The Susanne

Things are really look­ing up for me. Not only am I unchar­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally well pre­pared for this new semester which is about to start (having actu­ally read a few of the books on my read­ing lists over the summer), but I have a new job, plans for a great ‘new’ kit­chen and dining area and now — wait for it — The Boy­friend just landed the job of his (my) dreams! He is now get­ting paid loads of money to spend all day on the com­puter muck­ing about with php scripts. I think it is safe to say the future has never looked quite as bright to me as it does right now.

Also of course, I’m excited about my and Maria’s trip to London which is now only three days away. But somehow… I’m equally excited to get back here after­wards and just get on with my new, great every­day life. It is such an amaz­ing feel­ing, I don’t believe I’ve ever been quite as happy as this!

Het­mann moved back home today. He’s been stay­ing at my parents’ house all summer where he’s had the base­ment all to him­self, as well as a lovely, big ‘summer house’ (cage) out­side. He’s been spoilt rotten with all fresh food – mum’s home grown lettuce, pars­ley, car­rots, straw­ber­ries, apples and his favour­ite: rasp­ber­ries. So when I brought him back to our one bed­room flat today I felt a little bad for the little guy. But it seems he’s settled in just great! Already he’s run­ning around look­ing like the king of the castle that he is. I’m glad he’s home.

Now is all this great for­tune a result of fate? Was I destined for this all along? Is it a matter of karmic retri­bu­tion for having suffered through the last two, awful years of my life? Is it simply dumb luck? Well, to be truth­ful, who the h*** cares ay? I’m ridicu­lously happy and I’m not ashamed to say: I think I deserve it!

The first time I tasted this was on our second night in Sicily. Imme­di­ately after my first taste I just knew I’d have to make this at home. The recipe is incred­ibly simple, and the taste of the fin­ished dish is even more incred­ibly deli­cious. This is my gift to all of you, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do – every time!

Feeds two:

• 1 kg fresh mussels
• 2 dl wine (red or white, both work!)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 shal­lots, chopped
• 2 toma­toes, chopped
• 1 dl pars­ley, chopped
• olive oil
• salt & pepper

Start by clean­ing the mus­sels. Scrub off all grit, ‘volcano shells’, stringy bits, all of it. Any dirt left on the mus­sels will go in the broth and you’ll have to eat it. Yeah. Throw out any that don’t close when you touch them as they’re dead and poten­tially harmful!

In a medium sized pot on a medium heat, start by heat­ing some olive oil and then sauté the shal­lots and the garlic until barely golden. Add the toma­toes and the wine and stir care­fully to mix it all up nicely.

Add the mus­sels on top, cover, and let sit for a few minutes. After about 7 to 10 minutes the mus­sels should all have opened. Dis­card any that have not opened.

Use a slot­ted spoon to move the mus­sels into a serving dish. Stir the pars­ley into the broth, add some salt and pepper to taste, and pour it over the mus­sels — then serve and eat!

Yum!

Growing up, I never knew that whal­ing was seen as any­thing but normal any­where in the world. In my world, whal­ing was an import­ant part of my country’s his­tory, and whale steak was a former ‘cheap meat’ turned del­ic­acy that took great care to pre­pare prop­erly. It was not until I was a little older that I real­ised how most coun­tries dis­agree with Norway’s policies when it comes to whal­ing. When I first arrived in Sydney for my stu­dent exchange on my second year of high school, people at school knew mainly two things about Norway: that whal­ing is prac­tised (against the demands of many coun­tries), and that the cap­tain of a ship (the MV Tampa) which had recently picked up fugit­ives at sea and brought them to Aus­tralia, was Nor­we­gian. Luck­ily no one asked me if Norway is the cap­ital of Sweden or if we have to watch out for polar bears when we leave the house, but one lady who was the co-​worker of my first host mother did think Eng­lish is the offi­cial lan­guage in Norway. That assump­tion was based on my flu­ency so I was quite chuffed at the time, but ser­i­ously!) I wondered that they all knew so little of my home coun­try, but then I didn’t know much about Aus­tralia until just before I went.

I remem­ber once when I was very young, up north in grandma’s cabin, we had whale steaks and I couldn’t quite get my head around the fact that it was fish, but it wasn’t fish, and it was meat, but it wasn’t meat. My con­clu­sion was that it was good food and I liked it.

