Food & Thoughts

On a day to day basis, I think it's safe to say that I do most of our grocery shopping and cooking. It's not that M doesn't like cooking (the shopping is another matter), it's just that me making dinner is what makes sense. I get off earlier from school and work, so I don't have to suffer the post-traumatic stress it is to go to the store after 5 o'clock and generally, I say I like cooking us dinner. Only problem: what to make? I usually ask M in the morning what he may feel like having for dinner, but being the man that he is, knowing what he'd like to eat anywhere further away than 20 minutes from the present is a question along the lines of "What is the meaning of life?" He hardly EVER has a clue. So much for inspiration, I'm telling you. We've tried a lot of things: picking out recipes from randomly selected cookbooks that looks or sounds good; I've had M go over my delicious bookmarks, so he could find things he'd like eating...

A story my Mom and older sister like to tell other people from time to time is back from when I was little. It's the one about the red robin. We lived in a big house with large windows, and one day, a red robin flew, head first, into one of those glass panes. I'm pretty sure it died on impact, and it's tiny body fell to the pavement below. Mom got out the biggest shovel we had and scooped the dead bird into the outside bin, thinking not much of it. Until I asked her: 'when I die, will you put me in the bin, too?' I was a deep, deep, kid. Or a weird, weird kid, depending on how you see it. It wasn't because I was afraid to die, I think. I was just wondering what would happen. Another story is the one where I, not much older than 6 or 7, crawled up onto my Mom's lap and burst into tears. My Mom sat there for a second or two, wondering what might have happened, before she asked me what was wrong. 'I don't want to grow old. I don't wanna be an adult...

Allow me to ease myself back into blogging mode (one needs to, every now and again, don't one?) I've actually been cooking quite a lot from my fellow blogging friends these last couple of months - they're not half bad at it, the food bloggers out there, I must admit. Here are some highly recommendable try-it-yourselves: Spring Slaw from Tea & Cookies Let's start with a beauty - I was this close to calling the round-up "The Ugly (but tasty!) Edition" this time, because - well, you'll soon learn why. Tea's spring slaw didn't quite fit into the ugly category, au contraire, it is both very spring-pretty and ladylike in it's colors. That it was also very tasty didn't hurt, either. We had it with potato salad and frikadeller (a Danish meatball I will have to tell you about at a later time) and I had it the next day for lunch as well. Very yummy, and you feel so wonderfully healthy eating all that cabbage and radish and whatnot :) Love Dip fro...

recieving Molly's new book and reading it within three days (I had to go to work in between. Otherwise I'd have devoured it much faster) having dinner with friends who reveals they're getting married, and squealing with delight at the thought having breakfast in bed at 10.30 am - scrambled eggs, whole grain bread, cream cheese and Bayonne ham making bread form scratch on a weekly basis not knowing which of the recipes to attack first in your new Ottolenghi Cookbook because you want to do them all - especially the eggplant ones spending Saturday night with your best friend, her husband and little girl and big slabs of beef buying 2 pounds of vanilla beans and constantly swooning away from their heady scent

Doesn't that look like spring? Just a tiny bit? And don't we NEED a little spring? I know I do. The weather has been absolutely pretty around here the last couple of days, I've dropped off my big bulky winter jacket at the cleaners (so it'll be ready for next winter) and am cautiously stepping out of the ever present jeans and yesterday, I thin pantyhose and a skirt. A SKIRT. Next up, I'm getting seeds ready for the balcony. It IS spring, yay! The great thing about the salad up there - besides being almost girlish-ly adorable in it's colors - is that you can actually make this in the depth of winter. No, the tomatoes won't be as fantastic, but then leave them out and up the amount of sweet, musky melon (and I know, they're not really in season either, but at least they're worth paying for, as opposed to the greenhouse tomatoes from Holland that are all texture, no taste) The REAL time to make this is probably late summer, but I simply cannot wait. I ...

Is what I did this month. It's two weeks ago (it was on the 15th.), but I'm still revelling in it. I love being 30. I had a party - a FANTASTIC party, with cocktails, bubbly, dancing and finger foods. We had small glasses of butternut squash soup, shrimp cocktail in choux puffs (heavily inspired by Johanna's version - in fact, I took plenty of hints from Johanna's Canapées & Finger food section ), blinis with smoked salmon, creme fraiche and chopped red onion; we had chicken liver paté and little tarts with onion and bacon, sandwiches with grilled vegetables and bruschetta with aubergine and feta spread; there was homemade lamb sausages with slaw (and more on those some other time), pork meatballs with herbs and slow roasted tomatoes - and, pictured above, the party favorite, small baked potatoes with seared, VERY rare beef and a caper-tarragon mayo. Almost like béarnaise. There was cake - carrot cupcakes and a traditional lagkage , and chocolate mousse. Of cour...

nothing like a lazy weekend morning in bed, with breakfast, food magazines and a new lens (that I don't quite know how to master yet, but still already adore) I just realized I haven't recieved Gourmet since the May 2008 issue. (I am a subscriber. I don't expect them to just send them to me at random. Although after all those cookies, they should think about it, shouldn't they?) But seeing I didn't realize the lack of Gourmet for a full eight months - do you think that means I've gone overboard in the food magazine department? Is there really such a thing? I also subscribe to Saveur, Bon Appetit and Gastro (Danish food magazine. For men. I still get it though, it's the best around here.) Which ones do you get? (Real food, coming right up. Oh, and happy 2009!)