Food & Thoughts

...and before we completely forget all about the Christmas we just had, let me show you a couple of pictures from this years cookie-baking-parade. My Bonusmom and I have made a tradition out of getting together on the third Sunday in Advent and bake a truckload of cookies. This year, I totally miscalculated and made WAAAAAY to much dough - apparently, there is such a thing as too many cookies! We had a lot of fun though, and luckily, M and I also have a tradition of inviting family and friends around for some white glögg and cookies (and a little savory bite, too) on the very same day - let's just say people were stuffed with cookies and had their purses full of ready-to-bake homemade cookie dough when they left! There are the cookies that are always there - vanillekranse (bottom picture, the big, BIG jar!) and klejner (top tier) - a couple classics, but not ones we make every year - brunkager (bottom tier) and specier (middle tier, right) this year - and a couple new ones ...

I hope you and your family are enjoying the Holidays!

I haven't managed to buy one single Christmas present this year. Yet. I'm going out shopping with my sister today, so hopefully, things will have changed by the evening... But. Just in case they haven't, I was wondering if you think I could buy a whole lotta these Christmas anchovies and give to people instead? That can is just plain wonderful, if you ask me...:-)

No, no, I'm not going to be one of the birds piping the virtues of that fabulous looking no-knead bread from Jim Lahey that is EVERYWHERE on the blogs these days - but I will admit, it does look gorgeous. No people - I'm afraid this bread here calls for a little upper-arm work-out. I'm a self-proclaimed home baker. Not quite a Bakerina ('cause face it, who would be able to live up to the Bakerina?), but I try to make sure we never have to buy bread, unless we feel like something I don't know how to achieve myself at home (that would, coincidentally and ironically, be something like the wonderfully hole-y and slightly tough to the teeth-looking no-knead bread) I not only like baking my own bread for the whole "we're providing for ourselves here"-mentality - but I actually like the job itself. It's strangely comforting and relaxing to me. A long, loooooong, time ago, I used to do yoga. I don't remember exactly how I ended up in a yoga ...

As you might know, I've been doing the working in the restaurant business as a waitress on a regular basis for the past, oh... eight years. Woo. Eight years? Has it really been that long? Time travels fast when you're having fun! Funny thing is - I keep this food blog of mine (okay, I try!) and you people out there know just exactly how enamored I am with food and baking. Even so, I've never told anyone, on either side of the pass about Food & Thoughts existence. And I think if I was to ever tell anyone, I'd start with the waiters. Because somehow, the idea of the chefs knowing intimidates me. Like a lot. Over the years I've met and gotten to know quite a couple of chefs. There's far between the ones I don't admire, or even adore. With them, I've taken on a role of sorts. I was - or should I say am? - the brown-haired girl with the green eyes and the glasses that, at first anyways, didn't know a whole lot about food. The difference between a glac...

Sweetcorn tart from Tamasin Day-Lewis' Art of the Tart. Just not what I thought it would be. The pictures in this post are of food made from recipes that turned out okay, but just not as I thought they would. I don't think the recipes were off, and you might like them should you find the recipe somewhere and try them out. I just thought I'd use the pictures to accompany this post on how things that look good on the outside might be just a little flawed at the edges. Like I feel at the moment. It seems that lately, all I do here is trying to resurrect my blog. Maybe I'll keep doing that for another year or so, maybe I'll stop completely someday. But the silence the last couple of weeks has had it's very own reasons. Personal ones. And reasons that are really hard to talk about in a place that concentrates on food, and the good kind, mostly. It's got to do with me, how I percieve myself and the people around me, and oh. Spaghetti and meatballs from Nigella Law...

anything! Will be back, hopefully sometime soon...

My apologies. It was my sincerest intention to do a DwB post at least every other week. Then what happened? Well, the boss left on paternity leave and left me with a whole lotta work, hence, no post last week. Yup, always blame it on work. So even though I had done some cooking, I didn't have time to do a write up. But it's here today. Having done this DwB thing for quite some time now has had me troubling my mind - not so much with how to keep finding new recipes that I want to try to choose from - lord knows there's PLENTY! - but from what to do with the recipes I kept bookmarking from blogs that I've already once featured in a DwB session. I know, it's shameless of them to not stop posting about delicious things once I have acknowledged them - but they do keep doing it, oh yes they do! And I mean, of course you want to know about new blogs, but face it - it's also the food we're all after, isn't it? So what to do? I could of course just try them out, ...

