Today

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Cinnamon Bun, Mug, Silence, Solitude, Tea

Today I had the house all to myself for a precious moment. Or, at least, almost to myself: Daughter was outside taking a nap. It’s fun having the house full of life at all times, but sometimes solitude and silence is luxury to long for.

I’ve sat for a while now listening to the humming of a dishwasher and the ticking of a clock, while catching up on some of my favourite blogs and drinking a big cup of tea. This morning’s tea was Lipton’s Earl Grey in my in-laws’ blue seal cup. And the cinnamon bun was baked rather quickly last night after spending the entire day in the zoo. Rain came upon us during the last hours and called for warm, freshly baked buns as we came home.

My in-laws’ have almost a cupboard full of different cups and mugs gathered from across both time and space. Each one of them reflecting memories related to its purchase. I don’t know their stories so I make up my own. This seal, for instance, has been further north than I’ve ever been. Seen some spectacular mountains and scenic coastal views.

Enjoy your day 🙂

Happiness is…

Tags

Baby, God life, happiness, mess

Happiness is waking up, not being awoken. Having slept enough hours and only having been up a few hours during the night. Completely obliterate to the state of house (the clutter, the mess, the dirty dishes – the list goes on). Having a quick but quiet breakfast. Having time for a cup of tea, before the tea is considered iced. Stumbling across a soothing album by Andrew Bocelli on Spotify. Dancing across the room guided by by a mellow Italian male voice and a joyful beat with a smiling baby in my arms.

The baby tired and was places in her crib giving me a chance to share the moment. Now a long shower awaits.

I hope you all enjoy a calm and quiet Sunday morning

New year, new life…

White dowry – Løv tea from local shop Greenbay Bridge

We are already a month into the new year and life has changed a lot since last time I wrote. For almost two months my life has included a one more person more dear to me than life itself. Already in early December, four weeks before our due date, our gorgeous daughter decided to make an appearance. She was wee bit in the small side, but fit and ready for life without the restraints of an umbilical cord. And who can blame her for showing up early? The weeks before Christmas is a time I wouldn’t want to miss!
The past weeks have been wonderful, but of course also hectic. All my time has been spent with loved ones and catching up on things I haven’t been able to do for the past eight months (pregnancy utterly and completely crippled me!). Now I’m back to my old self, and although life is returning to normal, we are still experiencing a few minor hiccups in dealing with our new life. Life is good though, in fact I would go as far as calling it fantastic!
And tonight I sit cuddled up on the sofa with a big cup of tea while immerse myself in feelings of utter happiness and satisfaction. I hope you’re all having a wonderful evening!

Strawberry jam

Tags

Food, Home made jam, Jam, Recipe, Strawberries, Strawberry jam

Strawberries are probably the best thing about summer and to preserve them is a way of having that wee bit of summer all year round. I have made tons of jam this year, it’s my very first time trying, but it’s so easy, it’s something I’ll be doing every year!

When making strawberry jam you have two options: you can just mix the strawberries together or you can boil them. The flavours of the two types are very different! I wrote about the easiest version here. Boiling the berries will however preserve them better, have them last longer, and will not be as runny as strawberries that have simply been whisked together. It’s still easy as pie (actually a lot easier than pie…)

Add as many strabwerries as you have to a fitting pot. Strawberries can be fresh, but you can also buy frozen berries. No need to defrost. Add to the pot and place the pot on low heat. Put a lid on and go do whatever you want for half an hour or so. Come back and take the lid off. This will send those wonderful odours travelling around the house giving you memories of summer and sunny days. The strawberries will turn into mush, a lovely pinkish-red mush. For every pound (half a kilo) of berries you have add about 3/4 of a teaspoon worth of agar. After adding the agar you let the mush boil for about two minutes (turn the heat up and make sure to stir often) before you turn the heat way down low again. Add as much sugar as you (or any other type of sweetener) but make sure you taste while adding. You’ll never know just how sweet the berries are without any added sweetener, if you don’t taste! Add the sugar and let it dissolve (it will do so almost immediately).

Leave the jam in the pot and wait until it reaches room-temperature before placing in the fridge. You can also can the jam or freeze it. And what an easy way to have home made fresh jam any time of the year! Enjoy!

Lago di Garda

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Autumn, Cold, Lago di Garda, Lake Garda, Summer vacation

Autumn is here and the rain has set in. The little heat we had over the summer is disappearing fast and the temperature is just above two digits most of the days (actually ranging between 12 and 17 – but it’s getting cold). I like these days. I’m quite handicapped and have to spend most of my days indoors. The dark cozy evenings that I can spend snuggled up on the sofa with a huge cup of teas I welcome with open arms. And I can always dream about the paradise we visited this summer.

I’ll leave you with a few photos from the Garda lake area. Don’t let the dreary weather get you down!

Board games and wee children

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Boardgame, Games for children, Snakes and ladders

Earlier this week a local newspaper had an article on the benefits of playing board games with children – and there are quite a lot of them! I imagine many parents took their time to sit down with their children to play board games that afternoon. For me it was good to get a reminder of what I can do with Son that doesn’t require too much on my part (growing a baby and a bump is something parts of my body disagrees with to some extent and has made me rather handicapped). We had actually bought a board game for Son earlier that week, thinking that he now would be old enough to get the point of some of the simpler games. This is the ‘ladder game’, or what is probably ‘snakes and ladders’ in the English speaking world. Son loves it and has had no hard time grasping the concept of the simple game – I guess we’ve underestimated him a bit. But I haven’t tried beating him yet, and that includes a wee bit of cheating on my side…

Solbær- og ripssaft – Black and red currant drink

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Black currants, Cold drink, Currants, Food, Hot drink, Recipe, Red currants, Saft, Summer drink

My parents have several bushes of black and red currants and I was so excited to get my hands on them this year. I was very disappointed. From in all 10 bushes (or thereabout) we ended up with only half a litre of black currants and half a litre of red. I was first set on making jam. With those small amounts I figured jam would last longer and could thus be enjoyed far into next year, if used sparsely. But then I came across a blogger who talked about the benefits of black currant ‘saft’ during colds or flus during the winter. I wouldn’t get many drops of ‘saft’, but what I got will be worth it’s weight in gold when winter sets in. I thus decided on ‘saft’. 

