The Susanne

I caught a fish! Well, The Boy­friend and I caught it but I reeled him in and gutted him and cleaned him. And named him, Kalle Cod. After Kalle Klovn which was a char­ac­ter on tv when I was little. It was quite funny actu­ally, we were out on the water at about 9pm, and The Boy­friend said that he actu­ally hoped we didn’t catch any fish because then we’d have to clean it and bla bla bla. The next moment his face went kind of funny and he handed me the line. And there was def­in­itely a catch on the other end of it! So I reeled it in and as there was jelly­fish on the line and we were only a few short minutes from his house we just put little Kalle in a bucket and sped home. The whole family came down to see and The Boyfriend’s mum helped me gut and clean the fish. So fun. Going fish­ing again tonight, and Trond’s coming too. I’m excited about it: I love fish, I love fish­ing and I love hanging out with Trond. Unbeat­able com­bin­a­tion, really!

The Boyfriend’s homet­own is on the south coast of Norway and it’s such an idyllic little town that each summer it’s crowded with tour­ists making it almost unbear­able for the locals (or so I’ve heard, being some­thing of a tour­ist in these parts myself I wouldn’t really know). This summer, though, the weather hasn’t been very tour­ist friendly and as a con­sequence, when I ven­tured into the streets of Mandal on Friday I must say I found it quite lovely and peace­ful. Sure, I heard more people speak­ing in my own dia­lect than in the local one, but that’s only to be expec­ted I sup­pose. The Boy­friend was at work and his mum had to attend a funeral, so she dropped me off in town and I had a lovely day walk­ing around, doing a little shop­ping and drink­ing coffee and even a CB. The weather held up pretty nicely as well, except for one big down­pour which trapped me inside Coop for a little while with all the old ladies.

The Boyfriend’s family live on an island to the south-​west of Mandal. They’ve a beau­ti­ful old house in a gor­geous bay and it’s the most idyllic place to live I’ve ever seen I think. It’s a little isol­ated for people like me who don’t have their license or a car, but some­times it’s good to get away from everything and just be stuck in one place for a while. Plus they have boats, so we can still get around, and they have a gor­geous, huge black cat. He and I had a lovely morn­ing together on Friday before the rest of the house­hold woke up (we got up to have break­fast with The Boy­friend at 6am before he went to work)

I would like to argue the case for what I believe to be the best, and only, read­ing order of the Chron­icles of Narnia. Oh, after I make a tiny men­tion of the supreme superi­or­ity of the excel­lent White Witch of 1988 over the rather sickly and weak one of 2005. Hon­estly, Tilda Swin­ton, you’ve noth­ing on Bar­bara Keller­man! Just look at her!

I was ter­ri­fied of her for years! I had one of those Stompa beds which are kind of bunk beds with only the top bunk, leav­ing room for a play area under­neath. And can you ima­gine my terror as I night after night feared fall­ing asleep because I knew the White Witch was hiding down there, just wait­ing for me to fall asleep so she could kill me! Oh the ter­rors of a young mind. Now I recently saw the 2005 film (against my own res­ol­u­tion never ever ever to see it for fear of ruin­ing the won­der­ful exper­i­ence that the BBC series was to me in my childhood…) and I must say, I didn’t find the witch scary at all. In the BBC series, the witch is the most mag­ni­fi­cent part of the whole thing. But in the film…well..she’s ter­rible. And not in the ‘terribly frightening’ sense of the word, but ter­rible in the ‘terribly disappointing’ sense. I could go on and on about the other things that dis­ap­poin­ted me in the film, but as I knew in advance what to expect and chose to see it anyway, I’m just going to leave it for now. I’ll just quielty mourn the loss that modern tech­no­logy is caus­ing our chil­dren to suffer in terms of ima­gin­at­ive view­ing. What’s fun about talk­ing anim­als that look like anim­als? What’s fun about com­puter graph­ics that look so real you don’t have to ima­gine it being real? I’m just saying..

Ok. Over to the books! Count­less dis­cus­sions exist on this sub­ject and I’m dying to voice my opin­ion. Work­ing in the lib­rary I noticed that the edi­tions of The Chron­icles of Narnia on the shelves there were all numbered, and invari­ably The Magician’s Nephew was numbered as the first book. Now, I hon­estly don’t see how anyone can believe that this would make a nat­ural read­ing order! The Lion, The Witch and the Ward­robe is clearly the first book: it intro­duces the land of Narnia to the reader in a way which The Magician’s Nephew simply can’t.

