A Spoon, a Fork, and a Knife

Thoughts on Intervals

2011-10-10T12:54:00.002-04:00

There are few stages in life that consist so actively ofthinking about how one wants to define oneself as those intervals that arespent looking for jobs. This process isn’t just about envisioning who one wantsto be in the professional world, but it seems to be just as much aboutunderstanding oneself in contexts completely isolated from career aspirations.

Banana Muffins - recipe below

It’s been almost exactly a month since my job search in London started full-on. I’ve spent that time applying for positions,contacting companies I want to work for, and envisioning a possible future invarious roles. I’m constantly imagining what my everyday life might be likewere I to work here or there. Taking the very little I know about each place,my mind creates possible scenarios at each one, vaguely seeing myself doingthis job or that. So much of my state of being during this phase seems to bespent looking towards the future, scrambling to get out of the here and now towhere I’d like to be, to become who I want to be.

Whether these visions of the future hold any truth to themis out of my control. All I can do is put myself out there for employers.And wait. Will they grant me my dreams of becoming what I envision? To findout, I have to play the game. Will unemployment last another week? Anothermonth? Another five months? Another year?

It’s easy to forget, with all of this focus on the future,that who I want to be is not just about what career path I end up taking. It’seasy to forget that who I already am, the things in my life that make me, me,exist independently of whether or not I have a job. It seems important to thinkabout the way I deal with the inevitable waiting involved in this process. This waiting is actually what my life is about at this point in time, andthe strength and integrity (or lack thereof) of dealing with it can be just asimportant in defining who I am as the various futures I see for myself. These futuresare, after all, only shadows of possibilities.

With this in mind, I’ve lately been actively pursuingspending time doing things that are linked with my understanding of whoI am. I've been trying to see this period of unemployment as a part of life itself,not just as a period between A and B. As an end unto itself. As one of my wise friends recently wrote to me, “Stay as stress-free as possible about your job situation, because soon enough you’ll have one, and then you’ll have that to worry about.”

I’ve been trying totake time to listen to music and really hear it. To meet up with friends andtalk about our situations. To go for walks and explore. And of course, to cookand bake and spend time in the kitchen, one of my favorite places of all. It is in this spirit that I give you this absolutely fantasticmuffin recipe, which I recently tried out. They come out moist and fluffy and spicy and tasty. Food sure is the stuff life’s madeof.

*****

Banana Muffins

Original recipe from this cookbook.

1 cup flour

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 ts baking soda

1 ts baking powder

1/2 ts ground cinnamon

1/4 ts nutmeg

1 cup rolled oats

1 egg white

1 egg

2 Ts vegetable oil

2 ripe bananas, mashed

1/2 cup plain yoghurt

1/2 cup dried fruit (raisins, sultanas, etc.)

Mix flour, brown sugar, soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Grind rolled oats in a blender or food processor until flour-like consistency, add to dry ingredients. Whip egg white in separate bowl until fluffy, but not stiff. Add egg, oil, bananas, yoghurt, and dried fruit. Fold into flour mixture until just combined. Spoon into prepared muffin tin and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (205 Celsius) for 20-25 mins or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Whirlwinds

2011-09-22T05:38:00.000-04:00

Things have been kind of a whirlwind since I last posted. I spent the summer in NYC, juggling catching up with all of my loved ones and working on my MA dissertation. My plans of posting about yummy places in Prospect Heights, my adopted home for the 5 weeks I was there, will be shortened into this:

If you ever find yourself on the northeastern end of Prospect Park (maybe there for Grand Army Plaza? Brooklyn Museum? Botanical Garden?), go here for ice cream, here for tacos, here for brunch, here for lunch, here for coffee, and here for drinks.

Ample Hills ice cream in Brooklyn

After NYC, I spent two weeks in Oslo: an emotional experience after the events of July 22nd. I was glad to have good friends and family around who had been in Oslo during the attacks and was very proud of the way Norway responded to them. The summer ended with a rush to finish my dissertation and a mad apartment hunt all over London. After seeing loads of mediocre and downright depressing places, we walked into our new home and knew it was right.

Yes, it was a mess, it was chaotic, the bathroom was torn out and halfway through a renovation, but it had a soul. Our landlord seems to be a second-hand furniture fiend. Plus the area's really cool. And we had to find a place quickly so that we could start the next stage of life as active job-seekers. We moved in to promises of a completely renovated flat within a few days time.

Fast-forward three weeks and renovations, although not anywhere near finished, have come to a standstill. I might have to get used to using a lonely toilet in an otherwise torn up room, and showering sitting down in a bathtub. It seems oddly fitting that this part of life also is chaotic while so many other parts of my life are uncertain.

There are some definite perks about this place. It's on a quiet street near loads of cafes, bars, and markets. The couple we're sharing a place with is fun and easy to get along with. The living room is cozy and spacious for London. Plus the kitchen is filled with all of these cool/random accoutrements. Like a bonafide 1981 commemorative Charles and Diana plate. And a 5 piece upright toast holder. And a 70's teapot. And a tagine clay pot and lid, which was put to good use this past week, as outlined below.

---

Moroccan Lamb Tagine

Original recipe found here.

A few things: Allow lots of time for preparation, starting with marinating the lamb in half of the spice mix the night before. I only allowed an hour for the marinating, and it still turned out real yummy, though. Also, you can figure out how much dried fruit and nuts you want based on intuition instead of exact measurements. If you don't have a tagine dish, you can make this in a casserole with a cover. It's a slow-cook meal, meaning it needs to cook for 2- 2 1/2 hours. (Enough time for a movie!) Also, this dish only tastes better with time (up to a certain point...), so don't be afraid to make lots once you're at it and eat it up over time.

Spice mix:

1 ts cayenne pepper

2 ts ground black pepper

1 1/2 Ts paprika

1 1/2 Ts ground ginger

1 Ts tumeric

2 ts ground cinnamon

1 shoulder of lamb (get your butcher to chop it into stew-sized pieces)

2 large onions, chopped

2 Ts olive oil

2 Ts argan oil

3 garlic cloves, diced

1/2 liter tomato juice

1 can chopped tomatoes

115 g halved dried apricots

55 g halved dates

55 g sultanas or raisins

85 g flaked almonds

1 ts saffron, soaked in cold water

300 ml stock

1 Ts honey

4 Ts chopped fresh parsley, chopped (or 2 Ts and 2 Ts chopped fresh coriander)

Mix together spices in spice mix in a small bowl. Place lamb bits in a big bowl and mix with half of the spice mix. Refrigerate for however long you can afford.

Heat 1 Ts of olive oil and 1 Ts of argan oil over medium-low heat in a pan over the stove. Add onion and spice mix and cook until soft, then add garlic. Transfer to tagine dish.

Heat remaining oil in pan, brown lamb bits on all sides- might be good to do this in batches. Add to tagine dish. Deglaze pan with tomato juice, add to tagine. Transfer onions and lamb back to pan on stove. Add tomatoes, apricots, dates, sultanas, almonds, saffron, stock, and honey. Bring to a boil, and return to tagine dish.

Cover and cook for 2-2 1/2 hours. Remove from oven, sprinkle fresh herbs over, and serve with couscous.

As Ameri...I mean, Dutch as Apple Pie

2011-06-20T07:46:00.001-04:00

I've been in Amsterdam for the past few days for a wedding and am just about to leave for the airport to get on a plane to NYC. I am so psyched to be on my way there: it's been ten months since last time, which is the largest amount of time I've ever been away. I miss you, USA!

I just took a walk through the Jordaan, and stopped off at Cafe Papeneiland for some of its famous apple pie (which Bill Clinton made even more famous because he had some a few years ago). Say what you want about all of the good old American apple pie I've had through the years, this trumps it. (I actually feel awful saying that, is it possible that my memory for good American apple pie is just not that good?!) The slabs of pie they give you here in Amsterdam are massive, but it's so delicate at the same time- not too sweet, slightly cinnamony, but just a hint of it. Not the kind of pie you need a nap after, just perfect.

American apple pie-lovers, go back to your Dutch roots, you won't be sorry.

In the meantime, I hope you'll still let me come see you even though I think you'll have to find something new to be as American as. I'm just a plane ride away!

Manageable Life

2011-06-15T04:31:00.001-04:00

Once again, I find myself going through the papers and knick-knacks that have accumulated over the course of a year, tossing what I think I can do without, and zipping the rest of my life neatly into a few suitcases and bags. This has been my routine at least once a year since I left home at 18 and in some ways, it's really therapeutic, the fleeting feeling that yes, life is manageable, because, look, I packed it up and put it in that corner of my room there, and I will be moving it to another place just as I have decided to do.

Irish Soda Bread - recipe below

And then, of course, life moves on, sometimes with you running to catch up with it, but for a small moment, when the bags are stacked in a corner, you feel in control.

A part of this process is a little game I play where I try to find uses for all of the food I have left. The past few weeks, I've made some (sometimes) interesting dishes in this pursuit. Mushroom and rocket risotto. Spinach and brussel sprout couscous pilaf. Tomato-tofu lasagna with garlic, chickpeas, and white wine blended together for the white sauce. Yesterday, in a (successful) attempt to use up my various types of flour, I made an irish soda bread, something like a mix between scones and wheat bread and real easy to make. It turned out unbelievably good! I think I'll be munching on it right up until I leave tomorrow.

*****
Irish Soda Bread

Original recipe found here.

300 ml white flour
300 ml whole wheat flour
100 ml rolled oats
1 ts baking soda
1 ts salt
5 Ts butter
500 ml buttermilk (or whole milk with a bit of lemon/vinegar to thicken)

Mix together dry ingredients. Rub in butter with your fingers, add milk, mix lightly, then get your hands in there to finish the job. Add more flour or liquid if need be, but don't overwork the dough. Form into a round disc and place on a floured baking sheet. Cut an "x' on the top and pop into the oven at 180 degrees celsius for about 35-45 minutes, take it out when slightly browning on top. Allow to cool slightly, then cut into wedges and devour.

Do you want to go to the seaside?

2011-06-08T14:43:00.002-04:00

My guy and I have been talking about heading down to Brighton some weekend to see what it's all about for quite a while. With my departure for the summer from the UK coming close, though, it looked like it wasn't going to happen: I had plans every weekend I had left before the summer. Then it dawned on me: I am a student.

Brighton Smokehouse Kipper Sandwich - see below

Why not... go on a... weekday?

Duh.

So, Thursday last week we played hooky from the library and hopped on a train down to the seaside. We walked along the beach, played some arcade games on the pier, then headed up to the university to hear a friend play his jazz piano examination recital, before wandering around in the Lanes, an area with all of these great alternative stores and cafes. I left Brighton at the end of the day with bright-red sunburnt cheeks, wanting to stay longer, which is always the best way to leave a city.

We had lunch at The Brighton Smokehouse down on the beach. The prices are real decent and they do an absolutely fantastic smoked kipper sandwich. Such smokiness! It's this tiny charming place with all kinds of treasures from the sea. Order inside and stand at one of their tables outside, where you can see the ocean and their traditional smokehouse, a little hut opposite the shop.

The Brighton Smokehouse

Yay, student-life!

Out Stealing Recipes

2011-06-01T18:57:00.003-04:00

I've been living in a student hall this year, my first time ever, and it has had its ups and downs. Downs have been no real living room to socialize in (or to be able to invite people to) and a sometimes extremely messy kitchen. Ups have been being able to eavesdrop on other people's cooking, which has given me new ideas. I mean, living with Chinese, Italian, Indian, Kiwi, Ukrainian, German (etc.) people will inevitably give you some new food impulses, if only through smelling things in the kitchen you're not used to smelling or seeing things you're not used to seeing.

We all ask each other when we're curious. Just yesterday someone pointed at my barley and went, "What's that?" And I had to explain what barley is. "So kinda like rice, then?" Yeah, kinda like rice. Only more magical, if you ask me.

I've learned what goes into making Italian carbonara, and where people go to get Chinese spices in London, and all of these other little tidbits about different people's ideas around cooking, just by being around them and cooking in the same kitchen.

The recipe below is my take on one of my housemate's signature dishes. I didn't ask him for the recipe, I just went for it based on what I had seen him do a bunch of times. I hope you condone plagiarism.

****

Tuna with Pasta

1 small onion
Vegetable oil
250 g mushrooms
3 Ts red wine vinegar
Fresh basil
Salt and pepper
1 can tuna, drained
4 Ts light mayonnaise
Fusilli pasta

Put the pasta on to boil in salted water. Cut the onion in half and then in strips lengthwise. Slice mushrooms into quarters.

Cook onions and mushrooms in some vegetable oil. Sprinkle over 2 Ts red wine vinegar, tear a bunch of fresh basil in, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. When mushrooms and onions are done, add tuna to warm. Remove from heat and mix in drained cooked pasta, mayonnaise, and final Ts of red wine vinegar. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

And that's how it's done.

Easy-peasy

2011-05-31T13:51:00.004-04:00

Hi!

*Sheepish grin*

Hey, remember when I made this big grandiose statement like a year ago that I would stop neglecting this blog? Ha.

Recipe below

Anyway, I'm back, not making any excuses for not posting except for that I've been studying the past year or so, and haven't felt like I had time. But I have continued to constantly come back- turns out I make the recipes I've put up here pretty often. And maybe because of that, forget the ones I haven't put up. So I want to keep this going, if only to have all my favorite recipes and food experiences in the same place and maybe some other people will want that too. Again.

I find myself in a situation right now where one era of my life is coming to an end and another one is about to begin, which seems to happen about once a year lately. In two weeks, I'm putting my stuff in storage here in London and heading home to the US and then Norway for the summer while I work on, and finish, my dissertation. In three months, my life as a student will be over and I'll once again be figuring out what to do with myself. I'm staying in London for the time-being, that much I know. That is a good thing, I'm not done with this city and this city isn't done with me. So stay posted after the summer for London food stuff. And possibly during for NYC and Norway food stuff. But I'm not making any promises. Cause I obviously can't keep them.

I'm at the stage in the moving process where I'm trying to eat up food by making meals with what I have left. This is a simple dish I've made twice now, to use up some onions, broccoli, and barley (which, over the course of this year has become my FAVORITE kind of grain cause of the texture. YUM. Yeah, I love grains, it is the truth.) It's not an epic dish, but it's yummy, and that's what it's all about.

*****

Onion, tomato and broccoli over barley

2 Ts vegetable oil
1 onion
salt and pepper
1/2 ts chili powder
half a head of brocoli
1/2 bullion cube
1 can chopped tomatoes
spices like marjoram, sage, tarragon, oregano, or basil
barley

Put the barley on to boil. Sometimes it takes a long time for barley to be done.

Cut the onion into strips. Warm some oil with salt, pepper and chili powder. Add onions and cook over medium heat until soft. Add broccoli, stir for a bit, then add tomatoes, bullion, and however much of the spices you want. It's done when the broccoli's done.

Serve over barley. (Or rice or pasta or whatever you please).

Easy-peasy.

The United Nations of Food

2010-10-17T05:33:00.002-04:00

It's kind of surreal living in a student house at the age of 25. There are rules to follow here. Quiet hours at 11 pm. Visitors need to be signed in. Any new appliances are to be registered with the residence office. I'm not to keep any candles in my room. Plus the college has chosen to decorate my room with fire safety notices.

Still, I'm in walking distance of school and pretty much all of central London. I have a sweet little view of a garden and a park and the London Eye. I've made a nice little eating area in my room where I can drink tea whilst listening to the radio.

What makes it all worthwhile, though, are the other people who live here.

It's like a mini-UN, with people from Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, the US, China, Korea, Zimbabwe, Burma, India, New Zealand, France, Ireland... It's pretty interesting to put all of us together with all of our different perspectives and stereotypes and see what comes out of it. What's fantastic, too, is all is all of our different food traditions.

Last week we had our first bi-monthly taster session. We've decided that, every other week, 3 people will cook for the rest of the house, preferably something from their country, and by the end of it all, we'll have tasted the world.

For the first one, I cooked, as did an Italian girl and an Irish guy. The three of us spent the afternoon in the kitchen, commenting on this and that and exchanging tidbits about the food from our respective countries. At night, everyone from the house gathered in the garden with big wool sweaters and wine bottles, ready to fight the London autumn, and indulge in some great food. We all just ate and ate and ate. And talked some too.

My kind of Sunday night.

*****

I made fårikål, a simple, but delicious Norwegian autumn speciality, which literally translates into "lamb in cabbage".

Fårikål

(for about 5 people)

1 1/2 kg lamb stewing meat in bits with bones still attached

1 1/2 kg cabbage

4 ts whole peppercorns

2 ts salt

4 Ts flour

3 dl water

Cut the cabbage into wedges. Put alternate layers of meat and cabbage in a big pot, sprinkling with peppercorn, salt and flour between each layer. Pour water over. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and let it all putter away until the meat is tender about 2 hours. Serve with boiled potatoes.

If you can't find the lamb ready in bits, buy a half shoulder and cut it up yourself. Then just put the bone into the stew along with the rest of the meat and take it out before serving.

A cozy autumn treat!

Saturday Food Market

2010-10-02T11:13:00.002-04:00

So here's a fun fact: studying entails a lot of reading. Like massive amounts.

I somehow managed to forget just how much reading studying requires. I think I was focusing on the meeting new people, managing your own time, discussing interesting topics aspects of studying and it slipped from my memory.

So, I've been spending the better part of each day this week reading and I'm still hopelessly behind. But I am here in London, and I am a pro at procrastinating, so I took the morning off and went to a little food market on the Southbank with a few of the others from my student house.

Food market parking lot

London has tons of food markets, with tons of amazing food. At this one, they had cheese, organic wine, meat pie, cupcake, jam, bakery, churros, Indian, Turkish (cashew honey baklava: YUM), Lebanese, Moroccan, Polish (etc., etc.) stands, many of which were giving out samples (hooray!)

I had a Chicken Bastilla for lunch, this Moroccan pastry filled with spiced chicken, sweet almonds and cinnamon in an orangy kind of sauce. Fantastic.

My absolute favorite stand was this vegan one that made all of these different kind of loaves, not only banana bread, but ginger & fig, mango, mixed berry, carrot & cherry bread. They also had the most amazing banana fritters and curry puffs.

Can't wait to go to ALL the other food markets in London.

And now I really must get back to reading.

Transitions

2010-09-27T11:38:00.003-04:00

When I moved to NYC a few years ago, I was devastated by how fantastically overpriced food was. Eventually, though, I got used to the crazy prices and found the shops and products and restaurants that fit my budget, and ended up loving New York for its food despite my limited resources. I figured if I could make it work in crazy NYC, I can make it work anywhere (to paraphrase Frank).

But then I moved to London last week. Wow.

New York is cheap in comparison to London. London is like $12-for-greasy-chinese-food-expensive. And yes, for the past eight or nine months, I have been living in Oslo, which is notorious for being the second most expensive city in the world, but people seem to use Oslo in a different way than people use London and New York. Oslo is a small city, so home is never that far off if you need to stop by for a bite to eat, whereas in in New York, eating out is the norm. People meet up at the pub to socialize here in London, but in Norway, there's a long-standing tradition of drinking at home before going out. It's just the things people do to get around the prices.

I have to remind myself that I'm new in London. I'm so ready to be savvy about the city, know where everything is, know where all the great places and deals are, but I can't yet. It's just not the way it works when you're new somewhere. I have to give London time to show itself from its gorgeous (and inexpensive) side and myself time to explore those sides.

And even now, one week into living here, despite my initial panic, things have started looking up food-wise. Yes, I'm going to have to be extremely careful with money, but man, what a great city to be careful in. I'm already in love with London, with its history and traditions, its busy feel and cute neighborhoods.

Being a person that moves around a lot, you end up meeting a lot of people that do the same, and sometimes, if you're lucky, your paths cross again. Which is happening right now! I met up with a friend I got to know in New York for dinner the other night. She's been here for a few months already and knew a great place to take me that was right up my alley.

Isarn is an adorable and affordable (£6-£9 for a main) thai restaurant with a fantastic astmosphere in Islington. There's a little garden out in the back, and the feeling is intimate and cozy. Most importantly, the food is fantastic. I had spinach and butternut squash stirfry, and my friend had braised duck with shiitake, ginger, and spring onion. And then crème brulée for dessert. YUM.

And then this weekend, I met up with yet another friend, this one from Oslo, who took me to a great café in Shoreditch, 1001. They have an outdoor barbeque going all day with amazing burgers and sausages and loads of vegetarian options. I had a marinated chicken burger with all the fixins and these fantastic grilled potato wedges. £4.70. A cup of lemon and ginger tea will get you real bits of lemon and ginger infusing your drink. Relaxing, chill, quality. Absolutely fantastic.

1001's grilled chicken sandwich

Most importantly, I got my kitchen set up this week and went food shopping. I'm real excited about the food stores here. Yes, they're pricey, but overcomeable, and there are loads of local and organic options.

So Thursday last week found me sitting by my window looking out at the little garden outside my building, the London Eye off in the distance, my first home-cooked meal in London in hand, and I realized that yes, London and I will overcome and look past these initial expense difficulties and be good to one another, with time and friends and some great cooking to help us.

*****

Pasta with Mushroom and Green Pepper Cream Sauce

1 garlic clove
3-4 big mushrooms
1/2 green pepper
1 + 2 Ts vegetable oil
2 Ts flour
4 dl milk
1 vegetable bouillon cube
1 ts dried basil
salt and pepper
1 dl freshly grated parmesan

Put some pasta on to boil. Chop up garlic, mushrooms, and pepper and soften over medium heat in a pan. Set aside. Stir 2 Ts oil with 2 Ts flour, adding milk and stirring vigorously between each addition until sauce is right consistency. Add bouillon cube, and season with salt, pepper, and basil to taste. Add the mushroom mixture to the sauce, then turn down the heat and add the cheese. Stir until melted into the sauce. Serve nice and warm!

Tomatoes ARE Real Life

2010-09-14T16:55:00.001-04:00

This weekend, I'm moving to London.

The tomatoes in the garden aren't ready to be eaten. In fact, I don't know if I'd even call them tomatoes just yet. They are really just little green lumps of taunting promise of someday possibly becoming tomatoes. Now autumn has arrived, though, and with it, the cold weather. So I most likely won't get to try a nice, glossy red, pulpy tomato from my garden before I become a Londoner without a garden.

Tomatoes in picture appear bigger than in Real Life. Actual size: a thumb.

I didn't know a whole heck of a lot about gardening when I started this project. Tomatoes aren't known for growing well in cold weather, and if there's one thing Norway has a lot of, cold weather is it. (If there were two things, the other'd be blond hair.) But I like tomatoes and thought it'd be fun to try to grow them. I didn't ever imagine that they wouldn't become edible in time for autumn.

Even though I did many things right with the tomatoes, like planting the seeds indoors before moving them outside, I probably should've started a few months earlier and given them enough time to develop in the warmth before planting them outside.

So this tomato thing turned out to be an experiment. I got a lot out of it: a new interest in plants, hours spent outside in the sunshine weeding, something to talk about. Although actual pulpy edible tomatoes very likely is not one of the lot that I got, tomatoes were the reason I started this project in the first place, and without them, there would be no squash, carrots, coriander, or chives.

Time to change the subject. Something I'm sure you've noticed, is that I love all the parallels I'm able to draw from this Garden Experience to Actual Real Life. I'm about to do that again. Here goes.

I'm moving to London to start a Master's in Tourism, Environment, and Development, which is, quite obviously, completely unrelated to my undergrad, which was in TV Production. As with my first effort at growing tomatoes, much good came out of my first try at studying. I found a real interest in documentaries, I started working in the non-fiction TV world, I learned lots and lots, and met wonderful people. The projects I worked on also sparked my interest in another way: the content and research involved made me realize that I really wanted to go back to school again, learn about the world, not just about seeing it through a mediated what-works-for-tv-experience.

I'm super-excited about this next step in my life. I find my mind wandering: I picture myself at the library, nose-deep into books about tourism in far reaches of the world, I picture awkward conversations and careful banter as I get to know the people I'll be sharing a student house with, people who will be from countries I know very little about at this point, I picture me trying to overcompensate in trying to sound English and stealing things from TV and movies (Welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?"). And then in the midst of my daydreaming I remember it's all just a few days away and I sort of jump a little because I've been talking about and imagining this for so long and now it's about to start and that fact still seems unreal.

It's a fantastic thing to be on the brink of a new start, to be able to envision all the possibilities of where life will take you, and have all of them be viable options. It's a gift to be able to daydream. Although I know I'll have to find my way in this new subject just like the first time, I have all this stuff I've been through to fall back on as a reference for this next stab at life. (That sounds like I'm trying to kill life. I'm not.) I didn't know where studying TV was going to take me, and I never imagined I wasn't going to end up working with TV, just like I never imagined the tomatoes wouldn't turn out. I'm not certain where this next degree is going to take me (will I turn into a tomato or something entirely different?): I have no idea where I'll be in a year or five years or ten. And that is a fantastic and liberating feeling.

Would I try growing tomatoes again? Sure. I know more about how to grow them now so they're bound to turn out better and who knows what else it could lead to? Peaches? Plums? Beets? Coconuts?

And that, my friends, is my very last Garden--->Actual Real Life analogy. Probably. I'm not promising anything.

*****

Since I'll be leaving next week, I've been trying to cook with my beloved garden veggies as much as possible before I go. Here's a phenomenal carrot soup I made the other day out of one of my favorite cookbooks that I've posted about many times before, The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen.