When I went to the super­mar­ket today I was amazed by the unusu­ally well stocked fish counter. It was simply packed! There was fresh cod, salted cod, whole salmon, salmon fil­lets, trout fil­lets, mack­erel, halibut, pol­lock.. all very fresh and very invit­ing. My eye was imme­di­ately drawn to the trout, but then I spot­ted the whale. It’s been years since I last had it and as we had salmon last night at Anders and Stefanie’s, I decided tonight was to be a whale night. I also cast a few long­ing glances at the fresh mus­sels, the crab and the lob­ster, but man­aged to refrain from buying any of it. My poor little stu­dent hous­ing refri­ger­ator isn’t one I like to trust with the keep­ing of fresh sea­food, so I’m plan­ning to go back tomor­row and get some mus­sels to make Cozze alla Marinara!

Today, though, I made whale steaks. The girl at the fish counter said a por­tion size is about 200-250g so I bought half a kilo.  It was much more than I’d pic­tured get­ting, but timid little girl that I am I didn’t ask ques­tions, simply fol­lowed her suggestion.

The thing about whale meat is if you over cook it, chances are you’ll end up with an awful taste of tran (fish liver oil). My solu­tion was cook­ing it at a high heat for only about a minute or so on each side and then let­ting it rest (wrapped in tin foil) for about 15 minutes before eating. This left it very red in the middle, or should I say raw, but it was warm and lovely and incred­ibly tender. I’d rubbed it lib­er­ally with salt, pepper, fresh rose­mary and garlic and left it in the fridge for a few hours before eating, which gave it a bril­liant flavour.

The Boy­friend fin­ished off his whole steak but I could only manage about 1/3 of mine. So I guess it’s not always a good idea to listen to sales people when it comes to what quant­ity to buy…

Con­clu­sion: I still love whale meat. If you don’t, then — you’re miss­ing out!

Tonight, The Boy­friend and I vis­ited a couple we know who had a baby two months ago. The father is Nor­we­gian, we know him from uni, and the mother is German. He is really strong, wilful, and such a little man. He has loads of hair and it’s not like baby hair, it’s more like the hair of a thirty-year-old. Long, dark and thin­ning at the top. (Or is it filling in? )

Any who, he’s a pretty cool little guy. They tried to con­vince us he gets tetchy in the even­ings, but I didn’t really see how. They let me hold him and all I had to do was tell him how hand­some he is and say ‘boobies’ a couple of times, and he laughed his head off. Appar­ently you’re not sup­posed to talk baby talk to babies any more, but ser­i­ously, once you’ve got them there in your lap, look­ing so cute and baby­ish, how can you not do it? Beats me. We brought the camera but when we got there no pic­tures got taken, we were just so mes­mer­ised by the little fella.

And no, I’m not sold on the whole baby idea just yet. I don’t want a little man hanging from my boob all day, nor the inev­it­able house arrest which fol­lows the Mir­acle of Birth. Some day, though. And I hope whatever I end up with will be as cool as Vegard the Norweger.

This was my first Faulkner. I read it in pre­par­a­tion for a course in mod­ern­ism which I’m taking this autumn (I wanted to get a head start on the read­ing list as I’m taking five courses instead of the recom­men­ded three).

At first I really struggled to get into it. I didn’t find it very inter­est­ing after read­ing the back cover, saying it was the story of a woman’s death told by mem­bers of her family, and then all the chapters were pretty boring at first. None of the char­ac­ters seemed to have any­thing inter­est­ing to say. But then, some­thing changed. It might have been that I got to know the char­ac­ters a little better, it might be that their weird­ness became more evid­ent, but I star­ted loving it!

I spent a week on the first 50 pages and then about a day on the rest. I simply couldn’t put it down. I loved the fact that the char­ac­ters, Addie Bundren’s family, were if pos­sible even more weird than my own family. I loved that they were so honest about everything even when they hid things from each other: they may have hidden the facts of things but they always left their heart on their sleeve. I loved that they all thought ‘I’m the only one who really, truly loved her.’ I loved that every­one else had their own the­or­ies about the dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the Bundren family and that none was right. I loved it because it made it so clear that life is so ambigu­ous, truth is in the eye of the beholder, and that what others think never mat­ters until you let it.

Here’s a link to the book on amazon; I strongly recom­mend read­ing this. If you’ve a weird family or if you’ve the most normal family in the world, this will give you a new per­spect­ive on life. I promise!

