In An Attempt Too Wow....

Being 40 years old I decided it was time to follow in the tradition of thousands of women around the world and host my first home party, for Tupperware no less!

To be very honest, I don´t like home parties. I mean, I like the social aspect of them but I don´t like the pressure to buy. You´re always told you don´t have to buy, you can just come and have a nice time, but there you are with everyone in someone´s living room and everyone has pens and order forms and it just feels wrong to not order anything! So generally I try to avoid home parties but I have attended some and they seem otherwise harmless enough and there are always yummy cakes to eat! I do love cake!!! :-)))

So being the "Gourmet" I am...(NOT) I decided my Tupperware party would be a tad fancier with a little more food then just a cake! I was going to attempt too WOW them.. :-)

There were only 6 ladies who came to the party. I had only hung up notice about this party at work and totally forgot to ask anyone else- so for those of you who feel cheated out of this party there will be a new chance in November, just let me know if you´re interested! Yeah, I got suckered into a second party...but hey...by holding a second party within a year I qualified to be a VIP hostess and they get a lot of free cool stuff and that is what it´s all about isn´t it? The cool free stuff???!!! What can I say, I´m a sucker for free stuff...I´d probably have easily been one of those kids who get stolen by someone offering them free candy....if it´s free it has to be a great deal.....right???!!!!

Ok, back to the food. I did do a cake. The Classic Coca Cola cake which those who have been in my life long enough probably have tasted once or twice...a dreamy chocolate cake which is always a success.

Then I decided to try some tapas or finger foods for we simple people who like simple descriptions!!

First I made Asian Chicken Meatballs

These were yummy and when you eat them with your fingers you get the added bonus of licking the sauce off your fingers afterwards...slurp slurp!!! ;-)

Then I made Mini Quiches.

Wish I had a recipe to share with you but I don´t. I found a recipe for salmon mini quiches and pretty much read how high she had her oven and how long she baked her quiches and then pretty much improvised after that. That is the great thing about quiche, you can pretty much put whatever you want in them. So here is what I did. I bought butter dough pastry (you could also use a pie pastry dough would work also) in Norwegian that would be, Smørdeig.

I rolled out the butter dough pastry and cut out circles with a big glass I had and then laid the circles in a lightly greased muffin pan. Then I filled each one with bacon, mushrooms, and onions which I had fried up earlier and a teaspoon of roasted garlic cream cheese from Philadelphia´s new special cream cheese line. Then I mixed cream and eggs together and added some pepper and salt and then filled up the muffin cups until almost to the top, these puff up really big in the oven but then they sink once you take them out of the oven and they cool. I had my oven at 200C/400F and I baked these until golden brown- about 15 -20 minutes. YUM..and by the time I served them they weren´t piping hot either but they still tasted good, luke warm! :-)

Then I went out on an edge and made Deep Fried Ravioli.

Again, no recipe, although I am sure there are some out there and I probably did this wrong but it still tasted pretty good. My kids LOVED them so when I get their approval it will generally be something we would make again! So here is what I did here. I cheated...Gordon Ramsay and Eivind Hellstrøm would prefer you to make your ravioli from scratch but I went to the store and bought mine out of the refridgerator section. I got the ravioli with cheese fill. I heated up a pan of cooking oil and dumped them in until they got a nice golden color like you see above and then I took them out and drained them on paper towels and sprinkled garlic salt over them. Then you serve these preferably warm with a marinara sauce which is basically a tomato sauce and since I was already on a cheating streak I just bought some tomato sauce, warmed it up, and used that as our dip. I felt these ravioli tasted a lot like salty crackers with cheese fill and the dip was absolutely necessary for extra flavor!

For my next finger food I made a classic that Sarah´s boyfriend and family shared with us on our first visit to their house. We all went crazy for this and ate everything they served us so they had to go refill the plate and thank goodness they did because it was yum yum yum....They know next time to just make double when it comes to our family...hehehehe...we´re not shy when it comes to good food!

