Breakfast, Dumplings and School Shopping

Hello everyone. I'm starting my post by talking about preparing breakfast. I made a tortilla again, but this time with a slightly different twist. We had a delicious breakfast and I cleaned up the kitchen afterward.

Later I decided to make dumplings, as I hadn’t made them in a long time. I usually start the recipe with three cups of flour and one cup of liquid, but this time, I wanted to make a larger batch. I used a total of 900 grams of flour and added one and a half cups of liquid. Here's how I prepare the liquid mixture: for every three cups of flour, I add one egg, two tablespoons of oil, a teaspoon of salt and enough water to complete the mixture.

This time I used two eggs. After adding some water, I added another half a cup, making a total of one and a half cups of liquid. I mixed everything together with a fork.

On the side I prepared the onions and the minced meat was already thawed since I had taken it out of the fridge first thing in the morning. This dough works perfectly for both dumplings and boiled dishes. It's very easy to handle, with an excellent consistency and I hardly need to add any flour while working with it. After kneading the dough, I placed it in a bag and let it rest for about 30 minutes to make it more elastic. In the meantime, I started preparing the filling.

After half an hour the dough was ready. It had softened a little, so I mixed in a bit more flour. This time, I decided to shape the dumplings by hand. I usually use a mold, but we wanted to do it manually this time. The three of us, my mom, my daughter and I worked on the dumplings together.

I started rolling out the dough with a rolling pin. Normally I use a large rolling pin for small circles, but since it was a smaller batch, I decided to use my daughter’s plastic rolling pin. I set up the boards and we got to work. We tasted some of the finished dumplings and they were absolutely delicious.

Meanwhile I got a new plant, a ficus. My previous ficus had fallen and unfortunately didn’t survive, so I bought a new one. It already had large roots. I got it from someone else and brought it home. I placed it in its spot and added soil within a few minutes. I hope it takes root well. I plan to keep it in the kids room.

We continued making dumplings. Since we shaped them by hand, the dough usage was higher, meaning we ended up with fewer dumplings overall. However, they were larger this way, which made them more filling for the kids. Finally we shaped all of them, froze some and boiled the rest.

By evening, we went out as a family for school shopping. I thought we had bought everything we needed, but we still missed a few items, like new cross-country shoes and white socks. Still we got most of it done. By the way I’m planning to write shopping-related posts, if I can find time between the kids.

One thing I realized: our excitement for school shopping seems to decrease every year. In the early years of elementary school, it was much more thrilling, but now it feels more like just another task. I guess this is the same for everyone.

That’s it for today’s post. Thanks for reading and see you next time. 🤗