The Susanne

We did it! We got up early this morn­ing and rushed through the usual ritual of groom­ing and break­fast to get to the pet shop as soon as we could. And we bought Ramsay! Oh yeah, and she actu­ally turned out to be a boy. Also this Ramsay is actu­ally the ori­ginal Ramsay’s brother. Con­fused? Ima­gine how I felt, I didn’t even know they were boys until we were leav­ing the shop! Appar­ently the people in the pet shop had moved the boy bun­nies into the empty girl bunny cage to clean the boys’ cage. Yep. You’d think they’d let us know sooner! Not that I mind having a boy, except for the fact that I am now out­numbered two to one in this house­hold. I’ll just have to trust my com­mand­ing pres­ence to let me keep my role as Queen/Head of House…

Already, though, we’ve star­ted moving away from the name Ramsay. I star­ted call­ing him Tøffen (Though guy) simply so he’ll have some­thing to live up to and feel at ease more quickly. The Boy­friend calls him Kompis (Buddy), obvi­ously because he thinks he now has an ally in the house­hold. Yea right!

Then I thought I wanted to call him Gordon as it sounds cooler and it doesn’t remind me of Norway’s most idi­otic BB con­test­ant. The one with the infam­ous motto ‘If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.’

The Boy­friend wants to call him Hetman, I like the sim­ilar Heit­mann as it was my granddad’s name. But I like Gordon too. Let’s just hope he lives up to Gordon Ramsay’s crazi­ness and all will be well!

Here’s our little prin­cess! Ehm, I mean prince:

I’ll read­ily admit it: I’m a cat person. If my love life doesn’t work out I will be the old lady that shares her house with a hun­dred cats. And I might even pos­sibly end up refer­ring to them as my babies.

Right now, though, I live in a flat so I can’t have a cat. It’s so incred­ibly mean to keep a cat locked in a flat. A cat should have loads of room out­side to run around, climb trees and kill loads and loads of birds, rats and mice! At the same time, I’m long­ing for a kitten. I’ve had cats all my life, the last one was with us for 13 years and I still miss her even though she passed away four or five years ago. My par­ents have a new cat now, a boy, but he doesn’t acknow­ledge me as family: I’m just the vis­itor who if I’m lucky will get to pet him a little if I stay for sev­eral days.

Soooo… I want a bunnyrab­bit! I’ve been to the pet­shop and met a gor­geous little girl, she’s incred­ibly cute and looks just like a little dust bunny. When I was there she did this thing where she lifted up one front leg like a gryphon while she made a huge yawn – she looked like a roar­ing lion! (or gryphon…)

I’m just going over and over it all in my head: should I buy her or will it be a mis­take? One moment my heart over­rules my brain and I decide I will, the next my brain takes back con­trol and tells me of all the work, all the incon­veni­ence, and all my elec­trical cords which will be gnawed. Yet I still want her. I wish I had a photo of her to put up, she’s so incred­ibly beautiful.

Might just have to pop back down the pet­shop tomor­row and bring her home! Oh and her name? Ramsay. After Gordon, of course. It sounds equally cool in Eng­lish, South­ern Nor­we­gian, West­ern Nor­we­gian and East­ern Nor­we­gian. Yea, they are different.

I’m going to a friend’s house warm­ing party tonight and I had no idea what to get her. As far as I know, she has everything! So then I thought, maybe I should go over there and bake her a cake in her new kit­chen! But… then I real­ised I have no idea if she actu­ally has a cake dish. (Yes, I know I said she has everything. But yeah.) So I decided to bake the cake at home before I go. Much easier, mush less messy and I won’t seem like a com­plete freak for invad­ing her kit­chen on the night of her party!

Here’s the result, chocol­ate with hazel­nuts, wal­nuts and a rum cream filling:

About four years ago, whilst at work in a bar at Oslo Air­port, I was approached by a man who told me I would make a great house­wife. That was the first time anyone had told me that and frankly I was quite offen­ded by it: I was 19 years old and my bar job was only a way of fin­an­cing my shop­ping and drink­ing whilst trying to decide what degree to choose for uni which I was to start in August that year. I was the archetypal party girl: I would turn up to work with a ter­rible hangover or even still slightly drunk (shame!) and although I did a lot of clean­ing and was very effect­ive and good at my job, I didn’t see myself as someone who could be con­sidered in the way that man did. Since then, I have been told that same thing many times over, and I’m begin­ning to believe it. In fact, the only thing I can think of which doesn’t qual­ify me to some day become a great house­wife, is that I don’t want to.

I want to work. I want to use my brain. I need to get out of the house, meet people, have a social life of my own! But apart from that, I am get­ting quite adept at home-​making. If I may say so myself.

I abso­lutely love cook­ing. I love food. I love think­ing up recipes, start­ing with one ingredi­ent that I feel like that day or am curi­ous about and then adding things I think will taste good with it. And nine times out of ten, it turns out amaz­ing. I like that my recipes have that ori­gin­al­ity about them, that little piece of ‘me’ which makes them so spe­cial and sets them apart from other people’s food.

Also, I don’t really mind clean­ing. Mind you, I must be in the mood to clean or I’ll get angry and bang things around, throw­ing clothes about the room and being really loud and scary. And I’ll work myself into a rage whilst at it. This is another reason why I don’t want to become a house­wife: my kids would be in des­per­ate need of ther­apy whenever I had a bad day! -But when I’m in the mood! When I have the energy to clean, it can be cool! I’ll put on some ’80s music, turn up the volume and really have a great time. And I really am quite effect­ive. I’ll have the whole flat done in a half hour, no cheat­ing or cut­ting corners, and everything done. There’s no sweep­ing any­thing under the rug in my house!

