The Susanne

The Boy­friend and I are watch­ing Twin Peaks at the moment. My, it’s a swell show! I love the enthu­si­asm of Agent Cooper, the cun­ning of Audrey Horne and the weird­ness of Major Briggs and of course, the Log Lady (get my ref­er­ence?). We like watch­ing whilst eating dinner, and dinner tonight con­sisted of my very first pie! Smoked salmon, asparagus and onion com­bined with a mix of eggs, soy milk and parmesan cheese. Lovely!

I used unsalted, non-​dairy Melange mar­gar­ine instead of butter for the crust and it turned out beau­ti­fully! I pre­cooked the bottom crust before adding the filling, which con­sisted of some of the yummy leftovers from 17. May. I’m very impressed with myself for achiev­ing such a good result on my first attempt! The fla­vours were just right and went really well together, and the con­sist­ency was great too: the crust was crisp, as was the asparagus whilst the salmon and the egg mix gave mois­ture and soft­ness. Here’s what  I used for the filling:

About half a side of smokes salmon, sliced

6 asparagus shoots, in 2cm pieces

an onion, chopped

2 eggs

a splash of soy milk

about a table­spoon parmesan

a pinch of salt

and pepper

I mixed the eggs with a splash (prob­ably about a table­spoon) of soy milk, the parmesan and some salt, and set aside. Then I sautéed the onion and asparagus for a few minutes in a tea­spoon of mar­gar­ine. Then I layered the salmon in the bottom of the pie, before spread­ing the onion and asparagus over it. I sprinkled some salt and pepper over it, before adding the egg mix. Then the pie lid was put in place, I cut a couple of slices in it to let my pie breathe, then popped the baby in the oven at about 200 degrees Celsius. When the crust had turned golden and the egg mix was cooked, My First Pie was ready to eat and all that was left to do was to settle on the sofa and press play.

First for the ewww:  I made a dis­turb­ing dis­cov­ery this morn­ing when I went to wash my teapot which had been left out with soggy pep­per­mint leaves since last night (I was a naughty girl). My dis­cov­ery was in fact so dis­turb­ing that I have been turned com­pletely off pep­per­mint tea, and I cannot fore­see a time when I will again be able to enjoy it: there, amongst the soggy mint leaves, was the tail end of a bug! I don’t know what kind of bug it was, yet I cannot see how it mat­ters anyway. How utterly dis­gust­ing! The Boy­friend duti­fully went through the rest of the tin of pep­per­mint leaves and found another dried little intruder, so obvi­ously every leaf was unce­re­mo­ni­ously binned. I can’t help but feel sad at the thought of not having pep­per­mint tea any more, it is my favour­ite after all used to be my favour­ite! But if I ever feel the urge again, one look at this pic­ture will surely help change my mind:

Okay, enough dis­gust for one blog entry I’d say. No one can say that I have a weak stom­ach (except when it comes to dairy, of course) and this incid­ent did in no way put me off my appet­ite. Morn­ing is break­fast time and I felt like some­thing fla­vour­ful yet not too heavy, some­thing fresh, savoury, salty… I decided to make a Susie Salad which is my own take on the clas­sic Caesar Salad. I love the Caesar dress­ing, but I hate to follow a recipe reli­giously and whenever I do I always find I’m miss­ing my favour­ite ingredi­ents. Like toma­toes! So here’s what I did. I made some croutons by cut­ting up a few slices of bread, soak­ing them in a mix­ture of olive oil, crushed garlic and pepper, and roast­ing them in the oven. I have never actu­ally so much as looked at a recipe for croutons so when they turned out as scrump­tious as they did I was well pleased with myself! Then I made the dress­ing in a salad bowl, using:

a 55g tin of Abba anchovies (my favourite!),

a few cloves of garlic (crushed),

some salt,

pepper,

mus­tard,

Worcester­shire sauce,

some lemon juice,

an egg yolk

and some olive oil.

Beau­ti­ful! Then I threw in some crispy lettuce (I used Vest­fold­salat), tomato wedges, the croutons and mixed it all together to dis­trib­ute the dress­ing evenly. I divided the salad in two shal­low bowls and placed a medium boiled egg, halved, on top of each. Delish! A per­fect breakfast.

My crav­ings sat­is­fied, I sup­pose I should get down to some revi­sion. My first exam is in just over a week, yet I still haven’t been able to get into exam mode. I guess I’m just very good at put­ting things at the back of my mind. Maybe I’m learn­ing from The Boy­friend, maybe it’s an inher­ent trait in me and just one of the sim­il­ar­it­ies between us. I don’t know. All I know is I’m not nervous about my exams. And I really, really should be by now.

Today so far has been won­der­ful: prob­ably the best 17. May in years. When we woke this morn­ing we were greeted by snow­flakes fall­ing out­side our window. The Boy­friend and I dressed and shared a quite eleg­ant yet simple break­fast of cham­pagne, some rye crack­ers, grapes and fenalår before set­ting out on today’s adventure.