This is an easy peasy finger food which you can really play around with because you add and subtract ingredients to this depending on what you feel like. We stuck with what we had been served at Pål´s house the first time and that was this:

You´ll get a package of flour tortillas, spread snøfrisk (goat cream cheese) over the entire thing, then add some pieces of smoked salmon and some leek or spring onions and roll up and cut into bite size pieces. Super easy and super good! I have another friend who did another version of this with cream cheese, ham, basil leaves, and sun dried tomatoes and again- YUM YUM YUM!

Finally a faithful reader of my blog, who also has me as a friend on facebook, sent me some wonderful suggestions of various appetizers they enjoyed and I decided to try Bruschetta as I´ve always wanted to try it but never given it a shot. Primarily because I am the only one who really eats tomatoes in the family- in their natural form..so I just never have gotten around to making it. However, now I´ve made it and I LOVE it! So easy, so fresh, such a delightful taste in every bite! I loved tomatoes before but then I added finely chopped garlic and finely chopped red onion and some basil leaves (dried- fresh would probably be even better) and some salt and pepper and lovely extra virgin olive oil and let those flavors wrap themselves around each other in the fridge for several hours and now I am like a bruschetta addict....I had to have some for breakfast...and now it´s soon lunch...I´ll probably have more for lunch...it is just that good!

Oh I forgot an important part in the bruschetta and that is the bread. I bought some cheap french baguette bread here in Norway that you reheat in the oven, I think it was like 9 kroner or something at Joker..I sliced it ultra thin and brushed it with olive oil and sprinkled it with garlic salt and then stuck it in the oven until it was crispy...super easy. I am sure if I had bought a better quality french bread- or made some myself it would have just made it all the better, but sometimes we just want to get by cheap and easy...that was me last night!

I think the food was a success. I was serving a bunch of Norwegians, which, God bless them...they are quiet and shy when it came to a buffet type serving. Unlike my darling countrymen who would have piled their plates as high as possible, these ladies took a few pieces on their plate at a time and a max of two trips back to the buffet in the kitchen...but everyone said they enjoyed the food...so I was happy! :-) It´s important for a cook, even a hobby cook, to feel like she has made people happy with her food...it gives a pleasure I can´t describe unless you´ve experienced it yourself...even if I have to beg for feedback, I´m gonna find out if you liked my food so I can experience that happy feeling! And if you don´t like what I´ve made it´s ok too, I learn from my mistakes and I can´t learn if no one tells me what they don´t like!

I´m exhausted today and the weather is not encouraging anything but hibernation under a warm fuzzy blanket with a good book or magazine and something warm to drink...I should do more...I have a list...a never ending list...but I have a need to listen to my body and take it easy when it says I have had enough, so I can get up and get going tomorrow and not just be more exhausted.

I think I´m gonna snuggle with this guy today....

Look at him laying up there on that couch with the fuzzy warm blanket and that big ol´teddy bear face just calling out for me to snuggle snuggle snuggle with him....Oh I love my Bently Bear! :-) Alright, I love the whole gang...they are all a bunch of funny monkeys who fit perfectly into my circus life!

Have a wonderful day with your funny monkeys and thanks for stopping by!

Until next time my friends....

Worth A Thousand Words

My mind is on overload right now..too many thoughts and such going on up there so until things settle down up there I´ll just share some photos I´ve taken recently with you...

Flowers planted in boxes around my work place..

Saw this guy in the field the other day...grabbed my camera and went down into the field to try and get a closer shot...didn´t see mamma anywhere and when this guy saw me getting closer he high tailed it into the woods...still didn´t see mamma and was wishing really badly that I had a longer zoom on my lens so I could have gotten better shots..I´m always in awe when I see these animals...

When we don´t have moose to watch or any other wild life...we pass the time away here in the woods playing with bubbles....yeah...we enjoy simple pleasures....

Bently

Isabella

Jackson

Nanna

Jenny

The gang got groomed today...and my biggest fear came true today..I cut too far down on Isabella´s nail and she began to bleed and I didn´t have any powder to stop the bleeding, so I just held a cotton pad on it until she stopped. Felt like the biggest monster in the world..poor thing shakes as it is when I brush her. Grooming is totally not one of her favourite things to do in the world and then I had to go and cut too far on her nail...ugh...I feel horrid...