Carrot Soup

2 lbs. carrots, peeled and chopped

4 cups stock or water

1 1/2 ts salt

1 medium potato, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

1-2 garlic cloves, chopped

1/3 cup chopped cashews or almonds

3-4 Ts butter

1 cup yogurt or buttermilk

2-3 ts honey

2 pinches nutmeg

1/2 ts dried mint

1 pinch cinnamon

1 apple, grated, for garnish

Bring carrots, stock/water, salt, and potato to a boil and let bubble for 12-15 minutes until carrots and potatoes are done. In the meantime, sauté onions, garlic, nuts in butter until onions are clear. Sprinkle a little salt over. Add onion mixture to carrots and purée with a handblender (or transfer to a blender). Mix in buttermilk and honey, then spices. Warm if necessary, don't allow to boil. Garnish with grated apple. Enjoy in an autumnly fashion!

A Food Medley

2010-09-07T11:46:00.007-04:00

I've been jumping around from couch to couch in and around NYC the past few weeks, staying with good friends and family for two or three nights each, spending Good Quality Time with the people and the city I love.

It's weird. When I got back to NYC, I wasn't overwhelmed with nostalgia or haunting memories like I have been when returning to other cities. It just felt like I'd been out of town for a weekend, and here I was, back where I know how things work, (back where people know my name and they're always glad I came) back where people think like I do, but then also, where people don't think like I do at all and people thinking in so many different ways is a great thing.

This was weird because when I left NYC just seven or eight months ago, I was so ready to leave, felt so disconnected, didn't feel like I loved NYC at all. Yet, despite all the couchsurfing, coming back for this visit didn't feel anything like one. It felt like I was home. I guess it's true what they say: NYC is a city you never truly leave.

I've collected a lot of food stories and impressions over these weeks, so instead of posting about each of them separately, I give you here, a food medley:

(The pictures are of all different qualities because I didn't have my camera with me and kept borrowing phone cameras and even computer cameras from friends throughout...)

***1***
My first day back in the city, I had made plans to go out for burgers with some friends. I dropped my bags off at my brother's place and was going to hang out with him and his family for a few hours before I met up with the friends. (If it seems like I have an implausible amount of brothers, it's because I do.) My brother+family were just on their way to a new Shake Shack that has opened up on the Upper East Side. I have a such a soft spot for Shake Shack, that, even though I knew I'd be getting burgers later, I couldn't help myself from getting the whole spiel there: burger, fries, a black & white shake (Magnificent! Fantastic!) and showed up at the dinner at Five Napkin Burger with a sheepish grin on my face. Too stuffed to get a whole new burger, my friend shared some of her's with me, and gee wiz, Magnificent! Fantastic! Pricer than Shake Shack, but oh, you just gotta try these too. Just don't get both in the same day. Cause you'll get a tummy ache.

***2***
There are two friends I have with whom the most incredible tradition has been created, which is that whenever we get together, we cook dinner, whilst drinking wine and eating cheese. I couldn't see both of them at once this time around, one lives in a Philly suburb, the other in Jersey, and both work a lot and couldn't get away. I saw each of them separately, though, and made sure that tradition was duly respected. I was still on my zucchini kick around then (still am, actually, always will be, I think) and with friend 1, we cooked up this fantastic zucchini, summer squash, sweet pepper, tomato, onion, red wine sauce with veggies from my step-mom's garden and her friend's mom's garden and with vegan Italian sausages from Whole Foods. With friend 2, we made Chicken Zucchini Mushroom Onion Quesadillas with homemade guacamole (with tomatoes, sweet corn, garlic, and lemon! See recipe below). Yum for tradition!

Friend 1 + tradition

***3***
If you're ever in Jersey City around brunch time, GO TO MARCO & PEPE! They have french toast made with CROISSANTS topped with fresh berries! They sprinkle their eggs and ham with manchego and melted brie! They have the most fantastic atmosphere! You can thank me later.

Marc & Pepe eggs and ham over sweet portugese roll. You're welcome.

***4***
Mention Korean food, and my eyes will light up. I have my former boss to thank for this, who introduced me to it, and who would very generously share her food with me whenever she ordered it to the office. (She got a kick out of seeing my eyes light up like that, I think.) You can't get Korean food in Oslo that I know of, and seven months apart from it was getting to be a bit much for me to bear. So my tummy was extremely happy the night my former boss took me out for Korean while I was in the city. We went to her (and now my) favorite spot in Koreatown, Kunjip, where they smile when I use the only Korean word I know: kamsahamnida (thank you). Although I guess I know kimchi, chigae, bibimbap... but I just start drooling when I try to say them.

That shine on the chigae is the reflection of my eyes lighting up.

***5***
The first day I got to NYC, it was chilly, seriously fall weather chilly. I started complaining, saying this isn't what I came from cold Norway to NYC for. I shouldn't have, because for the remainder of my trip it was so hot and humid, it was just silly. On one of those silly hot and humid days, a friend of mine and I decided to trek all over Brooklyn (Park Slope to Downtown BK for the Brooklyn Flea, lunch in Fort Greene, then to Williamsburg for a backyard concert.) Within 5 minutes, we were soaked through with our own sweat, and we very nearly fainted towards the end of it, but it was a fantastic day. We were planning to cook when we got back to my friend's apartment, but we were so uncomfortably hot that the thought of turning the oven on was just impossible. Instead, we took cold showers and went into Manhattan (hooray for aircon on the subway!) to a cute little French place, Jules Bistro, where we had fantastic salads and listened to jazz. I got their canard confit salad: duck, grapes, string beans, pine nuts, frisée, truffle oil. Yum. See, no heat!

***6***
I wish I had known about Soundwalks when I was in Beijing, I would've loved to do one of them. People who are from or have a connection to different neighborhoods in certain cities around the world talk about them, from an insider's perspective, on tape. The tours are downloadable to any MP3 player and take you to parts of these neighborhoods you probably wouldn't know about had you just gone there to take a look around. We were going to do one about the Lower East Side, the history of which has always fascinated me, but it's currently being updated and wasn't available. So we downloaded the Meatpacking District tour instead and set on our way. Since we got a late start, we stopped for lunch before we started at 'sNice, a super-cute vegetarian café with amazing sandwiches. I had a curry cauliflower/brown rice wrap with mango chutney and my friend had a gorgonzola, walnut, and apple sandwich. YUM. The walk through the Meatpacking District was interesting, this artist type who had inherited a huge loft space (which we went to during the tour) was narrating and as we were looking at street upon street of posh designer stores, she described in detail about the stench the blood dripping through the streets used to bring about. It's crazy how much a place can change in a short period of time.

***7***
My last day in NYC, I told everyone I know that I'd be hanging out in Prospect Park from noon until I had to leave to catch my flight, and a bunch of people showed up to hang out. The weather was perfect for a picnic, the heat and humidity finally let up, and it was sunny and pleasant. We all sat around and talked and played frisbee and munched on snacks we had brought. (I brought peach-mint roll-ups: recipe below!) A great end to a few great weeks with great friends in a great city.

Peach-mint roll-ups

*****

New York, I will most definitely be back... Wait for me, will ya?

*****

Yummy Guacamole

2 avocados
1 tomato
1/2 cup sweet corn
1 garlic clove
1/2 lemon
salt and pepper

Squish avocados in a bowl, chop up tomatoes and garlic. Mix tomatoes, sweet corn, and garlic into the avocado. Squeeze lemon over and season with salt and pepper to taste.

*****

Peach-Mint Roll-ups

1 package lavash (or any other type of flatbread you want to use)
1 pack cream cheese
1/4 cup honey + extra for drizzling
1 lime
2 peaches
a bunch of fresh mint

Mix cream cheese, 1/4 cup honey, and juice from half a lime in a bowl. Cut peaches into slivers, roughly dice mint. Spread cream cheese mixture over the lavash, then make a row of peaches on the short end, then drizzle mint, lime juice and honey over. Roll into lavash, then repeat twice more before sealing off at end with cream cheese. Cut roll into pieces.

Zucchini for Sillies: The Sequel

2010-08-27T09:53:00.002-04:00

"You know what REALLY gets to me, though? What REALLY gets to me is that you're LYING. And I RESPECT you less for that."

A slightly overweight, red-in-the-face guy is standing over us, so aggressive I think he might punch me and my brothers and sister, or maybe there might just be a simple little *pop* and then his head disappears due to overexertion. Only, I know he won't hit us because we're at the Little League World Series and no one would actually hit anyone with all these kids around. Plus they don't sell beer here.

Zucchini Chocolate Cake - recipe below

I'm in Pennsylvania, visiting my dad and his kids. When you put the bunch of us together, we're really quite silly. And lately it's become so much more fun because they've gotten to an age now where they're actual human beings and not just little kids.

We get to the game, find some empty seats, and because they are empty, we sit down in them. Half an hour later this guy shows up and is STEAMING because we apparently took his seats. "You SAW the newspapers on the seats, I KNOW you saw them."

There were no newspapers on the seats. Plus if you're going to save seats at an outdoor sporting event, newspapers just don't cut it.

Anyway, my brothers and sister and I just stay calm and sort of smile out of the corner of our mouths because we know this guy is approaching this all wrong and has ended up just being slightly comical instead of convincing us to actually move. And we answer him here and there, saying things like "You, sir, are mistaken," which I've always wanted to say out loud. Eventually he walks away in a huffy puff to find other seats, leaving us to watch the game, which turns out to be pretty entertaining.

It seems that every game in the Little League World Series starts out with each team coming out on the field and dancing like wild for about ten minutes. Imagine if that was the case for Major League games: Derek Jeter doing the Lawnmower. Epic. On every team, there's the 12-year old who's about a foot taller than all of the rest of the players, as well as the kid who's a foot shorter. But it's impressive how they play baseball, and because there are naturally more errors than in a major league game, the game's more interesting to watch cause things actually HAPPEN.

We all get back from the game that night and start hovering around the chocolate cake that's lying out on the kitchen table.

My step-mom is a vegetable garden pro.

Every year she successfully grows zucchini, summer squash, butternut squash, beef tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, okra, green beans, lettuce, peppers, and several types of spices. I'm pretty sure I forgot something. Plus she grows lots of it. Overflowing amounts of green beans. Cherry tomatoes galore. And yes, so very much squash that she doesn't know what to do with it all. As earlier mentioned: this is a problem many gardeners contend with.

This chocolate cake is no ordinary cake. It smells fantastic and looks so, so moist because it's made with zucchinis from the garden. But so we're all eyeing the cake, and everybody knows we all want to eat it, but we're not sure if it's for us, or if it's for right now. And we're trying to be polite, which is weird, because when we're together, we almost never are.

"Is that for general consumption?" I finally ask, my mouth almost overflowing with mouthwater, the cake looks so good. I just am not able to wait any longer.

"Well, yeah," my step-mom replies, and before the answer is out of her, we are like monkeys on bananas. It's one of the best chocolate cakes I've ever had. And my step-mom is pleased because all of us crazy kids are using up her zucchini. And probably also because none of us got our face smashed in because of some seats at a kids' sporting event.

*****

Zucchini Chocolate Cake

3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 ts vanilla
3/4 cup oil
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup baking cocoa
2 1/2 ts baking powder
2 1/2 ts baking soda
1 ts salt
1 ts cinnamon
1/2 cup milk
2 cups shredded zucchini
3/4 - 1 cup chocolate chips (optional, but you'll regret it if you don't)
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Beat eggs and sugar together until creamy. Add vanilla and oil and beat. Sift together dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add a little at a time to egg mixture, alternating with milk, beating after each addition. Stir in zucchini and add chocolate chips. Bake either in a greased and floured bundt pan for one hour at 350 degrees fahreinheit or in a 9x13" pan for 30 to 40 minutes at 325 fahreinheit. Go apeshit.

Something really American

2010-08-19T09:16:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I sat on a plane.

When I got to Boston, my brother picked me up from the airport and asked where I wanted to eat. "Sushi?" he said.

"How about something REALLY American?" I said, having been gone from the States for a whopping 7 months.

"Oh easy," he said, "Red Bones."

Yes, true. Yes, of course.

I lived in Boston for a few years a while back while I went to school. I had an internship in Davis Square, and whenever an intern would finish their time at the company, we would use it as an excuse to have lunch at Red Bones. Because it's an absolutely fantastic place.

Red Bones is bona-fide BBQ. They have every kind of ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket, jerk chicken, all done right. Not to mention the collard greens, mac & cheese, cole slaw, corn bread, candied yams...and so, so many kinds of beer on tap.

I rolled out of there after dinner last night, nice and stuffed and jet-lagged. I was back in the USA.

Summer Vegetables

2010-08-17T14:33:00.006-04:00

Last week, it finally happened.

This:

turned into these:

and this:

turned into these:

The zucchini, carrots, spring onion, chives, and coriander have all become full-grown, ready to eat veggies and spices. (The tomatoes aren't going to be ready for another month or so. And the peppers, well, who was I kidding, trying to grow peppers in Norway of all cold places?)

So lately, around dinner time, I've been taking a stroll outside to the vegetable garden to see what veggies to use that day. It's a dream come true.

I've been saving up recipes I've wanted to make for months now. In all the cookbooks, it seems like it's a general consensus that people everywhere are annoyed by the fact that gardens produce a lot of summer squash. In one, it says "With this recipe, there will be no reason to complain about there being too much zucchini." Another says, "A great way to use up all that zucchini in your garden!" Like it's a PROBLEM that there's all this wonderful, amazing zucchini around. Like there are people all over the world actually throwing away perfectly good summer squash because they just haven't got a clue what to do with it. HOW EVER will they get rid of the HEADACHE that is home grown summer vegetables!?

Some people are silly.

So silly people, fret no more, for I have been going wild trying out recipes packed with zucchini and carrots and coriander since last week. Here are the best so far.

*****

Carrot and Coriander Muffins

I got this recipe out of a book called "1 batter, 100 muffins" that I got from some friends for my birthday. I'm so psyched about this book- some of the others I'm dying to try are chocolate peppermint muffins, orange, walnut, and rosemary muffins, and stilton and pear muffins. But now: carrot and coriander muffins, with carrots and coriander from the garden!

300 g flour
1 Ts baking powder
1/8 ts salt
freshly ground black pepper
200 g grated carrots
2.5 dl milk
6 Ts sunflower oil
3 Ts chopped fresh coriander

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celsius. Grease a muffin pan. Mix flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper in a big bowl. Combine with carrots. In another bowl, beat eggs. Stir in milk, oil, and coriander. Add to flour mixture. Stir until just combined. Distribute batter among the 12 spaces in the muffin pan. Bake for about 20 minutes, until risen, golden brown, and firm to touch.

*****

Summer Vegetable Soup

This soup is from one of my favorite vegetarian cookbooks, the famous Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen.

2 large potatoes, diced
1 cup fresh peas (I used green beans)
Kernels from 2 ears of corn
1 medium onion
2 medium carrots, diced into cubes
1 cup diced broccoli
1 green pepper, diced
2 zucchinis, diced
3 Ts butter
2 cups water
1 quart (liter) milk, warmed
1 1/2 ts salt
1/4 ts pepper
fresh thyme (I used coriander from the garden)

Cook potatoes in 2 cups water until soft. Mash together with cooking water. Add peas (or green beans) and corn to the mixture. Heat butter in a pan and cook onions with salt. Add each of the other vegetables in the order they're listed above, sautéing about 8 minutes after each. When all the veggies are cooked, add to potato mixture. Slowly add warm milk to soup. Add seasonings to taste. Don't bring to a boil, just heat. Serve nice and warm!

*****

Lasagne with Zucchini, Ricotta, and Tomato Sauce

This recipe is from a cookbook called "Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen". It is very seriously an amazing recipe, rich and yummy with ricotta and walnuts.

3-4 cups tomato sauce (Make from scratch or use store-bought and add fresh tomatoes when heating)
1 pound ricotta
Freshly ground salt and pepper
2 1/2 pounds zucchini
olive oil
1 pack no-boil lasagne noodles
1 cup chopped walnuts (or pine nuts)
1/2 pound (fresh) mozzarella, grated
1 cup freshly grated parmesan

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Cut zucchini in half lengthwise, then cut into thin diagonal slices. Heat some oil in a nonstick pan. Add zucchini and cook over medium-high heat, turning often until glistening, about 5 minutes. Spread 1/5 of the tomato sauce in the baking pan, cover with a layer of noodles. Then 1/3 of the ricotta, 1/3 of the nuts, 1/3 of the zucchini. Drizzle with salt and pepper, then cover with 1/5 more of of the tomato sauce, some mozzarella and parmesan. Start with another layer of noodles and repeat twice. Cover the top layer of noodles with tomato sauce and sprinkle with remaining mozzarella and parmesan. Spread a layer of foil over and bake for about 40 minutes, removing the foil 5-10 minutes before it's done. Let rest for a few minutes before serving.

Sneaky Sichuan Noodles

2010-08-10T08:05:00.002-04:00

I went to see the pandas in the morning, cause there are only like maybe 2,000 left and I figured now's a good time to see them.

They're pretty awesome: they just hang out eating all day, a lot of the time not bothering to even sit up to get the food in their mouth. Sounds kind of like me on an off-day.

When I got back to Chengdu from the Panda Reserve, I was starved, so I went out to find some amazing food.

After walking for a bit, I passed a noodle place where lots of local Chinese people were having their lunch, so I figured it was a good bet. When I entered, the woman working there seemed really busy. She started pointing at large pictures they had of dishes on the wall, and I just nodded at the first one she pointed at because I panicked and didn't want to waste her time. After, I hoped I had made the right choice. Maybe I should have taken a second longer to study the pictures to find something truly interesting. I was so ready for an amazing meal.

The place was packed, so she sat me down at a table with a Chinese couple who had ordered already. They smiled very widely at me when I sat down and I smiled right back at them. Their food arrived seconds later, a kind of cold meat salad. The meat was sliced and it was on a bed of things like spring onions and coriander. The couple smiled at me again, and the man motioned to the salad. When I smiled and shook my head politely, he became much more animated and pushed one of the salads towards me, insisting that I share their meal with them, wanting a foreigner like me to share in this Sichuan specialty. Plus I was starved. So I broke apart a pair of chopsticks and dug in.

It was absolutely fantastic! Extremely spicy, but the flavors were so intense and interesting, and it all fit so well with the spring onion and coriander. I began thinking that anything they served here would have to be fantastic, and started really looking forward to the bowl of noodles I had ordered. The couple seemed thrilled that I had enjoyed their meal so much, and continued to insist that I eat with them until all of their meal was gone.

As they were paying the check, my noodles arrived, and as my mouth watered, ready for round two of an amazing meal, I shoved the first mouthful of noodles in my mouth. My heart sunk: the noodles didn't taste like anything, they were super-bland and unexciting.

Oh well, I thought, at least I had a very nice meal with the couple and tasted something as phenomenal as the meat salad they shared with me. I continued eating the noodles, though, and then 5 minutes later, something happened. The same noodles I had been eating all of a sudden tasted like something. Something amazing, actually, not at all like the previous mouthful I had taken. What in the world is going on? I thought.

And then I remembered about the tongue-numbing peppers that Sichuan is so famous for. And I felt my tongue tingling.

I laughed to myself and chopsticked some more amazing noodles into my mouth. Hooray for sneaky, amazing Sichuan food!

Beijing Cooking

2010-08-09T07:46:00.008-04:00

Friends of mine had a beautiful wedding in Beijing this July, and about 30 people from Norway were present to witness it. It was a traditional Chinese wedding and was utterly fantastic. I mean, there were dancing dragons and bow & arrows involved, what's not to love?

I was in China and Tibet for about three weeks and this post and possibly the next one or two will be about that trip.

*****

So I'm standing on the street across from my hotel. I have been for 20 minutes. I'm frantically trying to wave down anything resembling a taxi, but it's rush hour, and there just aren't enough taxis to go around, what with the like 20 million people who live in the city.

Finally one pulls over. I show the driver the slip with Chinese letters on it I have with me. No, no, he shakes his head vigorously, waving his hand. "But it's just down there," I say in English, as if that will help, pointing down the street. No, no, he shakes his head again, and I climb out of the taxi and shut the door behind me.

I sigh.

And then I start walking through the streets of Beijing in the direction I have just pointed. I'm going to be late for my cooking class.

Chinese food has always been a mystery to me, plus I can't think of anything other than cooking I'd rather spend a day doing and being in Bejing made no exception to that. I did a little research before my trip and found out that a woman named Chunyi Zhou runs a fabulous cooking class out of the courtyard of the hutong she lives in. So I signed up.

Hutongs ARE Beijing. They are a kind of neighborhood of courtyards made up of small one story houses connected by small alleys. You can immediately sense Community once you step off of the main roads and into them. People use the space connecting them: they cook on the street, play Mah Jong or Chinese Chess long into the night, hold one another's babies, are basically just present in their neighbors' lives. (Sadly, many hutongs have been and are being destroyed to make way for skyscrapers that can house so many more people than the traditional one-story houses)

So, I'm walking as fast as I possibly can through the steamy streets of Beijing. It's hot, even though it's only 8:45. I'm sweaty and parched. The distances are longer than they look on the map, but eventually I arrive at the meeting point, only 15 minutes late. Except, no Chunyi, no other cooking class people in sight. They've already left for the market, and I have no clue where that is. Blarg! I was so looking forward to this. What now? Do I just go back to the hotel? I stop a few girls my age on the street and ask if they speak English, but they just smile and keep walking. I look at my slip of paper and and realize from the map that Chunyi's house is close, so I step off the main road and into the hutong. Only it's like a maze of courtyards and the group's not there right now anyway, they're at the market.

I remember how thirsty I am (how could I forget?), so I go to a little hole in the wall shop nearby and get a bottle of water. They must have a phone, I think, but what's the word for phone in Chinese? I put my hand to my ear, my thumb and pinky forming a makeshift receiver. At least I speak International Tourist.

Chunyi is happy to hear from me. She was wondering what had happened to me. A friend of her's comes to pick me up and takes me to the market, where I join the group.

The market is a large indoor place, with different stands and sections for different types of food. Chunyi is just explaining the difference between firm and soft tofu when I arrive. And next she shows us spices (Ah, so THAT's what sichuan pepper looks like!). Then different types of noodles, pasta, vegetables (oh, lotus root looks like THAT when it's whole), fruits (turns out a something I thought was a cucumber was a melon)... This is what's great about this market tour: I've been in Chinese markets before in NYC and Boston, but there's always been so much I didn't have a clue what WAS, let alone what to do with. The 6 other people in the group obviously feel the same way, because we're all asking: what's that, what do you do with it? Many questions answered and mysteries solved. Chunyi buys a little of this and a little of that, things we'll need for the day's cooking.

We all head back to the hutong (where I've been already!) for a short class on Chinese seasoning, meaning soy sauce, vinegar, and rice wine, and the importance of getting high grade types. Turns out light soy sauce has more flavor and dark soy sauce, which is heavier, is used more for coloring than the flavor.

And then we cook. And it's awesome. It's vegetarian day, which doesn't mean much in China, since meat is used to season pretty much everything, just a spoonful of pork or beef to give that extra flavor. There are a few bona-fide vegetarians here, though, and it almost breaks Chunyi's heart to let them omit the meat in their dishes. "It's not going to taste like anything," she says.

First we slice up things we'll need, like spring onion, garlic, chili, tofu, then we all stand in the heat of Chunyi's simple kitchen while she demonstrates. We take turns cooking up dry stir fried green beans, jia chang tofu (chili), and five spice tofu in big woks. The rest of us sit out in the courtyard and chat while the others are working, waiting to sample things as they come to the table. All the food is fantastic, so much flavor in every bite, and every dish is totally something we could make at home now that we know what the ingredients are.

We all sit around and talk, and it turns out there are some really interesting people here: an antiques dealer from Hawaii who sells Chinese antiques to the new rich in China (there are so many fakes in China, they'd rather use foreigners who acquire their merchandise abroad), a professor at an American college who did field work with a minority group that were forced to lease their land to the Chinese government in the south of China (now there's a tourism park there that has very little to do with the original culture), a mother-daughter team, the daughter studying food nutrition in Australia, a woman working on her Phd in Beijing.

I love the eating culture in China. You get a bowl of rice, and then you sort of pick at the food with your chopsticks and eat until you don't feel like eating anymore. And everyone shares. It's such a communal thing, which eating should be.

Finally, Chunyi shows us two more dishes, a stirfry with celery and lily bulb and this amazing hot-sour soup. (see recipe below) What a fantastic, amazing day! And to think I almost missed it.

If you're ever in Beijing, spend a day doing this!

*****

Chunyi's Hot Sour Soup

200g soft tofu
5 dl water
50g minced pork

a handful dried mushrooms
1 egg
1 Ts vegetable oil
ginger, chopped
spring onion, chopped, green and white pieces separated
2/3 ts white pepper powder
3 ts black vinegar
2 ts light soy sauce
2/3 ts salt
2 ts rice wine
1 ts sesame oil
1.5 Ts corn starch
2 Ts water

Soak mushrooms in water until soft, at least a few hours. Use the kind of mushrooms that are black and super-thin. Cut them in strips. Combine vinegar, sesame oil, white pepper powder, and the green parts of the spring onion in a big bowl. The soup will be served in this bowl later. Heat vegetable oil in a wok to medium heat. Add ginger and white parts of the spring onion. Stir for a bit, then add minced pork. Stir until cooked through. Add wine, then water. Stir. Add tofu and mushrooms and bring to a boil. Mix corn starch with the 2 Ts of water. Beat the egg. Add salt, soy sauce, thickening, and egg. Stir. Turn off heat and add everything to the bowl with the vinegar-spring onion mixture. Serve.

Time

2010-06-30T18:33:00.005-04:00

A few months ago, while I was in Germany visiting family, I spent an afternoon with my cousin and her adorably gorgeous 1-year-old. She had been home with him for the first year, but had recently started studying again, so her son was spending days in daycare while she hit the books.

