ICAD47, Postcrossing and P&L Swap

Today David and I sat and painted. My ICAD47 (purple prompt) was on the top. His is on the bottom. I wanted to do something different with the seed beads but I thought I'd just experiment tonight.

  Today I finally sent an outgoing letter to my friend Marianne in The Netherlands. It was nice to write a letter again. I haven't written in a while because of my elbow issues (which were partially caused by fine motor movements in my hands/wrist/fingers). 

    These were my incoming cards:

This one is from a teacher in the US. Three Island Crossing is a state park located in Idaho.

 This one was from a preschool in Poland. The food are "Ruskie pierogi" (Russian pierogis) which are like a dumpling filled with potatoes and cottage cheese. Have you ever had potato and cottage cheese together? I haven't.

This was from Kirsty from Penpalling & Letters. We both took part in a July card swap. Croissants- yum. I didn't like croissants until I had a chocolate filled one in Germany! This card is from The Netherlands.

Food Swap and Chocolate

INCOMING...

     Today I'm just going to focus on incoming mail. I have been unbelievably busy this week so my outgoing mail has not been as prolific.  Here are some yummy things to hit my mailbox this week:

Chocolate Bar RR- Received from Postcrosser melis dogan in Turkey. This chocolate is delicious!!! I also had another bar, that I loved even more than this dark chocolate, but Matt threw away the wrapper before I got to photograph it. (Rather, I gobbled up the chocolate so fast that it didn't exist long enough to be photographed.) This was delicious and I'm sad because I don't know the name of the candy bar now. (It ranked right up there with my Dumle bar from Finland)

Her envelope had some cool Olympic Stamps too!

Food Swap- Received this package from Postcrosser Cockie in Japan.  Very exciting. I can't wait to try everything.

 Curry.

 In the US, I haven't really bought anything liquid that is packaged in an envelope. The curry is liquidy too.

 I think this is a fruit drink? Maybe a tea- ginger and small citrus fruit flavored

 Pasta sauce with cheese topping.

 Clam chowder. It will be interesting to compare and contrast with New England Clam Chowder

 Looks very yummy-  Miso flavored noodles

A poster that was in the envelope. She made her envelope out of a calendar :) Nice.

     Thanks ladies, I really like them both! I can't wait to try all the food from Japan.

Strep...again

    So, on a negative note- I have strep throat for the second time in a month and a half- which means it either 1) never went away or 2) wasn't strep the first time. Being under the weather, I haven't written much but I hope to get a few letters out this week.

Outgoing:

Soldier mail and mail to Marianne... finally. I have had these ready to go, but I couldn't find my stamps. So, they're on their way now.

Incoming:

     My friend Chrissie totally made my day. I got home from work today and saw this sitting on my dining room table!

  I was super excited to see a package waiting for me because I totally wasn't expecting one!  I had a really bad weekend and then stayed home sick from work yesterday so this was a nice surprise. :) (Check out the little card covering my address. One of Timmy's friends gave it to him as a birthday card :) So cute!)
Stamps: I really like the football (cough cough... soccer) stamp.

 

When I opened the package there were lots of goodies!

Yeah! She remembered my birthday! (October 13) Although I never expect any of my pals so send me any gifts, I am always happy to accept them :)  Isn't her writing amazingly neat? The envelope on the left was a great letter, the right was a birthday card (Nice beach.. My friend Jan sent me a card that said "This year you have nothing to worry about on your birthday." You open it and it says: "The high priestess only sacrifices much younger women." Nice.)  The gift was a stationary pad. I love stationary of all kinds. Thanks, Chrissie!
     In addition to this, there were also these goodie envelopes, sticker bags and label bags:

     I haven't traded these before. If any of my penpals are reading this, let me know if you want any of these. I will add my stuff and then pass them on. Usually I put them in the next letter I respond to, but if there is somebody who likes to trade certain items, let me know and I will send them. Actually, it would be helpful to know what kinds of things you like- FB, label bags, sticker bags, x-slips, swap sheets, etc...

Other...

    In other news, I survived Timmy's 7th birthday party.  I now know why I chose not to have 14 children.. lol.. and why I didn't have 12 kids in 1 year.   Timmy loved Blue Man Group and was pretty amusing to watch during the show. He had a great day.

     I also heard from my food swap partner. My package will be from The Netherlands (stroopwafels? mmm..). The Postcrosser who is sending it has been through a rough time lately so I hope things get better soon. It will get here eventually.

Finnish Organic Onion Soup Review

     This summer I did an international food swap. (Check out the post on July 25th) I sent my food to Wales and I got a wonderful package from Finland. Tonight we ate the organic onion soup so I thought we'd write a family review for you. This is the soup we ate.

     As you can guess, it was simple to make. Boil water, add soup mix, wait- very easy. I was surprised a little bit that the soup mix kind of clumped up and floated (almost like balls of dough) while it was boiling but, other than that, it was pretty normal. Here's the finished soup.

    Nope, I don't know what the floaty things are.  Yes, I do have a chipped edge on my bowl.  The onions are minced which is different than a lot of the onion soups I see here. I don't think I've ever had yellow broth with an onion soup either. I've had a lot of French Onion soup that has a brown beef broth as a base.

Reviewers:
Matt (35)- likes to cook. Favorite method: throw a whole bunch of things together and make them somehow taste good.
     Matt says that the soup was "smooth, maybe a little too salty, but good."  I was going to snap a picture of him but I knew I was already pushing it by asking him to review the soup.

David (4)- Mr. Finicky. Favorite dinner conversation: "How many bites do I need to eat before I'm excused?" Favorite food: Turkey and cheese sandwich, no mayo.

     David says he "liked it" and that it tasted "like soup." He also says other people will like it "because it tastes like soup."

Timmy (6)- Mr. I'll Try Anything I'm Not Deathly Allergic To. Favorite food: Broccoli with cheese on it.

 (Action shot)

     Timmy says "I think it was good, a little. It had too much sliced up onions." He did not finish his bowl but he didn't mind trying it.

Jen (me- I'm 34)  I like to cook too. I've been on a diet recently so I've been sticking to some easy healthy recipes. I thought 59 calories for a bowl of soup was very reasonable! Favorite cooking method: Sticking to the recipe- ALL the time. I'm actually getting better at making my own choices, substituting, etc. Thanks to Matt's inspiration I've also just tried throwing a few combinations together.
     I thought the soup was good. It was a little thicker than I thought. When you spooned some soup up it almost looked like there were layers, like the soup might have gelatin in it or something, but it didn't taste gooey.  The soup was tasty but I think I prefer the broth of the American French Onion soup a little more.  This felt like it was missing something but I couldn't figure it out. It was definitely lower sodium than the soup we have here.  I didn't think it was salty like Matt did.


    This was fun. I should make it a reoccurring thing! Do you have a food we should try?  Feel free to send it along. (Timmy is deathly allergic to cashews, pistachios and pumpkin so it can't contain those!)  Recipes would also be fun.