipe I found on Saverqueen's great blog. It was great. I especially loved the tzatziki. Next day, at the cremation service of my grandma, we actually had some people ask us whether we had had a lot of garlic the night before…. WOOPS! Haha.. My grandma would have loved that.

I also baked two batches of cupcakes and a loaf of whole wheat bread. Baking just makes me so relaxed. It feels great to release stress by kneading and whisking and be rewarded by some cookie dough or batter straight out of the bowl afterwards.

For the cupcakes I used a Nigella Lawson recipe as a basis, but added all kinds of stuff along the way leading to a batch of Vanilla-Rasberry cupcakes with cute pink frosting and a batch of very rich and creamy coconut cupcakes. I have to say, they were delish! I’ll try to post my recipes when I’m back in Holland again. (But I have to warn you, I’m terrible at sticking to recipes. Usually I just do what feels right. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t…)

And the comfort clothes, it may surprise you, are not sweats. Whenever I feel down I dress up in a cute dress or skirt, wear high heels and apply more make-up than I usually do. It makes me feel beautiful and special. My absolute favorite is this one dress that my mom wore when she was in her twenties. My grandma had made it for her, but my mom decided it was too conservative and cut off quite a few inches. So the dress is short, but extremely cute and flattering. Wearing it always makes me feel pretty and close to my mom.

It was a soothing week. And I needed it.

(I know I should have taken pictures. I will. Soon.)