She told me how, after that first day away from him, when she picked him up from daycare, she could tell that he had changed. In those few hours she had been away, he had had experiences, had learned things that she wasn't there to witness, had been alive and grown and developed. This difference in her son was obvious to her, the fact that he was older and more worldly. She told me she had this same sensation often when she picked him up from daycare. In contrast to the first year of his life, during which she spent every moment with him, observing and being a part of every little triumph and setback, she now had the opportunity to gain perspective and see her son at intervals. Even if those intervals were only for a few hours.

[Carrot plants]

I didn't quite buy it. A day is just a day, I thought. People, even babies, don't change that fast. I thought, my cousin is sweet who is that attached to her son, but surely there was no true visible change in him after a single day apart. It was an appealing notion, but I wasn't convinced that's the way the world works.

Remember how I had big plans to plant a vegetable garden a while back?

I did - I planted the tomato plants I had started inside, I planted carrots, I planted spring onions, I planted chives, I planted squash. I watered the seeds and looked after them. Everything started sprouting after a few weeks, all except for the squash.

[Carrot plants]

I figured I hadn't planted them in the right kind of earth, that they needed warmer weather than what's available in Norway, that squash just wasn't my thing.

One day, though, I went out to my veggie garden, pulled back the fiber cloth I had covered the seeds with, and there were two big leafy green leaves sticking out of the ground. The night before, literally 12 hours earlier, there had been nothing there, just dirt and a few stray weeds. And then POOF: a plant. Not just an inkling of a stub. A full plant. Out of nowhere.

[Squash plant]

These living things, these things that grow, these humans, these plants, these animals, they are incredible, these things are. Just POOF and they grow.

I don't doubt my cousin's sentiment now. Babies change, they grow, they gradually become adults. Obviously. I just hadn't been around one enough to know that this progress is noticeable at certain times in their lives. Bit by little bit, they secretly transform before your very eyes, but sometimes it's not a secret. A day can be an awful long time when you haven't been around to experience that many of them.

[Tomato plant]

Before you know it, I'll be telling you all about tomato and squash and carrot and spring onion recipes, brought to you by the phenomenon that is time.

Nothing like a vegetable garden to teach you about the miracle of life.

This is London

2010-06-22T11:00:00.003-04:00

I was three years old the first time I was in London.

I have two memories of this trip that I'm certain are my own. One of them is very vague. It's of my mom holding me and pointing at a big clock (Ben) and me going, "That's it?". The other is of a very shy me whispering in my mom's ear that I want french fries, while a waitress hovers by our table. My mom tells me I can order from the waitress myself, but that I should ask for chips. "But I don't want chips," I say, "I want french fries."

There are other memories of that trip that are not my own, stories that have been told time and time again, so often that I've created images and feelings to go with them. One of these is of the three of us, my mom, my brother, and me, just having arrived on a plane from the US, sitting on the tube together, one kid on each side of mom, holding onto her and taking in this strange new place. My brother, then an avid PBS viewer, also at night when the British BBC would come on the channel, looks around for a while at this and that, the people around us, then turns to my mother, and goes, "Mom, does EVERYBODY here work at the BBC?", figuring that talking the Queen's English was something you learned on the job.

Oh, children can be so sweet when they haven't got a clue.

[Pasteis de nata: more on this below!]

The second time I was in London was two years ago on a long stopover in the middle of a somewhat crazy 9 day trip around western Europe, the itinerary planned by yours truly with very little leeway, during which things, inevitibly, went wrong. My friend and I basically had 7 hours in London as the result of some very faulty American Airlines customer service representitives. (More things went wrong later on that trip.) We arrived in London heavy-eyed and jet-lagged, ready to take in what we could of the city in a few hours. We wandered around for a while, met up with a friend of mine who lives in London, and upon interacting with someone who had slept in a bed the night before, very quickly realized that none of the sentences leaving my mouth made very much sense. This is known to happen when sleep and I are kept apart. The impulses entering my system during those few hours were pretty cluttered.

The third time I was in London was this weekend!

The fourth time I will be in London will be in September, when I move there to start a master's degree. Having only muddled memories of the city, I was psyched that my friend Lisa, who's living and working in London now, invited me for a weekend to take a look around.

Lisa and I spent it playing with her friends, having drinks and food, just wandering around and taking in the city. It has a big city feel like NYC, but to me, it seems less frantic. Obviously it's a European city, and the history and culture gives it its own feel. I think the fact that London's millions, unlike NYC's, aren't all trying to squish onto one single 12x2 mile island has a little something to do with it as well.

On Sunday, I met up with another friend of mine, Samanta, who took me to see what she called "the best of London": Sunday markets! Overwhelmingly wonderfully huge markets at Spitalfields and Brick Lane! There were clothes, hats, prints, purses, and so so much more, all artsy, supertrendy and cheap. So many cute dresses! I wanted all the dresses!

The best part, though, was the food! (So many exclamation points! So excited!) Row upon row of vendors selling FANTASTIC food, all of the world's cuisines represented. Crepes, handrolls, empanadas, eggrolls, it all looked sublime. We got this mouthwatering Morrocan Tagine with lamb meatballs, carrots, tomatoes etc. over couscous, a Spanish tomato salad, these japanese tofu/stickyrice/edamame/carrot/salmon muchies, and hands-down, my new favorite: Pasteis de Nata, a Brazilian pastry which is a kind of cinnamon egg custard in puff pastry. More please!

Finishing up our meal, we wandered out into Brick Lane, where people had set up make-shift markets of their own. Samanta told me girls come there to sell their overflowing wardrobes. Wandering on, we stumbled into another mini-food market: so many cupcakes and treats! Sampling those will have to wait for another Sunday come fall, though: we were stuffed.

This is what I loved about this trip, I spent it with good friends who knew their way around, and I knew I'd be back. So falling in love with the vibe of the city without getting a chance to actually know it wasn't cause for heartbreak, but rather a sweet taste of what's to come. Yes, I think London and I will be very happy together.

Yes, We Love This Country as it Rises Forth

2010-05-20T17:01:00.009-04:00

Norway grew a year older on Monday and Norwegians everywhere bubbled over with pride and celebrated as per usual.

Step 1: Dress up
Step 2: Grab a flag
Step 3: Stuff yourself
Step 4: Go out into the streets.
Step 5: Stuff yourself some more with ice cream and hot dogs.

My friends and I started the day by getting together for breakfast (after dressing up and grabbing a flag, duh). Everyone brought something to share- homemade bread, waldorf salad, smoked salmon, scrambled eggs, spekemat (salty, thinly sliced dried meat), cheeses, roast beef, tomatoes & mozarella, norwegian waffles. I brought a cake (recipe below!)

Having successfully brought ourselves to step 3 and beyond before noon, off into the streets of Oslo we went. Mind you, everyone else in Oslo is at least at step 4 by this time of day, so it's a little please-don't-don't-step-on-my-foot-ow-that-thing-your-elbow-just-jammed-into-is-my-stomach.

The parade that all of of Oslo's school children can partake in, carrying flags and waving at onlookers, was still going on and we watched and waved back for a while, then made our way up to the castle to wave at the Royal Family waving at their subjects. Lots of waving on the 17th of May. You're unpatriotic if you don't wave.

Finally, we headed down to the harbor to start on Step 5. Successfully striking that off the list, the rest of the day was spent frolicking about in the sun.

Hooray for Norway!

******

There's this typical Norwegian cake that people make on festive occasions called a bløtkake. It's a layer cake and there's tons of whipped cream involved. I've had awesome bløtkake, but a lot of the time it just ends up being too sweet and creamy.

So I decided to make something that kind of looks like a bløtkake, but that actually tastes like something. The guy who hosted the breakfast is allergic to eggs, so I put this eggless lemon vanilla raspberry cake together. It was nice and tangy and sweet and fluffy and fresh and I think it went over well.

(By the way, this vanilla pudding is AMAZING and so easy. Just make that if you're going to make anything.)

Lemon Vanilla Raspberry Layer Cake

Cake:

2 cups flour
1 ts baking powder
1 1/2 ts baking soda
1/2 ts salt
2/5 cup vegetable oil
1 cup plus 2 Ts sugar
1 1/2 cup rice (or normal) milk
1 1/2 ts vanilla extract
Zest and juice from 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease 3 pans that are about the same size, or if you are daring and want to bake it as one cake and cut it in three, only grease one. Put parchment paper in the bottom of it.

Mix flour, baking powder, soda, and salt in a big bowl. In a smaller bowl, mix together oil, sugar, milk, lemon juice and zest. Add to dry mixture, mix, then divide between the three pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes until just browning on top and a tester comes out clean. If you bake them in stacks, the bottom ones might not get brown on top, so try and figure out a way to handle that. Cool until room temp.

Vanilla pudding:

1/3 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups milk
1 vanilla pod

Combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a pot. Cut pod lengthwise, brush seeds into mixture with a knife, then put the stems in. Add milk and stir constantly over medium heat until it thickens. Cook for another two or three minutes, remove from heat, take out stems, and transfer to a glass bowl. Stick in fridge until set.

Frosting:

1 cup powdered sugar
2 Ts lemon juice

Combine, adding either more sugar or lemon juice to create the right texture.

Put the cake together:
Put a layer of cake on your serving plate, spread half the vanilla pudding over, then defrosted or fresh raspberries, then cake, vanilla pudding, raspberries, cake, frosting. Finally, decorate with raspberries.

Cities

2010-05-15T11:54:00.005-04:00

One summer while I was living in the States, I was home in Oslo for a few weeks. After some drinks in town with friends one night, I decided to walk for a while instead of getting right on the subway home.

It was one of those magical Norwegian summer nights, where, even though the sun has disappeared, you know it's never going to get really dark, one where, even though the nights are warm, a hint of a chill starts settling, reminding you that regardless of how much the sun does to warm it up, Norway is actually a really cold place.

I started walking through the city, and as I did, I was overtaken with memories with every building, with every corner I passed, bringing me back to years before. The park we would go to after school, equipped with a bin of ice cream and plastic spoons, where we would just sit around, sharing chocolate goodness on lazy spring afternoons. The streets outside the bars we went to the first times we were old enough, and the feeling that we were finally a part of it. The time I saw a naked guy run down the hill in Slottsparken, three or four cops close in pursuit. Corners where kisses were shared with boyfriends to be. The fast food place I would sit with friends in my early teens, drinking milkshakes and blowing bits of straw wrappers at one another. The Chinese restaurant I threw up in around the same age after a bad sandwich earlier that day. The library my mom took me to when we first moved to Norway. The hill up to the University where I first went to college, which I would walk up every Friday after my philosophy class. The street I would turn down on my beloved scooter (RIP!) on the way to school or to town. So many little things, some significant, some insignificant that were completely intertwined with this city, and also with me.

I've had similar experiences with Boston, where I studied for two years. Arriving there on a Chinatown bus one weekend from the hustle of NYC, memories overtook me there, too. Walking from the bus station past Copley to Hynes Convention Center, I passed places I hadn't thought about for months, but it all came rushing back. Corners I sped around on my rollerblades, places I passed on walks with friends, restaurants where we sat outside on warm nights. Every little detail of the city brought something back, made me feel the way I felt when I had just arrived in Boston, when I was exploring and comprehending what it meant to be that far away from home, relearning a culture I had only known as a child. I remember describing to a friend of mine that that first night back there made me feel like Boston was the city that got away. Here too, the city, the buildings were a part of me, a part of my own personal history. They helped shape me.

This past weekend, I took a trip up to Trondheim, where I also went to school for two years. Getting off the train and walking through the sleepy college town to get to my friends' place where I was staying for the weekend, I had a yet another experience like this. Every corner, every building, every piece of sidewalk brought back a memory. As I passed through Bakklandet, this gorgeous old cobblestone area with colorful wooden houses right by the river, a window was open. Through it, music was blasting and I could hear several guys singing passionately along at the top of their lungs. I remembered parties like those, the absolute freedom of living away from home for the first time ever, and being in a town filled with like-minded students.

Ghosts of the past don't haunt me when I walk the streets of Oslo these days, and after I had been in Boston a day or two, buildings turned back into plain buildings again, not just reminders of what had been. After being in Trondheim for a while this past weekend, it too turned back into just a city I knew really well. I guess it's those first hours that feels like coming home, a mix of nostalgia and happy reminders of the moments that made you who you are. Those are the moments that get to you.

Another thing that feels like coming home is seeing old friends again. Unlike cities that overwhelm you when you're first reunited, there are certain people who, even though you don't see them for months, or years even, when you get together with them, you fall right back into where you left off. I spent the weekend in Trondheim with that kind of friends and it was fantastic.

******

I brought them cookies, which we munched on all weekend. It was a new recipe, but it's real easy to make and they turned out yum! A chocolatey-chocolate chewy cookie, the recipe for which I found here.

Chocolatey Cookies

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar. Then add eggs and vanilla, blend until combined. Add flour mixture, mix. Drop tablespoons of cookie dough onto a cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees fahrenheit until puffy, about 12 minutes.

Zeros and Ones

2010-05-04T09:32:00.005-04:00

As a general rule, I make it a rule not to make rules for myself. Except for that one. And a few others.

Which is why I never became a vegetarian. Those of you who know me know that I'm a big fan of balance and finding a good middle ground. I appreciate nuances. The world is a pretty complex place and I don't think that making strict rules for oneself will really do a lot of good. If you're going to look at the world in terms of 0's and 1's, you're going to need a whole heck of a lot of them in order to approach some kind of adequate view on the way things work.

Another reason is that I really like meat.

A couple months ago, I read a book review in the New Yorker. One of my favorite authors, Jonathan Safran Foer, had published a book called "Eating Animals," his first delve into non-fiction. According to the review, Safran Foer has written about the phenomenon and hypocrisy of loving animals as pets, but not blinking an eye when eating them. It seems he's not necessarily trying to point fingers, but rather just show how there's an inconsistency out there, that people don't connect living, breathing animals with what ends up on their plate.

Here's a clip from the movie that was made out of his first book, Everything is Illuminated:

I have yet to read "Eating Animals," but the article in the New Yorker got me thinking. The reviewer gives numbers first on the amount of pets in American homes (millions and millions and millions), and then on the tremendous amounts of meat Americans eat (so very many billions of animals a year). To this last category, she says:

"Most of these creatures have been raised under conditions that are, as Americans know—or, at least, by this point have no excuse not to know—barbaric."

That's what got to me. It's true, I really don't have an excuse.

I know about the dirty factories and confined sheds and the inhumane butchering. I know how animals aren't treated as animals, but rather as things put into this world to solely act as meat-producers. I also know that eating things further down on the food chain takes less out of the world's natural resources (meaning in order to make a cow, you first have to grow all the grain to feed the cow, but if you just ate the grain in the first place, lots would be saved.) I also know that it's healthier to eat less meat.

Another thing I know is me. And that I don't believe in dogmas. And I don't believe that a person can or should try to solve the world's problems by living by strict rules, the problems are much too complex for that. This all or nothing attitude, this black and white way of thinking can be dangerous. You gotta live a little, after all, and be good to yourself, too.

The obvious moral qualms aside, food is such an intimate thing, we put it in our mouths and it goes through our system. Do I really want this kind of grossness (animals raised in dirty, inhumane conditions) becoming part of me? Shouldn't I at least be somewhat conscious of what I'm putting into me?

A person could go slightly loopy thinking about this. I see why not eating meat would be a postive thing. But I also see that the reality is that I don't want to be a vegetarian. I kind of really like meat.

So here's what I decided to do: just eat less meat. A happy medium. I don't have to have meat at every meal, or every day, even. What if I, instead of going straight for a chicken dish, or a beef dish, sometimes thought for a second longer and found something without meat to eat? My point is, if the purpose of becoming a vegetarian is to make an impact on the world by killing fewer animals in a gross way and putting less strain on the environment, then surely it'll help a little just to eat less meat. Because the only way this whole vegetarian thing will make a difference is if large numbers of people do it, and people cutting out some meat is so much more likely than cutting it out all together.

Is it hypocritical to not go cold turkey? I don't think so. I think it's realistic.

Anyway, it's a kind of a challenge, and I like a good challenge. There are so many amazing vegetarian recipes out there, and thinking about food without meat really puts a different persepective on it, and inspires thinking outside the box. Flipping through vegetarian cookbooks, I've discovered foods that I didn't even know existed, like polenta, and semolina for starters. And there are so many tastes in the vegetarian world, ones that were unknown to me before. It's a whole food world very much worth exploring.

*****

Here's a veggie-dish I put together one day, trying to come up with something meatless and filling and yummy. I wanted to make a lasagna with veggies, but without tomato sauce. It's based on this recipe, but I switched it up a bit.

This dish is exactly what I'm talking about: something scrumptious I never would have made had I been thinking meat.

Veggie Lasagna with Spinach, Carrots, and Zucchini

2 carrots
1 zucchini
1 pack frozen spinach
1 cup cottage cheese
1 egg
Sage
Tarragon
Basil
Salt and Pepper
1 can or dried package cream of mushroom soup
1 package lasagna noodles
1/2 cup grated cheese

Put oven on to warm up at 350 degrees farhenheit or 175 celsius. Grease a pan. Prepare the soup as directed, but leave a little of the liquid out: you want it to be slightly thicker than soup. Grate the carrots, slice the zucchini (I used the slicer on my grater to make them extra thin). Defrost the spinach, then mix it up with the cottage cheese. Add sage, tarragon, basil, salt, and pepper to taste. Whisk an egg in a cup, them mix it in with the spinach mixture. Ladle a layer of soup at the bottom of the pan, then put a layer of the noodles over. Spread half the spinach on the noodles, half the carrots on the spinach, and half the zucchini on the carrots. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Then comes another layer of noodles, a layer of the soup, the rest of the spinach, carrots, and zucchini. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Finally, another layer of noodles, the rest of the soup and the grated cheese. Cover with aluminium foil (butter the bottom to keep it from sticking to the cheese) and bake for 50 or so minutes. Remove the aluminium and bake for another 15 minutes until cheese has browned slightly. Consume!

Remembering NYC

2010-05-02T15:16:00.011-04:00

When I left NYC at the end of January, although I don't think it was all that visible, I arrived in Norway with a special souvenir: a few extra pounds. NYC is full of every kind of amazing, mouthwatering, scrumptious food and it's very nearly impossible to avoid putting on some weight while living there. I know I can earmark at least a portion of my little NYC-belly to Billy's Bakery, Crumbs, Sugar Sweet Sunshine, Burgers and Cupcakes, Magnolia, and Cupcake Cafe... I had such a soft spot for those round little single serving-sized cakes and incredible ones could be found around every corner. Sigh, I miss them...

[Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. Recipe follows below.]

Cupcakes aren't a thing here in Oslo. Sure, there are other temptations, but there's a different food culture in Norway than there is in the States.
In general, because of steep prices, eating out is reserved for special occasions, so people make meals at home and pack their lunches every day. There are also sugar taxes, so food that contains a lot of sugar is more expensive than nutritious food. All of this is good: people eat healthier, they spend less money on food, and they are forced to be creative about cooking. Being a part of this food culture the past few months, my NYC-belly has, little by little, taken its leave.

Even though I'm healthier, I dream about scrumptious New York food on a daily basis.

Two of my good Norwegian friends were my roommates this past year in NYC and they also had a soft spot for cupcakes while we were living there together. Some nights we'd be sitting around the apartment and we'd get a craving for cupcakes, so we'd hop on the train downtown and walk over to Magnolia or Sugar Sweet Sunshine to get our fix. Weekday nights were some of my favorite times in NYC- it was quiet after the day's rush of commuters had vacated and there was a calmness to the city that you couldn't find at any other hour. Munching on cupcakes, we'd walk around and just enjoy being in New York.

On Friday, one of my two NYC roommates and another friend, who visited us there often, celebrated their birthday here in Oslo. A few friends and I decided to try to recreate a little of New York for them and baked up a storm for the birthday party.

[Red Velvet Cupcakes. Recipe follows below.]

******

The following recipes were found on the Martha Stewart website, here and here. They were both absolutely incredible and transported me back to lazy NYC nights. YUM.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

A lemony cake bottom, topped with lemon curd and egg-white frosting.

Lemon Curd:
8 egg yolks
Zest of 2 lemons
1/2 cup plus 2 Ts lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
1 cup sugar
1/8 ts salt
10 Ts butter

Begin with the lemon curd because it has to set in the fridge for a least an hour. When separating the eggs, save 6 of the egg whites for the frosting.

Combine together egg yolks, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar in a pot. Stir constantly over medium heat for about 8 to 10 minutes, or until mixture is thick enough to cover the back of the spoon. Remove from heat. Stir in salt, then butter, one piece at a time. Strain into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it directly onto the curd to prevent air from reaching it and creating a skin. Refrigerate until chilled, at least an hour.

Cake:
3 cups flour
1 Ts baking powder
1/2 ts salt
1 cup butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, room temperature
3 Ts lemon zest
2 Ts lemon juice
1 ts vanilla
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 325 degrees fahrenheit (160 degrees celsius). Prepare muffin tins with muffin paper. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix butter and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing in between, then add lemon zest and vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture in three sections, alternating with the buttermilk and lemon juice. Pour batter into tins, bake for about 25 minutes or until knife comes out clean. Cool completely.

Frosting:
1 1/2 cups plus 2 Ts sugar
2/3 cups water
2 Ts light corn syrup
6 egg whites, room temperature

Combine 1 1/2 cups sugar, water, and corn syrup in a small pot. Bring to a boil, stirring now and then until sugar dissolves. Boil without stirring until mixture reaches a temperature of 230 degrees fahrenheit, measured with a candy thermometer. Use an electric mixer to beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Add remaining 2 Ts sugar, combine. Pour syrup into mixture while beating on low speed. Raise speed to medium high and beat until mixture is cool, 7-10 minutes.

Spoon a tablespoon of lemon curd on each cupcake, then a tablespoon of the frosting. If you want to get fancy, you can use a pastry bag and make a swirly top.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Cake:
2 1/2 cups flour
2 Ts cocoa powder
1 ts salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 ts red food coloring
1 ts vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 ts baking soda
2 ts white vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit (175 degrees celsius). Line tins with muffin paper. Mix together flour, cocoa, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix sugar and oil, then add eggs one at a time, and subsequently the vanilla and food coloring. On low speed, add flour in three batches, alternating with the buttermilk. Mix baking soda and vinegar in a separate bowl (it will foam), then beat into mixture. Fill tins with batter and bake for about 20 minutes or until knife comes out clean. Cool completely.

Cream Cheese Frosting:
4 ounces (1 stick) butter
6 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 ts vanilla

Beat butter and cream cheese until fluffy. Add sugar and vanilla, mix. Spread on cupcakes.

I'm back!

2010-04-25T12:16:00.007-04:00

Last night I had a dream about tomatoes.

It wasn’t all that exciting, except for that these tomatoes were grown in my garden, right outside my window. In the dream, I planted a tomato plant and then forgot about it. A few months later, I went outside and there were three bright red tomatoes hiding in the dirt, ready to be eaten. (I realize that tomatoes grow above ground, but in my dream, they were hiding in the dirt.) And that was all, a short little simple dream.

This was a dream I had last night, but it’s also a real dream of mine, to be able to walk outside, pick a tomato off a vine, chop it up and use it right away.

This little tidbit of a dream also reveals how I want this scenario to become a reality: I want to plant a seed, forget about it for a few months, then come back and enjoy the benefits without putting in the work that is obviously required.

A few months ago, I moved back to Norway to work and save up money before I move to London in the fall to do a master’s degree. I decided to try to take this time to do things I’ve been wanting to do for ages, but haven’t had the time for while studying or working a real job. One of those things was to plant and grow a vegetable garden.

My tomato dream was very much based on real life. A while ago, I planted tomato seeds in little pots and put them in my windowsill. I watered them and looked after them for the first few weeks. And then I forgot about them.

Much like this blog.

I loved writing here when I first started. I put work into it, remembered to bring my camera with me whenever I was doing anything food related, set aside time on weekend afternoons to write. Then I got busy, and spending time on writing here started feeling like a chore. The last time I wrote was yesterday a year ago exactly. Since then, lots of people I know have asked me when I’m going to start blogging again, people I didn’t even know read this. It's been wonderful to hear that so many followed and enjoyed this thing. And I've thought about starting again, I just haven't gotten my act together to do it. I do still love food, I do still love writing, thinking, and dreaming about it.

This blog has had the same fate as my tomato plants: I planted a seed, watered it for a while, and as per usual, forgot about it.

-

I woke up this morning and, inspired by my little tomato dream, went over to take a look at the seeds I’d planted.

There they were, sprouted, parched, but willing and able to become luscious red tomatoes. All they needed was a little help.

So, little tomatoes, so, little blog, I’m back to see you through.

*****

Part of the reason that I wanted to plant a vegetable garden is the fruit and berries my parents have always had in their garden. It’s the most incredible thing to be able to pick plums and cherries right off the trees and make a plum cake or a cherry tart. My parents’ freezer is stuffed with frozen raspberries and red currants from years past, and being home during these winter months, I’ve been working my way through their stash. Here’s the latest recipe I made, with fresh raspberries from the garden via the freezer (recipe found on Joy of Baking)

Apple Crisp
Topping:
1/2 cup (65 grams) all purpose flour
1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated white sugar
1/4 cup (55 grams) light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fresh or ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (84 grams) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/3 cup (30 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats
1/3 cup (40 grams) chopped walnuts or pecans

Filling:
6 apples (granny smiths are perfect!) peeled, cored, and cut into chunks
1 cup fresh raspberries
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 teaspoon lemon zest
3 tablespoons (40 grams) white granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 375 (190 C). Put all of the topping ingredients into a food processor, mix until crumbly, with no big pieces of butter left. This can also be done with two knives, but will take a while. Mix together the filling in a separate bowl, then spread into a buttered dish. Spread topping over apples. Bake for 30-40 mins, until top is golden brown and looks crispy. Serve with vanilla ice cream!

