Meeting Treska

We met Treska Lindsey and her daughter at the Asheville Bread Festival in March. Treska, now 88, is an author and illustrator, mostly of children’s books, who survived the Nazi occupation of her native Belgium as a teenager. After WWII, she came to the US, married Bob Lindsey and settled in the mountains of North Carolina.

We were especially enchanted by “How Batistine Made Bread,” a book about how a six year old makes bread from scratch (starting with harvesting the wheat!) Besides having children help you make bread, the book is a wonderful way for children to connect with making bread at home.

Originally published in 1985 under a slightly different title, “How Batistine Made Bread” was picked by the “New Yorker” for its yearly list of best children’s books. In 2010, she had it reprinted due to popular demand.

You can check out it and other books by Treska on her website — www.treskalindsey.com. You will not be disappointed.

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Here’s something exciting for the gazillion people who love wood fired pizza. Pizza enthusiast and inventor, Kristian Tapaninaho (right), has invented a light weight portable wood fired oven named Uuni, designed to replicate world class pizza at home. Only this one will set you back a mere few hundred bucks vs many thousands for a brick oven.

Uuni (meaning “oven” in Kristian’s native Finnish), burns the same wood pellets used for pellet stoves and can bring the oven to a near ideal 800 degrees in a just 15 – 20 minutes, hot enough to turn out your dream pizza in under 3 minutes. The finished model is expected to weigh about 11 lbs and measure 5x14x19″. An accompanying user manual will include recipes for pizza dough, naan (an Indian flat bread), Finnish flat bread rieska and more. (Pizza baked in Uuni oven pictured above.)

Here’s a video from the Kickstarter site that Kristian use to raise venture funds:

My first two thoughts when learning of the Uuni were, “wow, I want one” and “wow, if these really work well, I’d like to offer them in the Breadtopia store.” I can’t recall the order of those thoughts, but I did pre-purchase one and was soon on the phone with London based Kristian, inquring about dealer opportunities. He has yet to decide on how they will be distributed, but whether or not we carry them, I’ll demo mine and report my findings here on the Breadtopia site. I’ll compare the Uuni to our existing wood fired oven, our outdoor grill with grilling stone and our regular kitchen stove. Should be loads of fun.

As of late January (2013), Kristian was still refining some design elements ahead of the Feb 28 pre-order deadline. Delivery is expected sometime this summer.  If you wish to be notified of my review, use the Contact tab above and send me your email with the word “Uuni” in the message box.

Note: Detailed images and exact specs on the Uuni are purposely unavailable while Kristian secures patent protection.

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The holidays were made especially fulfilling with a wonderfully long visit from the “kids” and grandson Gray.

With 22 month old Gray’s mamma wisely preferring to to delay serving him sugary treats, we found an opportunity to develop some holiday cookies that we could make with him that involved no sugar at all (if you don’t count the fruit). We made Fruity Pie Crust Cookies! (Click the link to watch the video)

Ok, so the real purpose of this post is to show off Gray, but it just so happens the pie crust cookies were really good and scarfed in a rapid heartbeat.

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