Things I enjoy this weekend

... blue-blue spring sky. I feel so happy when I see such blue sky and a brightly shining sun. I missed them so much in winter. I'm so looking forward for warm spring days and green leaves and grass to appear.

... morning pancakes. I like cooking some pancakes in the morning on weekends in a slow and peaceful weekend atmosphere. And then enjoy eating them with a cup of morning tea or coffee. Just perfect beginning of the day!

... my new kitchen supplies for cake decoration. I was thinking about such tools for a while, but haven't decided to buy till I saw these two. The left one is a decoration pen and on the right side is a cake cream pastry injector. I've found them in a local supermarket, but you can find similar items on amazon, like this decoration pen and this cream injector. I haven't tried them yet, but I'm so excited to do this soon!

... banana cookies. In one of the evenings this week I suddenly felt that I need to bake something, but I had only one dark banana in my fridge. I started googling and found this lovely recipe. As it requires about 2-2,5 bananas and I had only one, I decided to substitute second banana with a few tablespoons of apple jam. I also added some chocolate pieces and chopped walnuts. The cookies were delicious with a nice banana smell and taste. I definitely recommend this cookies, especially if you like bananas.

Now I'm going to enjoy the second part of my lovely weekends.
Don't forget to enjoy yours!

Weekend pleasures

The week has flown quickly and we are enjoying our weekends again. Today we were blessed to have some long-awaited warm sunshine. It is a rare event at this part of the year, that's why it is so enjoyable to walk under it and soak it's lovely energy. We decided to go for a walk to one of the Kiev's parks - the park of Partizan Glory. It is quite large and includes a part of pine forest and few lakes. They are still covered with ice allowing people to walk on them. Another lake was full of skating children.

Take a look around. I haven't been on a walk for quite a while. We had a very cold and snowy winter this year. Hope spring will come soon and we'll be able to enjoy such warm sunny walks more often.

The sky was blue and looked unusual after all the grey days we've had.

Another little pleasure was on my table today. I finally tried to make a carrot cake! I used Lucy's recipe and it came out very yummy. And I have to mention it's really very quick to make.

See that little nose trying to steal my piece of cake? Actually, that's what I always deal with while taking photos anywhere in my apartment. This little fluffy helper is following me everywhere and she doesn't like to be turned back. Taking photos becomes a real challenge, especially when it comes to crochet things, she loves them most of all.

I was also preserving some orange zest. I dry it and add to my tea to give it a nice orange aroma.

Hope you are having a pleasant weekends! See you soon.

Family gathering

Past week was a bit busy and full of events. On Saturday we were visiting my grandparents to celebrate granddad's birthday. It was a fabulous weekend spent with family in the shadowy garden near their lovely house. They live in a small town near Kiev. There are a few small ponds there with a beautiful nature around. The blue building at the opposite side of the pond is an old wooden local church. I like visiting this place, it's always pleasant and relaxing.

Grandma's garden is full of flowers as usual.

She planted a few room flowers for me.

So I have a new blue blooming violet in my little violet collection and a few more flowers, one of them is going to bloom soon.

My grandma grows a lot of useful stuff in her small garden. My favorite are herbs. She provides the whole family with herbs. I love to make different herbal teas and most of all I like to use homegrown herbs for them. Lavender, mint, sage, lemon balm, jasmine - all this comes from grandma's garden. The tea taste is especially good if herbs are prepared by yourself or by kind grandma's hands and it's a great pleasure to drink it during long winter evenings or on breakfast - it gives a lot of energy and good mood.

I am a great fan of spices as well. My favorite one is basil. It is the best seasoning for meat, but I love it so much, that I can add it to any other dishes, except desserts of course. Fortunately, you can also find basil in my grandma's garden. As well as cumin, coriander, parsley, dill, rucola and so on.

The main dish of the day was grilled salmon cooked on a mangal. We prefer meat when the weather is colder and fish is a good choice for summer.