Pain in the neck

2009-04-24T22:33:00.005-04:00

On Wednesday, I woke up and couldn't move my head.

It was mildly scary and really pretty painful. I had no chance of making it to work: even holding my head up without support was excruciating. I felt like a baby who's head bobs down because it's not strong enough to hold it up. But for me, when my head bobbed down, it hurt like crazy.

I spent the day in bed with about 10 pillows strategically placed under my head and my roommates running back and forth waiting on me. (I couldn't even pick up a glass of water...) I was going crazy by the end of the day from not moving or doing anything or being able to use the swivel function of my head. If you think about it, that's really quite a handy function.

The next day was a little better, so I decided to try to go in to work for a couple hours. One of my colleagues stopped me in the hall, laughed, and did the robot. Apparently I was involuntarily doing a pretty amazing attempt at it.

So, when I got home that night, I was pretty sick of this whole pain in the neck thing and had no desire to lay around anymore. So I baked.

But I had to keep it simple since I couldn't physically do any real rigorous baking and also had to bake with what we had in the house (which wasn't a lot since we think our oven is screwed up and therefore never really bake anything). I found a simple pound cake recipe on allrecipes.com and got to it. By the time I was done using what I had in the house, the pound cake had somehow turned into banana bread. I can't be certain, but I think it was the banana I put in that did it. Mm-mm. Sweet, soft, moist...yum.

*****
Banana Bread Pound Cake

2 cups flour
1 ts baking soda (the original recipe says 2 ts baking powder, but I only had the soda)
1 cup white sugar
3 Ts brown sugar (had some in the cupboard, why not?)
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 large ripe banana

Put all the ingredients into a bowl. Mix. Pour into bread pan.

Bake at 350 degrees fahreinheit (175 celsius) for about 45 mins.
*****

Amazing

2009-03-30T22:18:00.006-04:00

This weekend, I filmraced.

I've done it once before, and it was crazy then and it was crazy now. 24 hours to write, shoot, edit, and deliver (in person) a short film. My team consisted of some friends from work and a friend from college. I think we came out with a halfway decent film, given the time constraints. I'll post a link once we put it online.

I only slept an hour and a half during the 24 hour period, and our team took the term filmrace to heart when, 21 minutes before the deadline, we decided to sprint the 15 blocks to the drop-off location instead of taking a taxi. (It seemed logical at the time, but so did a lot of things... Sleep depravation will do that to you). We made it there with a minute or two to spare, sweating and dryheaving. Turning in the film was all that much sweeter, though.

I was mildly tired when I got home Saturday night, to say the least and, actually, I think I'm still catching up on sleep, even though I slept and slept and slept Saturday night. I just can't seem to stay awake lately.

My roommates and I took it easy on Sunday, luckily, and went for a stroll down by Union Square over to Chelsea. On our stroll, we walked by a hotdog joint, then did a doubletake, walked back and went in.
It wasn't the first time I had heard of Dogmatic Dogs (26 E 17th st, New York, NY 10003, 212-414-0600), I had read about them on one of my favorite food blogs, Chocolate and Zucchini, but I seem to remember that when I then tried to look them up, I read that they had closed down.

Here's what really happened. Dogmatic Dogs started out as a hotdog cart. Then they closed down the hotdog cart and made it into a restaurant. Which is where the miscommunication happened between me and the internet.

And just so there are no miscommunications between you and me, let me just say that these are no ordinary frankfurters. These are made from meat that's all natural, the no-hormones, no-antibiotic, free-range type animals. And you can have your pick between lamb, beef, chicken, pork, or turkey. Or asparagus. But that's not really a hot dog. It's just asparagus. And they come in baguettes with a hole in the middle, yummy crusty baguettes. And they're served with your choice of sauce, like mint yoghurt, sundried tomato feta, or cheddar jalapeno. I reccommend the truffle gruyere sauce. YUM!

The moral of this story is: sleep is amazing when you've been deprived of it and Dogmatic Dogs are just plain AMAZING. I can't wait to have them again.

Trader Joe's, how much do I love you? Let me count the ways...

2009-03-21T16:01:00.010-04:00

When I first moved to New York, I almost started crying because of the price of food in this city. I remember that, after my first trip to my local Gristedes, I considered (for a few brief seconsds) moving away from the city because I couldn't imagine myself getting by on those prices.

It was a few days after that that I made my first trip (or should I say journey) to Trader Joe's in the city. Trader Joe's is a grocery store chain that sells only its own brand of food. The fresh produce is always great quality, the prepared (frozen, canned, dried) food is always made from solid ingredients (none of that processed stuff), a lot of the food is organic, the staff there is always friendly, and on top of all of this, the prices are great. I used to do almost all my shopping at Trader Joe's when I lived in Boston, but there's only one of them in Manhattan, in Union Square, which isn't exactly right down the block.

Walking in there after the devastating trip to Gristedes a few days prior was like coming home.

The one location they have in Manhattan is a madhouse, with a line curving its way through all of the aisles and tons of people at any given time of the day or night. So not only is it time-consuming to make the trek down there from my apartment on the Upper East Side, it's also time-consuming to be there.

I honestly don't mind, though, since I like the store so much. I end up going about once a month to stock up. I put on some tunes, pack up my reusable grocery bags and make a night out of it. I could spend hours browsing the aisles at Trader Joe's. This Wednesday was one of those nights.
Since I started working steadily, I've been trying to find ways to spice up lunch (which I diligently bring every day) and this past trip helped me out. For $3, you can get a mixed vegetable bruschetta spread, which is absolutely amazing on 7 grain bread with sliced avocados, smoked turkey, and Jarlsberg cheese (the Norwegian in me won't have any other kind). There are so many other spreads and things to choose from at Trader Joe's, that I'm sure I'll never run out of things to try. The past couple of days have been brilliant for lunch.

Trader Joe, you brighten a foodlover's day on the the cheap!

Chairs

2009-03-08T12:10:00.004-04:00

We moved into a new apartment about two and a half months ago, but it's happened gradually since my roommates and I were all away for a period of time after we took over the place. We didn't come with a lot of furniture since my roommates moved from Norway and I've always lived with other people who have furniture up until this point.

We spent hours pouring over craigslist for cheap, but nice furniture. By the end of February, we had pretty much everything we needed to make the place livable and homey. Except dining room chairs.

I had been in touch with a guy about some chairs for a while, but the pickup kept getting postponed. Last weekend, my friend Chris crashed at our place since he had a gig in the city, so Saturday night we had our first sitdown dinner at our new dining table. One of us sat on a chair with no seat, one on an office chair, one on a footrest, and the fourth on a coffee table. It was slightly awkward, but the food was great, a collaborative effort! (We made a chicken, garlic, and cabbage dish with sweet and sour sauce. It was yummy. I can't remember the exact recipe, though, we just sort of threw it together...)

Sunday night found us running through the streets of Harlem, each with at least one chair slung over our shoulder. (No, we hadn't stolen them and were tryng to make a clean getaway, we were racing to catch a bus back downtown after buying them) The bus driver wasn't happy about us taking chairs onto the bus, but allowed it.

So on Monday, when we had some friends over for some AMAZING spaghetti (my friend Alex dished up some homemade tomato sauce loaded with garlic and basil, we had fresh pasta, and I made meatballs from scratch), we were all able to sit on chairs around our dining table like normal human beings.

Sometimes I kind of miss sitting on the coffee table, though.

*****
Italian Meatballs

(from the book "Italiensk" the norwegian version of a book called "Italian Kitchen" by Jane Price)

1 lbs ground beef (or 500 g)
1-2 small onions
1-2 garlic boats, pressed or chopped
A few handfulls fresh bread crumbs (40-60 g)
A bunch of black olives, chopped (40-60 g)
1-2 ts dried oregano
1-2 Ts fresh parsley, chopped
salt and pepper

Mix everything in a bowl with your hands. Roll into little balls. Warm up some oil in a frying pan, then fry on all sides. You can either cook them through or just brown them a little and then add them to the sauce to simmer.

Baby Torso

2009-02-26T21:42:00.008-05:00

On Tuesday, a friend of mine and I showed up at a party in Brooklyn with a plastic baby, some dough rising in a bowl, some sprinkles, and a walnut-cinnamony-brown sugar sauce.

Have you ever heard of King Cake?

I hadn't until this Tuesday, which was Fat Tuesday, and the party was in honor of Mardi Gras.

King Cake is an old tradition for Mardi Gras, apparently brought over from Europe to the States a LONG time ago. And we, in turn, brought it to the party.

So, while people were mingling, drinking beer, trading mardi gras beads, my friend and I were rolling out the dough, spreading out the walnut-cinnamony-sugar sauce, and breaking the legs off of our plastic baby.

This is the awesome part about this cake (besides the fact that it tastes great). You're supposed to bake a little plastic baby into the cake. I think originally, this was supposed to symbolize the baby Jesus, but now I guess it's just a thing you do when you make King Cake. The only problem was that our plastic baby wasn't so much a baby as it was a toddler, with hair and all, pretty disproportionate to the size of our cake. We were afraid the baby was going to melt, ruining the cake, so we wanted it to be as small as possible so the ruined part would also be as small as possible.
Our solution was to yank the head and break the legs off of this poor doll, leaving us with a torso in a diaper. It rolled up nicely into the cake, though. Once it was out of the oven, icing and sprinkles (traditionally yellow, green, and purple for Mardi Gras) were poured on. The cake was then cut into pieces and lots of slightly intoxicated party people gobbled the cake right up. One girl found the torso in her cake, and was rewarded with being allowed to wear a crown for the rest of the night. Cause it was King Cake. And kings wear crowns.

*****
Vegan King Cake

The guy hosting the party is vegan, so we made it vegan in his honor, the recipe taken from this website. It was scrumptous!

Cake:
1 package dry active yeast
¼ cup warm water
1 Ts maple syrup
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more if needed
1 ts salt
¼ ts nutmeg
3 Ts granulated sugar
6 Ts soy margarine, cut into pieces
3 Ts Egg Replacer Powder mixed with ¼ Ts hot water
¼ cup coconut milk (not “lite” variety), plus more for brushing

Filling:
¾ cup dark brown sugar
¼ cup dairy-free soy margarine, softened
½ cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts
½ ts cinnamon
1 plastic baby

Icing:
1 ½ cup confectioners sugar
½ ts salt
3 Ts warm water

Yellow, Green and Purple Sprinkles
Combine yeast, warm water and maple syrup, mixing gently until the yeast dissolves. Set aside until frothy, about 5 minutes. Combine flour, salt, nutmeg and sugar. Add the soy margarine and mix with a mixer until it resembles fine crumbs. Add this mixture to the yeast, along with the Egg Replacer mixture and coconut milk. Knead, adding flour as necessary, until a soft dough forms. Place in an oiled bowl, covered, for 1 hour, or until the dough has risen to twice its size. To make the filling, combine the brown sugar, soy margarine, chopped pecans and cinnamon in a small bowl.
Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly oil a large baking sheet or round pizza pan.
Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a large rectangle about 1/8” thick. Spread the cinnamony mixture over the dough, then place the baby on one side of it. Roll the dough into a log, then form into a round shape with a whole in the middle, attaching the two ends to eachother.
7. Brush the cake lightly with coconut milk or soy milk. Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown. Allow cake to cool slightly.
8. Whisk together the confectioners sugar and salt. Add the warm water and stir vigorously until the mixture is a very thick glaze. Ladle the mixture over the cake in several additions, letting the icing run down the sides. While the icing is still slightly warm, sprinkle the prepared sprinkles over the cake, alternating sections of purple, green and yellow.
Serve and devour. Watch out for little plastic arms.

Ew, jerky.

2009-02-21T09:39:00.008-05:00

I usually wrinkle my nose when I think of jerky. It's so vulgar to me to be popping dried meat in your mouth like potato chips. Meat, especially dried, is NOT for snacks on the go.

But! I am capable of seeing things in a new light given the correct circumstances.

We were in Kentucky, the sky was blue, the geese were flying (south?), and we had just made it through some rough days of filming. 12 hour days, down to 2 degrees fahreinheit, and the only thing that had kept us going through it were the Toasti Toes foot and hand warmers you could hide in your mittens and boots. (Plus the 5 layers of wool. Oh, and of course the deadline of getting all the footage shot on schedule. But that's secondary.)

We made it through the tough days, and man, did we get rewarded for it! Three days later and it was 60 degrees out. Filming was a breeze.

It was under these circumstances that the General broke out the venison jerky.

I was the odd man out (or woman I should say) during the shoot in Kentucky. As I was pretty much the only girl, pretty much the only person under 25, pretty much the only girl under 25 who had lived in a city all of her life, I wasn't smack dab in the middle of the demographic for visitors to the range. Everyone liked to tease me a little about it ("betcha don't see wild turkeys running around in New York..."), but they were really great about making sure I was comfortable when we were out shooting.

"The General" was in fact a retired general and was one of the owners of the range. He was everything you would think a general would be, commanding respect even in civilian life. He lived about an hour from the range, and kept talking about how he'd have to bring some of the venison he'd hunted up to the range for us to try. I was stoked.

And so, on this beautiful 60 degree, post-2 degree day, he showed up in his white suburban and started handing out venison jerky.

Ladida. Here I thought I was going to get the chance to try some freshly hunted scrumptious venison, freshly hunted by a retired GENERAL, no less, and then it turns out it's in the form of JERKY. Sigh.
I took a piece anyway, just to be polite, ripped off a bite with my teeth and was utterly suprised.

This was some of the tastiest meat I had ever had. It was tender and the spices were incredible (the General told us that he dropped the meat off at a local place that seasons and dehydrates it for them). True, the meat looked like bark, but it had me practically begging for more.

I think the General was pleased that a city girl could be so happy about a piece of jerky.

Everything Happened at Once

2009-02-02T23:12:00.007-05:00

I haven’t written for a while because all of a sudden, everything happened at once.

As promised, my two Norwegian friends arrived in the States about two weeks ago. They’re going to be in the US for a year, living out the dream. They’ve spent a long time planning, contacting Norwegian newspapers and magazines, who they’ll be freelance-writing for while they’re here. They basically just up and left their day jobs to experience and write about New York for a year, much to my happiness, cause now I’ll have two amazing roommates.

We found an apartment pretty quickly, and we just moved into a beautiful (affordable and large by NYC standards, but expensive and small by any other) apartment on the Upper East Side, just a few blocks from Central Park. Or, that is, my friends and my stuff moved in, I haven’t actually had a chance to live in our new apartment yet.

About a week and a half ago, I all of a sudden got hired for a month as a production assistant on a TV show that’ll air on a cable network. I had to pack up my room in a weekend and leave NYC to meet up with the crew. I’ve been hoping for a longish-term gig like this for ages, but of course it happened the second I had a ton of other stuff to do. We made it work though, my friends and wonderful brother volunteered to do the actual moving so I could take the job, and so when I get back at the end of February, I’ll come back to a fresh, new apartment.

Being on set is enjoyable, but tiring. The days are long and the nights are short. There’s a lot of packing and unpacking, waiting and running around, but it’s great fun to be a part of. The crew I’m working with is great, and I love being a part of the team. One of the absolute greatest perks of being on location, though, is that the production company covers all meals. That’s right, eat what you want for a month and don’t worry about having to pick up the bill.

The gig started out with three nights in DC, with two days jam-packed with interviews. Most of the time while we were in DC, we were so strapped for time that we ended up eating in the hotel restaurant (or diner, rather). One night, though, we ventured onto the metro system and into downtown DC for some real dinner.

We stumbled upon this Mediterranean/Middle Eastern restaurant in downtown DC called Zaytinya (701 9th St, NW, Washington, DC 20001 202-638-0800). It was absolutely superb. The place is chic, but not overwhelmingly so, it’s just a cozy atmosphere. The idea is kind of like tapas, you order a bunch of little courses and share them with your group. (And we all know I love doing this!) We had Baba Ghannouge, Falafel, Lamb Bahar (spice rubbed lamb), olives, Chicken Melanzano (chicken breast with pomegranate and charred eggplant puree), shrimp in a mustard and lemon sauce, Fattoush Salad (tomatoes, cucumber, onion, pepper, radish, pita chips, pomegranate), the list goes on. I usually like this type of cuisine, but it’s never been my favorite because I always feel like there’s something a little bit off, or missing taste-wise, from the dishes. This wasn’t the case here, everything had full-blown taste, wonderfully put together dishes. It was incredible. And dessert! Oh my, dessert. I had a cheese tart with the most decadent and incredible greek honey thyme ice cream, pistachio shortbread, and sweet walnuts. I’ve been dreaming about it ever since.

Since Thursday, the crew and I have been on a range in Kentucky and we’ll be here for another week, shooting footage for the show. Kentucky has just had one of the worst ice storms of its history, blowing out the power for over 500 000 people. It started out with snow, which froze to ice, which was too much for the poor trees to bear, so they toppled over and took a ton of power lines with them. I must say, the ice was extremely pretty, despite all of the damage it did. Luckily, the power came back on at the lodge we’re staying at just before we arrived, but the Internet was back up just today. (There's actually only one spot in my room where I can pick up the wireless, so now that I've found it, I'm sitting on the floor there and writing this.)

I’ve found out that there’s a great deal of truth to the southern hospitality people talk about. Our stay here has been great and the owners and staff at the lodge have really taken us under their wings and are making our stay and our jobs easy. The food they make for us is wonderful, real southern comfort food: grits, sausage, eggs, gravy and biscuits for breakfast, pimento cheese, chicken salad, and tuna sandwiches for lunch, and (Kentucky!) fried chicken, smoked ham, steaks, and creamy, creamy mashed potatoes for dinner. The desserts are great, too, pecan pie, banana cream pudding, oatmeal cake (picture). I could learn to live like this...minus the ice storms.

I do have that amazing NYC apartment waiting for me...

Mischief Managed

2009-01-16T11:22:00.017-05:00

The day before yesterday, I drove out to the airport with my half-brother and his nephew to pick up my other brother who was coming back to the States after the holidays in Norway.

In the car ride back into Manhattan from the airport, my jet-lagged brother asked my six year old nephew how things were going at school. He answered that things were going well at school and that he often got stickers for his good work. "What do you do with the stickers you get at school?" my brother wondered. He answered that he usually puts them on his shirt. My brother thought it'd be funny if my nephew would put the stickers on the teacher's butt instead. My nephew thought this was a hilarious, but odd thing to do. But he's 6.

Kids love my brother, mostly because he teaches them ways to be mischievious, and doesn't tippy-toe around them like a lot of adults do, much to the other grown-ups joy (because he takes the time to play with the kids) and distress (once they realize what he's teaching them). At Christmas, for example, he taught our cousin's little girls how to make the screeching sound when letting air out of a balloon. The girls loved it, but somehow it didn't go over too well with everyone else who was trying to carry on conversations.

My bro decided to stay in New York for a day or two before heading back home, so yesterday we had two of his friends who live in New York over to my place for dinner.

I made our mom's lasagne recipe, which she's been making for as long as I can remember, from the time when we were kids and it was my (then) teenage half-brother who was indoctrinating us with mischievious things to do, and not us teaching his son shenanigans.

I love this recipe and know it by heart and am thrilled that my mom taught it to me.

*****
Mom's Yummy Lasagne

Tomato Sauce:
1 package ground beef
1 onion, chopped
1 can of mushrooms
1 big can of tomato sauce
thyme
basil
sage
chili powder
paprika
garlic powder
salt
pepper

Cheese mixture:
1 egg
1 big container cottage cheese (not the jumbo one, but the big one)
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
salt
pepper

Other:
1 package frozen spinach
1 package grated cheese
1 pack ready-for-oven flat lasagne noodles

In a semi-large pot, brown the meat, onion, and mushrooms. Sprinkle over salt and pepper. Add the tomato sauce, and add spices to make the sauce more interesting. Taste a little and see what it's missing. Cook the spinach (with salt and pepper!) in a bowl in the microwave. Mix together the cheese mixture in another bowl.

Put one layer of tomato sauce on the bottom of a lasagne pan. Sprinkle lightly with grated cheese. Lay out a layer of lasagne noodles, a layer of cheese mixture, a layer of spinach, a layer of tomato sauce, then a light sprinkle of grated cheese. Start with the lasagne noodles again, and do another layer of each all the way to the grated cheese. (if your lasagne dish is really deep, you might have room for yet another layer of each, but that'll be up to you and if you have enough ingredients left) Lay out another layer of noodles, a final layer of tomato sauce and sprinkle heavily with grated cheese.

Cover with aluminum foil, bake at 375°F for about an hour removing the foil for the last 10-15 minutes.

This is important: let the lasagne sit for about 15 minutes to set once out of the oven, otherwise the lasagne will fall apart. (One of my bro's friends who was here for dinner said that he'd never had lasagne with so much integrity before, haha! Yes, this is one unified, honest lasagne....)
****

It was a very nice evening, drinking wine (Malbec! from Chile, which, although I know practically nothing about wine, is turning out to be one of my favorite kinds), eating, and being merry. My bro's friends are a lot of fun to hang out with.

I forget why, but at one point one of his friends had her hand over the other's mouth, probably because she was trying to say something and he wouldn't stop talking. (It's ok, they're a couple.) My bro's friend then licked her hand, and she immediately took her wet-with-saliva hand and smeared it across his forehead. She said, "That just goes to show that you didn't grow up with siblings, otherwise you would've known that would backfire."

This blew my mind. I used that same trick for YEARS when I was a kid, (licking my brother's hand whenever he had it over my mouth, trying to get me to be quiet when I was mid-sentence in screaming, "I'M TELLING!" at the top of my lungs) and never did it occur to the master of mischief to get back at me by smearing my own saliva all over my face. I am happy that I'm now 23 years old and my brother no longer uses that method to try to get me to be quiet. I made it through childhood with that one secret weapon intact.

Don't look beyond the fact that he'll probably be teaching the smear-your-sibling's-own-saliva-all over-their-forehead trick to one of our nephews in the near future, though.

I am... a very thrifty broad

2009-01-12T23:04:00.010-05:00

I've been back in New York for exactly a week after the holidays, which were passed in Norway, and I've spent most of that time answering phones for Corporate America.

"Thank you for calling [insert Company Name here]!"

I say that sentence a lot. I'm really glad I went to college.

Being unemployed (or I guess at least not steadily employed, since I'm temping) has made my penny-pinching muscles super flexible, and I've already come up with a ton of ways to enjoy the city without having to enjoy it too much in the form of ending up living on the streets. During the past week I've done the following low-cost, or free things:

1. Saw an amazing production of "Women Beware Women" by Thomas Middleton. (FREE, thanks to my aunt, who set me up to usher with her at the Red Bull Theater)

2. Ate an amazing greek sampler meal in Astoria (cheap, thanks to my great friend Alex, who took pity on my predicament and picked up most of the bill, but who also just really loves food pretty much about as much as I do...mmmm, tahini!)

3. Went to the Museum of the City of New York (cheap! they have a "suggested" admission price, meaning you can pay as little as you want as long as it's a penny at least. They have a great exhibit on what New York's doing to green up the city, and also an awesome video spanning all of New York's history. Did you know Canal street was actually a canal and Wall street actually a wall at one point in time!?)

4. Borrwed a book from the wonderful New York Public Library (I'm reading the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. It's a great book, a kind of existential detective story about a guy who lives in, you guessed it, New York and sort of stumbles upon becoming a strange variety of detective).

All of this penny-pinching, of course, extends to everyday eating as well. Being the thrifty girl that I am, I pack my lunch to bring with me to work every time I go in (thank the heavens for red pepper flavored hummus for sandwiches), and then I head back to my apartment after to make dinner at home as often as I can.

Today was a dinner-at-home kind of evening.

I had some zucchini in the fridge, which inspired me to make up a new recipe and it turned out yummy!

*****
Zucchini Cream Sauce over Spaghetti
(serves 1 really hungry person, or two kind of hungry people)

1 small zucchini
1 carrot
1/2 sweet italian pepper
1 pork chop
vegetable oil
1/4 ts dried chili powder
1/2 ts dried sage
1/4 ts paprika

1 Ts butter/margerine
1 garlic clove
1 Ts flour
1-2 cups milk
1/2 buljong cube
1 ts basil
salt and pepper to taste

Cut the zucchini, carrots, italian pepper, and pork chop into pieces. Put some oil in a pan, add sage, chili, paprika. Add the meat, then the veggies, sprinkle salt and pepper over. Stir until pork is cooked through. Transfer to a bowl.

Melt the butter in the same pan, squish the garlic clove into the butter with a garlic press. Add the flour, and stir vigourously over medium heat. Add a little milk at a time, stirring til mixture is smooth and all the bumps are gone between each time. Once you have a good consistency, add basil, buljong cube, salt and pepper to taste. Add more chili powder, sage and paprika if it's boring. If it's too salty, add a little more water. Put the veggies and pork back in and boil down til the sauce is a good texture.

Serve over whole wheat spahetti!
*****

That computer in the background is for watching tv on my computer while eating. Hooray for hulu.com and free watch-anytime-you-want-tv!

Happy eating!

A Sporkife!

2009-01-02T16:22:00.006-05:00

I've always thought of the name of this blog as three separate important eating utensils.

My friend Andreas (who you'll be hearing a lot more about since he and another friend, Lasse, are moving to New York in 15 days), found a slightly different interpretation when he was in a sporting store a while ago. He bought it for me, and presented me with it, .blogspot.com and all.

I give you, in A SINGLE utensil, a Spoon, a Fork, and a Knife:

Secret Santa

2008-12-28T15:31:00.017-05:00

For years and years, my Norwegian friends and I have exchanged holiday gifts via the pseudonym Secret Santa.