Our trip to Rome is finally booked and we will be enjoying a full week in the Eternal City in October. The whole family plus Sarah´s boyfriend (whom I now refer to as my son-in-law...he´s such a good kid and they are such a good match..one is allowed to hope!) are going. Of course now that we have something to look forward to time is going super slow! Typical!

As you can tell life is pretty darn exciting right now...NOT....I´ll be back with hopefully a more interesting post soon!

Until next time my friends...

A Very Long Bike Ride and A Low Carb Taco Pie Dinner

I decided that today I would take a very long bike ride. I get crazy like that every now and then. Suddenly I am going to do something and the more I see other people doing what I want to do...the more determined I get that I will do it too. It´s just, I have this love/hate relationship with exercise. Once I´m doing it...I love it....before I am doing it...I hate it...so getting started is hard. I often have to argue with myself as to whether I am going to do something or not. I am a procrastinator. There was a commercial in Norway where this couple kept saying they´d get to things.....tomorrow....or in the weekend....that is so me. So this morning I woke way too early to a little Aussie who shall remain nameless to protect her sweet soul...(Jenny) barking like mad at something in the field. The leos who sleep with me immediately woke from their slumber, ready to assist and all their movement and whines woke me. So out I went to the kitchen where Sarah was up having breakfast.

She had work today so she was up unusually early for a Saturday. Had a few cups of coffee with her and my diet milkshake thingy..(I´ve been drinking these milkshake things for breakfast...not sure how to describe it except they aren´t that great but are packed with vitamins and minerals.) I also had a yoghurt. Sarah left for work and I had another cup of coffee...surfed Facebook a million times, read the newspapers online, brushed my teeth, weighed myself...can you tell I was trying to prolong the inevitable?...I then decided to get dressed....I put my bike shorts on which was a big sign that the bike ride would happen. I guess I was trying to figure ways to not let myself back out of my plans...I can be sneaky like that..hehehe...

The weather was gorgeous when I started my ride. I rode my bike toward Stavsjø which is where I work (about 11km from my house) then toward Brumunddal (perhaps another 8-10km) and I stopped at this lovely lake and ate my apple and looked at the clouds dancing on the lake. When you drive past all this beautiful nature you can´t fully get a sense of what you are passing until you pass it at a speed which allows you to truly experience the nature. I heard bubbling creeks I never knew existed because they are so covered with so much vegetation that you can´t see the running water. I saw the flowers along the road closer then I do when I drive past them at 80km an hour..it is such a wonderful feeling to experience nature like this..

Back on my trusty steed I continued my journey up Duengerhøgda which is the top of a hill which you get too through long winding roads that have an ever so slight slope the whole way up. At one point I had to get off and walk some..my arse was in shock after being thrown into my new "lifestyle" plans so abruptly. I maybe walked 1km then got back on..determined that I would ride as much of the trip as possible and besides that one little walk, I only got off one other time for about the same distance, so I´m so proud of myself!

I kept talking to myself throughout the ride...telling myself that I could do this...just take it easy...keep pedaling...don´t give up...I believe in you Amy. I really felt like my Mom was with me also. I believe she was giving me strength when I was doubting myself. Maybe some people laugh at the fact that I felt like my mom was with me but I believe my mom is with me anytime I meet a challenge in life. Mamma´s are there for their kids..that´s just what they do...dead or alive, in my opinion.

At the top of Duengerhøgda I knew the worst of my trip was over.

I only had one big hill left and that was the church hill up to my house. I had done that one before so I wasn´t too worried but my knees were starting to ache (as well as the rest of my body....oh and my poor arse...). As I approached Helgøya the weather wasn´t as lovely as it had been in the beginning but there was no rain..one should be grateful for small things in life, hehehehe!

Here you can see the beautiful island of Helgøya in the distance. Did I ever tell you this island is heart shaped? You can read more about this area in an article written in the national newspaper VG that came out today. I´m sorry the article is only in Norwegian. If you don´t read Norwegian perhaps you can google translate the article?

The local garden club has made some beautiful flower arrangements around Nes and on top of the bridge that goes from Nes to Helgøya. I love how the people of this area take such pride in where they live!

