Food & Thoughts

... a long , long time ago, there was this little geezer, who was very bored. "I want something to do!" yelled the little one, as he was lying there, snugly between all of his friends in the drawer - the cut out cookie shapes, the cheese cutter and the butter knife. "Come on, I can be of good use!!" he tried again, hoping someone would hear him... The drawer opened. The little cutter looked up, hoping so much that... but no. They took his friends, the Whiskers out instead. "Wheeeeeiie!" they laughed, they couldn't wait to go tumbling and twirling! After a little while they came back in the drawer, all nice and squeaky clean. "You know what we did, you know what we did??!" they asked the little cutter. "No" the little cutter answered - he was still a bit sad he hadn't been a part of the adventure. "Oh we twirled, and danced, and beat, and creamed sugar and butter! And eggs, one after the other! And lemon zest! And after tha...

As you might have guessed from the sudden infrequency of posts - at one point in my school break I think I actually posted EVERY DAY! - I have gone back to school again. I wanted to THANK YOU ALL for your nice comments on me passing my exam recently - I think it is so cool to know you're out there, hoping the best for me, and joining in my cheer when I succed. Hopefully, the passing and hurray-ing shall be no different at the end of this semester! But - I've been restricted to 8 hours a week of net-time by the mean Boyfriend (!!!) No, really he isn't - I need it, 'cause I could just spend HOURS and HOURS, blog-hopping. "Hello, my name is Zarah, I'm a blog-oholic" - tee-hee! I have been doing some "blogger-homework" though, so have a couple of things up my sleeve, all ready to go - so even if my cooking adventures wont be as adventureous the next couple of months - oh who am I kidding, it's not like I'm gonna stop eating! I'll still ...

This week, I jumped to it and proposed an Asian theme to Cathy . Like I explained in last weeks Dining with the Bloggers , my kitchen cupboards are filled to the point of bursting with stuff that I buy on a whim - so in there is (also) lot of Asian stuff. I actually enjoy Asian food a lot, but usually only eat it when I'm out - Boyfriend is not so enthusiastic about it, so I really shouldn't torture him, should I? There are so many Asian bloggers out there - Santos has very conveniently done a little list here , that I only discovered when Cathy pointed me there, and after having searched high and low in all sorts of blogger archives! So much for being and organized dinner planner, but what the heck! I actually thought it would be quite easy to find something I'd like to do, even though I did have some criterias to be meet - I just have to restrict myself, I don't know why! Anyways -I always fall for anything sweet - Rachel's Fuwa Fuwa Soy Milk Cakey sounded like s...

This is an entry in the Fond Food Memories Competition , held by Jennifer at The Domestic Goddess Even though my life these past years seems to have evolved around food (whether it be cooking it, serving it or eating it), it hasn't always been so. I remember a couple of months back when Meg from Too Many Chefs encouraged commenters to tell where they got their appetite for food and it's preparation from - who had been their inspiration and idol, who had guided them forward and helped them do the dirty dishes on their way. Her own story was a fascinating read about a Mom and two grandmothers, who all through her childhood had made fabulous food and homemade cakes, and who's strongly influenced the way she cooks and generally go about the kitchen today. I never had that. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't feel deprived because of it, nor do I feel I've been a victim of neglect or anything. It's just a fact. My mom wasn't so enthusiastic about the kitchen. An...

For this week's Dining with the Bloggers, Cathy suggested she and I tried out ingredients that we've never cooked with before. If you are anything like me, you too have there, in the back of the cupboard, weird stuff that you bought on a whim, simply because you remembered seeing it used somewhere, thought it looked interesting or read about it somewhere on the net - I think it's a tell-tale sign of a true foodie, that what they come home with from a trip somewhere is not weird souvenir-paper maché horses or something like that - it is most likely something food-related. This time, the trip was to be made in food-blog land, and, as always with Dining with the Bloggers, the inspiration should come from one of the many great blogs kept by YOU out there! And behold, in the dark corners of the back of my cupboard I found a can of condensed milk. Not brought home from somewhere, but bought because I, three years or so ago, spend three months traveling in South America, where I...