Since there are so many of us (I think there were 15 participants in this last one), we decided long ago to opt to give one larger, useful, well-thought-out gift to one person rather than 15 tiny, useless ones to all 15 people, even though everybody loves everyone else just as much.

One designated individual, the only one who knows the whole spiel, usually draws names out of a hat and links them to the receiving end sometime in early December. On December 22nd or thereabouts, the whole gang gets together. Each person puts their parcel into a huge burlap sack, making sure no-one else is watching to see what kind of wrapping paper he or she used, and then the gifts are distributed, but not opened. Everyone must wait two more days until Christmas Eve to open the gift at the proper time. Secret Santa is not a game.

On the 22nd this year, we were all invited to my friend Siri's house for Christmas treats and to partake in the distribution, but not unwrapping, of the gifts.

I don't remember who started it, but it sounded something like this:

"What if we... opened them together... tonight?"

I swear I heard a gasp after the question had been uttered. Open the presents BEFORE Christmas Eve? That's just crazy.

The night proceeded, though, and it kept coming up, someone venturing to say, "It would fun to see what everyone else got," and someone else saying, "Maybe it'll be nicer this way." Finally, we voted on it, and there were only 2 people who voted against. (Yes, we are the kind of people who vote on things. And who, at the age of 24, care deeply about the specifics of traditions...)

So, for the first time in history, we were all there to see eachother's first reactions to the gifts and could share in appreciating them together.

You're supposed to keep your identity as gift-giver a mystery for as long as possible, disguising the gift tag with someone else's handwriting, denying it to the death when someone guesses that it's you. I thought I did an especially good job at disguising my gift this year since I typed up and printed out my tags on little stickies, not leaving the handwriting thing to chance.

However, the second Andreas, who my gift was for, opened his present, I heard a *swish*, which was the sound of everyone in the room turning to look at me, including Andreas who turned to me to say thank you. The content of the present I made was a dead give-away.

*****
Pear and Fig Preserves

(recipe from washingtonpost.com)

10 cups Bartlett pears (about 8 or 9 pears), peeled
10 ounces (about 300 grams) dried figs
3 lemons
2 vanilla beans
1 ts vanilla essence
1 cinnamon stick
1 ts ground cardamom
1/2 cup honey
3 cups sugar
2 cups water

Prepare 6-8 empty glass preserve jars and by washing them in SUPER hot soapy water. Then rinse thoroughly, keeping the jars warm until ready to use.

Peel, core, and cut pears into pieces. Cut hard parts off of figs, then cut into pieces. Slice vanilla beans in half, then cut those pieces into 4 or 5 pieces each. Cut lemons into half-inch sized slices, discarding the ends, remove seeds.

Combine pears, figs, lemon slices, vanilla beans, vanilla, cinnamon stick, cardamom, honey sugar, and water in a pot. Cook over medium heat for about an hour, uncovered, stirring often. It'll probably take more than an hour, but you'll know it's done when it has thickened and gotten a slightly darker shade to it.

Fill each glass, still hot, with preserves using a ladle. Put a lemon slice and a few vanilla beans in each, but throw away the cinnamon stick. Leave 1/2 an inch of room at the top of the jar. Screw the lid on tight, then turn upside down to cool.

Pesto

(recipe modified from the one in The Dean and Deluca Cookbook by David Rosengarten)

1 cup firmly packed fresh basil leaves
2 Ts pine nuts
2 ts minced garlic
6 Ts extra virgin olive oil
4 ts freshly grated Parmesan cheese
salt to taste

Mix basil, pine nuts and garlic in a food processor. Add oil with machine running, mix in cheese. Put in salt to taste.

Olive Tapenade

(Also modified from the Dean and Deluca cookbook. Usually this recipe calls for 4 anchovy fillets, but I didn't use them so the tapenade would keep longer. I'm sure the taste would've been much stronger had I used them, so I recommend doing it if you use it up sooner than later!)

1 cup pitted black olives
2 ts garlic
1 Ts onion
1 Ts capers
1/8 ts dried thyme
a pinch of cayenne pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 ts fresh lemon juice

Combine olives, garlic, onion, anchovies, capers, thyme, cayenne in a food processor. With machine running, pour olive oil in. Stop before mixture turns into a purée. Add lemon juice, stir.
*****

I put the preserves, pesto and tapenade in jars, made little labels for them, then cut out 3 circular red pieces of felt, draped them over the lids and tied them with green ribbons. These three jars coming out of the wrapping paper along with a gift card for a subscription to Time Out New York (Andreas is moving to New York in January) were certain indicators that I had been responsible for the gift.

There were tons of other great presents: one person got a homemade cookbook plus oven mitts and some of the ingredients for the recipes, another person got a homemade hat; there were books, dvds, espresso makers, board games, t-shirts, all very thoughtful. It was wonderful to open the gifts together, lots of fun. I really don't know why we were so against it before.

I got a wonderful cookbook from my Secret Santa called, "Nibbled- 200 fabulous finger food ideas". It's full of food ideas for get-togethers and has great full page pictures. Someone had obviously been paying attention to this here blog and noticed that I have a new-found love for tapas, but I had no idea which one of my friends had given it to me.

I got the opportunity to use the book just a few days later when Andreas had the entire gang over for holiday tapas in his tiny student apartment (or should I say closet...). He had arranged it so nicely, had taken out all the furniture (since he's moving out of his apartment on Monday anyway in preparation for New York in a few weeks), put his mattress on the floor and huge pillows all over, and decorated with tea candles. 16 of us managed to squeeze into as many meters squared. It was cozy, though, and luckily we're all good friends. I'm sure he set the record for how many people you can get into the standard sized student room at the University of Oslo.

I made Kofta Meatballs from my new cookbook.

*****
Spicy Koftas

(from Nibbled)

Dip:
1 small tomato, peeled, seeded and finely chopped
1/2 Lebanese (short) cucumber, peeled and finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 Ts chopped mint
125 g (4 oz/1/2 cup) plain yogurt

Meatballs:
500 g(1 lb 2 oz) ground lamb
1 small onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 ts ground coriander
1 ts ground cumin
1/4 ts ground cinnamon
1/2 ts red chili, seeded and finely chopped
1 ts tomato paste
1 Ts chopped mint
1 Ts chopped cilantro (coriander)
oil, for pan-frying

Mix all yogurt ingredients together, cover and refrigerate.

Mix all meatball ingredients together with your hands in a large bowl. Heat a little oil in a pan, then roll small meatballs and drop them into pan, turning until browned all over and cooked through. (It'll take a couple of batches) Drain on paper towels. Can be cold when served, but warm works too.

*****

There was so much wonderful food there that night: oven roasted potatoes with aioli, filled artichoke hearts, little mini burgers held together with toothpicks, Princess cake, marshmellows, apples and bananas dipped in chocolate, crepes with mushroom and pepper fill, mozzarella, tomato and avocado salad, pasta salad (that Andreas made with the pesto I gave him!), meatballs in tomato sauce, salmon rolls... the list goes on... It was an incredible and lovely night.

Thank you to Erik for my wonderful cookbook! (Yes, he broke the Secret Santa code and revealed himself later that night, slightly intoxicated...)

Barcelona!

2008-12-22T08:37:00.019-05:00

As earlier advertised, I just spent 3 marvelous days in Barcelona visiting my two friends, Tesse and Stefan, who're studying there this year.

Absolutely everybody I talked to about Barcelona before I went is crazy for the city, and raved about how beautiful, gorgeous, and amazing it is. And it turns out, I wholeheartedly agree. I fell in love with the city at first sight. And first taste.

I spent three days wandering around, taking pictures, and eating. It was wonderful.

Barcelona is an interesting city partly because of it being Catalan, and not really Spanish at all. I wasn't really aware of this, but Spain has 4 official languages, and 3 areas inhabited by people who would really call themselves something quite other than Spanish (Basque Country and Galicia being the other two). Barcelona is pretty much the capital of Catalonia, and the language is a mixture of French and Spanish.

It's such an old city, but there's a lot of new mixed in, which I guess you could say about a lot of cities. In Barcelona, it shows itself in the narrow streets of the old town which are just too narrow for cars, which is the most amazing thing. Coming from the craziness that is New York traffic (even as a pedestrian), the long strolls we took around the old town were a welcome change for a few days.

The first night, we wandered over to "La Champagneria", the bar famous for being jam-packed at all hours of the day, for their 70 cent cava, and most importantly, their simple and straightforward tapas. My friends explained that there are the fancy tapas places, and then there are the traditional ones, where you can tell how good they are by how much garbage there is on the floor. (Meaning the staff is too busy serving people to stop and clean up). Utilizing this scale, this place was phenomenal. It's also super-cheap. Apparently, they haven't raised their prices for decades.

We each got a glass of cava and a sandwich (beef, bacon, roasted red peppers, the works, tasty, but greasy as hell... the combination of it and the magnitudes of cava we drank were probably the origin of our extreme queasiness the next morning) and found a small place to stand among the (it felt like) hundreds of other people jammed into the small place. What was really amazing, though, was the ham and chorizo we tried later. They sure know how to smoke a good ham...

My second day was designated as the Gaudi day, and we went all over town looking at all the wonderful buildings and city spaces Gaudi has contributed to Barcelona (and is still contributing: his enourmous cathedral, Sagrada Famiglia is still being built, and is nowhere near being done). I don't know much about architecture, but I've been looking at buildings all my life, and this guy had quite the fantasy. He certaintly wasn't a fan of straight lines, and his work really defines the city.

The first night was rustic tapas; the second was fancy, or at least as fancy as we could afford. We sat down at a restaurant, Lonja de Tapas, with a bottle of wine, and kept the food coming. We had patatas bravas (fried potatoes with spicy paprika and garlic mayo sauces), mushrooms with aoili, toasted bread with diced tomato sauce, roasted camembert in a dark berry sauce, smoked tuna with macademia nuts, chicken satay in a sesame sauce, tender pork bits with a mango jelly formed like a square, then topped it off with cheesecake with pistachio ice cream and a green tea olive sauce. I think the descriptions can speak for themselves as far as how yummy this meal was.

I used to think tapas was a weird way to eat, because you never really have an entire meal. Now I love it. There's nothing better than sitting around with good friends, some wine and taking your time tasting all different kinds of foods.

On my last day, we went for a walk by the beach in the sunshine before heading around town to do some Christmas shopping, which turned out to contain a lot more eating than actual Christmas shopping... We stopped every now and then to try something new.

We got chocolate raspberry tarts from a chocolateria and sat down on a bench to devour. They were so rich and yummy!

We went to the food market and got some olives to munch on. These were seriously the tastiest olives I've ever had. I don't know if I can ever go back to the boring store-bought kind again. I'm realizing that there are so incredibly many different kinds of olives, and all have thier unique taste. Olives are something I've never really given much thought to before, but now I'm hooked and am craving the ones we had in Barca. They had everything at the market: fresh fruts and veggies, dried chorrizo, cheeses galore... Everything was supercheap and mouthwatering...

Finally, we went to Granja de Chocolate for some churros dipped in warm chocolate, which was heavenly... The chocolate was really rich and would've been too rich to have on its own, but dipping the churros in it was out of this world.

After churros, we hurried home to meet up with a few of Tesse and Stefan's friends, who came over and made dinner for us! One of their friends is Italian, and he made a pizza di patatas, I think he called it, a baked mashed potato, cheese, and sausage caserole. I got to try out my Spanish that night, which mostly came out as French, but I think I gave it a decent try.

The trip was incredible; Tesse and Stefan were wonderful hosts, I ate a ton of amazing food, and I am now madly in love with a new city...

Barcelona, baby!

Pre Barcelona Tapas

2008-12-15T09:34:00.016-05:00

Today I leave for 3 days in Barcelona, then two and a half weeks in Norway for the holidays!

How is this happening when I'm without a steady job and my savings are depleted? I ask myself the same thing.

However, last year, I got off an overbooked flight, waited a day to go on a trip, and was rewarded with a 600 dollar voucher for American Airlines and a night at the Hyatt. The Hyatt was nice, but the 600 dollars came in super-handy when planning my trip this winter.

And then there's the fact that my mind is always at work on how to make things work to make things I want to do remotely feasible. Two of my best friends in the world are doing a year abroad in Barcelona this year, and having been in America the past two or three years, people have been talking about Europe as a single entity. I started thinking that, well, Norway's in Europe, and Barcelona's in Europe, so it shouldn't be too hard to stop by there on the way home. And in some ways it's true, because tickets were really pretty much the same price to stop by Barcelona and with the voucher, it was actually really affordable. I'm PSYCHED, to say the least. I've only heard amazing things about Barcelona and I can't wait to hang out there for a few days with my friends.

Before I left New York, though, I wanted to have some people over and celebrate the fact that I've survived 4 months in this city. I obviously wanted an excuse to do some cooking and try out some new recipes as well... I invited them over for a potluck tapas night.

Try out new recipes, I did.

I found this recipe for Dulce de Leche Cheesecake Squares on a food blog called Smitten Kitchen. It looked too awesome to pass up, and honestly, completely objectively, it really was... Gah, these squares are sooo tasty, the BEST finger food.

Since I'm leaving today, I promised one of my friends last night that he could take the leftovers home with him. He kept telling people how good they were, and then kicking himself because people kept eating them, so there was less for him to take home...

The recipe was also exciting because it called for things I've never done before like making dulce de leche out of sweetened condensed milk and using a water bath for baking. Don't be scared to make it, though, it's fancy and you need to start a day ahead, but not too difficult!

*****
Dulce de Leche Cheesecake Squares

Crust:
3 1/2 oz graham crackers, crumbled (1cup)
2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 325°F. Line bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan with foil and let some hang over the edge.

Grind graham crackers, sugar, and a pinch of salt in a food processor. Add melted butter with motor running. Blend until combined, then press evenly onto the bottom the pan. Bake for 10 minutes, then cool for about 5 minutes.

Filling:
1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup whole milk
8 oz cream cheese, softened
2 large eggs
3/8 teaspoon salt
1 can sweetened condensed milk

Make dulce de leche out of the condensed milk. Some people do this by just putting the entire tin can in water and boil it for an hour. I didn't try this cause I read somewhere that it could be dangerous. You can also pour the condensend milk into the top a double boiler and boil for about 50 minutes until it turns into dulce de leche, stirring every now and then. That's what I did.

Sprinkle gelatin over the milk in a bowl, let stand for 2 minutes to soften. Add cream cheese, eggs, salt into the gelatin mixture and mix with electric mixer until well combined, about 2 minutes. Stir in dulce de leche gently but thouroughly. Pour filling onto crust, and bake in a hot water bath in the oven until the center is set, about 45 minutes.

A hot water bath is just a larger sized pan filled a little with water that you put the pan into when you bake it. It's so the cake cooks evenly.

Cool the cheesecake to room temperature, this takes about two hours. Then chill, covered, in the fridge for at least 6 hours. I chilled mine overnight.

Glaze:
3 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened)
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter, cut into pieces
2 teaspoons light corn syrup

Within 2 hours of serving the cake, make the glaze. Heat the three ingredients in a double boiler, stirring until smooth. Pour over the cheesecake. Tilt to cover the whole cake. Chill in fridge, uncovered.

Lift the cake out of the pan and cut into 1 inch squares. Devour.

*****

I also tried making this pear, onion, and jack cheese strudel that I found on epicurious. It was made with phyllo dough, which I've never used before either, so it was a new experience. It turned out good, but messy, and I feel like it could've had a little bit more bite taste-wise. If I try it again, ever, I'll definitely try adding something like gorgonzola cheese or bacon, like some of the people suggested on the site.

*****
Pear, Onion, and Dry Jack Cheese Strudel
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter
1 onion, chopped
1 Bosc pear, peeled, halved, cored, chopped
3/4 cup (packed) grated dry Jack cheese or 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese and 1/4 cup grated sharp white cheddar cheese
3 teaspoons whole grain Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 sheets frozen phyllo pastry, thawed

Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a pan over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until brown, about 7 minutes. Add pear and sauté 3 minutes. Transfer pear mixture to medium bowl. Cool slightly. Stir in cheese, mustard and salt.
Melt remaining 4 tablespoons butter. Place 1 phyllo sheet on work surface. Brush with melted butter. Top with second phyllo sheet. Brush with melted butter. Top with third phyllo sheet. Brush with melted butter (do you see a pattern here?) Arrange half of pear mixture in log along 1 short end of phyllo, leaving 1-inch border at each end of pear mixture. Fold in sides and roll up tightly into log. Brush all over with butter. Transfer to large baking sheet. Repeat with remaining phyllo, butter, and pear mixture. (Strudels can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate.)
Preheat oven to 375°F. Bake strudels until golden brown, about 18 minutes. Cool 5 minutes. Transfer 1 strudel to cutting board. Cut on diagonal into 12 pieces. Repeat with remaining strudel. Transfer to platter and serve
*****
Finally, I made honey Dijon Chicken Wings from a recipe that I found on the Whole Foods site, of all places. I had no idea it was so easy to make chicken wings. It's kind of scary that I now know it's so easy because if there are two things wings are, they are (1) yummy and (2) really bad for you. Mmmmmm.
*****
Honey Dijon Chicken Wings
3 pounds chicken wings
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1/4 cup honey

Bake wings on a baking sheet covered with foil for about 40-50 minutes, turning once after about 25 minutes. Stir together butter, mustard, and honey in a sauce pan. Toss the oven hot wings with the glaze in a bowl. Transfer back to baking sheet, pouring remaining glaze over and bake for another 8-12 minutes.
*****
The tapas night was really very nice. Everyone brought something, either wine or a tasty dish and we sat around eating, drinking and talking to our heart's desire. My kind of night.
Next stop: real Spanish tapas in Barcelona!!! Let's see how they hold up to what New Yorkers can pull off...

Edible Happiness

2008-12-09T00:29:00.009-05:00

A friend of mine has a few weeks off from working this month, and has taken the opportunity to explore what New York has to offer in the form of activities. He's been to meditation groups, free yoga (suggested donation of $5, apparently), taken up voice lessons, the works.

Today, after work (yes! I'm working for PAY this week...), I met up with him for another event he wanted to try out, a group called Rooftop Films. They arrange screenings of films (sometimes short, sometimes feature length, sometimes fiction, sometimes documentary, sometimes somewhere inbetween) that aren't distributed through other channels. It's a great opportunity for the filmmakers they select to get an audience and create some hype around their films.

Usually, apparently, when weather permits, these screenings are done on rooftops all around the city. Today, however, since it was so freezing my arm almost fell off, they hosted it indoors at a warehouse type building called Chelsea Market. There was free beer, sponsered by Radeberger and hundreds of people showed up.

The event lasted about three hours, and was made up of about 4 short films about half an hour each in length, and 2 about 5 minutes in length. All of them were slightly odd, but very entertaining. The last one was a documentary about this 3rd grade class in China that was learning about democracy, and was going to have an election for class monitor. At first, they didn't understand the concept of democracy, but by the end, they were screwing eachother over and saying whatever it took to get votes so they could get into power. It was hilarous and kind of sad and telling seeing what elections can do to even cute Chinese 10 year olds.

When the three hours were up, my poor friend was starving since he hadn't really eaten anything all day, so I accompanied him to a sandwich place called 'Swich (104 8th ave, between 15th and 16th, 212-488-4800). They specialize in pressed sandwiches, all of which looked awesome. They have a sandwich called "Thanksgiving Every Day" with turkey, stuffing, and cranberry bread, one called "Tuna-na-na, italian tuna, tomato and marinated artichokes with olive tapenade on 7-grain", and a "Trojan Horse, ground lamb with tomato, tzatziki, and fresh mint on rosemary focaccia." All sandwiches I would definitely want to try from a place that boasts that they've tried every sandwich at least 15 different ways to make sure they're serving the best one.

However, it isn't the savory sandwiches that inspired me to write about this place. It's the desert my friend got: three types of chocolate (dark, white, and nutella) pressed between two slices of brioche. Luckily, it was shared with me, and I found myself saying, "This is like happiness in a dessert," because I could actually feel the smiles coming on as I ate. It actually made me happy because it was so good.

Then I realized that the actual name of the thing is "Edible happiness". A very fitting name.

The Thanksgiving Post

2008-11-29T17:50:00.019-05:00

Thanksgiving is probably, most definitely the absolute greatest holiday ever. An entire holiday dedicated to eating! It’s not religious, so it doesn’t make me feel awkward for pretending to be, or rather for not being, religious myself, and although I guess I could feel awkward about what Americans (colonists?) did to the Native Americans way back when, none of my family was in America at that time. And anyway, what my ancestors did is not what I did. Plus why search for something to feel awkward about when you could be stuffing yourself with a turkey and 5 different kinds of pies?

The other part of Thanksgiving is, of course, all about family, which I also think is great. The thought of gizillions of families all over the country stopping (For An Entire Day!) to share a meal together and keep traditions going and creating new ones. This is a nice thought.

My family, like all families, is crazy.

However, I would venture to say that my family is crazier than most. I have 2 older half-brothers in their 30s, a brother just a few years older than me, a younger half sister, 13, and 2 younger half-brothers, 11 and 7. We’re all close, but it’s a mess whenever we get together.

Thanksgiving weekend started with my oldest half-brother, his wife, and their two kids, our aunt, and me squishing into a van in NYC around 7 on Wednesday night, the day before Thanksgiving, to get to our Dad’s place in Pennsylvania. I was nervous about leaving Wednesday night in the first place, because it’s the biggest travel day of the year. We made it over the George Washington Bridge just fine, but then my half-brother stealthily decided that we would take the local route on 80 West instead of the express and 5 minutes later we were somehow extraordinarily lost in the depths of New Jersey.

An hour later we were still lost, and were stopping for snacks, still about 10 minutes from Manhattan and no closer to Pennsylvania. By the power of some miracle, though, we ended up making great time once we finally located the highway we were supposed to be on, and arrived just after midnight, about 8 hours before my predicted arrival time (which factored in other possible unintended detours...).

Thursday morning, my half-sister, and I were put on potato-peeling duty. After we finished, we counted the potatoes.

13. This wasn’t going to feed 23 people.

I promoted myself to Mashed Potato Master and promptly sent out the troops to get more potatoes. An hour later, we had 10 more pounds of potatoes and I was satisfied.

*****

Natalya’s Mashed Potatoes

(feeds at least 23 people, but most likely closer to 40...)

15 pounds of potatoes, peeled
1 pint of milk (or you could do half a pint of milk and half a pint of cream)
1 stick of butter
1 cup sour cream (optional)
lots of salt and white pepper to taste (white pepper to blend with the white mashed potatoes)

Boil potatoes in salty water until they’re well done. Drain the water. Use a potato masher to do the initial mashing. Add the butter and stir. Put milk/cream on the stove, warm until just before boiling, stirring to keep bottom from burning. Pour some of the hot milk over the crushed potatoes and blend with a hand mixer. Keep adding milk and mix until creamy. Add sour cream if wanted. Then put in lots of salt and white pepper and mix it up, tasting it until you’re satisfied. It’s a good idea to leave it a little less salty than you like it so people who want more salt can add it themselves. It’s a nice touch to put some butter on top when you serve it. It melts and looks yummy.

****

The place was a madhouse. The 5 kids were running around, playing video games, screaming at the screen, revving each other up. Then my step-mom’s side of the family arrived, and suddenly there were 4 babies under the age of one and about 10 more adults to add to the mix.

Luckily, there was more than enough food to go around: plentiful amounts of turkey, stuffing, gravy, green beans, corn casserole, yams with marshmallows, beans, rolls, cranberry jelly, cranberry sauce, and of course, mashed potatoes.

Once a year.

Once a year, there’s that wonderful abundance of food and then eventually the feeling where you KNOW if you take one more bite, you’ll burst. Once a year, we indulge, eat ourselves sick.

Come time to eat, I was starving, and so, so very excited. I dug in.

It was all over too quickly, but it was amazing. Everything was awesome: I love the combination of all of the different flavors, sweet yams with salty mashed potatoes, tangy cranberry sauce with tender turkey... I had to fight to finish the last bites and knew that if there was any way I was going to be able to tackle desert, which was approaching rapidly, something drastic had to be done.

My post-dinner, pre-desert solution:

I woke up to someone yelling, "the pies are out!"
I was ready for battle. My step-mother’s mother is a pie expert. I’ve never seen a meringue so perfect as the one on her lemon meringue pie. When I mentioned it to her, her entire family went, "Uh-oh don’t get her started!" Apparently, one Thanksgiving about 30 years ago, her meringues were truly perfect and she’s been striving to get them back to the same consistency ever since. She showed me the meringues on her chocolate and coconut cream pies and showed me how they were weeping and had shrunk back a little from the edge. She thought it had something to do with the dairy in those two pies, and had tried all different kinds of recipes over the years to rediscover the perfect merengue, to no avail.

I thought they were wonderful, though. There was blueberry, chocolate, pumpkin, apple, lemon merengue, and coconut cream, all of them wonderful. Plus cupcakes from Crumbs that my brother had brought with him from NYC (which are awesome cause all of them have a hole in the middle with extra icing or topping). It was all absolutely incredible and tasty.

After desert, I couldn’t move. I had to lay on the couch for an hour before I could sit upright. This can’t have been healthy. It wasn’t. But once a year, right?
Thanksgiving dinner had been around 2 and even at 7 that evening, I thought I would most likely never eat another bite for the rest of my life. My step-mom’s family had to leave to get to another thanksgiving dinner (how they managed ANOTHER one is beyond me), and the ones who were left decided to play charades. We had spent about half an hour writing down prompts to play charades with, when somebody said, "I’m hungry".

This one statement caused the whole family, all 12 of us, to drop the charades game in its tracks and an entirely new round of eating commenced. Somehow I found myself putting together the first Thanksgiving leftover sandwich of the season, when, an hour earlier, I thought I would never eat again. Funny how that happens.

