On the move

Source: Sweet Mama Jane

The Hausfrau is busy these days packing her things for a transatlantic move. Mercy, have I ever collected a boatload of vintage in recent months! My husband has made the smart tactical move of refraining from any comments on this topic, but I can tell he is not looking forward to lifting my suitcases....

And you can be sure I wept few tears when I had to entrust "die deutsche Post" with several carefully-packed boxes of one-of-a-kind dresses, linens, and kitchen gadgets. Will I ever see them again?

Source: Happy Postcards

Inspired by my real-life change, I have decided to move my blog as well, away from the "blogspot" subdomain and to a dedicated URL, hausfraujournal.com. Since this entails updating a few posts and troubleshooting over a period of time, I'm expecting the transfer to be complete by the beginning of September.


Back to the boxes...






(By the way, many thanks to rockin' Susan at Susan's Diary—Vintage style meets heavy music for nominating the Hausfrau Journal for a "one lovely blog" award! If you're into mid-century with a twist of heavy metal, check out her not-so-ordinary blog.)

Recipe: Strawberry Chutney

Strawberry season has come and (largely) passed, and while you can still spot some of those heavenly red berries in the supermarket, the ubiquitous stands offering crates of them at discount prices have long disappeared.

One day in recent weeks I came home with more strawberries than I could put in my morning müsli, make into jam, or mash up for dessert, so I decided to adapt a chutney recipe I had lying around.

Hausfrau's Strawberry Chutney

• 2 cups of strawberries
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 chopped apple
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon mustard seed
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice 
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• a spritz of lemon juice

Mix ingredients together and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for about an hour or until the mixture becomes thick. Stir occasionally to prevent the chutney from burning to the bottom of the pan. Break up larger chunks by mashing the mixture ever so slightly, but do not make a homogenous pulp!

In the end you will be rewarded with a condiment that infuses your mouth with a bevvy of flavors: sweet, sour, spicy, tangy...

Mmmmmmmmm!

As I was titillating my mouth with a spoonful of this red ambrosia, I looked out the window and spied a Long-Tailed Tit feasting on the little insects that sit on the undersides of the leaves in our cherry tree.

Aegithalos caudatus, or "Schwanzmeise"

"Mahlzeit!"