Special Summer Drink

Hi everyone!

Are you all enjoying this late summer?

I know I am! The heat has become more bearable and is, in my opinion, much nicer to spend days outside in. Gotta love August. :)

The following drink that I'd like to share the recipe of with you has been my go-to refresher this entire summer! I started drinking it as a kick-me-up sweet drink to sip from whilst studying my ass off in order to graduate... Well, I graduated! I don't want to put all of the credits into this drink but it is pretty great. ;)

Best enjoyed during sunny summer days, but I think it could be just as nice on a particularly perky Spring afternoon! It's incredibly easy to make and requires only three real ingredients, to be honest. Everything else is completely up to you and you can make it as spectacular or festive as you wish. :)

Recipe:

Required ingredients:

- Ice cubes

- Festini Strawberry (Ola) or a similar type of strawberry popsicle

- Elderflower Syrup

- Refrigerated water

- Scavenged fruit for extra taste and decoration: I.e. strawberries, blueberries, blackberries or lemon (Optional)

Instructions:

1. In a tall lemonade glass, or a mason jar if you have one, add ice cubes until it's approximately filled for 1/4 part.

2. Add the Festini popsicle (still on the stick) and let rest between the ice cubes.

3. Pour the elderflower syrup onto your ice cubes. Elderflower syrup can be incredibly sweet, so pour with care and to your liking. You can always add to the mixture and stir if you end up wanting it to be more sweet.

4. Fill up the rest of your glass with previously refrigerated water. Key is that the drink is nice and cold!

5. By the time you filled up the glass with water, the popsicle will have started softening. Use a fork to 'shave' it off its stick and mix with the cold lemonade.

6. For serving, and taste, I like to add leftover fruit that I find in my fridge. I've learned that fresh strawberries, blueberries and blackberries match really nicely! Lemon gives it a great extra sour tone, which may be nice to take focus off the sweetness of this drink. It's also great for decoration only, I would say. :)

I created this recipe myself, if you have anything you would like to share that could make this even more refreshing then don't hesitate to let me know! Would love to see you make this too! :) Tag me in your Instagram photos, at @evazuring.

See you for my next post?

Love,

Eva

Snazzy Seafood Summer Dinner

Hello you!

Plans are to become a lot more active on my blog this year! I realise that close to all of my blogposts start like this. The thing is that I have so many passions and hobbies that I just keep to myself or don't really explore with any significant depth that I feel like I'm wasting a beautiful opportunity!

This past month I've spent away from home, living and working by the beach in the beautiful province of Zeeland! I'm sure you've snooped and seen some photos of my experience back over on my Instagram. It was a month's worth of vacation partnered with a summer job at a restaurant on the beach called Kon-Tiki! I had a job in serving which I was really nervous for but ended up enjoying a lot! It is a type of job that really isn't cut out for anyone, and whereas I did have my difficulties I do believe that it's a job cut out for me. The only downside is what little payment you end up with, but that is something I discovered a little too late into my journey... :p

I've learned so much, working at this restaurant, and it somehow sparked some sort of gastronomical interest! I hate that word by the way, 'gastronomical', it makes me think of body parts. My Pinterest and Tumblr addictions made that I started hoarding recipes during this summer, almost as if my life depended on it. I have that every so often, a passion that hits me with the power of a thousand suns and I just cannot wait to dive completely and utterly into it.

So here I am now, with bucketsful of recipes waiting to be tried out at my leisure. And of course! Waiting to be shared with you once they turn out to be absolutely, freaking amazing!

My first try-out bore wonderful fruit, hence why I'm more than excited to share with you my first foodie blogpost. :)

This past Tuesday, I surprised my Mum and her boyfriend with a lovely seafood dinner including a light cocktail to sip all the while. They were thrilled! Not only by the fact that I cooked for them, because that might as well have turned out horribly, but especially by the wonderful flavours in this meal! I highly recommend you try out this recipe. I will make sure to list where I've found it, so that all credits go to their original author.