So I'm just like WAY ahead of ya'll! Like, I kinda did my entry last Friday , m'kay? Ahem. Or maybe I was just a dofuss and got the dates mixed up and everything, so I accidently posted my entry a week too early. And I could just have taken it down and published it again at a later time, but, as Dagmar agreed with me, there can be no such things as too many Sugar High Fridays, so I just got two, and you only got one! Tee-hee! Gotta work around my goofy-ness, don't I? As was the case for "my last" Sugar High Friday, this one is also hosted by Clement at A La Cuisine ! I threw this one together with the leftovers of my puff pastry for a Friday afternoon treat for me and the Boyfriend. Very simple, but very tasty! And no, I did not get to make my own puff pastry - I did have leftovers but well, life interrupted, as it sometimes does. (From Spis Med) 1 sheet of puff pastry, cut into squares - mine were about 7 cm by 15 cm 1 egg, beaten, to brush on the puff pas...

I was so hoping this wouldn't become necesary, but on the other hand had a feeling that with the new and fabulous commenting field, it might prove a problem along the way. It was only one, little comment spam, I'm not even sure it was a real spam - but it was enough to p*** me off and think: YOU'RE NOT GETTING AWAY WITH IT! So here goes, all of you nice people out there will have seen this in some shape or form before - and for you, mean spammer - you probably have too, but I'm DEAD serious! I will not tolerate you! Therefore: 1. Any advertisment to be posted to this site, must be approved by me in advance, by writing me an e-mail with the contents of your proposed ad. The address can be found on the main page. 2. You may post the comment, endorsing your product/site/service, but I will charge you a fee of $1000 per individual comment. 3. The comment will remain on this site for no longer than 10 minutes, after which it will be deleted. 4. Payment is due on...

It's dinner-time! Or rather, it's baking time this time around, as Cathy's done a couple of rolls and a toaster oat bread , and I tried my hand at TinyFork's Bialys. I had no idea what Bialys was - I'm not even sure I do now I've made them, but they looked so pretty in Fae's post from way back in December, that when Cathy and I decided on the baking theme, I knew I had to go back and find it. As far as I've found out, it's somewhat like a bagel, but you don't boil them before you bake them, and they don't have the hole in them. Please enlighten me, anyone who can..? I laugh often and a lot at TinyForks posts, and she does a load of nice, comforting stuff - don't say pancake one time to many, 'cause I'm sure Fae would just whip you up a batch in no time! She's got a recipe for waffles up at the moment that I'm dying to try - I just recently got a waffle maker - mine's the horrid modern kind, and not nearly as goo...

I've been doing a major clean-up in my kitchen - after 3-4 months of general neglect, due to school, I'm always sorta looking forward to getting in there, moving everything around and finding long forgotten interesting ingredients, putting everything in it's place, getting out the soapy cloths and really giving everything a good run-over. It usually takes me at least a day, even though our kitchen is small, but I enjoy it, have loud music on an do a little dance every now and again. So I was shuffling around all of the boxes, cake pans, plates and stuff, putting everything on the floor to be able to clean properly. I'm a BIG fan of Sex and the City - I have all of the episodes on DVD and LOVE watching them again and again. When the last episode was airing, me and a couple of girlfriends got together and sat there screaming: He's behind you, TURN AROUND!!!! and would have sipped on Cosmopolitans, hadn't it been a school night. So for those of you as obsessed ...

You can't buy vanilla extract in Denmark. Well, you can, but it is HILARIOUSLY expensive. Not just expensive, but tummy-turning, pocket-wrenching expensive. Browsing through Santos ' archives (I've got some catching up to do, with blogs being off-limit for the most of December and January - exam, remember?) I found this - and thought it would be appropriate to share with all of you sad souls out there, that, like me, can't lay your hands on anything like those gigantic, everlasting bottles, SIGH! - how EASY, BREEZY it is to do your own extract. I got the - well, it's not exactly a recipe, more like a guideline - from the lovely chicks at Nigella's Kitchen . Take 5-6 vanilla pods and a bottle of good-quality vodka, rum or cognac. Slit the pods open, and place in the bottle of alcohol. Shake. Leave for a couple of weeks, somewhere dark, shaking every time you remember it's there. Then - use at you would your ordinary extract. You can refill the bottle ...