Inside Lime I have a hard time believing that it's been three months since we returned from our roadtrip. Where did all that time go? Where did all the time that we spend ON the trip fly away too? And why, oh WHY will it not come back?? So a couple weeks ago, I took matters into my own hands, and tried to recreate a little piece of time passed by. The Dinner Club girls (as we shall refer to them in the future) are a bunch of girls that started out in med school at the same time. Some have gone off to do other things, and the rest of us are spread out on different semesters, but we try to get together at least once a month, taking turns to be in charge of dinner and doing the dishes. We try to keep it low-key - it really should be things that we'd make for ourselves on a weeknight, without further ado. But it was summer, I had more spare time than I usually do, with school not taking up the big hunk of time it normally does, so of course, I had to throw myself at it like a kid ...

I had promised myself to be a good girl this week. I'd promised myself: no baking. You can't keep doing cakes and muffins and sweet stuff for DwB, Zarah - you're going to end up having to rename the project Baking with the Bloggers! I know, I've only done one DwB-post yet this time around - but trust me, there's a scary amount of chocolatey treats finding their way into my to-do-list. I could claim I was innocent, that they simply jump in there themselves. But we all know that's a lie. And I'm no liar. So, I went looking for something savory. And you know, as well as I do, that there is PLENTY of opportunities in that respect out there also. It was a windy, cold and dreary Monday, and it was weather for soup. Yes, already that time of the year. And there it was, jumping out at me from my Bloglines. Smitten Kitchen is a relatively new foodblog written by Deb from New York. I forget how I first stumbled upon her blog - at first I thought it was from Cate ment...

I'm so close to being late for La Festa al Fresco - tsk, tsk, but I'm telling you, traffic was just HORRIBLE! ;-) Lis and Ivonne asked us all to bring something fresh and seasonal for the party, so... wait a minute, it's stuck down here in the big brown bag... Yes, of course I brought something! - what kind of guest would I be if I didn't? I'm not so rude as to be both late and empty-handed! Fresh, seasonal ingredient? You know it, I know it - it's got to be tomatoes. While I haven't succeded in getting the cut-off's I got from my Bonus-Mom's green house tomatoes to produce anything resembling the amount needed for this, tomatoes are now and here and everywhere - and they're the star ingredient in this yellow-like-the-sun Tomato & Saffron Tart from Tamasin Day-Lewis' The Art of the Tart . Great book and a fantastic tart! I kept expecting shellfish every time I took a bite of it, because what I usually associate with saffron is Bouilla...

'Dear Diary, Yes, I'm here again. I know, I know - it's an unworthy job, being a diary. You almost only ever hear from me when I'm blue. Or stressed. Or thinking too much about something. You thought something was different this time? Think again... I've started a new job. Yes, I know, it is only two and a half month since I got back and started working somewhere new, but eh. What can you do? New job it is. It actually seems like it's going to be rather exciting - I might get some responsibility here. If I'm woman enough to live up to it. That's always the thing, isn't it? The fear of not being as good as people think you are. Yes, it's their expectations, not yours. Still. The whole not-knowing-where-things are, new people all around, with names you just can't remember, and ways of doing things you're not familiar with. The lack of well-known routines. It's scary and thrilling. And very much - much. School starts again Monday. That ...

Way back when I used to do a regularly scheduled blog, I ALWAYS took part in this brainchild of Jennifer, The Domestic Goddess - The Sugar High Fridays. Then stuff happened, I didn't blog much for a while and well, no SHF for me. Now I am blogging somewhat regularly - so what better way to celebrate that I've been doing more than one post in the past three weeks than to take part in Nicky & Oliver of Delicious Days ' version of SHF: Can You Can? And in fact, yes, I can can , (I can even do the cancan, but that's a whole other thing!) so this time, I chose to bottle instead. Hey, Nicky and Oliver said it was okay - at least that's how I interpreted the rules (there's a "bottle" in there somewhere, isn't there?) Hence, I give to you: homemade rhubarb cordial . During the warm (wait, make that darn hot, as they have been here this year!) months, I drink a lot of water, as I'm told to do. I like flavoring it with cordial, and usually go for el...

This might be kind of silly - I mean why draw your attention to a blog that I'm almost a 100 % sure you already know? Because - well, because as soon as I saw what I tried for this post, I knew I had to try it. So bear with me - it might not be an unknown blog, but it's a good blog. (and there is, btw, noone telling me what I can or cannot do - so of course I can focus on a well known blog - heh!) So: we're talking a guy that's writing cookbooks. Wait, let me re-phrase that - no just any old kind of cookbook. No, this man writes books on desserts . People - how could I not love this guy? Yes, yes, it's him - it's David Lebovitz and his blog that I've put my clammy hands on this Wednesday. Ever since I first read his blog, I've been rolling around on the floor laughing - I love his sense of humour, and the man is downright F U N N Y ! Even honest , too (seriously - if you haven't read his confessions-post, you have to hurry up and do it - it's h...