I’ve left the parents’ house which was my home for the summer and returned to my beloved flat. It’s a com­plete shambles even after sev­eral days of ‘tidying’ as I’m not great at clean­ing and neither is The Boy­friend. We (read: I) wanted to give the flat a good tidy­ing up, get­ting rid of some of the junk that’s accu­mu­lated over the four­teen months we’ve lived here, in pre­par­a­tion of a Fresh Start (read: new semester). In addi­tion to making our flat the most per­fect flat in stu­dent hous­ing his­tory, we’re going to become model stu­dents and start going to the gym reg­u­larly. Yeah, that’s right: we’re going to become naus­eat­ingly per­fect! But all that’s happened so far is we’ve bunny-​proofed the place to make sure the little guy doesn’t acci­dent­ally chew an elec­trical cord and get him­self fried, moved a lot of stuff out from its ori­ginal hiding place and scattered it around the flat, and moved our desks around along with the sofa and the tele­vi­sion to make room for — wait for it — Our Very Own Dining Table! Yeah, that’s right! We’re (read: I’m) finally fed up with eating all our meals on the sofa, hunched over the coffee table in front of the telly and have decided to make room for a sep­ar­ate dining table. It will be small of course as we only have a tiny flat. But it will be the right height and it will have chairs that go with it so we can sit upright and eat our meals like normal human beings. Yey!

But sadly, for now, this is My Reality:

I’m also look­ing for­ward to another addi­tion to our little home: a new kit­chen counter! (you thought I was going to say ‘baby’, didn’t you!?) I’m not repla­cing the one we have (as we live in stu­dent hous­ing that’s strictly ver­boten), but instead I’m adding 80×60 cm of won­der­ful work sur­face and stor­age in my (until now!) ridicu­lously tiny and use­less kit­chen. I’m ecstatic! The counter top is going to be (treated) solid wood so I won’t have to muck about with silly cut­ting boards that slip on the lino sur­face that we have now and that are too small to be of any real use (because the counter tops avail­able to me now are so small I’m sure the people who designed these units four years ago couldn’t ima­gine stu­dents ever eating any­thing but frozen pizzas and take-​out). So I’m sure you can all ima­gine my excite­ment and relief.

Another bright spot on my hori­zon is my trip to London which will happen in just ten days! I’m going on a girls’ LONG week­end (more like a week, really) with my best friend Maria who’s study­ing to be a doctor in Hun­gary and we’ve not had more than a couple of days together in three years. I’m so excited about this trip I’ve a long list of things I want to do there:

• I want to see the Broad Street pump where Dr John Snow first proved that chol­era was a water-​borne dis­ease thereby dis­prov­ing the (then) pop­u­lar theory about miasma, and have a drink in the pub bear­ing his name.

• I want to visit the Dick­ens museum and the Sher­lock Holmes museum, and have a drink in the Sher­lock Holmes pub.
• I want to go to the Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val which is hap­pen­ing while we’re there.

• I want to visit Dennis Sever’s house which is a kind of mystery-tour/museum/time capsule.
• I want to go on a guided boat trip on the Thames as soon as we arrive.
• I want to drink Pimms at the White Horse Pub.
• I want to visit some of the cool mar­kets and try jel­lied eel (jel­lied ewww?).
• I want to visit the Museum of Torture.
• I want to go clothes shop­ping (of course).
• We’re def­in­itely going to see The Merry Wives of Wind­sor at The Globe Theatre
• and Chicago!

I’ve never been to a musical before but I have seen a Shakespeare play. Not at his own theatre, though! Oh, the excitement!

Plus loads of other stuff that doesn’t come to mind at the moment but I’m sure it will as soon as I’ve posted this. If anyone has any sug­ges­tions for us, what to do, what to see, what to drink, what to eat, please let me know.

After all, I’m a London virgin… -for another ten days!

I read this book in Sicily, on the beach and on the bus. It was a great com­pan­ion because it com­pletely cap­tured my atten­tion, leav­ing me almost obli­vi­ous to the annoy­ing voice of our Sicilian tour guide (on the 13 hour guided trip to Piazza Arm­er­ina and Agri­gento) as well as keep­ing me from work­ing myself into a fit over the crying babies and loud Trøndere at the beach.

As to the story, well, let’s just say I was mes­mer­ised. It’s one of those stor­ies where I get so caught up in the action and in the feel­ings of the char­ac­ters, I feel like they’re friends of mine and I feel a deep sense of loss when the story ends and so con­sequently my acquaint­ance with them.

Whilst I was thor­oughly sick and tired of Char­lotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (the char­ac­ter) about twenty pages into the story, I never tired of neither Gil­bert Markham nor Helen Graham/Huntingdon. I loved the por­trayal of Gil­bert as a silly, con­ceited, spoilt but essen­tially lovely and kind man, depic­ted (as modern read­ers know, but which was not known at the time of pub­lic­a­tion) by a woman. I loved Helen Graham’s piety, her folly, her sil­li­ness and her mar­tyr­dom (please allow me this little exag­ger­a­tion) and I did not for one moment resent her or feel annoy­ance at her like I did towards Jane Eyre.

Beau­ti­ful though grim story, def­in­itely worth a read, a tear and a laugh.

If you’re think­ing of buying it, here it is on amazon.