When I got to Helgøya church I had to stop. I didn´t think I could do anymore. I had pushed myself more then I have in weeks- months...so I stopped and decided to eat some of the nuts, dried fruit, and dark chocolate I brought along and my banana. While I was at the church I decided to call Thomas and ask him if he would be willing to come down to the church and bike ride with me up to the house...the last little bit of my trip. I needed some help...I had woke him up, he had his friend spending the night and they had been up late...but he said "sure Mom, I´ll be right there"...

Yeah...this mamma was proud...not only of herself but this great kid she is raising...he showed up with a smile on his face and kept telling me I could make it when I would tell him I didn´t think I could make it up one more hill. When we got home he told me how proud he was of me. Good kid that one...

Before I tell you about dinner I have to share with you the air photo we had made of our property.

I don´t know about you guys but the Captain and I were thinking a pool was missing from this photo to make it perfect...hehehehe...What do you think?

Now to dinner. This is a low carb dinner and probably a great alternative for those of you who eat a gluten free diet as well.

Taco Pie

4-6 portions

First you´ll make your pie bun out of EGGS. You´ll need the following:

4-5 eggs

1 deciliter whole cream

2 tbsp butter

Melt the butter in a pie form and then brush the edges of the pie form and add egg mixture. I added some gourmet salt, garlic pepper, and a little paprika spice to the egg mixture. Bake in the oven at 180C/365F until the top is dry and has gotten a slight golden color.

Should look something like this.

You´re going to mix up your own taco spices instead of using pre-made taco spice. So you´ll need the following:

1.5 tsp Salt

2 tsp chili powder (chillipulver)

2 tsp paprika spice (paprikapulver)

1 tsp garlic powder (hvitløkspulver)

1 tsp onion powder (løkpulver)

1tsp cumin (spisskummen)

a dash of cayenne pepper

The recipe I used calls for hamburger but we used ground chicken meat. You´ll need 400 grams of this. Fry it up in a pan on the oven in a little butter (I used coconut oil) add one finely chopped garlic boat. Add about 2 tbsp of the homemade taco spice and 1 tbsp tomato paste, finally add 1/2 deciliter of water. Mix well and then turn down the heat and let simmer for a few minutes. Your pie bun should be resting after being baked in the oven...when your meat is finished you´ll put that on top of your pie bun.

Next you´ll mix up the cheese topping. Here´s what you´ll need:

2 deciliters of shredded cheese (use whatever kind you want that melts easily)

1 deciliter of whole cream

1/2 deciliter of crème fraiche

Mix this well.

Put some sliced raw onion rings on top of the meat and some cherry tomato boats then top the pie with the cheese mixture.

Bake this at 180C/365F for about 10-15 minutes- until the cheese gets some color..should look something like this..

While the pie is in the oven you can make some guacamole. Here is what you´ll need:

2 avocados

1 deciliter crème fraiche

1-2 tsp lemon juice

2-3 garlic boats (more if you love garlic...this is a very tame guacamole)

2tsp good olive oil

Use a hand blender and mash all of these ingredients together. We had a lot of guacamole left over after dinner so we used the last bit of taco spice that was left over and mixed that into this and it added a lot more flavor. Now we can use the guacamole for veggie dip- nam nam..

Serve this dinner with a fresh salad and you have one very healthy Saturday evening meal. Bon Appetit!

I´m anxious to see how my body is tomorrow..right now it hurts every time I bend my knees. Some might say I over did it..and maybe I did...maybe I should have built up to such a long trip but like I said...when I get something in my head I just have to do it...do now, learn later that is the story of my life...hahahaha...I think I´ll be waiting to go to the gym until Monday now. Had plans to go tomorrow but I´m thinking I might not be able to move very well tomorrow so I think I´ll be grooming some leos (at least their heads)...hehehehe..Hope you all have a wonderful Saturday evening and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Until next time my friends...

More Low Carb Recipes And Rome

Happy Friday everyone! Hope your last day of the work week has been a good one. I had off from work today so the kiddos and I went into the gym. I´m so proud of us, two days this week...which compared to the last weeks is really a big thing. I do ten minutes of warm up on the stationary bike then I do strengthening exercises with various weight machines and free weights and finally some sit ups which I really felt today after Wednesdays sit ups. My stomach is in shock...poor thing....little does she know that I have good things in store for her...even though I´m beating her up physically I am making up for it with some yummy low carb dinners such as...

