Happy Chinese New Year, 2014 is the Year of the Horse

Neiiiiiiigh Prrrrrrrr said the horse…. the photo below shows me as a very happy girl and my two old horses Rivaldo and Hekla. Also below is my little sister on her old horse named Monique (my little sister is actually born in the year of the horse (1990)  🙂

My darling J is a quarter Chinese so therefore of course we are going to celebrate Chinese New Year tonight.

Our Chinese New Years dinner is: Chinese chicken – coriander soup and rice paper rolls served with some tasty bubbles 🙂

Chinese New Year is an important traditional Chinese holiday celebrated at the turn of the Chinese calendar. Chinese New Year celebrations traditionally run from Chinese New Year’s Eve, the last day of the last month of the Chinese calendar, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month, making the festival the longest in the Chinese calendar.

The Year 2014 is considered as the Year of the Horse. In Chinese culture, the Horse is a symbol of nobility, class, speed and perseverance.

The table below shows what animal you were born in according to the Chinese Zodiac Calendar (The Chinese zodiac calendar comprises 12 animal signs and horse is the seventh among all of them):

The Sign of the Horse

If you were born in 1918, 1930, 1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002, or 2014, you were born under the sign of the horse.

The horse is one of the Chinese people’s favorite animals and has become closely linked to people’s lives. It provided a quick and useful mode of transportation before the invention of vehicles.

One of the ways the horse serves human beings is to give people a ride to their destination. Therefore, the horse is not only a symbol of travel, but also a sign of speedy success.

The horse ranks seventh among the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. People born in the Year of the Horse are highly animated, active, and energetic. They are typically very elegant, independent, gentle, and hardworking.

Their most striking characteristic is their strong self-confidence. Thus the Year of the Horse is a time for all people to go forward confidently in the direction of their goals and dreams, just as the horse gallops at top speed toward its destination.

Chinese New Year Traditions

Chinese New Year is the most important of the traditional Chinese festivals.

There are many traditions and customs associated with the Chinese New Year. Families thoroughly clean their house in order to sweep away any ill fortune and to make way for good luck. Windows and doors are decorated with delicate red paper cutouts and poetic couplets—pairs of corresponding lines of poetry that express people’s joy and hope for the New Year.

Fireworks, firecrackers, red packages, the lion dance, the dragon dance, and lanterns with riddles are other common customs and traditions observed during the Chinese New Year period.

Very importantly, many families gather for a big family reunion dinner on New Year’s Eve, and the Chinese people also pay visits to their relatives as part of the New Year celebration.

I think the Chinese New Year is full of beautiful traditions and I would love to visit China one day and experience it with my own two eyes. But this year I will be celebrating from my home in Barcelona with J♥

I think the arrival of the Year of Horse is a time to reconcile differences, let go of all grudges, and sincerely a time to wish everyone peace, health, and happiness.

Happy New Year !!!

• I think that I´m like every other young women who love to re-decorate the home many times a year.
  I have the last few weeks (since J and I came home from Sydney) been thinking about a new way of storing some of our books.
• …and I think I will store them like this, in a big casual bunch on the floor, next to our living room balcony-door, where we have a little reading spot chair, and maybe I think the more books the better, so maybe I should take all of our books and stack them in one big stack, just to make it slightly more extravagant 🙂
• What do you think???

1. 
6. Homemade Gluten-free Pizza Dough Recipe
7. Ingredients for 2 pizzas:
10. 5 cups of luke warm water
11. 20 g of yeast
12. 2 tsp of salt
13. 100 g of buckwheat flour
14. 100 g of corn flour
15. 200 g of  rice flour
16. (or 400 grams plain gluten-free flour mixture)
17. ½ -1 cup extra virgin olive oil
22. Recipe:
23. Dissolve yeast in water, add the oil, salt, and flour and knead well for about 5 min. The dough should be slightly firm and not too hard.
24. Let the dough rise in a few hours.
25. When the dough has rised enough turn your oven to 200 degrees. Turn dough out on to the table and divide into 2 equal pieces. Add rice flour on the table and roll the dough into a round ball that you tap out with your hands. You can also use a rolling pin with a little rice flour on.
26. Add your favourite toppings and bake your pizzas for about 30 min. (keep an eye on them during baking).
28. 
29. Buon Appetito
31. P. S.

32. Pizza 1 was a genuine Hawaiian pizza with tomato, lots of ham, fresh pineapple and topped with lots of mozarella cheese

33. Pizza 2 was a more girl-friendly with tomato, spanish serano ham, fresh mushrooms, onions, grated parmesan and fresh rocket.
    I know which one I would prefer  🙂

I miss the Scandinavian winter a little bit, therefore I try to put a bit of the scandinavian winter into our home in Barcelona and I think that there´s good inspiration to get from these nice photos above.

I think that frost-look-a-like colors such as gray, white, black, silver and all natural raw materials and of course a few Hyacinths  fits well into a nice and beautiful Scandinavian winter home. For me Hyacinths is the most beautiful winter flower and then they smell lovely.

These days many people have a antler some where in their house. Are you one of them?? If yes, then, have you considered to spice it up a bit or du ypu prefer it natural? Try to see these painted antlers…

I especially love the the blue and white Mussel-inspired painted antler (Mussel is a special and expensive Danish porcelain decor from Royal Copenhagen. A porcelain that mostly every Dane loves or hate, and I am one of them who LOVES it, a lot !!!).

Recipe for gluten-free, healthy and very good chickpea buns

I love to bake and Sunday is just the best baking bread-day for me. Last Sunday I baked these Chickpea gluten-free buns  !!!

Ingredients for 14 buns

1 glass of pre-cooked chickpeas (400 gram)
2 cups of lukewarm water
1 package of yeast
0,5 dl of oil
2 cups of  yogurt natural
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 tsp of salt
2 tsp of turmeric
100 grams of rice flour
100 grams of gluten-free flour mixture

1/4 cup of milk
1 tbsp of sesame

Blend yogurt and chickpeas in a blender.
Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water.
Mix salt and turmeric together with both flours and the baking powder.

Mix it all together in a big bowl and knead well.

Cover for 1 hour and leave to rise.

Shape as many buns as possible and brush them with milk and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

Bake for 40 minutes at 190 degrees.

The ingredients are taken by eye, so be aware to be a little more or less liquid / flour in your dough, the dough should be soft and slightly damp for best results.