New Year’s Eve

These cards are from the sixties till the eighties. I have many more in my collection. I remember looking at these cards as a kid, they looked so festive to me.

 

Ink pen and nibs

I have this wooden pen since I was a child. My grandparents had their saving accounts at the socialist state owned bank (named CEC) and my grandfather and me would visit our neighborhood branch quite often. They had there these wooden pens and ink bottles for people to fill their paper work with and although I was too small to be really sure about this, I suspect that these pens were one of the reasons we would be there so often. My grandfather knew the women working there and he would enter sometimes just to say hello. While my grandfather was solving his banking things or would chat to the employees, I would draw with these pens and inks. This is such a serene memory for me. At some point one of the women working there gifted me one of the pens. I used it a lot, as a kid but also later in art high school and university.

The small metal box with nibs is my friend’s flea market find. She borrows me the nibs.

Hearts

I wouldn’t have said that I collect these, but apparently I do. The orange one is bakelite, two of the small ones are celluloid, the big blue one is turquoise, two of them are Art nouveau gold plated brass and the rest are silver. 

Linking up with Vintage Charm party.

Vegan boef salad

This salad is another traditional festive dish, that people make for every special occasion. Although we don’t really celebrate Christmas, we did have all the appropriate food :), in vegan versions of course.

For this salad we mixed sliced pickled cucumbers and red bell peppers, boiled potatoes, carrots and peas. Instead of mayonnaise, which is the dressing for this salad, we boiled 5 more potatoes until they were very soft and mashed them with sunflower oil, mustard, salt and pepper. We could have added to the dressing some nutritional yeast, too, but we forgot.

This vegan version came out really close to its non-vegan original but much nicer and guilt-free, of course.

1 year and some celluloid

My blog had its 1 year anniversary yesterday. Writing here is still one of my favorite pastimes.

Last weekend, in a great flea market visit, I have found some celluloid things. A new elephant for my charm collection, two heart charms, a rose clip, a string of rose beads and a beautiful old silver and celluloid nameplate bracelet. I like to wear Nina’s bracelet, whoever she was.

Vegan stuffed cabbage rolls

Cabbage rolls are so banal, as everybody makes them for every holiday or event, but they still feel like something special to me. They take some time to make, but afterwards you have a big pot of them to eat for a few days. They are one of the very few meals that gets better the longer it stays in the fridge, as the tastes from  the sour cabbage and stuffing mix together. We make the vegan version of them for years now and we mostly improvise the quantities and ingredients every time. There are traditional vegan versions of this meal (for fasting) but these versions are usually kind of boring (mostly rise and mushrooms for the stuffing). We like to make this dish with these ingredients (for two big pots of rolls):

3 heads of sour cabbage

7 large onions

10 smaller carrots

500 grams chickpeas (soaked in water for at least a few hours)

500 grams shredded soy (also soaked in water)

1 kg pleurotus mushrooms (any mushrooms are ok, but we specifically like the texture of this kind)

cooking oil

2 mugs of rise

salt and pepper

thyme

bay leaves

tomato sauce

We use a vintage shredder (the kind used for meat but we use it for plant based foods, of course) to shred the onions, carrots, chickpeas and mushrooms. We stir all these together with salt and pepper and with the soy for a little while (it is very hard for such a big quantity not to get burned at the bottom, as it is difficult to stir). We mix it with the uncooked rise and we season it with powdered thyme and this is the stuffing. We roll the stuffing into the sour cabbage leafs and we boil them in a pot with thyme twigs, bay leaves, tomato sauce and enough water to cover all the rolls. Usually it takes around 2 hours (or a little more) to simmer and cook.

They came out really delicious and now we don’t have to cook for 3-4 days, and we will also have guests these days :).

 

 

FIX gold fill pendant

I have written about my Art nouveau costume jewelry collection before, here and here and here. I have found a new piece this Sunday. It is marked Fix, which was a French company producing gold fill jewelry at the end of the nineteenth, beginning of the twentieth century. I sometimes see these pieces marked Fix, with their pretty Art Nouveau designs and usually they are not expensive. This pendant was less than 5 euro. I put it on a gold plated vintage watch chain that is long enough to wear around my neck.

Linking up with Vintage Bliss Tuesdays and Vintage Charm parties.

Old cards and photos

I had a great time at the flea market yesterday, with lots of nice finds that I’ll show in the next days. These is an assortment of old cards and photos that I paid less than 2 euros for.

My favorite is this funny card written in October 1905, in Bucharest, by a guy to his dear cousin Adeline, assuring her of his devotion. But he also says Honny soit qui mal y pense (the card is written in French, like people who would want to think of themselves as being well mannered would write at that time in Romania). So, he wanted to say that his affection is purely platonic, I guess.

This is another love card, but a more committed love this time. This is a really crazy late seventies card, sent out by a girl to a guy in August 1980. She writes: “Oh, how beautiful it will be the moment of our reunion. Sweet kisses.”

I have also found some old photos. This studio photo is from the late thirties, I think.

Some real snow in this one:

These ballerinas are from France (there is a photo studio stamp on the back).

A street photo of a handsome guy. (I have written about a similar photo here).

And finally a type of photo I want to collect more of, an image of workers in the factory, in the seventies, maybe. Or was this taken earlier? No inscription on the back, unfortunately.

Linking up with Vintage Bliss Tuesdays and Vintage Charm parties.

Excuses

This guy apologizes to a woman named Luiza for not visiting her during his vacation and promises to visit her next time. The stamp on the back says this card was sent on the 9th of July 1924. Luiza is married (the card is sent to her husband’s name). Maybe this guy is a cousin? A friend? The tone is kind of formal (or at least this is how my limited Hungarian knowledge makes me see it) but could he be a secret (and uncommitted) lover?

Poinsettia

I have this little silver brooch since last December, it was a very cheap antique fair find. Judging from the style of the clasp and the general feel of the brooch, I think it is quite old (end of 19th- beginning of the twentieth century). It feels like winter outside these days, so it is finally time for me to wear this brooch again.

Linking up with Vintage Bliss Tuesdays and Vintage Charm parties.