As we left the flat after break­fast and made our way towards the city centre and the royal castle, the tem­per­at­ure had risen slightly and snow had given way to heavy rain and sharp wind. We met up with The Boyfriend’s brother and pro­ceeded through the throng of rev­el­lers towards the castle to find a good place to spot the King and also watch the children’s parade – and we suc­ceeded beyond expect­a­tion. It was freez­ing, it was wet, my shoes were a touch too high and about a size too big, a man kicked me with his muddy shoe and we only man­aged to catch occa­sional glimpses of the Royals whenever a strong gust of wind would blow aside a branch of the tree which obscured our view of them. Yet is was bril­liant! We waved our little flags and shouted HURRA! with the chil­dren, we spot­ted a rel­at­ive of The Boy­friend and The Brother in one of the march­ing bands and we really had a great time.

After a while I found I could no longer ignore the pain in my feet, and as we were just about frozen through we left the cel­eb­ra­tions and made our way back home where I cooked up a gigantic (at least for three people) brunch. Actu­ally I hadn’t meant for it to be quite of that scale but I found as I was cook­ing away that I simply couldn’t stop. One thing inspired me to make another and in the end I’d made, clock­wise from bottom left: scrambled eggs with chives, warm potato salad, tomato and moz­zarella salad, a plate of smoked salmon and my spe­cial gravlaks (which turned out great I might add. A tad salty, but tasty!), mus­tard sauce for the salmon and aïoli, both home made, fresh baguettes (which I only heated up so no credit there), a plate of cured ham and fenalår (cured leg of lamb), and asparagus with cured ham and parmesan. It was quite a feast!

All this took about an hour to get ready, so luck­ily I thought to serve up a cheese, cured ham and rye crack­ers plate to sus­tain the two hungry men whilst they waited, as well as some italian ice cream cake which I’d pre­pared last night. We feasted upon all this for a while until we were well and fat, and then lounged about for a while trying to catch our breath. The Brother provided some enter­tain­ment in the form of his lovely guitar play:

After brunch we sep­ar­ated for a few hours to get some rest before the evening’s shenanigans: we’re going to a con­cert! Farm­ers Market are play­ing at Rock­e­feller and I’m well excited. I know Stian Carstensen’s music from his Christ­mas Jazz shows home in Eids­voll, which are simply bril­liant. He is a musi­cian quite dif­fer­ent from any other I can think of: incred­ibly tal­en­ted in both tech­nique and per­form­ance, as well as dazzlingly cre­at­ive and ener­getic. I simply can’t wait!

I’m quite excited about the upcom­ing hol­i­day 17. May. It’s the Nor­we­gian Con­sti­tu­tion day, cel­eb­rat­ing the day in 1814 when a con­greg­a­tion of the finest men of our nation com­pleted our con­sti­tu­tion and declared our inde­pend­ence from Den­mark. Of course, we were to be sub­jug­ated to Sweden for another ninety-​one years before finally achiev­ing com­plete inde­pend­ence in 1905. But we still cel­eb­rate 17. May as the most import­ant date in our nation’s his­tory. The day is tra­di­tion­ally cel­eb­rated with every­one dressed up in their best, many wear­ing folk dress, all gath­er­ing in the streets to par­take of or watch the many 17. May parades.

The best known and prob­ably most endeared parades are of course the children’s parades. The Nor­we­gian poet Henrik Werge­land fathered the idea of the national day being the day of our nation’s chil­dren. He also penned the song ‘Vi ere en nasjon vi med’ (lit­er­ally trans­lated ‘we are a nation, we also’) which is sung by chil­dren in the parade. The parades are fron­ted by march­ing bands play­ing this and other songs such as the national anthem, with school chil­dren fol­low­ing, singing, shout­ing ‘HURRA’ and waving flags. It is truly a sight. In Oslo the children’s parade fin­ishes out­side the royal castle where the royal family gath­ers on the bal­cony, for the people’s view­ing pleasure.

At Eids­voll, where the con­sti­tu­tion was cre­ated, there is also a spe­cial pro­gramme on each 17. May. The set­ting is per­fect for the cel­eb­ra­tions on this day: the house where it all took place making a mag­ni­fi­cent back­drop whilst the people gather in the grounds for speeches, music and games for the chil­dren. This is the 17. May I grew up with. We would get up early, gather at my school and then pro­ceed to the start­ing place for the parade before, after an excru­ci­at­ingly long wait, the parade would get under way and finally we’d end up at Eids­vollbygnin­gen where our par­ents awaited us, cheer­ing, their pock­ets con­tain­ing money for the hot dogs and ice cream we so longed for. 17. May is the one day a year when chil­dren can eat all the ice cream and all the hot dogs they like.

This year, I’m host­ing my first 17. May break­fast. The Boy­friend and I decided on a quieter and less stress­ful route this year, no stu­dent party and no train ride to the Nation’s cradle which is where my par­ents live and is the scene of my child­hood. Instead we’re having The Boyfriend’s brother over for break­fast early in the morn­ing and then we’ll head down town to see the children’s parade and try to get a glimpse of the King.

