Food & Thoughts

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...