We want YOU! - to participate in this mean chain-like blogging event that's going on - that's right, it's coming to get ya, it's coming to get ya! Be afraid, very afraid... Somehow, I got stuck with it too, thanks to the ever so lovely OsloFoodie - just because she's got a soft spot for me! Aww, that's so sweet! (grr, grr!;-)) There seriously are some very well-written and educational- in-the-world-of-music-posts out there! Alright: Confession time: I was sorta hoping it'd be passed my way some time - you know, noone likes being picked last! I've loved reading everyone else's (even though half the time I have NO IDEA what the music they're talking about is!) It's actually kind of refreshing to get to know something about all of ye food bloggers out there that hasn't got anything to do with food... I'm pretty easy with regards to music, my Dad is an opera fanatic and used to take me all the time when I was a little girl (In f...

I just made and served cheese-burgers and fries for a Hen Night for one of my sister's girlfriends. Guess that wouldn't be weird under normal circumstances. But - it was at a mansion. One of the girls was a countess. And they had a butler, that for the first three minutes addressed me with "miss". Now, don't you come tell me I don't live in a fairy tale country! (Seriously - that was AWESOME! It was like taken out of a sixties movie or something!! Ok, so the sixties might not be fairytale century, but still...) Hubby's re-do of the burger today Sunday, but the ones served looked pretty much the same...

Just got home from work, e-mail from Clement and comment from Dagmar - SHF is not until next Friday! Ouh! Sorry if I've caused any confusion - I don't know what got into me, but I was sure it was today! That's what you get from not looking in your calendar at all - I'm still on vacation from school, so... No harm done hopefully, this just means I might be able to do one more thing for the event. And afterall, you can never have to many Sugar High Fridays in my opinion! :-)

Puff pastry! Puff pastry? PUFF PASTRY ?!?! I mean, seriously! Clement, this is a hard one! Nevertheless, I will not succumb, I must once again join the challenge that is Sugar High Friday ! This time hosted by none other than the picture-fantastique photographer and blogging role model Clement at A la Cuisine! (You seriously have to take a look at his blog , his pictures takes my breath away!) But puff pastry. Whatta?! I am - as always - all for a challenge. And I wanted to make puff pastry myself, oh yes indeed I did. But then, as I realized Friday was drawing VERY close, and I had no idea yet as to what to make, I thought: you know what? Shop-bought would be good here - especially considering the fact that I never tried doing puff pastry from scratch before, let alone using it in sweet dishes. And hey, it was on offer, would you believe the coincidence? Maybe they knew SHF was coming? Mind you, I have tried eating puff pastry-thingys. I was never really impressed with...

Don't you just love this? Something so dull... Turning into something this fantastic and life-confirming! AH!

Yea, that's right - I've attempted an archive, guess I just have too much time on my hands now! Got scared of how many posts I've put up on baking topics, compared to the number of posts on something savory... Ah well! Maybe that explains the waist line thing... It's in the right hand bar, if you wanna take a look.

Over at My Little Kitchen , Cathy keeps coming up with wonderful ideas and projects to do. Recently, she started doing " Dining with the Bloggers ", a weekly event in which she tries out a recipe from a fellow blogger - it can be any recipes that's tickled her fancy, and you know what? There are so many fantastic recipes out there, being posted every day by all you guys, and just not enough time to try them all out! So I had been thinking to myself: Zarah, you know what? You're REALLY bad at actually trying new stuff. I mean, you might read about them, you might even comment and say, hey, that looks awesome - you might even read the recipe... But you seldom bookmark it. And you almost never, ever actually cook what's in the post. Maybe, if you have the recipe in a book you own yourself, but still... That's just not good enough. Zarah - GET WITH THE PROGRAM!! What was I to do? There was only one thing I could do - I resolutely went to my g-mail account, a...

Well, that's not what they're really called, it just came to me now. Again, the recipe is from Baking by Flavor (just let me know when I'm pushing this book a little to much at you, m'kay?;-)) and I'm pretty sure the results will be amazing if you don't do the two things I did : 1) forgot to put salt in the dough 2) was too occupied reading some food blog (now how did that happen?!?) and let them have just those two minutes too long in the oven. I know - stupid - stupid - stupid! The recipe - Oh, I'd love to give it to you, but I've already posted a couple of recipes from this book and my conscience is nagging at me. But I'll let you know this. It's a three component affair, elaborating over 3 pages in the book . You start by making the yeast dough (which you can leave to rise in the fridge if you want, thus stretching the preparation of the buns over two days) and then there's filling and a so-called sticky mixture . What I f...