Emptying My Camera And Getting Caught Up

So I didn´t mean to disappear for almost 10 whole days! Seriously, but fate would have it otherwise. I´ve actually tried to be a good blogger and write often so you all will hopefully keep coming back...but then these woodsmen who are thinning out the woods around our house decided to take down a tree close to the power line and voila...no more internet. The phone company refused to fix it until Monday so we spent a weekend without internet. Dare I say it was...relaxing and go even further as to brag about how much I actually got done in that weekend when the temptation of checking out what you all are up too wasn´t around??? Alas, my internet is fixed and temptation is back and so am I! I have, for your entertaining pleasure- hahahaha, photographed this past weekend for you so you can see what I´ve been up too. I´m sure that is important for you :-) 


Let´s start with some food.....now I am taking this lifestyle course at my gym and so I was thinking I wanted to make some Italian roll ups that would be healthy and hopefully good. I didn´t use a recipe. (Sorry) But put together a dough based on some simple dough principles. Yeast and a combination of dry and wet that gives you a non-sticky workable dough. What you put in as your dry ingredients and wet are up too you. In this dough I tried again to do some healthy twists by using spelt flour instead of regular. However, I struggled using only spelt and ended up adding some durum wheat and finally some fine Italian pizza flour. I wanted some good flavor for my dough so I made a basil, garlic, and oregano mixture with some olive oil that I added to the dough. The process looked roughly like this...

                                      

When I began the next step in these rolls Tiger smelled chicken and came running....

No no you silly cat...this isn´t food for you.....I don´t care how cute you look.....


Let´s see where was I? Oh yeah....next step. I took some onion, some mushrooms, and ground chicken and fried them up....

I used garlic herbs and black pepper to spice this up. You can use whatever you like- that is the beauty of recipes like this. For me though there can never be enough garlic! :-)


Next you want to use a red tomato sauce/pesto. I chose this one with mozzarella and peperoncino that I got at my local asian market, it has a slight kick to it from the peperoncinos that I love. Next time I would have used two bottles of this as these are small bottles and the end result was a little dryer then I hoped for. I put this sauce over the rolled out dough, then the meat mixture and some mozzarella. I have to admit, this was really hard to roll up but I got them rolled up finally and added a little more shredded mozzarella on top...

After about 20 minutes or so in the oven..they looked like this...as you can see slightly dry looking inside- not really the pizza type roll ups I hoped for, but there was mounds of taste in this. So if you´re looking for a nice Italian type bread to go with some other Italian dishes, this is really lovely. 

Are you guys interested in seeing what they´ve been doing to the woods around my house? For those of you who have visited me, these are the woods right in front of the house on the left side as you drive up to the house. I´ve walked my puppies in these woods as it is right next to the house and offered lots of fun places to play with the puppies...now it´s not nearly as magical. Oh yeah...it´s open and brighter..and I´m sure I´ll get use to it but I don´t take to change very well. I don´t like how everything has to change...even if there is a purpose such as generating new growth in a woods...I just don´t see the point in taking practically everything down...one here, one there...with big gaps between trees- ok...but this looks like someone went wack happy....and I´m definitely not happy about it but since it´s not my property I have nothing to say about it really and will therefore adjust to this after awhile I´m sure. What choice do I have?

Now, I admit, I am an emotional eater...I´ve been raised to eat for all the wrong reasons. I don´t eat to survive...I eat because I am happy, sad, angry, depressed, bored..you name it. All the wrong reasons. Which is one reason I am not sure I will ever fully grasp the whole lifestyle change thing because I´ve had too many years living this way, however, I am a firm believer that people have the power to change if they really want too. But that is the great question. I haven´t been completely convinced of my own dedication and will on this subject but I guess I figure if I am 90% good then the other 10% shouldn´t be such a big deal. I mean after all you will be having this lifestyle for.....well....life...so it should be something you can live with. I´ve decided to really stick with the one day a week, eat what I want- idea. Saturday is my day and I won´t begin Saturday on Friday and have it last until Sunday...that is very easy to do. But Saturday I will have what I want within in reason and be a good girl the other days....at least this is the plan...again...it´s all up to me and how badly I really want this lifestyle change and we´ve just recently booked a holiday home on the Canary Islands for two weeks in August and I REALLY want to wear cute summer clothing and not hide behind giant t-shirts...so I am going to really make an effort. 