Here is what you need: I had about 650grams of berries and simply halfed the amount, added a comma and litre instead of kilos for the measurement, resulting in (650/2=325) 3,25 dl of water. Divide the weight of the fruit by 3 to find how much sugar you need (650/3= approximately 200grams of sugar).

For one kilo of berries you then need:

•  half a litre of water (1000gr/2=500) 5 dl
• about 330 grams of sugar (1000/3=333)

Add the berries and water to a pot and let it boil for about ten minutes. Add a muslin cloth to a pasta drainer (or similar) put this over a bowl and sieve the ‘saft’ through the cloth. Tie the corners of the cloth together, and hang it over the bowl and remove the pasta drainer. Hang it for about an hour or until it is so cold that you can squeeze what remains of the juice out of the cloth. 

Put the juice back into a pot and add the sugar. Heat it until the sugar has dissolver and leave to cool under a lid. Add to boxes (for freezing) or sterilised jars or bottles (for storage).

When the winter comes with its viruses and colds you will now have some proper c-vitamin shockers to aid your immune system. Drink it hot or cold and enjoy! 🙂

Out hiking and getting warm

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Bonfire, Forrest, Geocaching, Nature

Geocaching, which I talked about here, gave me a good excuse to discover new and exciting places last time we visited my in-laws. But it became a lot more fun as soon as I had convinced them all that this was a fun hobby. One of days we took out, there were six of us: Husband, Son, Uncle T3 (there are three uncle Ts, this is the youngest), Granny, Grandpa and me. And Rambo the dog (a small papillon who lives up to his name only when encountering small birds).

We had two posts we wanted to find. We drove for a few minuted and then found a small, gravel road to take us up into the forrest. The first post was found quickly, we practically ran up. The road led us to its vicinity, and the post was located only a few metres off the road. The second however, was not connected to any of the paths we could find. It was getting cold, we had two arguing about which way to go (arguing for exact opposite directions). We knew in which direction the post was, but we were faced with two paths, non going in the direction of the post.

So we stopped. Made a fire. And watched the sun set in-between the trees. And if we hadn’t already reached perfection: we now have to set out for the second post some other time, which means another splendid day out in the wild.

Lazy friday morning

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Friday, Good life, Tea, Weekend, Work

Honestly it’s not all that lazy, or the morning is slightly lazy, but then I have to be super effective for the rest of the day. I’m working from home today. Which means after dropping Son off in kindergarten I went home, made myself a cup of tea and sat down in the kitchen with a pile of work. I have candles burning, a cup of custom-made (!) black tea and a bit of fruit on the side.

I visited a local tea shop earlier this week looking for a fruity black tea. These dark days require something stronger than green tea to keep me going from morning till night. Unfortunately the only teas that met my requirements were pre-bagged – tea-bags are just not as much fun as loose-weight tea. Part of my daily routine is to find a bag of tea, bring it up to my nose, inhale deeply and truly enjoy the scent, before I turn on the kettle and prepare the cup of tea. You can’t do that with a tea-bag… The shopkeeper soon realised that a carton of peach flavoured black tea would not make me happy, no matter how good the quality of the tea was. Lucky for me he still knew what to do to keep me coming back to the shop: he found my favourite plain black tea among the number of huge jars sitting on a table in the middle of the shop. He then lead me to the other side of the table where I sniffed out my favourite fruit tea. Then he mixed the two, sending me home with my own blend. I think I have to go back and find the perfect blend for every mood and every need! The tea I came home with is a black tea with passionfruit (there must be citrus in it as well). A perfect round smooth taste from the perfect black tea, and a shock of vibrant fruit flavours from the large pieces of dried fruit. Perfect!

As you can see I’m having the perfect start to the weekend (all I need now is an increase of songs in my spotify playlist – I need writing-friendly, good-spirited music that’s perfect for efficient days in front of my Mac. Do you have any songs you could recommend?). I hope you’re having a wonderful Friday and that your weekend will be a blast 🙂

The feast continues

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Christmas, christmas brunch, Christmas morning, Føste juledag, Food, The first day of Christmas, Yule

After a proper materialistic feast yesterday, we continue with a culinary feast today! Son  had the time of his life yesterday receiving more gifts than any two-year-old should have. I see a future of consumerism! European economy failing and falling? Apparently not in this house. I’m not telling you this to brag, I’m embarrassed, but still I’ve played a big a part as everyone else. The evening was a great success though, it seems everyone had a good time. The two-year-old smiled as much as the 82-year-old.

Today is the first day of christmas. We start with a humongous brunch which has been the same for as long as I can remember. My mother is a wizard in the kitchen and refuses to accept any helping hands while cleaning up after christmas eve dinner and making ready for the first day of christmas brunch. I’ll have a few recipes for you at a later stage.

Usually the brunch is the only big meal on the first day of christmas, but in order to gather all us kids (my three brothers and me) my parents have invited all of us, with our families, for a big turkey dinner this evening.

The day will be spent with the family. Husband and Son are sitting on the floor, busy putting together a large pirate-ship, while I’m enjoying the calm before the storm. Enjoy the holidays and have a great time! We sure do!