Here is a picture of the previous family gathering, when we cooked meat - Shashlik. Looks smoky and yummy. My father cooks the best meat I've ever tried.

This week was extremely hot and we are all looking forward for divine rain or at least wind.

Hope you are having a great weekend! Will be back soon with more news. See ya.

Chestnut city - Kiev

Hello and thank you for stopping by. Today I'm going to show how beautiful the capital of Ukraine is during this warm May days. And the reason is blooming chestnut trees. They are everywhere. It doesn't matter on what street in Kiev you will appear, you'll definitely see at least one chestnut tree. It is very easy to distinguish it from any other tree because of plenty of white/pink pyramids on it.

There are few stories about how did chestnut trees appear in Kiev.

Due to one of them all main streets of Kiev were planted with chestnut trees just before the visit of Russian emperor Nicholas I in 1842. They were brought from Balkans. But maybe the emperor didn't like them or something else happened and all the trees were cut down. Emperor's favourite poplars were planted instead on that places. But people liked chestnut trees, took cutted branches and planted them on the backyards near their houses and everywhere they could. That's how Chestnut tree became the most numerous tree in Kiev.

According to another story first chestnut trees were planted in Kiev Pechersk Lavra in 1825 and they spread through the city from here by Kiev people, because the trees have a lot of advantages: they are very unpretentious, grow quickly, bloom in young age, can grow everywhere, even on clay, frost, shadowy and extraordinarily beautiful.

There are about 2 millions of chestnut trees in Kiev. About twenty of them are more than 150 years old. Among them we have 350 years old Peter Mohyla's chestnut tree (25 meters high and 1.1 meter in diameter) and 200 years old chestnut tree near St. Sophia Cathedral (24 meters high, 1.15 meters in diameter). [source]

Chestnut tree is the symbol of Kiev. Chestnut leaf and bloom were on the official coat of arms of Ukraine during soviet period.

This symbol is often used on emblems by Kiev organizations, companies, etc.

We have few types of chestnut tree in Kiev: horse chestnut, Ohio buckeye and red horse chestnut. They all are not edible. Also there are white and pink colors of chestnut blossom.

Remember, I showed you few photos of the chestnut tree in front of my window in my April post. Well, it changed a lot. Have a look.

Here are some photos of chestnut trees from different parts of Kiev.

Chestnut trees near the main building of National Technical University of Ukraine 'Kiev Polytechnic Institute' (where I'm about to graduate).

Chestnut trees near the red building of Taras Shevchenko's National University.

Chestnut trees on the main street of Kiev - Khreshchatyk street.

Chestnut trees on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square).

Hope you enjoyed my little excursion. Have a great day!

Kiev Botanic Garden

Today I've visited Kiev Botanic Garden, also known as State Botanical Garden or the Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. We visit it every year usually on the 9-10th of May, cuz that's the time when lilac (there is a huge collection of it here) is blooming and, believe me, that's worth seeing... and smelling. This year we're going to visit our Botanic Garden as usual, but we decided to make one more visit today and see the magnolias blooming. And that was unbelievable! Magnolias were gorgeous - white, pink, dark pink. The ground was covered with their petals like with the snow. Well, I won't explain better then the photos will do. Just have a look. Aren't they beautiful?

Of course, we've found not only magnolias. Next set of photos is especially for tulip lovers.

A little bit more of yellow...

A little bit of white...

The next one is not actually white. It is of a special and very interesting pale pink color. There wasn't anything green on that tree. Even the leaves were a little pinky. Very nice tree.

Some more orange/pink...

Some blue...

And my favorite. Guess what? Purple, of course. Oh, what a color! What the flowers... Our nature is fabulous, definitely.

And a little bit of views. The sky was very strange today.

As you see, I've got a great portion of flower/nature/colour therapy today, it gave me a lot of positive energy and pleasure, that I'm sending to you through this photos. Have a great day! I'll show you more photos from the Garden when lilacs will bloom.