Every time I make eggs in horseradish sauce for dinner, I wonder why I make it so rarely. When my daughter was going to kindergarten one of the mums was nervous about the fact the children had eggs in horseradish sauce for dinner. Reportedly, a kindergarten is not a milk bar. It was strange because it was only a problem for the mum. Her daughter relished this dinner.

My family demands a huge amount of the sauce. For this dinner I serve boiled potatoes and broccoli, which are all swimming in the sauce. Maybe it doesn't look attractive, but it tastes excellent...

Ingredients:

4 eggs

2 tablespoons of butter

2 tablespoons of flour

200ml of vegetable stock or water

2 tablespoons from a jar of grated horseradish

salt

I received the book "Kevin alone in the kitchen" by Kevin Aiston just before Christmas. I thought that my family would disown me when instead of looking after the Christmas dishes I started to read this book. With my mind's eye I saw burnt mushroom soup, too salty carp and overcooked cabbage. Despite this, with good intentions and with a spoon in one hand and the book in the other everything went well. As I read the book I had to try hard at times not to burst out laughing directly into the cabbage with mushrooms.

This book by Kevin Aiston is only ostensibly a cooking book. In my opinion it is an amazing, cultural repository about Great Britain, containing titbits about dishes, seasonings and customs. Do you know why allspice has this name? What is "toad in the hole"? Where does the name beef Wellington come from? What are Scotch eggs, and how do you put out burning oil in the kitchen? You will find in this book the answers to these and other questions. The author observes our all Polish habits in depth, and accurately, ironically and in a slightly quizzical way condemns our culinary and customary little sins. A housewife insisting on another piece of tasty homemade cheesecake even though the guest is full and has no desire for anything else - what a typical picture during a family visit to our grandma's or aunt's home. For us this is typical, but for a foreigner it is difficult to understand and accept.

I think I must have made creamy soup from every vegetable. Recently, my friend made me aware that I had forgotten about leek. Until recently I always thought of leeks as ingredients in traditional soups or salads. Now cream of leek will be a permanent soup on our menu.

This robust soup, slightly mollified with sweet cream, warms us up on winter afternoons. Making use of a recipe by Karol Okrasa, you may  serve it with smoked cottage cheese. You should try it – it is an interesting combination.

Ingredients:

3 leeks

half celery roots

2 potatoes

2 cloves of garlic

2 tablespoons of oil

1 tablespoon of butter

a half stock cube

a half teaspoon of ground coriander

a pinch of red pepper

3 tablespoons of sweet cream

Do you remember the time when cocoa was a rarity and in our childhood mugs we most often had caffeine-free corn coffee, Inka coffee or tea with sugar and milk (in Poland called "bawarka"). I still like all of these drinks. My brother didn't drink corn coffee, and "bawarka" and Inka coffee were a kind of punishment for him. My children don't like Inka coffee either. I don't dare give them "bawarka", but I drink it sometimes .

Recently, quite coincidentally, I found on the internet a website about Inka coffee. It turns out that I can make a few interesting and tasty drinks. Most of them I would rather combine with desserts. As well as fruit, my children got one of them for dessert. The combination of two kinds of chocolate, Inka coffee and whipped cream was excellent.

Ingredients (for two people):

5 pieces of dark chocolate

5 pieces of white chocolate

200 ml of milk

4 teaspoons of Inka coffee

150ml of 30% sweet cream

1 teaspoon of caster sugar

2 tablespoons of chocolate glaze

January 1st is the shortest day of the Year because the morning starts around noon. That is, unless we spent New Year's Eve taking care of our liver and head, and after drinking a New-Year toast went directly to bed. For the majority of us it is a lazy, sleepy day aimed more at taking a nap or reading a book under a blanket than at any physical activity.

It is worse if at 7:30 in the house two little, well-rested human beings are running around. We have to get up, wake ourselves up with a bucket of black coffee and prepare an honest breakfast. Later on we put some cartoons on the TV and lethargically pretend that we do not exist. Unfortunately, the amount of unused energy in the body of a young person is usually inversely proportional to the tolerance level of "tired" parents.

My children were able to remain inactive only until after dinner time. As skating and swimming could not be taken into account for obvious reasons, we decided to take a walk. As a matter of fact I decided, because the man of the house adamantly refused to go anywhere.

I reminded myself that since the autumn it has been possible to see the King's Garden of Light in Wilanów Park, so we went for a frosty evening walk to Wilanów.

It was beautiful. Thousands of colorful lights create a mysterious garden where you feel like you are in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In the courtyard you can take a picture in the royal golden carriage and try to listen to the light drops falling from a huge light fountain.