The children’s exper­i­ences in Narnia in The Lion, The Witch and The Ward­robe takes the reader on a jour­ney to a — both to the reader and the chil­dren of the story — unima­gined land which they find at the back of an old ward­robe. The Magician’s Nephew is a ret­ro­spect­ive story, the story of how it all began; and it is para­mount to the full and proper exper­i­ence of that book that the reader already be famil­iar with the land of Narnia. As to the view that as The Magician’s Nephew comes first chro­no­lo­gic­ally, I simply don’t see how that can be con­sidered a valid argu­ment by anyone. Firstly, it was pub­lished much later, second to last in fact, and secondly it hardly offers a sat­is­fact­ory intro­duc­tion to the magical uni­verse which the Chron­icles depict. Being much more abstract, and much less like a fairytale, it hasn’t that won­der­ful qual­ity which The Lion, the Witch and the Ward­robe has, and which has dazzled gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren and made them fall in love with the Chron­icles. All love begins with an ini­tial attrac­tion, and The Chron­icles of Narnia being children’s stor­ies, The Magician’s Nephew simply does not have ‘it’.

When C. S. Lewis replied to a little boy’s letter saying he agreed with him about the read­ing order of the Chron­icles (the silly little boy thought The Magician’s Nephew should come first as the story is chro­no­lo­gic­ally before the rest of the books), it is my belief that he was humour­ing a little child and not at all intend­ing to set the cannon for the read­ing of his mas­ter­piece in years to come.

Enough people have debated over this sub­ject that I feel no need to go into the boring facts and det­at­ils; I’ll just leave it at this: When I, together with Lucy Peven­sie, first found my way through that ward­robe it was the begin­ning of my rela­tion­ship with Narnia. And I am a firm believer in that being the only real way to get there.

Here’s an incred­ibly simple recipe for some­thing that tastes incred­ibly good and will lift almost any food to incred­ible height, taste wise. Yep.

Take

• a big bunch of pars­ley about 1,5 dl I should say), chopped.
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 dl olive oil to start but maybe as much as 1 dl depend­ing on how runny you like it.
• a large squeeze of lemon juice

Mix it all together in a small bowl. Eat it:

• on a sand­wich (I’ve tried it with fenalår and beef pas­trami so far, both delish),
• with your schnitzel (tried it, yum!)
• as salad dress­ing (oh my goodness!)
• on samlon (just ima­gin­ing but ohh…just the thought of it)
• or chicken (mmmmm!)
• well the list could go on forever.

These brownies will put a smile on your face any day! (they cer­tainly made the thun­der­storm that set in an hour after I fin­ished work for the summer, much more bearable…)

I found the recipe that inspired these at A Matter of Taste.

You’ll need:

• 200 g milk cook­ing chocolate
• 200 g dark cook­ing chocolate
• 1 dl margarine
• 4 eggs
• 2 dl sugar
• 2,5 dl flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 dl chopped almonds
• 2 dl shred­ded coconut

Set your oven to 175 degrees C.

In a sauce­pan, melt 100 g of each chocol­ate on a low heat with the mar­gar­ine. Chop the rest of the chocol­ate into big, chunky chips and put them aside for later.

When the chocol­ate and mar­gar­ine is melted, stir them together and add the sugar. Stir until it’s well combined.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the eggs. Pour into a bowl.

Add the flour and baking powder and com­bine well.

Stir in the chocol­ate chips, almonds and coconut. Pour into a greased baking pan, and pop in the oven.

Let the brownies bake for about 20 minutes. I recom­mend check­ing them after 17 just in case. They’re done when whatever you stick into them comes out sticky but not covered in runny batter.

Enjoy! And may your rainy days be lovely :)

An hour after I got off work, the sun was gone. (It had to happen…) In its place was a thun­der­storm with strong wind and heavy rain:

Yeah. Good thing my brownies turned out won­der­fully per­fect! They’re moist and sticky on the inside, with lovely big chunks of almonds and dark and milk chocolate… Recipe will be posted under ‘drinks and snacks’!