This past Saturday for my Saturday treat, I bought some vanilla yoghurt ice cream and as a topping I made a butterscotch sauce. You can´t buy butterscotch in Norway! Can you imagine? They have no idea what they are missing out on. Here is a recipe for ridiculously easy butterscotch sauce:


This makes about 2/3- 3/4 cup of sauce so it´s probably smart to double this when you´re first at it! 


1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp flaky sea salt (or 1/4 tsp regular salt) plus more to taste.
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract plus more to taste. 


Melt butter in a medium heavy bottom sauce pan over med. heat. Add cream, sugar, and salt. Whisk until well blended. Bring to gentle boil and cook about 5 minutes. Whisking occasionally. Remove from heat and add one tsp vanilla, taste and add more salt and vanilla as needed. Keeps 2 weeks in an airtight container in the fridge. 


My kids have also found that dipping apples in this sauce is a wonderful treat also!!! 

 Tiger!!! Are you back again?????

What are you saying? Please don´t pay attention to the cute black and white kitty who just wants to sit and smell the food?? Act like you aren´t here??? That´s hard to do Tiger..but if you promise to be a good boy and not jump on the kitchen counters you can sit there while I make up an omelette. 

Good boy Tiger! Now to fry up some mushrooms, onions and bacon for my omelet. Smells good eh Tiger? A little mozzarella cheese and voila...Sunday breakfast which is soooo yummy and apparently healthy! Omelets are yes food- did you know that Tiger? Well, you say yes to everything so of course you would have known that! 

Now we´re all caught up. I´ll be back soon (as long as the internet lines don´t go down again) In the meantime leave a pawprint...eh, I mean comment in my comments box if you feel up too it! Tell me what you love in your omelet? 

Until next time my friends....

South Of The Border Tomato Soup..Otherwise Known As Tortilla Soup

I´m on a soup kick these days. It´s cold (not as cold as usual here but still cold) and nothing tastes better when it´s cold then soup! I´ve wanted to try a Tortilla soup for a long time. We love tomato soups here but usually go the Italian route. This time we tried south of the border. I followed this recipe HERE. Thanks to the Mississippi Kitchen for a fantastic recipe! Her photos are MUCH better then mine but below is my soup in the works and the final product. I used only 1 tablespoon of chili powder in this soup because I have Norwegian children who can´t handle the heat in spicy foods...BUT with that said, this baby was still packing a whopper kick to it with just 1tbsp...even this self-proclaimed, I-can-handle-it mamma was sweating and taking a drink after every bite...but it was good...made me feel good...we made a lot of jokes about how spicy the soup was but everyone agreed the taste was out of this world good! As the recipe says you can use various toppings. I had thought I´d open a box of corn nibblets to put on here but forgot them. We had the fried tortillas and avocado (mixed with a little light kesam/sour cream) and sour cream. The kids used LOTS of sour cream to try and tame the spice in the soup and they said it helped!

Oh I also couldn´t get hold of the fire roasted tomatoes in a can here in Norway so I chopped up about 8-10 regular tomatoes and together with the onion and one can of chopped tomatoes I set them in the oven until they got a slightly burnt look to them then into the blender!

If you´re tired of the same old tomato soup and looking to spice things up this is definitely a recipe to try! Arriba arriba andele andele as Speedy Gonzales from Looney Tunes use to say which loosely translated from Spanish means...Hurry up Hurry up! Come on Come on!!

Enjoy my friends...oh and for those who asked..I turned off the word verification for now..so feel free to leave a comment without the hassle of the unreadable word verifications!

Until next time....

Memories

In the quiet winter months when nature rests under a frozen blanket of white, memories of my mother fill my head. 

A thousand words won't bring you back, I know because I've tried; neither will a million tears, I know because I've cried.

Forever in this heart of mine, an everlasting bond, for now until the end of time, are memories so fond.

Those we love don't go away, they walk beside us every day.
Unseen, unheard, but always near; still loved, still missed and very dear.
- Anonymous

Each happiness of yesterday is a memory for tomorrow.

Death is the last chapter in time, but the first chapter in eternity.

I thought that I would miss you so, and never find my way.
And then I heard the angel say "She's with you every day."
"The sun, the moon, the wind, the stars, will forever be around,
reminding you of the love you shared, and the peace she's finally found."