*****

Open faced Left-over Thanksgiving Sandwich

1 piece cinnamon bread, toasted
butter
turkey
stuffing
green beans
cranberry sauce

I’m writing this down because the choice to use cinnamon bread, in combination with the other leftovers was awesome, it’s definitely one of the best Left-Over Thanksgiving Sandwiches I’ve had.

*****
I slept forever that night, soundly on my blow-up camping mattress on the floor of my Dad’s living room. My body needed me to be unconscious to digest all the wonderful food I’d put into it.
Once a year indeed!

Visits and the search for Key Lime Pie

2008-11-20T22:06:00.015-05:00

Last week, my friend, Hilde, was in from Norway visiting. She knows the city well and has a much more passionate love affair with it than I'll ever have. While living here last spring, she fell hard for the big apple, resulting in her coming back to visit just 5 months after she last left. Walking around last week, she would point out all of the pretty and fun things about New York, things I tend to overlook. I guess I've been so busy trying to get settled in New York, that I forgot to look around and take in a lot of the great things about it. The visit was kind of like having a sleepover continuously for 12 days, of course with a whole bunch of food and fun and NYC mixed in.

Although there was a lot of great (and luckily cheap!) food involved in Hilde's visit, the best food day was last Monday when we went on an adventure with Alex Jones: on a quest in search of the allegedly best key lime pie in the city, possibly the world. Alex Jones had been talking about this pie for at least a month, and we had designated the day to find it.

We started out in Williamsburg, because when heading out on any quest, one must be sure to be well fed ahead of time. We met up with Alex for lunch at a cute and trendy cafe/lunch/brunch type place on Bedford ave, Fabiane's Cafe and Pastry (718-218-9632, 142 North Fifth Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211). Everything's under 10 dollars and everything's scrumptous. Their specialty is baked eggs, which they serve all day, but their sandwiches are also killer. I had a duck and brie sandwich with fig spread, which was more than decent, and Hilde's chicken salad sandwich with dried cranberries was out of this world, as were Alex's baked eggs with salmon and potatoes.

While sitting at Fabiane's, the guy at the table next to us, who was eating alone, started talking with us. He had lived in the neighborhood for ever, and due to his eavesdropping (which apprently is okay to admit to), he had gathered that at least one, maybe two of us were not natives and were visiting, so he decided to give us a list of places we had to go in the Williamsburg area.

We took some of his advice and walked over to McCarren park, frolicked a little in the autumn leaves (as one should take time to do) and then made our way down to the water to see the awesome view of the Manhattan skyline in the beautiful sunshine. However, the day was pushing on and we had places to be and it wasn't the Norwegian sea. Or the east river. But that doesn't rhyme.

It was Red Hook, aka the home of the city's best key lime pie, so we got on a bus. After being on this bus for half an hour, we realized that if we were ever going get to Red Hook in this vehicle, it would take us at least another good hour. Fun as riding buses is, we opted to get off in Downtown Brooklyn and hop on a subway, which then led us to another bus. The bus let us off not too far from Ikea and then we started walking.

I don't know if you know anything about Red Hook, but the area is nothing but warehouses.

"Are you sure this is where the Key Lime Pie is?" I asked Alex Jones.

He was sure.

10 freezing cold minutes later, we saw the sign. KEY LIME PIE, it read. Oh man. We followed more signs, all very dainty and cute, and finally found ourselves in a huge warehouse that smelled like a warehouse (and not key lime pie). I was skeptical, but we didn't let it deter us from our quest. We got one regular key lime pie and two key lime pies on a stick, dipped in chocolate. This, we learned, is called a swingle.

We sat outside the wearhouse, with our key lime pies on a stick and dug in. The sun was just setting on the water by the warehouse. The pies were indeed incredible. I'm not entirely sure how they manage to make key lime pie like that in New York, plus anything you put on a stick and dip in chocolate automatically becomes at least twice as good. The pies didn't last very long and it was definitely worth the trip.

For those of you who are in New York, or ever visit, the place is called "Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies" (204 Van Dyke Street, Pier 41, Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY 11231, 888-450-5463) It's a good idea to call ahead because they don't keep any normal hours and sort of just close whenever they feel like it.

Amazing key lime pie in a warehouse in the middle of Red Hook, and dipped in chocolate and on a stick on top of it? What will they think up next?

*****
Here are some of the other places Hilde and I hit up during her stay:

-Grey Dog, (33 Carmine Street, (212)462-0041) a cute cafe in the west village with AMAZING sandwiches and cookies so big they have to roll you out of there. Get the grey dog turkey club, and if you can muster it, a chocolate peanutbutter cookie...

-Noodle Cafe Zen, (31 St. Marks Place, 212-533-6855) a japanese restaurant, where all of the sushi is half off, including sashimi and special rolls. We stuffed ourselves on sushi for 10 bucks each.

-Pie by the Pound, (124 fourth ave, between 12th and 13th, 212-475-4977) a pizza place with yummy thin crust pizza where you pick how much pizza you want, they weigh it and you pay by the pound.

-Coffee Shop, (29 Union Sq W Ste 1, 212-243-7969) this place isn't cheap, but Hilde treated me to dinner. The place has a chic vibe to it, a mix between diner and late night cocktail bar. We got the Cobb salad and it was awesome.

New York Night

2008-11-03T14:08:00.013-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I was hanging out with my friend, Tishon, looking through the Norwegian newspapers online, when I came across an article, "Verdens Beste Burger Finnes i New York" or "The World's Best Burger is in New York" directly translated. It was an article about Jean Luc Naret, the director of the famous Michelin guide, a company which is not just known for tires and big squishy marshmellow men, but also for awarding stars to the best restaurants in the world. He knows his stuff, in other words. The article goes over some of the things that are special about him, like that he can't cook, he eats out 365 days a year, he never eats on planes and that, yes, he does eat junkfood from time to time and finally names a place called "Burger Joint" in New York as the best burger in the world.

"The best burger in the world?" I said excitedly and told Tishon what the article said.

"I've eaten there!" he said, "It's the kind of place you need to know about to find. We should go."

And go we did.

I'm on a strict budget these days since I STILL don't have a job. I earmarked $15 at the beginning of the week, though, so we could hit up this burger place. I was mildly excited to say the least.

Another friend of mine, Alex, came along, and we got there before Tishon. It was at a hotel, a pretty fancy one at that, Le Parker Meridien (119 W. 56th St., New York, NY 10019 near 6th ave). Alex and I went inside, and tried to find the burger place, but ended up just sort of wandering around the lobby for a little while, feeling pretty out of place.

I happened to look down a little hallway, though, and there in the dark was a glowing burger sign and an arrow.

"There it is," I said, as if we had found the holy grail.

We walked over and peeked inside. It was like another world. Gone were the fancy consierges and leather couches from the lobby. Here were guys in white T-shirts flipping burgers and darkly lit booths. It was jam-packed.

Tishon showed up (saying "I was a man on a mission walking in here, everyone else was struggling to find it, I knew where I was going.") just as we managed to take over a booth from a few people who were leaving. Burgers were 7 bucks including the works, and besides soda, beer (Sam Adams!), french fries, and brownies, it was pretty much all they had on their menu.

We each got a burger and sat down to stuff ourselves.

It was awesome. Really truly. It looks messy and it WAS messy, but it was pretty darn amazing and tasty.

Was it the best burger in the world? That's really very difficult to say. I'd say it's right up there in the top three of burgers I've tasted, including the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, and Sesamburger in Trondheim, Norway. (My friend Zac cooks up a mean burger too, by the way, which should go on my top 3 list, although now it's top 4) There are a lot of burgers I haven't tasted in this world. Maybe the same goes for Mr. Naret? However, even though he's french, I'm sure eating out 365 days a year would ultimately mean he's tried a few more than me. I wonder if he's tried the one in Trondheim, or my friend Zac's, though?

It was such a good start to the night that it couldn't end there. Tishon, who's lived in NYC for seven years, said we should go to a place called Fat Cat. We hopped on a subway down to the West Village.

This place was just as awesome, just as New York as the Burger Joint. It has live jazz every night and about 15 pool and ping pong tables. They have cheap beer, scrabble, chess, checkers, go, othello... Looking around, the only thing that was missing was the heavy smoke you would associate with places like these. (Although truthfully, I'm happy there wasn't any).

Burgers, cheap beer, live jazz, and ping pong. It doesn't get any more New York than that.

Cheesecake and New York days

2008-10-27T08:28:00.007-04:00

This weekend a few friends of mine from Boston came down to NYC to hang out. They know the city well, so it wasn't your typical try-to-see-as-much-of-the-city-as-possible-in-12-hours kind of trip. We thought we'd just walk around and enjoy New York and see what there was to see.

Unfortunately, the weather didn't agree with us. There was drizzling to downpour most of the day, and at points there were windtunnels that blew dresses, hair and umbrellas frantically in the air. Not exactly the kind of weather to promenade in.

But we did our best. We had brunch at the Waverly, a diner in the West Village. We then found this underground vintage baazar in Chelsea, and went wild there for a while. Dan bought a sports jacket, Kara bought a ring, and Chris bought a military backpack. Next we decided to head down to Soho.

This is when the wind tunnels and the rain were at their worst. And somehow our entourage had managed to grow to about 6 people. Everyone was tired, slightly cranky and not really in the mood for rainy New York.

Only two of us were really hungry, the rest just wanted to sit somewhere. We spent about an hour looking for a place to go, but it seems every other New Yorker had the same idea as we did at this point: get out of the rain and get something in your belly. After much trial and error, we found this taco place called La Esquina, or the Corner. It was just what some of us wanted, but there was really no place for all of six of us to sit. I was exhausted.

This is when I turned around and saw my destiny. There, right across the street (17 Cleveland Place, 212-966-5585), in big letters, was a big sign displaying the words "Eileen's Special Cheesecake". I was stupified. It was like those moments in the movie when the hero turns around and sees the girl of his dreams right there after looking for her his whole life and all he has to do is walk 3 steps over and say, "Hey".

Some people were more interested in the tacos, but Dan, Chris and I ran across the street and took in the sheer amount of choices of cheesecake to choose from. For $3.50 a pop for mini cheesecakes, there was pineapple, blueberry, carmel pecan, rocky road, dulce de leche, chocolate, cookies and creme, peanut butter, pumpkin.... the list goes on. It was all too exciting.

I decided on a chocolate esspresso cheesecake, Dan on a raspberry, and Chris on pumpkin. We sat down to enjoy. It's a small place, but it looks bigger because of the floor to ceiling mirror on one side, and adds to the feel of it being a small, specialized operation.

The cheesecake was AWESOME. It blew my mind. Light and fluffy, and the different tastes that were incorporated into each kind worked so well. I tried to savor it so it wouldn't end, but alas, eventually it did.

It's amazing how cheesecake can rejuvenate you. Back on the street, my mood was lighter, (and my hair was fluffier too, due to the rain), so cheesecake really had an effect. It turned out to be a great day in New York after all, between the cheesecake, the gallery we went to and the happy hour later that night.

Saturday Morning

2008-10-21T22:26:00.006-04:00

On Saturday, I woke up and had a day ahead of me.

It was one of the first weekend days I'd had in New York without having planned it ahead of time. Usually when I'm met with free time, I do one of three things: 1) go for a walk/explore, 2) cook, or 3) freak out cause I have free time and don't know what to do with myself.

I was close to choosing option 3, but option 2 was just too tempting.

Anybody who's ever stayed with me has realized my slightly obsessive love for pancakes, which really stems from the fact that with a plain batter, you can really add anything to them, something I think is so much fun: apples, pears, banannas, chocolate, walnuts.... I've even made them for dinner with potatoes, artichokes, cheese, and ham in them, topped with syrup. I had a tummy ache for days after, but it was worth it.

One of my favorite anecdotes about pancakes is from a documentary I once saw called "I Like Killing Flies", which is about this absolutely crazy guy who owns a restaurant in Grenwich village called Shopsin's (which now that I think about it, I should go check out since I'm in the city). I won't go into details about how this guy is crazy, but in the doc he talks about all the different kinds of pancakes he makes, including Postmodern Pancakes. He basically makes a plain pancake, dices it up and puts it back into the batter of a new pancake. It's such a funny and great idea that it makes me love pancakes even more for making it possible.

However, I didn't make pancakes this time. Ever since I was little, I always loved the idea of waking up on the weekends to something freshly baked. And since I had the time and the carrots (left over from the soup), I made carrot muffins for breakfast this wonderful Saturday morning (the recipe for which I got off of this website).

*****
Carrot Raisin Muffins

Makes about 10 muffins
2 eggs
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups coarsely grated carrots
1/2 cup raisins
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 1/4 ts baking powder
1/4 ts salt
1 1/2 ts cinnamon
1/2 ts ground nutmeg
Preheat oven to 400°F (205°C). Grease muffin pan.
Whisk eggs, oil and sugar together. Mix in the carrots and raisins. Stir together the remaining ingredients in another bowl. Add the flour mixture to the carrot mixture and stir to combine. (This is a stiff batter.) Spoon the mixture into muffin cups. Bake about 15 to 20 minutes until tester comes out clean.
*****
While I ate the muffins, I watched Engel Entertainment's last feature documentary, "A Walk to Beautiful." Engel is one of the two places I intern and is also a place I'd really, really like to work largely because the work they do is so great. The film was all about women in Ethiopia who get Fistula as a result of not being close enough to proper medical care when giving birth. As a result, they get ostracized from their communities, since they don't know about the cure. A single simple surgery can cure them, and there's a clinic in Addis Ababa that performs 1200 of these procedures a year. It's incredible how such a simple thing can completely and utterly change someone's life for the better. I hereby recommend this film to everyone; it's such an important topic.
The muffins turned out pretty good, except for the fact that they weren't as fluffy as they could've been because I only had butter in the house, no veggie oil. They were great fresh out of the oven with strawberry jam and earl grey tea...
I love Saturday mornings like these.

Tuscan Veggie Soup and Headaches

2008-10-17T00:11:00.007-04:00

The other day my friend, Alex, and I were supposed to hang out after work. I didn't realize it til the end of the day, but a giant fist had been slowly closing in around my brain so that by the time I could stamp out of the office (which is ironic to say, since I'm still not getting paid), there was so much pressure on my head that I could barely stand up straight.

I met up with Alex outside of work, and I grunted in reply to everything he tried to talk about. All I could think about was my poor head. Luckily he realized the dire state I was in, and so we went back to my place for some rice krispies (with raisins! which apparently isn't that common, but I've always done it, so I didn't know), and massive amounts of sinus headache medicine.

After half an hour of me laying perfectly still in the dark while Alex played around with his iphone (yes, the same friend as before obsessed with the same iphone, although this time, he was hooked on a new game called taptap, which is a version of guitarhero for the iphone), the pills finally kicked in and I could slowly start to form sentences again.

And what were those sentences about? Food, duh.

What were we going to make for dinner? Spaghetti was too simple, and my suggestion, Norwegian meatballs were too similar to the Swedish meatballs Alex had made with a different friend the week before.

"I could go for soup," I said, trying to remember the saying that goes "feed a cold, starve a fever..." and trying to think of some excuse for soup in particular being good against headaches.

I think I just like the concept of soup in general. You chop up all of these things and just throw them in together, and boil it for a while and it ends up tasting pretty good. I think what I like best about it (besides the taste) is eating it with a spoon. Not to pick favorites over the fork and the knife, but there aren't as many foods you get to eat with a spoon.

So we decided on making this Tuscan Veggie Soup recipe that Alex had tried out before and had found on the Food Network website. (The Food Network is my favorite network, by the way...) It's a hearty soup and everything that goes into it is super good for you.

We went to the shops near where I live in Washington Heights, which is a Dominican neighborhood, to get the ingredients. I hadn't tried any of the small shops before, but it turns out the veggies you can get at these places are really cheap. We got everything we needed for the soup (carrots, onions, barley, beans, garlic, tomatoes, zucchini....etc) for about $15, including half a roasted chicken from a restaurant near here. And we made a double recipe! And I have a ton of carrots, onions, etc. left over with which I can think (dream?) up new and wonderful things to make.

*****
Tuscan Veggie Soup (with Chicken)

Neither the barley nor the chicken were in the original recipe, but they both really added to the soup. I might even use a whole chicken next time.

1 (15-ounce) can low-sodium canellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 large onion, diced (about 1 cup)
2 carrots, diced (about 1/2 cup)
2 stalks celery, diced, (about 1/2 cup)
1 small zucchini, diced (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves (or 1 teaspoon dried)
2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
32 ounces chicken broth or vegetable broth
1 (14.5-ounce) diced tomatoes
2 cups chopped baby spinach leaves
1 cup cooked barley
1/2 cooked roasted chicken, deboned and chopped

Chop all the veggies.

In a small bowl mash half of the beans with a masher or the back of a spoon, and set aside.
Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic, stir for a while, then add carrots, celery, zucchini, garlic, thyme, sage, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper, and cook stirring occasionally until the vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes.
Add the broth, chicken, barley, and tomatoes with the juice and bring to a boil. Add the mashed and whole beans, and the spinach leaves and cook until the spinach is wilted, about 3 minutes more.
Serve with a baguette!
*****
The soup turned out amazing and I've been taking leftovers of it to warm up in the microwave and eat for lunch at work. And I haven't had a headache since, so I'm guessing it's a pretty safe bet that it indeed is a remedy against headaches.

Quiche

2008-10-12T18:06:00.010-04:00

A few weeks ago, I was out at a clounge (a club/lounge), and I started talking to a few Britsh guys. Here's how meeting new people usually goes for me:

Me: Hey.
Them: Hey.
Me: I'm Natalya
Them: Hey Natalya, I'm George, where are you from?
(It's weird, absolutely EVERYONE I meet is named George. Such a coincidence)
Me: [pause] I always end up telling my life's story whenever anybody asks me this. Basically, I was born in Virginia, but I grew up in Norway.
Them (Or George, apparently): NORWAY, really?
Me: Yup, yup, Norway.
Them: Wow.
Me: Yup.

I basically blow their minds.
Anyway, this time, going through the whole spiel, I got to the "NORWAY, really?" part and then all of a sudden this night's George pulled a girl from (seemingly) out of nowhere, and said, "This is Lisa, SHE's from Norway!"

I talked to Lisa for about 3 minutes before her whole group left and went to another bar, but we exchanged phone numbers due to our common Norwegian experience.

Lisa sent me a text this week and we decided to meet up for coffee on Thursday.

Coffee goes well with cupcakes, I thought, and I wanted to try out a bakery a friend of mine suggested, so we walked all the way over to 8th street where it was supposed to be. Supposed to be as in it wasn't, so after walking back and forth a couple of times, we gave up and started looking for a new place to get a quick bite.

We walked by this restaurant called La Lanterna di Vittorio (129 MacDougal St, New York, NY, (212) 529-5945) that seemed cute, and decided to go in since we had been walking around for a while. It was dimly lit and really meant for impressing first dates, but it worked for us too. I ordered spinach and mushroom quiche with a salad ($10) and it was probably one of the best quiches I had ever had. They did something with the crust that I couldn't really put my finger on, but it was slightly sweet, but not in a sugary way, if that makes sense. I enjoyed myself. The pizzas and all of the other dishes looked really nice as well, and apparently they have a garden in the back with a lot of tables.

I had a nice time hanging out with Lisa, it was fun to compare notes on New York with another Norwegian.

This leads us to part two of the story:

Yesterday, my brother came over to my apartment with his family for lunch. They hadn't been to see my new place yet, and they were going to be in the area for a birthday party, so it was a good opportunity to have them over.

Inspired by the quiche I had had a few days earlier, I decided to make a broccoli and cheese quiche for them. I used a recipe my mom uses; quiche is sort of one of her specialties.

*****
Broccoli and Cheese Quiche

Crust:
1/3 cups plus 1 tablespoon chilled vegetable shortening
1 cup all-purpose unbleached flour, plus extra for rolling
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 to 3 tablespoons ice water

I also added some honey and basil to the crust, honey because I was trying to imitate the crust I had had a couple of days earlier. The crust turned out pretty well, but I either didn't use enough honey or it wasn't the restaurant's secret ingredient...

To make pie crust without a kitchen machine, all you need is two knives and some patience. Basically, you need to cut the shortening into the flour to the point where the flour is crumbly and you can no longer tell the margerine from the flour. Just use one knife in each hand and cut them with an X movement. Once you've gotten this far, add anything else you want to add (like spices or the honey I tried out) and then add the water seriously a tablespoon at the time, because it takes very little water to get the dough to stick together. You want it moist enough for it to hold together, but not sticky. When you've got the dough together, throw it in the freezer to cool off until you're ready for it again.

Filling:
1 cup cheese, cubed or shredded
1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated (optional)
4 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups heavy cream or milk
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
a bunch of broccoli
any other spices you think might fit

Preheat oven to 450 degrees fahreinheit or 230 degrees celsius

Cook the broccoli, cut into small pieces. Mix all the other ingredients together in a bowl.

Roll the dough out. I often do it on a piece of wax paper so it doesn't stick to the bench. Once it's big enough, sprinkle flour on top, fold in half, sprinkle more, and fold once more into quarters. This makes it easer to transport to the pan without it breaking. Unfold. To make a nice edge on the pie, go around the edge and push one finger into two fingers on the other side in a pinching motion. If that makes sense.

Pour the egg mixture into the crust, add the broccoli evenly into the pie.

Put the pie in the oven at 450 degrees (230 celsius) for 15 minutes, reduce heat to 350 degrees (175 celsius) and bake for another ten to twenty minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Let the quiche stand for about ten minutes once out of the even so it sets.

Serve with bread and a salad!
*****

The quiche was a success, even my nephews seemed to enjoy it, and we had a really nice time together.

I'm going to have to go back to the restaurant and sneak into the kitchen to figure out what the secret ingredient in the pie crust is. I'll keep you posted on my food sleuthing...

Park Slope

2008-10-06T22:49:00.012-04:00

The day after the filmrace (here's what we managed in the 24 hours alotted! Sorry about YouTube's bad picture quality), I needed to relax, so I went out to Park Slope in Brooklyn to visit a friend of mine that lives out there. I had no idea it's such a nice area; it's city-ish, but quieter, prettier, calmer, happier than Manhattan. It was a beautiful autumn day and I almost felt like I wasn't smack dab in the middle of one of the world's busiest metropolitans, but rather in a place where people take their time, have space to walk on the sidewalk without being afraid that someone's going to run you over, and actually enjoy life.

We started out by getting lentil soup and a falafel from a mediterranean place called Olive Vine Cafe (441 Seventh Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11215 at 15th St. 718-499-0555) that my friend has been going to for years. The lentil soup was awesome. My feeling is that most lentil soups are kind of heavy, but this one was light and tasty, a really good filler meal. And the falafel was yummy too, in fresh pita. Tasty.

We hung around for a while and were going to cook something for dinner, but we were feeling lazy, so we made a compromise between cooking and going out. We went to this amazing shop called "Russo's Mozzarella and Pasta" (363 7th Ave between 10th St & 11th St, Brooklyn, NY 11215, (718) 369-2874). It's been around since 1908, I want to say (nineteen oh something at least), and has all of these amazing specialty foods, mainly olives and things in jars, but the exciting part is that they have big buckets of fresh pasta and you can put the fresh pasta in a bag or a container and take it home. They also have a ton of frozen pastas shipped from Italy. I think that's a pretty crazy thought and probably kind of bad for the environment that pasta has to be shipped all the way from halfway across the world to Brooklyn to be authentic. BUT they had pumpkin gnocchi frozen from Italy, and it sounded too amazing to be true, so that's what we got. Also, they have all of these specialty sauces in the fridge next to the pasta, and we got walnut pesto. Let me repeat that WALNUT PESTO. Thank you.

On the way back from Russo's, we stopped in at my friend's standard wine shop, Slope Cellars (436 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215, (718) 369-7307), another local store in the neighborhood. I love this place now too, cause I don't know anything about wine, and when we went in, we were like we have pumpkin gnocchi and WALNUT PESTO, and the lady was like, "hm, interesting, we should ask Mary." (Her name wasn't actually Mary, but my memory is failing me and for the sake of this story, she very well could have been Mary). Mary was obviously awesome because the lady was in awe, hanging on Mary's every word. Mary was like, "yeah, you're gonna want this wine, it'll complement the sweet of the pumpkin and the nuttiness of the pesto perfectly" and the lady was like, "Really!? WOW, that's interesting, I would've never thought of that." I forget how seriously some people take wine, and that you have to go to school and develop a palate just to know these things. And I'm glad they do because the wine ended up being great with the food and I probably would've just gone for the one with the prettiest label. (The wine we got was Barbera d'Alba, Vendemmia 2006, by the way, an Italian red wine. Also, even though I enjoyed it, I'm sure this wine was lost on me because I just googled it and, among all the berries and wonderfulness it tastes like, it apparently also tastes like "Forest Floor" and "really dark inky chocolate" according to those who know (or seem to know) what they're talking about. Inky chocolate? Right.)

The dinner tasted just about as wonderful as expected, great with a greens and apple sald. There were two little humps when it came the gnocchi, though, and that's that I was walking around saying "nochi", like ryming with "yoshi" and thought that was a great way to say the word, even remembering that the g is silent. But it turns out it's pronounced "nocki", which isn't as fun.

The other was that I had no idea when to know if the gnocchi was done, and that's because it's soft no matter what. Google helped with the answer: when they start floating, leave them in for another minute and they're done!

Yum, Yum. Brooklyn has so much to offer!

Filmracing

2008-09-27T10:17:00.013-04:00

A friend of mine from college and I are thinking about entering the Brooklyn Filmracing Competition next weekend. The concept is this: at 10 pm on Friday night, October 3rd, competitors get an e-mail with a prompt, one theme the film has to revolve around and one suprise element that has to be incorporated into the film (such as a prop or and action). The competitors then have 24 hours to come up with a concept and a script, shoot the film, edit the film, and output the film in order to reach the deadline of 10 pm on Saturday, October 4th.