And when it comes to laun­dry, yeah, I’ve had that down since an early age thanks to my mum. I will def­in­itely be passing on that tra­di­tion to my chil­dren: they will learn to do laun­dry as soon as they’re old enough to under­stand what the dif­fer­ent set­tings on the washer and dryer mean. (And the wash­ing instruc­tions on the clothes, of course, as we don’t want lambs wool going in the dryer…)

I love the ‘clean house’ feel­ing. I love to flop down on the sofa after clean­ing, with a cup of tea or coffee or maybe even (per­haps prefer­ably) a cold beer. And just relax. Ahhhh…

But basic­ally what I love the most is cook­ing. I have been trying out some new things lately, such as grilled halibut with a warm potato salad, and today, for the first time, I made scampi. I mar­in­ated them in chilli and garlic which is what my mum does so I know from exper­i­ence it’s deli­cious. I served them with asparagus and spa­ghetti with a home made car­bon­ara which turned out even better than I’d ima­gined! I love it when things work out well. The fla­vours went well together which was a relief as the car­bon­ara was really more of a backup plan in case The Boy­friend didn’t love the scampi (he isn’t really one for the sea­food). But it was great. And he loved it, by the way. At least he said so: I can never be 100% sure if he’s telling the truth but if he lies about it he’s really only shoot­ing him­self in the leg as he will be served the same thing again. Ha!

So yeah, another thing for The Susanne’s Super Secret Heir­loom Cook­book. Though I guess this one isn’t very secret any more. Oh darn.

Yesterday two amaz­ing things happened:

• I handed in the last essay of the semester
• …and imme­di­ately the awful, stub­born flu I’ve been strug­gling to shake finally let go!

So, need­less to say I have been in an unusu­ally great mood today. I went to my sem­inar feel­ing on top of the world! I paid closer atten­tion than I have in months and actu­ally learned a lot! Then I asked my pro­fessor about my essay and he said, straight away, ‘Don’t worry, trust me, you passed!’  YEAH!

So I felt the need to reward myself: and what better way than to head down­town for some spring shop­ping? I bought two new tops which I love and new sunglasses. Very classy. Very cool.

Also couldn’t help but notice the beau­ti­ful city I live in. How can it be that a city whose aes­thet­ics I usu­ally feel only embar­rass­ment for can sud­denly be so beau­ti­ful? It’s spring. I love spring. Def­in­itely my favour­ite season. I just marvel at how everything comes back to life after the long, dark, cold awful winter. And it’s so vibrant! The beau­ti­ful col­ours that are appear­ing every­where, the buds on flowers and trees, and the blue sky and the intense sun­light all warm my soul. Yes­ter­day, after I’d fin­ished my essay, The Boy­friend and I had a little picnic in the local park. The trees have no leaves yet, but they do have nest­ing birds..

It truly is a won­der­ful world.

The Boyfriend’s mum gave us a bril­liant gift last christ­mas: a cast iron grill pan! I am com­pletely in love with it but am begin­ning to real­ise that you’re sup­posed to season an iron pan before you use it. Now I did look over the pack­age for instruc­tions before I used it, how­ever there were only some pic­tures of happy people cook­ing with the amaz­ing pan and no instruc­tions what­so­ever. So. I just star­ted using it. Every time I’ve used oil in it, I’ve been close to smoking myself out of house and home. And by exten­sion, my neigh­bours. If it wasn’t for our large win­dows I’m sure I would have, too.

Today I turned to Martha for help, and learned how the pan should have been seasoned. So, that’s what I’m doing right now (better late than never, right?), and in case anyone read­ing this would like to learn…here’s how:

1. Care­fully wash the pan in hot, soapy water. Yes, soap. It must be impec­cably clean. Rinse it thor­oughly afterwards.
2. Dry it care­fully. First using a dish towel, then in the oven at about 150 degrees Celsius for ten minutes or so. Just make sure it’s com­pletely dry to avoid rust!
3. Coat the pan in oil. Don’t use too much oil but make sure every bit of it is covered.
4. Back into the oven with it, and let it sleep there for an hour.
5. Take it out, let it cool and wipe off excess oil.
6. TaDA! The pan is seasoned and ready to use!

After season­ing, never ever use soap to wash your cast iron pans, as this will ruin the season­ing. Instead, try using salt and a paper towel, or clean water and a brush. If the season­ing starts wear­ing off after a while, just season it again!

I have been watch­ing a lot of Gordon Ramsay’s Kit­chen Night­mares and it has inspired me immensely. In fact it has inspired me to the point that I neg­lected going to the lib­rary today to work on an assign­ment, just to stay home and cook! I feel I must men­tion that Gordon Ramsay is quickly becom­ing my idol. It used to be Rachael Ray: I loved her easy, hearty italian food. Yeah, it got boring. She’s out, Gordon’s in. I just love his pas­sion! His foul mouth, the way he tears up when things are done badly… Amaz­ing. I could never dream to even come close to his bril­liance; yet I feel I am almost up there as far as pas­sion goes. One thing is cer­tain though: I could NEVER be a chef. I could never handle the stress of a res­taur­ant kit­chen. I love exper­i­ment­ing with fla­vours and cre­at­ing things that tickle my tastebuds. But my pas­sion couldn’t sur­vive the stress. I’ll just settle for a fat family.

Here’s some­thing I feel incred­ibly pas­sion­ate about: my latest inven­tion, The brand new Susan­neB­ur­ger! Simple, fresh,  and all from scratch, it tasted like heaven on a plate: The Boy­friend was close to tears and I have found my new favour­ite food. In the whole wide deli­ciously tast­ing world.