Hunter Soup

(The direct translation from the Norwegian cookbook- I´d probably call it Mushroom Soup)

A side not here: Sarah made this soup because I was working yesterday...was wonderful to come home to find dinner already made...my children spoil me...

Sarah served this with cheese chips which is basically cheese that bakes in the oven until it melts and then you take it out and it gets crispy and chewy and you can eat it instead of bread to soup. YUM! Didn´t miss my bread at all with this...

We bought a mix of various types of mushrooms, so there is no rule as to which mushrooms you have to buy. We bought about 400 grams of mixed mushrooms which were on sale at the local grocery store for 10 Norwegian Kroner...a bargain in Norway!! You´ll also need the following:

1 onion

2 vegetable broth cubes

8 deciliters of water

3 deciliters of whole cream

butter to fry the mushrooms and onions in.

In a pan on top of the oven you melt your butter and add your mushrooms and onions and stir them around until they are have a nice color. Add salt and pepper to taste. Take out a few mushrooms for decoration and then add water, broth cubes, and cream and let the soup simmer for about 15 minutes. Sarah used our hand blender and pureed the mushrooms in the soup then added the mushrooms she had set aside earlier when she served the soup.

For the cheese chips, cut cheese in half centimeter thick slices and lay them on baking paper on a cookie sheet. When they start bubbling in the oven, take them out...voila...Hunter Soup!

For lunch today after our workout I decided to make an omelette with lots of veggies some fuet sausage from Spain and some blue cheese.

I love the colors of the veggies in this...I used red pepper, red onion, a little garlic, asparagus, and cheery (well I mean Cherry but I misspelled and thought it fit) tomatoes..

After I have added the egg, I added some rocket salad and the fuet sausage and blue cheese.

Voila....low carb friendly lunch and great after a good workout!

After this scrumptious lunch I took Isabella and Bently for a walk which I tried to do briskly, I also took a few chances to try and jog...so I guess you could call it an interval type training. I was certainly breathing hard as were my walking partners..especially Isabella...my little Italian isn´t a big fan of jogging unless it´s on the trail of a deer or something...

Speaking of Italy. I think we have finally decided on the location for our vacation this fall. Rome Italy!!

We have found a wonderful apartment in the heart of Rome, very reasonably priced and the reviews on the place (22 of them) were very positive. Many who were repeat visitors and the owner of the apartment is apparently very helpful. Always nice to have a native help you around if you don´t want to get caught in every tourist trap a city can spring on ya! Hopefully we will get confirmation soon as to whether we can get the apartment. Keep your fingers crossed! Many of you have visited Rome so please feel free to write your tips and advice for a great trip in the comments....where do you recommend eating? What do we HAVE to see? Is there anything outside of Rome worth visiting for a day?

Finally I am going to leave you all with our dinner tonight...this post is bulging with recipes but I think it´s important to share this low carb adventure with you all. I have been searching the internet for information on eating low carb and there is a wealth of information out there so I´m just adding my two cents to the pot...hope you don´t mind!! Now mind you, we are not hard core low carb...but trying to eat 80-90% low carbs and hoping the last 10-20% won´t be so bad if we are being good the rest of the time and working out. I´ll let you know how it works out..we´ve only been doing this about a week but I feel very positive about it and haven´t missed anything really.

OK, for dinner tonight we had Spicy Chicken Filets with Peanut Butter and Coconut...sounds good eh? It was! Ok, here is what I did:

5 chicken filets sliced into bite size pieces..fry this up in a little coconut oil and butter (I was going to just use the coconut oil but the recipe called for butter and I wasn´t sure if it would effect the taste, so I used a little of both!) Coconut oil is suppose to be one of the healthier oils for you to use! I thought it would make my food all taste like coconut but it doesn´t..haven´t tasted any coconut after taste!