As far as I’m con­cerned, I don’t mind going the whole day without so much as a mouth­ful of ice cream or hot dog. What I could never do without on this day though, is salmon. Smoked salmon and gravlaks. Which dir­ectly trans­lates to dug salmon or dig-​salmon. It has noth­ing to do with dig­ging though: gravlaks is simply fresh salmon mar­in­ated in a mix­ture of salt, sugar, fresh dill and some cognac for three-​four days. Many people con­fuse gravlaks with the very different-​tasting rak­fisk. Whilst gravlaks is fresh salmon and deli­ciously tast­ing, rak­fisk on the other hand is fer­men­ted fish. Some do say that gravlaks is basic­ally the same product, having simply gone through a quicker pro­cess not includ­ing micro-​organisms and that the final result is much the same; but I do not agree with this com­par­ison at all. To me, there is a clear dis­tinc­tion between the fla­vours and also, there is of course a vast dif­fer­ence between decom­pos­ing fish and fresh fish. And just to make it clear: no one will be served rak­fisk at my table. Ever.

Today, my pas­sion for improv cook­ing has lead me to mar­in­ate half a side of smoked salmon. Yes, it might be super­flu­ous, as the fish is already ‘prepared’, it might not turn out well at all, but I’d quite like to see the result anyway. I made the mar­in­ade using the usual ingredi­ents: salt, sugar, pepper and heaps of fresh dill. As we don’t have cognac in the house (The Boy­friend is more of a whisky drinker) I poured a shot of whisky over my little exper­i­ment instead. I’m excited to see the result on Sat­urday: I’m sure I’ll eat it even if it doesn’t taste great con­sid­er­ing the amount of work I have ahead of me in the days to come. The salmon must be turned over sev­eral times a day, and prefer­ably left out of the refri­ger­ator for a few hours each day in order for the fla­vours to prop­erly impreg­nate the fish.

Excited? Oh yes, I should think so!

I have achieved the per­fect lasagne! I was googling some­thing or other and happened to stumble upon a recipe with a com­ment from a person claim­ing to be Italian saying ‘this is the real lasagne’. Of course, I had to take a look. From what I could see, the basic dif­fer­ence between that recipe and the ones you usu­ally find is that it con­tains barely any cheese: no moz­zarella or ricotta at all, simply some grated parmesan sprinkled on top. Besides that, it was basic­ally your normal recipe for lasagne, with veget­ables, toma­toes, minced meat and red wine making up the meat sauce. Of course, I couldn’t leave this baby without tasting!

So i went to work, modi­fy­ing as I always do to get the taste just how I like it. I used much more toma­toes than the recipe called for, simply because I love the rich fla­vour of ripe toma­toes and feel lasagne really should taste of tomato. Oh and I had to make dairy-​free Béchamel of course, which actu­ally turned out just fine. It curdled a tiny bit in the oven, must have been some reac­tion between the soy milk and the wine, or some­thing. I’m making a mental note to try using rice milk next time!

The lasagne was heav­enly. The Boy­friend had fourths and I barely man­aged to snag me the last square which I hid at the back of the fridge for today: I simply must have more of this!

And to all you out there who didn’t know that las­gane really shouldn’t be cheesy: Prego!

Bunny Buddy is begin­ning to get used to us. He doesn’t hide in his house any­more except when we hoover or make sudden, scary move­ments. He likes to hang out in his house from time to time though, usu­ally just for a quick nap before recom­men­cing his bunny shenanigans. He loves play­ing with his take-​away coffee cup and his shoe­box, gnaw­ing them, throw­ing them around the cage and hiding in them. Yep, the cup too:

Isn’t he just ador­able? Oh yeah, he still has many, many names. In fact they keep accu­mu­lat­ing. I’ve star­ted call­ing him Krølle (Curly) and Snøfte (Snort). He’s not curly haired and I haven’t seen him snort yet. Last night, though, he kissed my nose! My heart almost exploded!

But I do actu­ally think about other things than our new little sweet­heart. Exams are coming up and I try my hard­est to do revi­sion but it’s not really work­ing out too well. The weather is too damn gor­geous and my will­power is not strong enough to resist the many, many tempta­tions of spring. Like bar­be­cues in the park…

The Boy­friend and I went to see The Orphan­age last night. It was incred­ibly scary and I loved it! The Boy­friend proved his status as the ‘not protective’ guy when he instead of com­fort­ing me simply made me even more frightened. But it was great nev­er­the­less. I love the ‘suspense’-scary movies. I get so caught up in the story that I lit­er­ally turn into a nervous wreck, sit­ting on the edge of my seat, hiding my face in my hands and actu­ally scream­ing when some­thing even only slightly scary hap­pens. I was the only one in the cinema last night who screamed. Luck­ily The Boy­friend only finds it adorable…

If you’ve seen the film or don’t much mind spoil­ers, take a look at the offi­cial website!