This is a crazy task, since making a three and a half minute film usally takes days and days, if not weeks of planning. We got together on Thursday to see how much we could plan ahead of time and if it'll be feasible for us to pull something off. We started thinking about getting actors involved, what a good location would be (we would have to get permits ahead of time, making sure that the location could be used for any theme), what our schedule would be like the day of, possible concepts that we could incorporate any theme into, possible music/composition we could use, who and where we would edit the movie together. Also, neither of us owns a camera, which is sort of essential...

I made us dinner before we had our brainstorming session, cause food is what makes the brain go round. And it's also yummy.

I got home from my internship at 7, and my friend was supposed to be there around 7:30. It was no problem throwing this dinner together in half an hour and I had all the ingredients at home anyway.

It's a simplified version of a recipe I used to make a lot, one called Portugese Chicken that I got out of the New York Times Cookbook. I didn't have the recipe right there, so I sort of used what I could remember and added some of my own stuff.

*****
Chicken in White Wine Vinegar with Tomatoes and Spinach

4 chicken breasts
olive oil
3 Ts white wine vinegar
1 can of tomatoes (whole or diced)
1 cup frozen spinach
1 ts flour
garlic powder
chili powder
dried basil
salt and pepper

Warm up some olive oil, add some garlic powder, pepper, and chili powder while it heats up. Brown the chicken breasts in the oil. Add the white wine vinegar, throw the spinach and tomatoes over, and season with basil, salt and pepper, or any other spices you think would fit. Sprinkle the flour over, stirring it in. Let simmer for a little while. Serve with couscous and a salad!

This recipe is great with mushrooms and onions added, I just didn't have any on hand.

*****

Read more about filmracing here. And if we do end up entering, follow how our film does online! On your marks, get set....

Basia Bulat

2008-09-20T00:15:00.006-04:00

I found out Basia Bulat was coming to New York to do a show about a month and a half ago and have been waiting ever since for today. Basia is a sweet and adorable musician from London, Ontario and sometimes her music makes me want to cry because it's so beautiful, but most of the time it's just very nice to listen to. Here's her myspace page if you want to check her out.

I was all set on going alone, something I've been doing more and more with concerts lately, just cause it's an easy thing to do, but luckily a friend of mine texted me, asked what I was doing tonight, and jumped on going to the concert with me. We met up ahead of time to grab some dinner.

I have been CRAVING a burger for the past couple of days and I have no idea why. Sometimes you just need a big hunk of meat to bite into. And some ketchup. My friend suggested Burgers & Cupcakes, a place on W 23rd st, but when we got there, it was closed, apparently forever!? I hope not, because the concept seems AMAZING. I LOVE burgers and I LOVE cupcakes. I don't see how that business plan could ever go wrong.

Another friend of mine had been talking about this place called Shake Shack, an outdoor burger joint in Madison Square Park. I figured we'd give it a a try, although, I thought it was kind of weird that a burger place could be so amazing that it'd be something to recommend to other people.

And then, once in the park, there was a crazy line leading up to the Shack. Always the optimist, I took it as a good sign, meaning it was probably worth the wait.

I was right. I might even say you haven't tasted a real burger til you've tried the one at Shake Shack. But on top of that, the fries were incredible. BUT on top of THAT, their shakes were out of this world. We got a black and white shake, a vanilla and hot fudge custard... Taking a sip of this shake brings you from one taste to the next to yet another during the course of swallowing it. Now that's a real shake.

Another cool thing is that parts of the earnings from the Shack go to upkeep of the park, AND they have a camera on their website, so you can check on how bad the line is, although, I assure you, it's worth the wait.

Our only real regret was that we didn't have time to wait in line again to get more... Oh glorious burgers... I will dream about you.

The concert was amazing.

"I wanna believe you
You know that I try
It's just the way that you look sometimes
Oh it's been hard on me
It's only feeling
But after all this time, why can't it be mine?"

Do you think she's singing about a burger in this song?

*I didn't take this photo, grabbed it from the Shake Shack website, just so you have some kind of visual stimulus*

Bookshelf

2008-09-08T00:11:00.021-04:00

I just moved in to a WONDERFUL new apartment a few weeks ago, way uptown in Manhattan. I love my room, (hardwood floors, SPACE, which is a luxury in this city, two windows) but it came unfurnished, and since I don't have a steady job yet, I decided to buy most of my furniture used. I also thought it would be a nice thing to do to the environment.

I got a full-sized mattress from a friend of mine (I haven't had a full-size for 2 years!), I bought a boxspring, bedframe, and a dresser used off of craigslist and picked them up when I rented a van at the beginning of the month. The used bookshelf I bought at the same time, though, just didn't cut it, so I kept looking on craigslist.

Last Saturday, I found one of those oldschool ikea bookshelves for sale on craigslist, one with four independent shelves, held together by a metal frame. It was black wood and exactly what I wanted! I e-mailed the guy, requesting to buy it, and then continued unpacking while I waited for him to e-mail me back.

While unpacking, I found an unopen box of "risgrøt", Norwegian rice porridge. I had brought a pack back with me when I was in Norway in January and never opened it. Grøt is pretty standard fare in Norway; in most institutions (like hospitals and nursing homes), people eat it for dinner every Saturday. Also, at Christmas time, it's a tradition to eat it with the family and hide a peeled almond in the pot. The one who finds the almond in their portion gets a pig made out of marsipan. Mmmm... marsipan.

It's never been substantial enough for me to have as a whole meal, but it's yummy with sugar and cinnamon on it. I hadn't bought sugar in my new place yet, so I put honey and cinnamon on it. I had a bottle of saft from Norway, too, which is a concentrated fruit drink that's typical Norwegian and usually served with Risgrøt, so I managed to have a pretty standard Norwegian lunch. I read online that you can just use any longgrained white rice to make the pudding, although I'm sure it turns out a little different than the kind that comes in a package.

******
Risgrøt
For one person:

4.5 dl milk (about 2 cups)
1 dl rice (a little less than half a cup)
salt
sugar (or honey) and cinnamon
butter

Boil the milk. Add the rice, boil for about 15 minutes, stirring all the time, until rice is done and a lot of the milk is absorbed. Sprinkle some salt over for flavor. Put a portion in the bowl. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over, add a little spot of butter on top and watch it melt.
*****

After lunch, the bookshelf guy had written back, but wanted me to come pick it up as soon as possible, saying it was first come, first serve for the bookshelf. It looked like it was going to rain, but I called up my friend Jose, who I wanted to hang out with anyway, and asked if he wouldn't mind coming uptown to help me with the bookcase in exchange for me cooking him dinner.

Rain it did. When he got up to my apartment, he was soaked. So I cooked him dinner right away. I made one of my most standard dishes, from a recipe I originally found in an Italian cookbook many years ago, but it's developed into my own recipe over the years, which is also a reason why I don't have exact measurements for anything, I just sort of throw stuff into the pan.

*****
Chicken, Broccoli and Mushrooms in a Sour Cream Sauce

Chicken Breasts
Broccoli (frozen)
Mushrooms (from a can)
Olive oil
Buljong cube
Water
Sour Cream
Whatever spices you have in the cupboard that you think will fit with the dish
Salt
Pepper
Pasta

Set the pasta water to boil and throw in pasta when it does. Cut up chicken into small pieces, fry it in some olive oil. Add broccoli and mushrooms, season with spices you think will fit. I usually put in salt and pepper, dried basil, garlic powder, maybe some paprika. Stir every now and then while chicken browns.

Once chicken is browned, add a little bit of water and a buljong cube. Let it simmer for a bit, until broccoli is cooked. When satisfied, pull off of heat, and add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream. Mix well and serve over pasta.
*****

After the meal, we looked outside and thought it had stopped raining. One step outside told us we were wrong and we turned around and went back in to hang out instead of picking up the bookcase. I called the guy and told him I couldn't come and he said he might sell it to someone else, then.

The next day, it was GORGEOUS out. The guy selling the bookshelf sent me an e-mail saying that I should stop by by 1 if I was still interested in it. I was. I had plans to meet another friend of mine, Alex, later that day, (not my brother Alex) maybe around dinner time. He was nice enough to change his plans around so that we could do lunch and he could help me pick up the bookshelf. The bookshelf was beautiful and exactly what I needed to fit the rest of my stuff into a sane place in my room. Alex swung the bookcase over his shoulder for most of the way and carried it by himself. We also took it on the subway for part of the way and got a few comments from people, asking where I had bought the bookshelf.

I bought Alex lunch as a thank you for his help. The neighborhood I live in is Dominican, so we went to El Malecon, one of the better known Dominican restaurants in the area. It was awesome. We had Carribean soup ($4) as an appetizer, a soup with chicken, carrots, potatoes, plantains in it. Really good. Then we split half a roasted chicken (their speciality), yellow rice, black beans, plantains, and mofongo, a Dominican specialty consisting of green plantains and some kind of meat, arranged in a mound. We got the chicken one. The roasted chicken was incredible; we had to eat all of the skin, and plantains are a huge favorite of mine. There were enire families there splitting a whole chicken ($12 with rice and beans), so this place is great for sharing. The mofongo was a little weird to me, I felt like it was missing something, but I'd never had it before, so I don't know what they're supposed to taste like. But it looked pretty awesome, which always counts for something. For dessert, we got Dominican cake, the pineapple kind, which was nice and fluffy.

I've been back to El Malecon since, and got a whole chicken- I brought the leftovers home and used it to make yummy yummy chicken sandwiches for lunch the next few days. It's a great place, and cheap too.

Now my bookcase is standing proudly in my room and I love it!

Mango Sticky Rice!

2008-08-30T10:37:00.007-04:00

I met a friend of mine in midtown for drinks the other day. We caught up on what we'd been working on since the last time we saw each other, he showed off his new iphone, and then, of course, we started talking about food. Somehow he managed to gather the seemingly devastating information that I had never had the pleasure of trying Mango Sticky Rice.

"We're getting some tonight!" he said. "Ugh," I said.

I had just stuffed myself with dinner at a diner with my brother and his family. It was the kind of place where they remember you from the last time you'd been there and serve you ginormous portions and soup and dessert is included in the meal.

Eating any more food wasn't really an option for me, especially rice, which is so filling. I pictured a pile of rice with mango bits around it. It didn't sound appealing. I just wanted to sit and down some cold beer. Mmmm.

After the first beer, we were out on the street, and my friend already had his iphone up on the gps system, and was typing in "thai" to find the closest thai restaurant so that I could join the wonderous elite that had tried Mango Sticky Rice as soon as possible. I thought this whole iphone thing was kind of neat, so I said, "Ok, I'll go with you and try some of YOUR Mango Sticky Rice".

The iphone navigated us to a thai place which was called Little Thai Kitchen on east 53rd street. They were just stacking the chairs on the tables as we were arriving to close up for the night, but told us where the next closest thai restaurant was that would still be open, at 945 2nd ave, at 50th street, a place called "Pooket" (212-759-6339).

I found out later that this restaurant is where my brother took my sister-in-law on their first date.

We sat down, ordered Mango Sticky Rice, and awaited its arrival. When it came, I took one bite, and announced, "Ok, we're sharing this." It was awesome. And a dessert! Which I somehow didn't manage to gather ahead of time. The soft and juicy mango paired with sweet, gooey rice topped with toasted sesame seeds was such a great combination! I was sold. I really do think my life is better after trying Mango Sticky Rice.

People never seem to get dessert at Thai restaurants, and if they do, they seem to always get fried ice cream (just because it's such a crazy idea: "Wait, it's ICE cream, and you're going to DEEPFRY it?!"). People should start getting dessert at Thai restaurants.

After the amazing food stop, the night eventually led to more beers, Brooklyn, and me falling asleep on the subway on the way home to catch four and a half hours of sleep before work the next morning.

By the way, the picture is taken with my friend's iphone. I might have to get me one of those. Possibly.

Pre-Party Food

2008-08-25T23:39:00.004-04:00

Whenever my brother, Alex (a different one than the one mentioned in the post about Rice), and I are in New York at the same time, we always end up going out with his friends from college. Growing up, I always wanted to tag along on what my brother was doing, and he was usually pretty great about having me around, if you disregard a couple of years during his mid-teens when he needed space.

Luckily, as a grown-up, he's no different and loves to have me come along. Alex's friends are always a blast to go out with because they know how to do it right; there's never any chance that we'll end up sitting around at the end of the night regretting that we put the effort and money into the ordeal.

This friday, my brother and I headed out to Astoria to meet up with a friend of his for dinner before we went out and ended up going to a great panini place called "Il Bambino" (34-08 31st Avenue, between 33rd and 34h st, Astoria, NY 11106. Phone: 718-626-0087). It's a small place, and has a nice vibe to it, really relaxed. It's BYOB, (or BOOB, if you will: Bring Our Own Booze) and there's a liquor store and a convenience store that sells beer and wine on either side of it. They charge 5 dollars per table for BOOB, but that can just be seen as a wine opener rental fee.

But that's not why you go there. Obviously, it's for the food. Which was amazing. They have all these amazing paninis, warm and crunchy and delicious, and crostinis, which are little bits of toast type thingies with stuff on them, to explain it with some awesome vocabulary. I wasn't feeling that hungry, so I got a crostini with truffle egg salad and speck. They mix in truffle oil in the egg salad, and speck is a type of dried ham, kind of like prusciutto. It tasted amazing. I tried my brother's panini and his friend's as well, and I immediately wished I could have more of their's, but then I tried a bite of mine again and I was happily confused by my wish to eat everything at once. Alex had some kind of mozarella and tomato panini, while his friend had some kind of goat cheese and artichoke thing going on. It was incredible and I want to go back and try everything on their menu.

Apparently they have cupcakes and such there too, but we didn't get a chance to try those.

It was a great way to start out a night that eventually led to many things, for example karaoke

Oh, and while I was looking around at websites for this post, I found a pretty cool flickr group that shares a bunch of menus from restaurants people recommend in Astoria! Handy to have a bunch of them together in one place online if you're ever in the market for a restaurant in Astoria. I'm guessing I will be again sometime soon.

"Rice" is nice!

2008-08-18T18:01:00.007-04:00

I'm helping my brother out for a few days down in Soho. He's editing a commercial and I'm acting as his assistant. It's awesome of him to bring me on, because it means I can earn some extra cash while looking for a job, and he's also in this really fancy building with lots of other production companies, so I'm in the middle of where things are happening.

Whenever my brother and I try to eat anything together (usually food), we have the toughest time figuring out what to eat. This is because both he and I are extremely lazy, meaning that it's too much of a hassle to really care too much about what we end up eating, as long as it's yummy. Or maybe we just care a little too much that it's yummy, and making the wrong choice about what we eat for a meal could be devastating.

Today, we spent about 20 minutes discussing where we were going to get food from for lunch before we actually got it. But man, I was pleased with the decision. We ended up ordering from this place called Rice, which has a ton of different choices, all involving, you guessed it, rice.

We got an order of tofu satay-($6.50 for small, $11.00 for large, comes with rice, described on their menu as "tofu served with a warm satay sauce of roasted almonds and peanuts") with thai black rice ("sticky black skinned grain with white flesh, rich distinctive flavor, steamed in coconut milk") and an order of vegetarian meatballs ($6.00 for small, $10.50 for large - "tofu balls with miso, soy, scallions and red pepers with sweet or spicy chili sauce") with green rice ("infused with cilantro, parsley & spinach"). Sounds super healthy, right? I'm guessing it was, and healthy usually tastes boring, but everything tasted awesome.

Healthy is good, as long as it tastes like something. Rice isn't a vegetarian place; we just got tofu cause my brother's a vegetarian and cause it can taste good when the right thing is done to it. Both main dishes had tons of flavor, the satay creamy and nutty, the veggie balls sweet and spicy. I had never had black rice before; it's looks really cool, and it tastes good too, has a good texture to it. There are still a ton of things on the menu I'd like to try, like lebanese rice, thai beef salad, tea-smoked salmon salad, butternut squash chowder, carrot or spinach rice balls, to name a few.

Another great thing is that the place is all about being healthy and environmentally friendly. Their website tells us that they get all their food from "conscientious" vendors, they donate 1000 lbs of organic waste a week to this farm nearby, and their delivery van even runs on "filtered Waste Vegetable Oil", meaning after they use oil in cooking, they then use it for fuel for their van (which is way better than the other way around...haha?).

From what I can tell, they have 4 different locations; we got food from the place in Nolita, which is at 292 Elizabeth street (212-226-5775) downtown, right off of Houston. I almost walked right past it, because it's also a coffee shop, and that name is what's big on the door (I think it's called Johnny's coffee, but don't quote me on that), but they're at the same location. I would love to eat in there sometime, cause the atmosphere seems great.

Rice is nice, like sugar and spice!

*I didn't take the photo: I grabbed it from Rice's homepage*

Indian Cooking Lesson!

2008-08-14T17:26:00.007-04:00

I'm staying with my brother, his wonderful Indian wife, Gagan, and my two baseball-crazy nephews while I look for a job and a place in New York. For a couple of days now, my routine has been to go to apartment showings in the morning, then come back to my brother's place and make phone calls about jobs and hang out with my sister-in-law during the day before I go explore the city at night.

Gagan has promised me that she'll teach me how to cook Indian food while I'm staying with them, which is something I've always wanted to be able to do. From what I can tell about Indian cuisine, the biggest challenge is finding the right ingredients because most of it is made with spices that aren't in your typical North American (or European!) cupboard. Gagan tells me that there are a bunch of Indian stores on 23rd street in Manhattan where you can get ahold of the spices that you need.

Yesterday, Gagan taught me how to make authentic Indian Ginger Chicken! Gagan learned to make it from a close friend of her family. It's kind of hard to write down the recipe for it, because there aren't a lot of exact measurements involved, Gagan just sort of took a handful of this or a handful of that, however much she felt was right for the recipe. It turned out great- better than a lot of the stuff I've had at Indian restaurants.

*****
Indian Ginger Chicken
About 6 chicken thighs and 6 chicken drumsticks- I think about 2 lbs? (1 kg?) Whatever kind of chicken you use, make sure it's on the bone, it'll turn out tender

Marinade:
2 inches ginger (meaning two inches lengthwise of a piece of ginger)
Hari mirch- small green chili peppers (these are HOT. For true desis, they use about 4 of them, but for wimpy non-desis like me, use maybe a half a chili)
4 big spoons of yoghurt
a handful of kasoori methi- dried fenugreek leaves
a handful of dried crushed Dhania- coriander
a handful of jeera- dried cumin seeds
a handful of garam masala- a blend of lots of different spices
a big bunch of fresh chopped corriander
salt and black pepper to taste

Take the skin off the chicken and wash it. Set it aside. Peel and dice the ginger and chili. Mix everything together in a big bowl. Taste it before putting in the chicken, and add any more spices you might want. Add the chicken and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for however long you can be bothered to, the longer the better, overnight is good

Olive oil
2 more inches ginger
2 ts jeera- cumin seeds
a couple spoonfuls of garam masala
3 big spoons crushed tomatoes
salt to taste

Cover the bottom of a large pot with olive oil. Heat the pot to high. Peel and chop the ginger. Saute ginger, jeera, and garam masala for a few minutes. Add entire chicken mixture, marinade and all. Saute on high until yoghurt has largely evaporated. Add crushed tomatoes. Cover, cook on high for another half hour. Salt to taste.

Serve with rice and some Indian veggies, maybe some naan. I hope to learn how to make those soon!

*****

The Pie Shop

2008-08-12T23:11:00.009-04:00

A few of my friends and I went out to Prospect Park in Brooklyn this evening because Bob Dylan was playing there. I'm not a Bob Dylan fan. I mean, he can be good background music, but his nasal voice has never done it for me. He was obvioulsy not playing for free, but he was playing outside, so although there was a fence up to prevent anyone who wasn't paying from seeing him, we could hear him pretty well. We sat with hundreds of people outside the fence, and basically just enjoyed sitting outside, goofing off with some nice background music. And he's a legend, and living legends are the kind of people you have to sit outside a fence to hear every once in a while, even though they're not your thing.

We left the concert early to beat the rush back on the metro, and my friend Sheri was like, "Look, pretty lights!" -meaning that a street down to the right looked cozy. The whole Prospect Park area is a really nice area, by the way, very pretty. So we took a detour away from the metro station and started strolling down the street. I stopped and turned around. My friends saw my eyes light up.

"Pie!" I said.

"The Pie Shop", it was called, a small little store that sells pies and other pastries. The four of us entered the store and just sort of stood there staring. The guy behind the counter was like, "want to try something for free?" I had to do a double-take. "Free...pie...and...pastries?" My eyes opened wide.

The store was just closing for the night and they were giving away free pastries as a result. I had an Almond Pound Cake and it tasted heavenly. "Want something else?" he said. I love this guy. "Can I have a peach tart?" Oh man. Pandora's box.

I looked them up online when I got home, and apparently they're called "Down Under Bakery" and their speciality is New Zealand/Australian style meat pies! I'm going to need to try them. They have two locations in Brooklyn, but the one I went to is at 211 Prospect Park West (corner of 16th St) Brooklyn, NY 11215 (718-788-2448) And you can order them for shipping pretty much anywhere in the states. Amazing, no?

I'm going back to Prospect Park just to get pie sometime. I love pie.

The Other Two Birthday Cakes!

2008-08-09T10:42:00.005-04:00

Here are the other two cakes that my mom and I made for my birthday! I don't know exactly what cookbooks they're from, but I know the blueberry one had beautiful pictures in it. So just go look for the cookbook with the beautiful pictures in it, it should be in there.

This blueberry cake was SO easy and fast, if you don't take into consideration the hours it took to pick the blueberries in the forest for it. I was a little late in the blueberry picking season, a lot of Oslo-people had raided the forest already, so it took longer than usual to get enough berries. But the end result was FANTASTIC. I loved this cake.

*****
Upside-Down Blueberry Cake
1 Ts butter, melted
1/2 dl sugar
400 g blueberries
100 g butter
1 dl sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 dl flour
1 ts baking powder
2 ts vanilla sugar

Grease a round cakepan with 1 Ts melted butter. Sprinkle 1/2 dl sugar over. Place the berries in the pan.

Beat butter and sugar together, light and fluffy. Mix in one egg at a time. Work in flour, baking powder, and vanilla sugar. Pour the batter over the blueberries in the cake pan. Use a rubber spatuala to evenly distribute the batter.

Bake at 175 degrees celcius (350 fahreinheit) for about 40 minutes. When done, place a plate over the cake pan, and turn over quickly onto the plate. Serve warm.

I repeat: yum.

******

This next cake is one that my mom adapted from an apple cake recipe to be a raspberry cake since she has raspberries in her garden. It is also spectacular.

*****

Raspberry Cake
125 g butter
1 1/2 dl sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 dl flour (150 g)
1 ts bakingpowder
2 Ts heavy cream (or whole milk)
200 g dark chocolate
350 g raspberries
almond slices
3 Ts sugar

Mix butter and sugar together, light and fluffy. Add one egg at a time and mix well. Mix together flour and baking powder and add it to the butter/sugar/egg mixture alternately with the cream/milk. Mix everything together.

Pour half of the batter into a greased pan. Melt chocolate and mix with the remains of the batter. Pour into pan on top of other batter and swirl with a fork. Place raspberries on top and sprinkle with almond slices and sugar.

Bake at 175 degrees celcius (350 fahreinheit) for about 40 minutes. Make sure to take the cake out of the oven before it gets dry in the middle.

*****

4 birthday cakes

2008-08-07T17:59:00.008-04:00

About (or exactly) 7 days ago I turned 23.

Birthdays mean cake. There's really not much other reason to celebrate and the most important thing to make sure a birthday child gets is cake in their stomach.

For my birthday, I had a bunch of friends over. My mom and I made 4 cakes. And no, that's not overdoing it.

At the beginning of July, I was in Germany at my cousin's son's baptism and there was a cake there that blew my mind. It was called a maulworfkuchen: a "mole cake", like the animal because it looks like one of the piles of dirt it leaves after having been in your garden. I found the recipe for it online and tried it out for my birthday. It turned out pretty well, but I would use a ton more whipped cream than the recipe suggests!

*****
Maulwurfkuchen

350 g flour
175 g sugar
175 g butter or margerine
1 Ts baking powder
1 Ts vanilla
3 eggs
4 Ts cocoa powder
1 cup milk
250 g heavy cream (to whip, but I would use at least 500 g, maybe more)
50 g chocolate, shredded
1 Ts Vanilla sugar (if you use more cream, use more vanilla)
3 bananas

Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, vanilla sugar, and cocoa. Melt butter/margerine and together with eggs, mix into dry mixture. The batter will be stiff. Add a little milk at a time. Grease a round pan with a removable bottom and put the batter in. Bake at 390 degrees fahreinheit (200 celsius) for about 30-40 minutes. Let the cake cool.

Now take the top off with a spoon, leaving the edges. Separate any larger pieces into crumbs and set aside in a bowl.

Whip cream together with vanilla sugar. Grate chocolate into the cream and mix.

Cut bananas in half lengthwise. Arrange so they are covering the cake. Pour whipped cream on top of bananas, then cover with the crumbs which were removed earlier. Maulwurfkuchen!