Once your chicken is browned, add about 1-2tsp of Sambal Oelek . The recipe called for 1tsp but I threw in one more because it didn´t look like very much. Then you will add about 1tsp salt, and the juice from half a lime. (I used an entire lime...again, I felt like since I was increasing some other things I needed more lime and I´m glad I added it) The recipe calls for 2tbsp of peanut butter..but I added 3. Then you will add 2 deciliters of coconut milk and 2 deciliters of whole cream. Let all of this simmer for about five minutes. I served it with a fresh salad and some cauliflower and this was wonderful. Just enough kick from the Sambal Oelek...even my kids enjoyed this one and they are very picky when it comes to spicy!

If you are trying a low carb diet, I highly recommend all of these recipes. I loved each one of them. My kids thought the soup had a tad too much pepper in it...but I thought it was great...the salt and pepper in the soup is by taste..so you can spice it up or down as you like. Same with the Sambal Oelek. So be adventurous my friends and try one of these yummy meals and let me know what you think!! Oh and don´t forget to share your best Rome tips with me ok? Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Until next time my friends....

Salmon Recipe, A Return To The Gym, And A Birthday

So as I mentioned earlier I´m trying to incorporate a lower carbs diet into my life. Take note of the key word there folks- lower which means some carbs not 0 carbs. I have mentioned before how important it is for me to be able to eat what I want but at the same time I am open to the fact that some foods aren´t as good for me as others and I need to eat less of them. So with this in mind I´ve entered the world of low carbs and in an effort to have some easy ideas on hand for low carb meals I got the following book:

This is a Norwegian low carb book by Annika Dahlqvist and Maria Höglund. For those of you living in Norway I highly recommend it. Lots of yummy recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between. There are also recipes for salads, sauces, and side dishes. So in my opinion a great read for we novices in the low carb world.

Tonight I decided to try a cheese filled salmon dish with a white wine sauce. The recipe calls for gorgonzola cheese but the fear of the unknown was too much for my kids so they put their food down. I was ready to try it but had to buckle under for the majority. Have you ever tried gorgonzola cheese? How would you describe it?

I decided to go with a mild blue cheese which worked just as well in my opinion. This recipe didn´t call for any other spices other then a pinch of salt but I decided to add my own with a dash of lemon pepper as well.

English translation for recipe:

4 salmon filets without bones

100-150grams gorgonzola cheese

melted butter

salt

Sauce

1 deciliter white wine (cooking wine is fine)

1 fish broth cube. (we get broth flavorings in cubes here in Norway- one cube is usually enough for a half liter liquid)

2 deciliter créme fraiche

1 deciliter finely chopped dill

1 big dash of butter

Cooking instructions in English:

Set the oven for 200C/400F

Divide the cheese into four equal parts. Make a pocket in the center of the salmon filets(you can leave the skin on the filets, no problem) Fill the pockets with the cheese and brush with melted butter and add salt. Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes. I ended up kicking my oven up to about 250C/450F but watch your fish and take it out when the tops are golden and cheese is melted.

For the sauce: loosen up the fish broth cube in the white wine, add the créme fraiche and dill and butter. Whisk everything together on a low heat. It doesn´t say so in the recipe but I added a dash of gourmet salt and some lemon pepper to the sauce as well.

Into the oven my little cheese stuffed salmon babies...see you in a bit...

Voila, beautifully baked salmon....

Tender juicy salmon that melted in our mouths with a delicious sauce and side of veggies. I think I could get use to this low carb thing if it´s all this good....

So today we also headed back to the gym for the first time in forever. All three of my darling children came along and it was delightful for this mamma´s heart to see her kids doing something physical for themselves. I hope they will learn to appreciate exercise a lot quicker then ol´mamma...and perhaps if I can keep it going they will follow and being as young as they are grow a deeper love for it then even I have. I do love exercise...it´s just getting started which is my battle. Once I´m going I love it and it feels great. Problem is getting going and keeping it going indefinitely. I can be really good at exercise for short periods then something happens and I stop. I am so aware of my faults and yet they happen over and over. Will I ever learn that it is easier to keep going then stop and start all the time? UGH! What is your hurdle with exercise or are you one of the lucky ones who have no hurdles and can´t imagine a day without exercise?

Yesterday Julia had her sweet 16 birthday. Thanks for all the birthday wishes here and on my facebook wall for her, she read them all and it meant a lot to her and to me that so many wished her well on her special day..