 This Rosé Lemonade went incredibly well with this dinner dish since the sweet/sour lemony taste complemented the seafood very nicely. I could also recommend sipping this drink on a sunny afternoon before dinner with your family or friends. :)

Click here to find the original recipe!

This recipe was made for two drinks but I personally just went ahead and altered it so that I could fill up this weck bottle which I'd saved. If you've half a lemon left or so, I recommend using it to garnish the drinks! I completely forgot to do so in the rush of dinner, but I think it would look mighty cool! The yellow contrasting with the gorgeous pink drink.

It's incredibly easy to make and a delicious thirst-quencher for summer/dinner since it's not too boozy. :)

Now as for a lovely seafood dinner! 'Seafood Spaghetti Marinara'. I was incredibly eager to try out this recipe after having had 'linguine au fruits de mer' at an Italian restaurant when I was in Paris. Spaghetti with seafood is a common dish at our house, and I've always been a big fan. But the way we've always prepared it is without a tomato sauce. Having ordered 'linguine au fruits de mer' in Paris, I was expecting to be served a similar dish to the one I was used to at home. What I got, however, I have taken even more of a liking to!

It's a magical world of flavours to have the gentle, sweet taste of a simple tomato sauce mixed with the chewy, savoury seafood. Add to that some parsley and you've got a celebration on your plate right there!

This recipe I found came close enough to what I enjoyed in Paris, despite it being a spaghetti dish and not linguine of course. This is also because I altered the recipe to my convenience a little bit. In the original recipe, the seafood mixture contains fish as well as shellfish. I only used a mixture of shrimp, mussels, squid and surimi. Mmmm I love seafood. Also, you may want to change the amount of spaghetti you cook depending on your appetite. I found that the recommended amount was a bit too little, so I altered it with accordance to my family's tummies. ;)

You can find the original recipe over here!

I give it 2/5 for difficulty, because it wasn't difficult at all but it did cause me a little bit of stress at one point. That's probably just my lack of cooking experience, but I will state this for other beginners in the kitchen. :)

Taste wise, 4/5! For definite. It was a really nice meal that I will definitely be making again in the future!

Hope you all enjoyed reading this new type of post, and I hope I will be writing even more of these in the future. If you prefer me to write the recipes including my alterations in these posts, let me know!

Have a good day!

Kisses,

 Eva

'Vous pouvez-vous cogner à la vie'

In one of my favourite films of all time, Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, there is a certain advice directed at Amélie that has to convince her to seize the moment and go after her love interest, Nino. Today I don't want to talk about this entire piece of advice, but rather about a specific part of it: "Vous pouvez vous cogner à la vie." In English this would translate to something close to the likings of "You can take life's knocks".

For several weeks now, this has been my personal WhatsApp status; accompanied by a cheeky bicep emoji to symbolise (my) strength. It made me feel good about myself for a pretty long while. This is because in my life, despite it only having lasted 18 years thus far, I've dealt with plenty of life's knocks and survived to tell the tale. The quote made me feel proud of myself, and much more confident about dealing with life's knocks in the future.

Now, however, I've been knocked down again, and despite the logical thought that I will continue to live and that I will be able to deal with it eventually, I just want to scream at the world to quit knocking me down.

Everyone always says that it takes these knocks to create character, that storms make trees take deeper roots; that the same storms are better at making a good sailor than a clear sea would ever be. But if these storms keep raging, keep coming back even after periods of sunshine, it will wear out the tree as much as the sailor. After too many punches, the boxer, no matter how strong, collapses.

Illustration by Cassandra: http://c-cassandra.tumblr.com/

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm tired and having more and more difficulty taking these knocks that life throws at me. Branches bend, until they break, and to a worn out tree even a tiny gust of air can feel like a hurricane. And with a worn out sail, the ship will lie still.

So now I've changed my status, and I'm not saying that I won't ever start loving that quote again, but for now I'm in a period of surrender. For now I need life to sit in time-out for a while. A white flag is waving. I'm taking some time off.

Illustration by Julianna Swaney: http://ohmycavalier.tumblr.com/

Thanks for reading!

Love,
Eva