There was recently a program where different musical stars from here in Norway are honoring each other´s work with their own versions of each other´s songs and the artist Vinni did the following rendition of Halvdan Sivertsen´s song, Sommefugl i Vinterland. You can see Vinni´s version here:

For my English readers who don´t understand Norwegian, I´ve taken the lyrics of Vinni´s song to my dear friend Google translate and given the following back:

Butterfly In The Winter Wonderland

I hear the wind screaming, it makes noise for the Northern Lights
Mountains on either side so here are life there are some that grow in the
But it depends on the weather carries
The hot bli'kke of distant stars
But the closeness and love for the atmosphere to where we live
And it extends upward to the ground can no longer stop it
And that's just us again, again
For there is a small butterfly and everything looks so different in the

And you gave me a smile
Butterfly in the winter wonderland
No one can take from you
Colors you showed me
And may you have the dream come true
Butterfly in the winter wonderland
Butterfly in the winter wonderland
Butterfly in the winter wonderland

It went so far at a time, it flew so far away
It could hardly understand the mountains it had come across
And it makes the water shine, it tried to compare
But once winter is over, so now no 'new start
Hear wings beat in time, sleeping under the moon tonight
Clearly it is cold when it's so clear
But wake up soon
Light of all that pollen
Redo all the ice to properly feed
They say that the lotus grows in mud
So why did I dream
And it extends upward to the ground can no longer stop it
And that's just us again, again
For there is a small butterfly and everything looks so different in the

And you gave me a smile
Butterfly in the winter wonderland
No one can take from you
Colors you showed me
And may you have the dream come true
Butterfly in the winter wonderland
Butterfly in the winter wonderland
Butterfly in the winter wonderland

Not exactly a perfect translation but pretty good and you´ll get the idea of the song. The melody is beautiful and this song also makes me think of my Mom. Maybe not so much the words as much as the melody which is beautiful like my Mom was.

Until next time my friends...

Mushroom Soup That Makes You Want To Scream YES YES I WANT MORE!

I really hope no one takes offense to that title I just had  to use it because my kids were giving me such a hard time about it and I was laughing so hard...I love to tease them and hear them squawk it reminds me of the good ol´days with my younger sister...she was also fun to tease....so just bear with me on the title...but it´s actually true also!!! I made the best soup...it made me giddy....who knew a soup could do that??


Now...a warning...I was so hungry after smelling this soup cook that when I finally told the kids it was ready I totally forgot that I had not made any bacon to decorate the top of the soup with, like I planned on doing. So there is no decoration BUT if you want, add some crispy bacon on top and maybe some chives..that would be scrumptious...I was going to dive into this soup and didn´t want any distractions on my way in...although bacon would have been a lovely distraction, don´t you think?

The original recipe for this is in Norwegian and you can find it HERE. It´s from that TV show I told you about the other day, 4 Stars For Dinner. (Fire Stjernes Middag) I used google translate to translate the recipe for my English readers...am I not the sweetest??? hehehehe..


500 g cleaned, assorted wild mushrooms (difficult now, but the flavor,mushrooms, portobello mushroom + frozen + possibly some dried, soaked)
2 tablespoons oil
1 clove crushed garlic
1 shallot, sliced
2 tablespoons butter
1 carrot, sliced
½ parsley root, sliced
3 juniper berries
1 thyme sprig
1-2 cups of white wine
2-3 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce
crushed sea salt and ground black pepper
4 dl cream


Procedure:
Cleaned mushrooms fried in oil until it is slightly golden and aromas emerge.
Put the onion, garlic and butter, then add white wine and cook slightly.
Add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil with half the cream and season to taste.
Let simmer just under ten minutes.
The rest of the cream whipped to fluffy (not too stiff) and turn into whipped cream just before serving.
The soup is not filtered, so it's nice if all the pieces are sufficiently cleaned and cut into nice chunks.
Alternatively, you can run some of the soup with a hand blender.
Good forest experience!


Don´t you just love Google translate? Good Forest Experience...hahahahaha...so cute....funny little Google...