We didn´t celebrate like the sweet 16 birthday kids on MTV celebrate (those are ridiculous) but she had a nice day I think- hope. It was bitter sweet though, as the day before she had said goodbye to her dad...he hasn´t been home for one of her birthdays since she was 8 and yes we celebrate with him before he goes out but it´s not the same for her. It´s one of the drawbacks of the profession the Captain has that he can´t always be there for special days and as an adult I understand these things but for a growing young lady it´s harder to accept, even though she claims she understands.

I also had to work on her birthday so the only ones who were home with her all day was Sarah and Thomas. They did their best to give her a great day starting by blowing up tons of balloons and putting them in her room before they woke her up. Then Sarah made Julia some french toast for her birthday breakfast and when I finally made it home she got to open her gifts from her siblings. She got money from us before her dad left...so all in all she was very pleased with how the day went. I owe a lot to Sarah for making the day special for her sister when I couldn´t be there...she is good at that kind of thing!

We were going to eat chinese in Hamar at a place Julia loves but of course the ONLY day they are closed are Tuesdays...which is what the day was yesterday...so she said she would like some beef and Sarah said there was a steak house near the Lindex in the center of town. So we headed there hoping it would be a good substitute for the chinese. Unfortunately though it was a nightmare. First, we all decided we wanted baby back ribs which was 199kr, however, the waiter quickly came back and told us they were completely out. Ok, I ordered a fajita (chicken and beef combo) and Sarah ordered a pepper steak and Thomas and Julia ordered some meat plate with lamb, chicken, and beef with rice and veggies. My dish was so incredibly spicy my tounge got numb, Thomas and Julia could barely chew through the meat they got and the rice tasted like boil-in-bag and veggies were so overcooked they looked wasted away to almost nothing. Sarah´s steak was drowning in a sauce that was anything but a classic pepper sauce and her veggies consisted of 2 broccoli heads and 2 carrot stripes! Where the hell is Gordon Ramsay or Eivind Hellstrøm?? This place desperately needed their help. Our dinner ended up costing us 1189kr (about 216 dollars) so it was an expensive lesson on where NOT to go out to eat next time..I felt so badly for Julia but my kids all did their best to stay positive. They said it was just another reminder that my food was the best! Hahaha...I love those guys!!!

I had made Dirt Desert for Julia´s birthday celebration while her dad was home, so I didn´t make anything on her actual birthday. Mostly because I was at work all day, had I been home I think I would have buckled under and baked something for my sweet girl just to make the day extra special. Instead we got an ice cream at the end of our trip to Hamar and she seemed ok with that. If you haven´t tried dirt desert- do so..you can find vanilla pudding recipes online if you can´t find vanilla pudding in your local store or you can use chocolate pudding instead of vanilla pudding. This is such a fun desert and I have surprised many Norwegians by putting a flower pot with "dirt" on the table, only to take out the plastic flowers and put a big giant spoon in the pot and say- VÆR SÅ GOD (Help yourself!)...hahahaha, I can still see their faces..so funny!!

Tonight my Captain called and said he made it safely to Brazil. The weather was 20C and blowing winds. They are going toward summer down there so I imagine his weather will only improve in the weeks ahead. Unlike here, where this morning we woke up to 3C...it did manage to warm up to about 8-9C by the afternoon but there was nothing that would really indicate it was only August...ahhh...gotta love these Scandinavian summers and those sexy blue eyes of my beloved honey bunny....hehehehe....

Sarah and I are researching vacation possibilities for when the Captain comes home. After our failed summer vacation we are hoping to be able to take a week somewhere when the Captain gets back and that it will be much more successful then our summer vacation. We are looking at the South of France, Italy (The Italian Riviera, Tuscany, and around Rome), and we´re looking a little bit at Spain. Hopefully in one of these areas in October we can experience at least Norwegian summer temperatures but we won´t be basing our entire trip around a pool and pool activities..so we want to experience historical sights, quaint markets, wine farms, beautiful nature, and other cultural curiosities these places could offer. Of the choices above, where would you go and why? I´ll let you know where we are going once I find out!!!

Have a great evening everyone....until next time...