Food & Thoughts

  For obvious reasons, it would be silly to cook fennel for people who don't appreciate it, which is just about 2/3 of my household. I, on the other hand LOVE fennel - so I had to find someone to cook this dish for. Luckily, I had a much cherished and also fairly new friend come over, who happened to also love fennel.  Let's just say we gobbled up the two bulbs I made between us - it was THAT good. Dressing could definitely be used elsewhere, too. Easy to make, too. 

  Every once in a while, my dad-in-law stumbles upon an offer of red meat he cannot resist. That sometimes result in a somewhat spontaneous (as in: planned within a week or so) dinner - they bring the meat, we provide the BBQ and some sides. Couldn't let the opportunity of trying yet another one of Justines recipes pass me by. I leafed through the book, suddenly realizing that the majority of her salad recipes are made of cooked or baked vegetables, and somehow hit my autumn/winter spot, more than the summer equivalent. I am definitely on team 'cooked salads' AND team 'a salad can be a meal' - but a lot of the recipes suddenly seemed well - wintry. Which might not be entirely fair, because there are Tempura-fried Asparagus with Buttermilk Dressing, A Garden Salad to Make You Love Garden Salads and Basil Cucumbers with Slightly Sweet Peanuts also available - but on certain days, I have to take the people I feed into account as well, and I wasn't sure any of those...

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...

We had this tonight - or, half of it - roasted in a pan, with a generous amount of salt and pepper. Then we put it in a wonderful risotto with bacon, peas and spinach. A little mascarpone and a lotta parmesan. 'twas very nice. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the other half.

One more time, for the crowd! ;) Vanilla Raspberry Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting from Cupcake Bakeshop I made these cupcakes for one of my Sister's friends, back in May. Vanilla cupcakes with a couple raspberries thrown in, and a pink cream cheese frosting. Yes, it was an All Girl Birthday, how did you know? You probably won't be surprised that the recipe was an adaptation of one from the now sadly 'closed' Cupcake Bakeshop , namely this one , and inspired by this one. Basically, I made the batter, then layered it in the cupcake liners with some frozen raspberries. I liked how the raspberries cut the sweetness a little, because you know, those cupcakes are sweet! Savoy Cabbage Gratin from Orangette Now you've had your sweets, I'm sorry, but you gotta eat your greens, too. Molly posted about this Savoy Cabbage Gratin a couple days ago and lo and behold if there wasn't a Savoy cabbage sale at the local supermarket shortly after. I grabbed one, rem...

Listen, I know, I know, that picture up there practically SCREAMS out of season. Not very comme il faut, I know, but if I tell you I made this back in July, will you forgive me? I did tell you I had a lot of photos lying about with stuff I never blogged about and I might as well start now. I - come to think of it we, as in both of the people in this household - eat too little vegetables. One of the things I have resorted to doing is to make salads to eat either before or after the "main dish" if you will, just to make sure we actually get some greens. This was one of those, heavily inspired by Shauna's Zucchini Carpaccio (from October. 2005. Yowser, time moves fast!) that I bookmarked some time ago (obviously). It's easy to do, and if you have a garden with zucchinis growing in it (I envy you - but that's not really the message I'm trying to get across right now), a bag of almonds and a block of crumbly cheese in the fridge, you're all set. Finely slice ...

Surely, what is a Christmas Countdown without at least two installments of DwB? And seeing I only gave you one so far, here's one more, for your entertainment. If it wasn't because I like Denmark as much as I do, I'm sure one place I'd love to call home would be Australia. They have a great food scene, it seems. And they have the most fanatstic light there - at least that's what I gather from the photos taken by Jules of Stonesoup . They are nothing short of amazing - light, natural, ethereal. Beautiful. As if taking incredible photos isn't enough, she also writes awfully well. About her friends, about her family - she writes about life with an honesty that is captivating. Her pieces on the recent passing away of her Mum had me in tears. Even though she is several oceans and time zones away, and all I know of her is what she writes on her blog, I felt like reaching out and giving her a big hug. When a blogger does this to me, I know there's no way I'...

Do you eat enough vegetables? Do you really, honestly, get your " 6 a day? " I think it is pretty safe to say that even though I have the best of intentions, I don't. For all the thinking, writing and enjoying food that I do, I'm actually a real slouch on an everyday basis. This is an account of last Thursday, but you could tell the same story for many of the days during the looooong time off I've just had: I wake up, a large glass of tea on the bedstand next to me, lovingly provided by Martin. I get up, lounge around the apartment for a couple of hours (internetting, checking the balcony, doing some scrap-booking (on a good day)), then suddenly realize I need to get to work. I shower and run out the door. You did notice I forgot to eat breakfast, right? And even though I take my tea with both milk and sugar, please, and there is a lot of it, I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit neatly into the category of "stamina-inducing breakfasts". So I jot to wo...