Now I need to correct some things that I did which weren´t in the recipe and some things I didn´t do. I didn´t whip my cream. I didn´t use Juniper berries and I didn´t use a Thyme sprig. I used about 5dl of chicken broth, instead of the thyme sprig I used some dry thyme and some garlic pepper. I didn´t use 4dl of cream as I only had about 3. So I used that and about half a box of cremè fraichè.  I also used about a quarter of the parsley root, finely sliced and then chopped into tiny pieces (same cutting method with my carrots). I used about 1.5 dl white wine. (Black Tower) I also used half of a regular yellow onion finely chopped instead of a shallot. Finally 2 garlic cloves instead of one...can you ever have too much garlic??? 


I used a blender on some of the soup so there wasn´t just big chunks but some smaller chunks. It was just soooooooo good. Serve this with the best bread you can find with a little butter on top and I promise you´ll be jumping on the first plane to Norway just to give me a hug and thank me for sharing this recipe with you. Even if you don´t like mushrooms, you´ll love this soup...trust me will ya??


My baby girl is in pain and it is really bothering me as a parent to be so helpless in helping her. 

She has a double prolapse in her back. At least she did last time they checked. She is going in for a new MR next Tuesday. When the results are back from that they will be sending her to a back specialist in Gjøvik which is about 45 minutes from here. There they will decide if she is going to have an operation or rehabilitation in a nearby town. Our doctor thinks most likely it will be rehabilitation. We´re hoping for that also. It´s times like this the Norwegian health care system sucks in my opinion. It takes so long to get her seen and get a diagnosis and a treatment plan going and in the meantime she is in so much pain, sometimes to the point of tears...like today when she called her Dad and I (two different calls) crying and talking about how it feels like she is walking around with a knife in her back constantly. I was extremely disappointed in our regular doctor who basically told me to let her have paracet (like Tylenol in the USA) as often as she needed to stay out of pain. I´m not a big believer in medicating for everything and my kids haven´t been raised to take pills for every little thing. So it felt like a big time blow off from the doctor who we were visiting in hopes of getting some help for her pain. Just take some pain killer and call me in the morning....voila...the end of all your problems! Yeah....right. 


It´s the worst feeling in the world when your child is in pain and you can´t really do anything to take the pain away. When you´re fighting a system which has all the time in the world while your child is in pain and you want some help NOW. I´m trying to muster up all the patience I possibly can and hoping that when we get to the back specialist she will finally get some help for her back and she will finally get some relief from the pain she has been in. We can hope at least. Can´t even imagine how this health care system works if you had an even more serious health issue which couldn´t wait....ugh...shiver to think about it...


Have a great evening everyone....this will be my second post for today but the first one was a quick recipe for a yummy fish dinner and since I´m now off until Monday I had time to share some more recipes with you and I promise you, that soup.....YOU WANT TO TRY IT....mark my words...


Until next time my friends....

Fish In A Hurry

Ok, this post will be as quick as my dinner last night. Oh I love you guys...just don´t have time for this BUT with that said, this dinner was so good I can´t not share it with you! I asked a friend at work what she was going to have for dinner and she said she was going to have some sort of fish up in pita bread with salad. I thought....mmmmm....sounds wonderful! I went to workout after work and hadn´t taken up any fish that wasn´t frozen so I decided to buy fish cakes. Yeah..these are definitely not as good as my mother in laws- she is amazing when it comes to fish food but they are the next best thing and were not frozen! 

Now just about any Norwegian will know how to make fish cakes from scratch which will taste a 1000 times better...it´s kind of like skiing...Norwegians are born knowing what to do and it´s the same thing with the "gold" from the sea...they just know how to magically transform the delicacies of the sea into great things to eat. Here is a recipe by Jamie Oliver if my English speaking friends would like to have a go! Anyways, back to my store bought fish cakes.

I warmed these up and while that was happening, in another bowl I mixed together garlic marinaded scampi and crawfish tails along with some Old Bay Seasoning and mayonnaise, spring onion, and sugar peas.

Season after taste, I used a lot of this stuff because...it´s just gooooooooood! Finally, you warm up your pita bread, stuff it with mixed salad, your fish cake, top it with the scampi and crawfish salad and more mixed green salad- as much as you can- it´s not easy to fill these pita breads! Voila...a healthy meal with fish and seafood in a hurry!!!

We had to use a knife and fork on this one...she was bulging out all over the place!!!! This is really really good folks so if you´re looking for something healthy and quick...give it a try! For my English speaking friends who are daring enough to try the fish cake recipe- they freeze beautifully...so give it a try!!!


Until next time my friends........