Flavoured sugar with lemon zests - Zucchero aromatizzato con scorze di limone - Šećer aromatiziran koricom limuna

Even if nowaday everybody wants to eat healthy and organic food as much as possible, it's not so easy to find it in the market every day.

Even the most remote farmers sometimes use chemical substances to protect the harvest from insects and diseases.

Even if the quantity of chemical substances is very small and not harmful for our health, there are other bad substances that are arriving with the wind and water, so at the end we can't totaly escape from chemistry in our diet!

Even if there are so many natural ways to coltivate healty food, if the land is near to roads and big towns, can it be absolutely pure?

I have so many doubts in my head about real organic food, but I persist in searching and providing healthy, seasonal and organic food each time I can. We must preserve our health and the health and long life of our eart!

If you are lucky and you find nice pure organic lemons in the market, make a good supply of these seasonal fruits.

Citrus fruits, especially lemons can be conserved for long time in fresh places, even in refrigeratos.

And you can consume the whole fruit, if you find fruits with edible peel.

Last week I've purchased plenty ripe lemons with edible peel and while I was preparing some lemon cookies, I thought, why not preparing flavoured sugar with the lemon zest too? So I've prepared my homemade flavoured sugar and I keep it now in a jar in refrigerator. It's easy to do it and when you finish the work your hands will be perfumed and velvety soft, because the natural oils from lemon zest have beneficial effects on the skin.

My grandma's Vanilla Grencle - Grencle alla vaniglia di mia nonna - Vanil Grencle moje bake

I wanted the snow to fall, I wanted it so, so much, that it fall at last. It was quick and very wet, it melted in few hours, but I was so happy watching it falling. And I was at home! I adore the silent atmosphere all around and all the whiteness covering the ground and paralyzing all movements. Our garden was suddenly hiding its colours.
The snow disappeared as these vintage cookies did! Vintage cookies, because the recipe is so, so old. My grandma brought the recipe with her from "Old Yugoslavia" when she and her husband came back to Croatia from Belgrade during the second world war. It seams that I have migrant genes, I think all my family have them! And I have inherited these genes more then any other in my family, but most of all I have inherited the love for innovation and discovery. I like to give new life to good old traditions and experiences. I like to remember good old times too. So I wanted to remember this recipe that my grandma passed to my mum and my mum wrote it down in her notebook full of recipes that I like to read from time to time, because I always find something new in it!
We always call our cookies with their names, never just cookies, every single variety has its unique property and all of them deserve to be called by their names.
Vanilla Grencle are typical Christmas cookies, but are perfect with a cup of tea and it's a pity not to bake them more often. I think every family in ex Yugoslavia has its own recipe for this particular vanilla cookies, all these recipes are similar, but slightly  different, every lady pastry chef like to add the personal "secret" to the recipe that makes it special and family heritage. My mother and I usually use slightly sour jams do contrast plenty of icing sugar that covers the cookies. If you try to do your own cookies, I'm sure you will adjust the recipe too. This is the secret of every family tradition and recipe!