Or actually, that should be, WE, the natural yeasts in the air and I, have created a monster. I can't wait to see what we can breed from it!:-)

Yes, that's right! :-) Dining with the Bloggers was - or actually, that should be is - a project Cathy of My Little Kitchen laid out for herself in January last year: she wanted to try out some of all the recipes she kept bookmarking, and not just have them withering around on her computer. I joined her, and we spend a couple of months doing little posts on the recipe we tried and the blog from which it was chosen, every Wednesday. We stopped in November 2005, after nearly a year of fun-to-do posts and trying out recipes - swamped with that ever-present real work and exams. Luckily, we got a real-life installment when Martin and I joined Cathy for a week during our recent trip to the States. I even had the great fortune to do Dining with the Bloggers, The Real-life Versions! with Stephanie , Julie , Luisa and Jen as well! Yes, you can call me lucky! And while a virtual DwB is a poor excuse for the real thing, my del.icio.us list is growing like cucmbers in a hothouse during a p...

ANYWHERE!:-D From the market in Cap Ferret (France), where we had a beautiful vacation with the Family this July...

The family bathing in Vesterhavet... I think I was 13 when I first met C, my Dad's wife. When writing about her here, I often refer to her as my Stepmom, but really, that title has a bit much Cinderella-"Where's my dress!? Clean my room!"-ring to it - so how about a bonus-Mom then? I think we'll call her that. Because that really sums up what she means to me better. Anyways. 13. My Dad and I had recently returned from a trip to Burgundy - a trip where the driving back (which, I might point out is just short of 2000 kilometers) was done by my Dad in one stretch, in a little less than 24 hours. He obviously wanted to get home, and I was oblivious as to the possibility of there being such a thing as love involved in his determination to get back so fast. I was just happy to go back to all of my friends at home! A week or two after we'd returned home, I spend the weekend at my Dad's, as I used to do every other week...

(still on a blog-cleaning trip - see what I found!:-) It might be a while since I took the picture, but it's still good... In fact, I might have to make this again soon...) As it reads in the introduction to the recipe for this, rygeost (litteraly smoked cheese) is probably one of the things us Danes have all to ourselves. And no, it's not because it's bad, people, it's just - well, I don't know - just because? To some extent, that does make it pretty silly to give you a recipe for a piece of smørrebrød where the main ingredient wont be one you can just go out and get - but eh, you can't win them all, and look at it this way: if you're ever around here, you'll know what to look for! (and who knows, there might be some Danish people peeking at this blog out there, too!) Rygeost is a soft type of cheese, consistency-wise like a fresh goats cheese. It's made of cows milk though, and often a lowfat type milk. Why someone came up with the idea of smoki...

And because I'm trying to do a little blog "cleaning" these days, which include going over a lot of old, up-loaded photos - so I found this one. Panna cotta with mandarin jelly on top, made for New Years Eve 2005/2006. Eh, so I'm late. But it was good. The panna cotta itself not so very different from this one , but I need to put down in print how to make the jelly on top ('cause I remember having to do it with an apple jelly just a couple months after I did this one, and my memory was BLANK!) So, for the panna cotta 0,75 L whipping cream 3 gelatin sheets (soaked) 150 ml sugar (1,5 dl) Seeds of 3 vanilla beans Whisk together the cream, sugar and vanilla bean seeds in a pan. Bring to the boil and let simmer for 10 minutes. Leave to cool for a bit. Gently wring the water from the gelatin leaves, then dissolve them in the hot cream. Strain the cream through a sieve into the tumblers. Put in the fridge for a couple of hours, to set. For the jelly -should make enough f...

Someone else's home? From The Enchanted Woods at Winterthur... ... for the first time in - well, a long time. Four months? And believe me when I say ours is a household that is very seldom without eggs. It's a weird, and very small gesture, I suppose. But somehow it was also a purchase that made me go: wow. We're really home. In our very own apartment. Not some pink motel room, not a rented house, not someone else's home. Just plain HOME. For the last couple of months: in the States - when we got back and stayed at my Dad's and my Mom's alternately, between work - on a jaunt to France with the family last week - home's been somewhere non-fixed and always fleeting. All of a sudden, it's place where you can keep eggs. Mind you, we were in for a surprise when we got the apartment back. I spend the last week (and still am spending a lot of time) cleaning the place and the stuff in it, 'cause the people that had rented it turned out to be little piggies...