We are getting ready to a one-week trip. I don’t know if there is anybody among you who can prepare a trip in a relaxed, calm state of mind, but even after so many travel challenges and adventures I had to face in my life, I still can’t. I am writing different kinds of to do lists, I think about thousand times if I had presents for everybody who we are going to visit, and check travel documents more times than needed. The funny thing is, that we are not going to a mysterious, unknown place we hardly know. Quite the opposite. We are going to a place, which has a very special place in my heart. My second home. A place where I know the baker, the sellers at the market and the paper shop owner by name, where familiar faces pass by when I walk down the streets, exactly the way as I feel in our small village. Maybe this is the reason for my excitement, it is a positive kind of, like as we were children and were waiting for Christmas Eve to come. We leave our little house, the garden, the apple trees for one week to get lost in another, very different world that we love so much. While I am packing our suitcases I decide to stop for a short time. I caramelise sugar in a saucepan and add milk. Relaxing movements which calm me down, the scent of caramel fills up the air of the kitchen and the hot drink gives me enough energy to finish preparations. It is so simple, as good things in life are, but this recipe is like these little good things in life. We easily forget about them, or just don’t take notice of them.
Although these little good things are everywhere. In kind gestures. In careful attention. As Christine didn’t forget that my favourite tea is verbena and two boxes of it are prepared when we arrive. As Maria, our lovely and warm-hearted friend bakes bread with olives, because she knows that it is Áron’s favourite. That the seller knows by heart what vegetables I used to buy although I am gone since a year. And that Ani, our neighbour in our small village offers us to set the fire in our tile stove so the house will be warm and cosy the time we arrive.
Small and simple things. Like a cup of hot caramel. But after all, these are the things that really matter.
Hot caramel drink
Ingredients for 2 people:
400 ml milk
6 tsp sugar
250 ml cream
confectioner’s sugar according to your taste (2-3 tsp)
Put the sugar into a saucepan and caramelise it until golden brown. Carefully add milk (caramel can easily burn you so please be careful!) and heat it until caramel completely dissolves. Meanwhile whisk the cream with the confectioner’s sugar and spoon it over the hot caramel drink.
kata
It is adorable that you mixed names for milk on English and Hungarian in a recipe… I like to read your posts because it transport my soul directly to my childhood memories in a small town in Vojvodina near Hungarian border. Thank you for that.
Judit Neubauer
Dear Kata, thank you so much for your comment! First of all, thank you for telling me I need to correct the recipes, sometimes even if I am going through several times to correct the text and recipes, it happens I don’t notice something! Thank you again! I am so happy that the blog evoked nice memories in you, this was my secret wish and strong desire when I started the blog! Nice greetings to you in Hungary!