Dad and I took a little trip to Sweden yes­ter­day. We got an early start and man­aged to get in a café trip and some shop­ping and were on our way home by 12.45! Yeah. Effectiv­ity is def­in­itely a talent of ours. The little café, (actu­ally a ‘konditori’ which trans­lates to con­fec­tion­ery but I’ve never heard that word in use) is in the small town of Char­lot­ten­berg which has a lovely little high street which used to be crowded with both Nor­we­gi­ans and Swedes on pretty much any day of the year. But then the evil shop­ping centre mogul Olav Thon built a huge shop­ping centre between the border and Char­lot­ten­berg and almost all local busi­nesses had no choice but to move from the lovely town and into the giant con­crete and glass prison. Con­sequently, Char­lot­ten­berg has become some­thing of a ghost town in com­par­ison. But Källmanns, the con­fec­tion­ery, is still open. It used to be so crowded you’d have to wait for a table, but these days the place is pretty damn empty and I worry they won’t be able to stay open very long. dad and I snagged us a table out­side in the sun and had a lovely lunch of smoked salmon with scrambled eggs (me) and a prawn sand­wich (him). And two cups of deli­cious coffee, of course. A little group of spar­rows were there, keep­ing their dis­tance but all the while watch­ing us in case we dropped some food. I ‘dropped’ one tiny little piece of my roll and the pret­ti­est one caught it. Yey!

The candy store, God­isfab­riken (the Candy Factory), is also open. I remem­ber coming there as a child, and seeing all the candy and belie­ve­ing I had gone to heaven. And let it be noted that I was never really one for the sweet stuff, I was always more about the pop­corn and other salty stuff. But this place… good­ness me! I took some snap­shots. I sup­pose it’s noth­ing spe­cial if you’re Amer­ican or native to another coun­try where gigantic candy stores are every-​day fare. But to a little girl from Norway, this is spectacular:

When we got home I threw myself at the veal we’d picked up across the border. I love going on the little trips to Sweden as food is so cheap and when we come home we get to eat loads of stuff that’s usu­ally too expens­ive to buy here. Like veal! Dad also bought me some kangaroo steaks and a deer roast which I’m going to keep in the freezer and cook this autumn when The Boy­friend returns to the civ­il­ised part of the coun­try. That gives me ample time to plan some­thing spec­tac­u­lar to do with them — I’ve made kangaroo sev­eral times before and I abso­lutely love it, because of its incred­ibly low fat con­tent as well as its amaz­ing fla­vour! Every time I eat it I try to figure out whet it is it reminds me of but I never quite hit ‘it’. It’s not beef, and it’s not lamb and it’s not moose or reindeer. But it’s def­in­itely familiar.

As to the veal, I made schnitzel of course! With the sesame seed crust and served them with a bean salad, some salsa verde and a pan sauce with some red wine in it. Dad said sev­eral times that it tasted amaz­ingly deli­cious, which I com­pletely agreed with him on but it’s such a treat to hear that from a parent! The two pieces of veal we bought were gigantic, about 40 or 50 cm long, so I ended up with four schnitzels…meaning there’s leftovers for today! Hooray! I’m cur­rently engaged in an inward debate on whether to heat them up in a skil­let or in the oven. If I placed a lid on the skil­let they’d heat up quite nicely I should ima­gine, plus I could throw in a smi­g­den of mar­gar­ine also and I would be sure of get­ting the crust back to its former, crispy glory. In the oven I could just place them in a covered or uncovered dish (yeah, not decided on that either) and they could heat themselves…but then I’d have less con­trol of the re-​heating pro­cess and as I have never re-​heated schnitzel before I don’t know if the crust will get crispy in the oven or even how long they take to heat or even if I should do it at all — what if they turn dry?!

Yeah, I’m scared. At least I have the great suc­cess of yes­ter­day fresh in my memory to cheer me up if today’s prob­ject is a big fiasco. Oh, and speak­ing of fias­cos, I’m going to have another go at baking brownies today. I’ve bough new cook­ing chocol­ate, and a whole bag of shred­ded cocnut (I LOVE chocol­ate and coconut together!) and some more mar­gar­ine and as soon as I get off work it’s straight to the kit­chen where I’ll not lose sight of the tem­per­at­ure dial once. And then, maybe I’ll return with some vic­tori­ous snap­shots of scrump­tious double-chocolate-and-coconut brownies? Time will tell, people!

Oh, just one more thing: I gave the bunny his first straw­berry! Oh you wouldn’t believe how incred­ibly, amaz­ingly ador­able he looked! Ima­gine frantic lick­ing, the whole tiny little bunny-​chin covered in red straw­berry juice, the look in his eyes that christ­mas and his birth­day and 17. may and easter and every other hol­i­day had come at once. So cute!