*****

I don't have the recipes for two of the cakes with me at the moment, because I'm in the middle of moving, but I'll post them when I find them. One of them was an upside-down blueberry cake with fresh blueberries from Nordmarka, the forest near my parent's house and the other was a wonderful raspberry cake with fresh raspberries from my parent's garden, the recipe of which was adapted from an apple cake recipe.
I figured that three cakes with fruit in them meant that I should make one cake that was in a different vein, something without fruit. I've wanted to try making a nut cake for a while, and I found a recipe that looked great online. It was only halfway through making the cake that I realized that this cake, too, had fruit in it: pineapples! I wouldn't want it any other way, though, it tasted awesome.
*****

Swedish Nut Cake
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 ts baking soda
2 ts vanilla extract
1 (20 ounce) canned crushed pineapple
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
1 3/4 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup butter
1 ts vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahreinheit (175 celcius). Grease and flour a 9 by 13 inch pan.

Mix flour sugar, 1/2 cup nuts, and baking soda. Add eggs, pineapple, 2 ts vanilla. Beat until smooth and pour into baking pan. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes.

Beat butter/margerine, cream cheese, 1 ts vanilla, confectioners sugar together. fold in 1/2 cup nuts. Spread on hot cake.

*****

It was a wonderful birthday to say the least. The other two recipes later!

Tapas

2008-07-20T16:31:00.005-04:00

On friday, I was invited to a tapas evening through some friends of mine. Everyone was supposed to make a little finger dish to share. I have always wanted to try out making little filled savory pasteries, because you always see them served as appetizers at fancy parties.

I found a recipe for Mushroom Pasties in a cookbook we have at home called "the Book of Appetizers" by June Budgen. Catchy title. Since this was all last minute, I didn't have any mushrooms in the house, but I did have a pack of frozen spinach, so I decided to make Spinach Pasties instead.

The recipe said it made 10 little pasteries, so I made a double recipe and ended up with WAY too much filling compared to the dough. I suggest making a single recipe for about triple the amoung of dough of what's suggested in this recipe. It wasn't a big deal, though, because I used the leftover filling in some stuffed crepes that I made for lunch the next day.

*****

Spinach Pasties

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon flour
6 tablespoons firm butter
1 to 2 tablespoons cold water
3 shallots, chopped
1/2 pound spinach (or mushrooms if you want to make mushroom pasties)
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon dry sherry
2 tablespoons milk
8 pitted olives, sliced
salt and pepper to taste
1 egg, beaten

Cut 4 tablespoons butter into one cup of flour, or mix in a mixmaster until it resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle in cold water, stirring until dough holds together. Gather into a ball and chill.

Melt remaining 2 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet. Add shallots and cook, stir until soft. Add spinach (or mushrooms), cook until liquid has evaporated. Stir in 1 tablespoon flour, then stir in mustard, sherry, and milk. Bring to a boil, stirring, Stir in olives and season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove from heat, chill.

Grease a baking sheet and preheat the oven to 400 degrees fahrenheit or 200 degrees celsius.

Roll out pastry thinly on a floured board, use the opening of a glass to cut out 3-inch rounds. Place a small amount of spinach (or mustard) mixture in center of each round, bring edges together and join in center. Pinch to make sure edges stay together. Brush tops of pastries with beaten egg. Bake 15 to 20 minutes.

*****

If I were to make this recipe again, I probably would've made a lot more dough at once. Although it takes longer to roll out so many more pastries, you're putting time into making these pastries in the first place, so you might as well make 40 instead of 20.

20 was a great amount to bring to the Tapas evening, though, which turned out to be a lovely night! About 10 people showed up, each had brought a wonderful dish to share. There were crackers with brie and granny smith apple slices, asparagus wrapped in bacon, then fried, mini pizzas made out of pita bread, tomato sauce, a slice of turkey, cheese and arugula on the top, crepes filled with blueberries, little turkey meatballs, potato salad, apples with procutto, french bread with smoked salmon, mustard sauce, and dill... Everybody had put a lot of thought into their dishes and everything, EVERYTHING tasted wonderful. We sat outside in the garden, ate wonderful food, drank some beers, and thouroughly enjoyed ourselves.

This was a great way to bring people together- the food was so good, but so simple and with everyone pitching in to make it, it was easy to put together. This is definitely something to consider doing again!

Indian Wedding

2008-07-19T07:35:00.007-04:00

A few months ago, a friend of mine, Vineet, invited most of his friends to come to India with him this summer. His brother got married there this week, and it was an enormous celebration: a four day wedding, 400 guests, and I heard rumors about elephants being invited too. Three of my friends actually went with him to partake in the wedding, but most of us didn't have the time or money.

In honor of the wedding, though, the people remaining in Norway decided to go out to eat a nice Indian dinner.
We ended up going to a new Indian restaurant in Oslo called Indian House (Fred Olsens Gate 11, 0152 Oslo, T: 22 41 79 00). A friend of mine had gotten a brochure for it from someone passing them out on the street, and since we were in the market for an Indian restaurant anyway, we decided to go there.

I was sceptical, because restaurants that have to advertise on the street usually aren't amazing, but I was happily suprised! It turned out to be a nice place with REALLY good food and great prices to be Oslo. (Food in Oslo can be pretty pricey, as I've mentioned before).

I had Gosht Badami Korma, which is Lamb in a nut and coconut creamy curry. It was perfectly cooked, nice and tender, and the spices were great. I also had Peshawari Nan, a sweet nan with coconut, raisins and nuts. It's quickly becoming my favorite kind of nan, but it can be a little weird for some people; I think it takes some getting used to. My friends tried a bunch of other meals, such as Zinga Til Tila, an appetizer of spicy king prawns deepfried with sesame seeds, Palak Gosht, lamb in a garlic and spinach sauce, and Jhinga Kadhai, king prawns with onion, tomato, corriander, and capsicum. Everyone was very pleased with their food choices.

It was a great way to celebrate the newlyweds, and a little taste of India for those of us who couldn't actually go on the trip. AND we found a nice new restaurant in Oslo too!

Summer Dinner

2008-07-15T12:28:00.012-04:00

This Friday, I invited a bunch of my friends over for a summer dinner. My friends were nice enough to indulge me by giving me the opportunity to try out a bunch of new recipes on them. I think in the end, though, they ended up letting me spoil them for a night.

I started planning a few days ahead of time, pouring through cookbooks my mom has lying around the house, looking for recipes that would go well together. I love looking through cookbooks, especially ones that my mom has, because I know she’s used a bunch of them most of her life. Also, I love imagining all of the things that I could possibly end up making, and what they could taste like, organizing, figuring out what to finally make.

I spent the entire day in the kitchen on Friday, and had a great time doing it. The night was a success; how could it not have been, comibining three of my favorite activities: hanging out with friends, cooking, and eating.

I went a little Martha Stewart and decorated the table with dried roses, which were dry cause I forgot to water them, not cause I dried them for this purpose.

The first course was a Mushroom Bisque Soup, a recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen. Moosewood is a famous vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca, NY and the cookbook is beautiful, all handwritten with little drawings.

I had been thinking about the mushroom soup I had had the week before in Germany since I got back. So once I knew I wanted to make a soup, picking which one to make was easy. The one from the Moosewood Cookbook was pureed, while the German one had bits of mushroom in it, but they were both creamy and rich and reminded me of summer. I made a triple recipe, which is of course way too much for 10 people… But served with chopped fresh chives on top, it was so delicious that I don’t mind eating it for the next two weeks.

*****

Mushroom Bisque

4-6 servings

6 tablespoons butter
1 ½ lbs. (0.7 kg) fresh mushrooms
1 stalk celery
3 fist-sized potatoes
1 ½ cups (3.5 dl) chopped onions
1 ½ cups (3.5 dl) stock or water
Appx. 2 teaspoons salt.
¼ teaspoon thyme
3 cups (7 dl) milk
½ pint (2.5 dl) heavy cream
2-3 Tablespoons dry sherry
1-2 Tablespoons tamari (a special kind of Japanese soy sauce)
fresh black pepper
freshly chopped chives

Peel and slice potatoes thinly. Chop celery and mushrooms coarsely. Begin cooking the onion in butter, adding 1 teaspoon salt. When the onion becomes translucent, add the potatoes and the celery. Continue to cook over fairly low heat, mixing well, so the butter coats everything. After several minutes add the mushrooms, water, and remaining salt. Cover and cook over medium heat until potatoes are done. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

Puree the entire mushroom mixture. Heat the milk in a separate pot until just before it starts to boil. Then heat the mushroom mixture very slowly, as you mix in the hot milk, cream, sherry, and tamari. Heat only until hot enough to serve! If cooked or boiled, this soup will easily curdle. Serve right away, topped with freshly chopped chives and freshly grated pepper.

*****

On the side, I served Brown Butter Soda Bread, a round, fluffy bread made without yeast. I found the recipe online on the Bon Appétit website. The spices and pepper in the bread make the bread interesting and good compliment to the soup.

You’re really supposed to have 1 ts baking soda and 2 ts baking powder for this recipe, but I couldn’t find baking soda anywhere in Oslo. So, I just added more baking powder and it worked out fine. Apparently, you can replace soda with powder, but not the other way around.

Provence spices are a mixture of thyme, rosemary, majoram, and basil.

*****

Brown Butter Soda Bread

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon “provence” spices
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper plus additional for topping
1 3/4 cups buttermilk or kefir
1 egg white, beaten to blend

Preheat to 375°F (190°C). Stir butter in a small pot until it turns golden brown, just melting it is not enough. Stir flour, oats, sugar, provence spices, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and 3/4 teaspoon pepper in a bowl. Pour buttermilk and melted browned butter over flour mixture; stir with fork until flour mixture is moistened.

Turn dough out onto floured work surface and knead it carefully, only until it comes together. Divide the dough in two, shape each part into a ball and flatten it into a round disc, about 6 inches in diameter. Place rounds on ungreased baking sheet and brush tops with beaten egg white. Sprinkle lightly with ground black pepper. Using small sharp knife, cut 1/2-inch-deep X in top of each dough round.

Bake breads until deep golden brown and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool breads on rack.

*****

For the main course, I made a recipe from a Dean and Deluca cookbook we have at home. Originally, the recipe calls for cod, but when I was at the store, cod was so expensive that I opted for another kind of white fish, pollack (sei in Norwegian). This type of fish is very common in Norway, and it worked well with this recipe.

I read online that one should calculate 1/3 to ½ a pound of fish fillet per person for a dinner. (between 0.15 and 0.2 kg), so I made a triple recipe for 10.

*****

Cream-Poached Cod (Pollack) Fillets with White Wine, Mushrooms, Onions, and Tomatoes

1 tablespoon butter
¾ pound (0.35 kg) shi-take or mixed mushrooms (I used shi-take, aroma, and champion)
1 medium onion, halved, sliced thin
2 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
2 large shallots, sliced thin
¼ cup (0.6 dl) dry white wine
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
1 teaspoon thyme
1 ¼ cups (3 dl) crème fraiche
salt and pepper to taste
1 ½ pounds (0.7 kg) fresh cod (or Pollack) fillets

Melt butter in a big pan, throw in the mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, shallots, white wine, the parsley, and thyme. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 8 minutes, until the vegetables are softened and the liquid is almost evaporated.

Add the crème fraiche and bring to a bare simmer. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the fish, stir the sauce so the fish is buried in it. Cook gently, turning once, after about 5 minutes.

Transfer the fish to a platter, serve the vegetables next to it. Garnish with parsley.

*****

I served the fish with wild rice and a summer salad that I found at allrecipes.com, a Strawberry Spinach Salad. I really like this website because users write in what they think of the recipe once they’ve tried it, and most importantly, what they did to improve it and change it. Originally, this recipe calls for sesame seeds and poppy seeds, but I took some of the users’ advice and used toasted candied almonds instead. Also, instead of honey, it called for sugar in the original recipe, but honey gave the dressing a nice taste. I served the dressing on the side so people could decide themselves how much to use. The sweet and tangy dressing with the slightly sweet strawberries and almonds was a great combination.

*****

Strawberry Spinach Salad

2 bunches spinach, rinsed and torn into bite-size pieces
4 cups sliced strawberries
2 cups sliced almonds
Sugar for sprinkling over almonds

Mix the spinach and strawberries together. Heat a pan, and pour almonds- don’t use any butter, just a dry pan. Sprinkle sugar over and toast almonds until they are slightly browned. Allow to cool before adding to salad.

Dressing
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/2 cup honey
1/4 teaspoon paprika

Shake together in a dressing shaker and serve on the side.

*****

Then came the grand finale, dessert. I love desert. I made a warm blackberry and apple soufflé served with a piece of black and white brownies on the side. I couldn’t believe that the soufflé turned out, I had always heard it was so hard to make. It was light and fluffy and the spoonful of fruit puree at the bottom that was added before baking turned into a great sauce with the soufflé.

*****

Warm Souffle with Blackberries and Apples

Serves 6

Butter and sugar for the
350 g (0.8 pounds) blackberries
1 big apple, peeled and cut into pieces
grated skin and juice of 1 orange
150 g (0.3 pounds) sugar
3 egg whites
powdered sugar for decorating

Preheat oven to 200°C (390°F). Brush 6 small soufflé dish with butter and sprinkle sugar over them. Shake off excess sugar.

Heat berries, apple, and orangejuice- and skin together in a pot until the apples turn soft. Put the mixture through a sift. Stir in 50 grams of the sugar.

Put a tablespoon of the fruit puree at the bottom of each soufflé dish. Wisk the egg whites until stiff and add the rest of the sugar gradually until you have a nice marengs. Turn the rest of the fruit puree into the egg whites, spoon into soufflé pan.

Put soufflé dishes in the oven for about 10-15 minutes until the soufflés have puffed up and the tops have turned golden brown. Shake powdered sugar over and serve right away.

*****

I’ve been making this recipe for brownies since I was about 11 years old. It’s form the New York Times Cookbook from 1961 and I grew up using it. This is the first time I made the black and white version, though, adding chocolate to only half the batter.

*****

Black and White Brownies

4 ounces dark chocolate (1 1/8 bars dronning sjokolade) (use half this amount for black and white brownies)
1/3 cup (80 g) butter
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
¾ cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
¼ ts salt

Preheat oven to 350°F (177°F). Grease a pan.

Melt butter and chocolate together (or separately for black and white). Beat eggs with sugar until fluffy, add chocolate mixture to eggs (or just butter for black and white). Add flour, blend, add vanilla and salt. Stir well. (for black and white: divide batter in two, add chocolate to one of them)

Pour into pan (Alternately chocolate and non-chocolate for black and white) Bake for about 30 minutes or until knife comes out clean.

*****

Ah, what a night! One of my friends said, “It’s too bad you spent all that money on getting an education, cause you would’ve been a damn good housewife”. Which was a compliment.

It was a great evening and so much fun to make. Yay summer and time to do things like this!

New Easy Dinner Recipe!

2008-07-09T06:49:00.004-04:00

I have a few staple easy dinner recipes that I make, they usually consist of me throwing things together in a pan and serving it over some kind of rice, potato, or pasta.

Yesterday I made a new one!

Tuna, Apple, and Raisin Curry

2 Ts butter
2 ts curry powder
1/4 onion, chopped
1 apple, chopped
2 handfulls of raisins
1 can of tuna
1/2 cup-ish milk
flour
paprika
cumin
salt and pepper
1 Ts-ish honey

Melt the butter, add the curry into the melted butter. Throw in the onion, apple and raisins. Stir around for a few minutes, until soft. Add the tuna, stir a little more til warm. Pour the milk over, then sprinkle flour over and mix it in, however much it takes to thicken the milk a little. Then season with paprika, cumin, salt and pepper. Add a little honey for sweetness.

I had it with pasta, but I bet it'd be good with both rice and potatoes. Also- I had the leftovers on a bagel and melted cheese over it for lunch today. Yum!

German bliss

2008-07-08T13:16:00.005-04:00

I've been in Germany for the past few days for my couisn's son's baptism and have had quite a few amazing food experiences.

The first was the buffet on the ferry down to Germany from Norway, where I basically stuffed myself solid. They had so many different kinds of food, as buffets normally do, and I had to try as many as possible. That's my technique at buffets, quantity of items tasted is definitely what I go for, not to put together a cohesive meal, which I've actually met some people who do. I'll never have the self-discipline! I also try to not get completely and utterly stuffed, but then end up failing miserably. It's all worth it, though, isn't it!? I tried crawfish for the first time, and learned the technique for cracking one open. There were also about 10 different kinds of desserts, about half of them cakes and the other half puddings... My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

The second food experience was at the baptism; there was this absolutely amazing cake that someone had made for the reception, but I will have to post about that later... stay tuned. Here's a picture to let you start thinking about it.

The third food experience was at this cute beergarden in a small town called "Altstadt" (directly translated: Old City) just outside of Nurnberg. Chantarelles, this fantastic tasting mushroom which are all over the woods in Germany (and Norway too, by the way!), are in season, and they had a mushroom soup on the menu that was amazing. It was creambased and was rich and the mushrooms fit so well with it. Oh my.

And these experiences are just the specific ones I'm mentioning among all of the other berry and fruit cakes. And sausages. And cheeses. Germans know how to eat.

Just some recipes I like

2008-07-02T23:22:00.004-04:00

Guest blogger! The stage is yours:

I am going to skip the informative posting part, and get straight to the recipes, because these are a few favorites I need to share with the world, and most notably Sam and Natalyo.

First, as always, a cocktail. This one's called a Mango Sour. I found the recipe in a Gourmet magazine cookbook.

You need: Vodka, Mango Nectar, lemon juice, and ice. It's easy, basically just combine those four things however you like it. It's best if you shake the mixture then add it to a cup of ice. Drunkeness is directly related to the amount of Vodka you add. This was probably obvious but now you know for sure.

Okay, next thing, RISOTTO. I found this recipe in a Jamie Oliver cookbook, called The Naked Chef Takes Off. This one's a little wordy but not as hard as it seems.

RISOTTO!!!

INGREDIENTS

5 Cups vegetable, chicken, or fish stock. I used bullion cubes cause I'm classy like that.
Baby portabello mushrooms (I used a whole package)
2.5 heads of garlic
3 shallots or 2 medium onions, finely chopped
1/2 a head of celery, finely chopped
14 oz. medium grain rice, such as arborio (I used brown rice-not a great idea, because it takes longer)
2 wineglasses of dry white vermouth or dry white wine
sea salt and black pepper
5 T butter
4 oz. freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 handful fresh thyme leaves
2 T mascarpone cheese

1: Heat the stock. Roast the remaining garlic heads (which should be whole and unpeeled if possible) on a dish in a 450 degree oven for a 25 minutes to a half hour until they are soft.

2: In a separate pan heat the olive oil, add the shallots or onions, and 2 finely chopped cloves of garlic, and the celery. Fry slowly for about 4 mins. When veggies softened, add rice and turn up the heat.

3: Keep stirring the rice as it fries, and once it looks slightly translucent, add the vermouth/wine and KEEP STIRRING. The alcohol evaporates and what's left tastes AMAZING. Jamie knows what he's talking about.

4: Once the liquor has cooked into the rice, add your first ladle of hot stock and some salt. Turn the heat to a simmer. Keep adding ladles of stock, stirring the creamy starch from the rice, allowing each ladle to be absorbed before adding the next. Add the thyme and the mushrooms as well. Should take about 15 minutes. Taste the rice before you decide it's done! Believe me, you will want to. Continue adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite.

5: Remove from heat, add the butter, some Parmesan, and the Mascarpone. Stir gently, then lid the pan and let sit for a few minutes. It should be creamy and oozy...eat right away!

The other recipe you need to try is pretty basic, and one my sister tried the other day that was wildly successful.

ROASTED CHICKEN WITH VEGGIES AND WHATNOT

INGREDIENTS

You need chicken-preferably something with skin and bones but if you're the boneless type then follow your heart.
several Shallots or 4 onions (just get shallots!!!)
1 Garlic head, peeled
Carrots-lots of them.
Potatoes-the cute little red kind.
TONS OF FRESH ROSEMARY.

Place the chicken in a baking dish, and douse it in olive oil. (BTW, you need olive oil..forgot to mention that earlier). Add salt and pepper if you're into that. Chop the rosemary and distribute across the chicken. Slice the carrots and throw them in, then the potatoes, then separate the garlic but there's no need to chop it. Add the shallots, which should be cut in half at least...if you are using onions instead then cut in four pieces. Now cover your baking dish with tin foil, cook it until it's done ('bout a half hour) and the EAT IT. Pretty simple, and very delicious.

Bon apetit!

-Fork

Potato Trick

2008-07-02T10:57:00.003-04:00

So the other day, I was SUPER hungry and my mom was making dinner for the family since I'm home. I'm not proud of it, but it's a well-known fact that, even though I'm 22, I become slightly cranky when I reach a certain stage of hunger. My mother, who has known me all of my 22 years, realized that I was coming very close to this stage.

Long story short, she was going to make fried potatoes, which usually means you have to boil the potatoes first (which takes about 25 minutes) AND THEN cut them up and fry them, which takes another 5 minutes at least. But, smart as she is, she took out her trusty grater and grated the raw potatoes directly into a pan of olive oil, added some salt and basil, and the potatoes were done in 10 minutes! And they were super good too because they were thin and moist.

I'm by-passing boiling from now on.

Free Money!

2008-06-29T09:43:00.013-04:00

I'm back in Norway for the summer and have been loving it so far.

Every time I get home, the very first thing I eat is "sild i tomat", herring in tomatoes. I always get in sometime in the early afternoon and even though I'm deadly tired and smelly from the plane ride, I usually sit down with my parents and have brødskiver, openfaced norwegian sandwiches. Norwegian bread is so good, everything pales in comparison- it's crusty on the outside and nice and soft in the middle and full of seeds and oats and other good stuff. Herring is a white fish and it comes with onions in a tomato sauce. Probably sounds a bit weird, but I love it and it's a great thing to come home to.

The first night I came back, I went out with a bunch of friends, and the next morning, sligtly reduced from then night before, I met up with Bettina and Andreas, and went to town. Seriously!

Basically, this really gross guy who was already drunk at 2 in the afternoon may or may not have dropped 500 kr on the ground, but we couldn't be sure it had been his, so we decided to use the money on the beautiful day that lay ahead of us! We felt like little kids who had found 20 kr and could now do ANYTHING.

What better thing to spend money on than food!?

There's a new opera house in Oslo, which has been in the works for years. It's built right on the water and is supposed to look like an iceberg, I think, but in any case, you can walk up the slant which is the roof and look out at the water and sit there. I hadn't been yet, so we headed over there, and on the overpass on the way there, we smelled waffles. Beautiful norwegian waffles. They're usually shaped like hearts, 5 of them in a circle and topped with some combination of sour cream, strawberry jam, raspberry jam, or sugar. A woman was selling them at a stand right by the opera, so we each got one, (probably courtesy of the gross drunk man, although we can't be sure). So we sat down at the opera house (which was suprisingly pretty and fitting for the city, which you never would have guessed by the drawings that had been in the newspapers for years) and ate scrumptuos Norwegian waffles with raspberry jam on top. I'll post a recipe for Norwegian Waffles at the end here.

Oslo is an expensive city. The world's 10th most expensive city according to CNN (New York is 15th on that list), but I've also seen lists where it ranks number number two, right after London. So, eating out is tough and whenever I find a new place to eat where prices aren't crazy, I get excited!

We had 440 kr left, and decided to go to "Rice Bowl" (Youngsgate 4, 0181 Oslo, 22 41 20 06), a Thai restaurant that Bettina and Andreas knew about, for a late lunch. Our friend Sandra met us there. Prices weren't crazy- from 95 to 130 for a meal. We each had some version of yellow or red curry with chicken and veggies and cashews, except for Sandra, who had rice noodles with broccoli. It was all very yummy and very free.

Yay free money and a summer day filled with food!

KORPSETS VAFFELRØRE

This is my Aunt Laila's recipe for Norwegian waffles. "Korps" means school band, and this recipe was used for the waffles made and sold for fundraisers for the school band. It's really good.

This is a really big recipe, so it's probably a good idea to half it eventually. Also, a pinch of cardemomme is really good too.

1/2 l (2.1 cups) kefir (or buttermilk)
1/2 l (2.1 cups) whole milk
300 g (1.3 cups) melted margerine
500 g (4 cups) flour
1 or 2 eggs
300 g (1.5 cups) sugar
1/2 ts vanilla
a pinch of salt

Mix everything together, let it stand for about 15 minutes.

Preheat the waffle iron, make them one at a time, try topped with sour cream and strawberry jam!

Brownstone

2008-06-24T18:22:00.007-04:00

Today, Sam and I went out to eat breakfast at Brownstone Diner & Pancake Factory in Jersey City. (Address - 426 Jersey Av, Jersey City, New Jersey 07302. Phone - (201) 433-0471) It's turning into something of a tradition for us to go there when I go to visit her, if by tradition, you mean doing it twice.

They have a HUGE breakfast selection, anything you could want or imagine. Tons of different kinds of pancakes (I had banana walnut ones today!), Belgian Waffles (which, when covered in peaches, take less than 5 minutes to eat when you're really hungry. Don't ask me how I know this), omelettes, breakfast sandwiches, combos.... The French Toast version of which are Sam and Kat's (Kat is Sam's BFF..her other one...one of her other ones) favorite thing to eat there. It's a matter of personal pride for them to attempt to finish the entire thing, although it has sausages, eggs, bacon, AND three huge sopping wet (in maple sirup) pieces of french toast with powdered sugar on top. Sam came awfully close today. A valiant effort.

Also, I should mention that when Sam eats, she cuts all her food up before she eats it, which must be a very practical and good way to eat, I just get too excited about eating that I can't wait for the time it takes to cut things up before eating. Hence the less than 5 minute Belgian Waffle.

Mmmm... breakfast.

An Idea is Born

2008-06-23T20:59:00.003-04:00

We're three girls that decided to eat. Nothing is better to eat than food. And nothing is better to talk about. So we're sharing, with each other and whoever wants to read.

Bon Appetitt. Yum, I can't wait!