The Susanne

Or should I say that time of the semester: it’s essay time! Four essays to be writ­ten and handed in within the next couple of weeks, the first one due tomor­row. And let me just say, that as fas­cin­at­ing and fun I find the play I’m sup­posed to write my essay on, Ben Johnson’s Vol­pone, the ques­tion is pro­por­tion­ally boring and unin­spir­ing:

“The major­ity of the char­ac­ters of Ben Jonson’s Vol­pone are devotedly self-​seeking, and vary only in their meth­ods and their degree of ruth­less­ness.” Dis­cuss this statement.

Ser­i­ously, what’s there to dis­cuss? Yes, they’re devotedly self-​seeking! That’s one of the major themes of the d*** play!  And yes, they are all dif­fer­ent and so they must inev­it­ably vary in their meth­ods, as well as their degree of ruth­less­ness! Ahh…I’m frustrated.

There is no rel­ev­ant cri­ti­cism to be found on the sub­ject either, I’m guess­ing because it’s such an obvi­ous theme that no one has bothered to write about it. Feel my frus­tra­tion! Does anyone know this play? Anyone will­ing to rescue me from my cur­rent state of hope­less­ness by assist­ing me to another view on this sub­ject and/or giving me some point­ers on how to write this essay, will earn my eternal grat­it­ude and pos­sibly dinner if they live near enough.

Of course, all work and no play (well, one play, but you get my drift I’m sure) makes Susanne a very dull girl.. and hungry too! Luck­ily deli­cious, light meals can be put together in a jiffy if you’ve only got a few staples at hand: a little rocket, some cherry toma­toes and a few wafer thin slices of parmeg­giano reg­giano and you’re good to go! Well I am, anyway. Sadly, snack time and rant­ing time over, it’s now time to get back to work. Yey.

Last night as I was set­tling down with my books, ready for a night of hard core study­ing, a sudden surge of loneli­ness came over me. I felt des­per­ately sad and pathetic, newly single and home alone on a Sat­urday night! Yes­ter­day was also the one month anniversary of my break-​up, which only made things sadder and more pathetic, in my mind at least. So when C called me, on her way home from Göteborg, I thought I’d never been so happy to hear another person’s voice. A few hours later I found myself on her sofa, glass of wine in hand, gig­gling and dis­cuss­ing where to go out. We ended up at a party with C’s friend M’s friends who are all civil engin­eers and it was the weird­est, fun­nest and fun­ni­est group of people I have met in a long time. Firstly, they all looked the same! Actu­ally they all looked very dif­fer­ent, but some­how they still man­aged to look identical. Quite the conun­drum! Secondly, they were all dan­cing! All the time! Grown men (and a few women) dan­cing to Bob Sin­clair and DJ Ötzi, taking up all floor space and a couple were even spot­ted dan­cing on chairs. Strange, you say? Unbe­liev­able, you say? You don’t have to take my word for it: I took pictures!

The last couple of days I’ve been trying to get rid of some of the stuff that’s been accu­mu­lat­ing in my fridge and pantry — it was at the point where I felt very guilty about buying any food because I already had so much, plus there was really no room for new food any­ways. So I made two ‘throw everything in a pot’ meals which both turned out amaz­ing! Yes­ter­day it was a seafood-​noodle stir fry which i made with kimchi fla­voured ramen noodles and sea­food from my freezer. The noodles were an impulse pur­chase, I actu­ally had no idea what kimchi was but I had a vague feel­ing I’d heard about it some­where before, most likely on Elyse Sewell’s LJ. My desire for learn­ing ignited, I poked around a little on this won­der­ful thing that we call the Inter­net, and learned all about kimchi. Who knew fer­men­ted veget­ables could taste so good? I used a little of the kimchi broth to make the stir-​fry sauce, along with soy sauce, garlic, hot sauce and onions. Fried up the noodles with green beans, sugar snaps, some carrot and onion, and the sea­food. Mmmm!

Today I made a sort of bulgur ‘risotto’, with juli­enned carrot and sliced onion, and an asian type glaze which I made from onion, garlic, loads of ginger and soy sauce, with just a little corn flour to thicken. It was so yum! And healthy too, if you don’t count the tons of salt in the soy sauce. And I’ve always been a bit extreme when it comes to my salt habits, so noth­ing new there…

Last night I found I couldn’t sleep (might it pos­sibly have been because of my sleep­ing mara­thon the day and night before, I wonder?) and had this intense crav­ing, not for eating any­thing, but for cook­ing! Everything, any­thing, whatever, I just wanted to cook. I get this weird feel­ing some­times, and I’ve yet to real­ise how or why or where it comes from — all I know is what Lord Henry so fam­ously says in Pic­ture of Dorian Gray:

The only way to get rid of a tempta­tion is
to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with long­ing for
the things it has for­bid­den to itself, with desire for what its
mon­strous laws have made mon­strous and unlawful.

So.. I decided to try and make Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Perfect Scones’ from his book Gordon Ramsay’s Secrets. I failed. Read­ing ‘a good pinch of fine sea salt’ as just that, a good pinch, my first attempt at Gordon’s scones were nowhere near per­fect. I had to throw them out, and went back to bed feel­ing deeply disgruntled.

This morn­ing, how­ever, I awoke with renewed gusto. I made another batch and voila! Per­fect scones! I’m very pleased with myself. They were light, airy, fla­vour­ful and deli­cious. And even though I didn’t have any sul­tanas in the house and I only had store-​bought rasp­berry jam, not home made straw­berry as Gordon recom­men­ded for his scones, I must say I’ve just had a very enjoy­able break­fast. Scones, jam, Eng­lish tea and Harry Potter audiobook. Per­fect! I’m ready for a new day — of house clean­ing, study­ing and maybe even some fårikål?

Today’s inspir­a­tion comes from Cook­ing with Amy who’s par­ti­cip­at­ing in the Hunger Chal­lenge, in which you’re sup­posed to make up recipes for meals cost­ing no more than US $1 per serving, living within the budget of those unfor­tu­nate enough to have to rely on food banks. She’s doing an amaz­ing job, not one of her recipes so far has failed to make my mouth water! Today, she was happy to report that food chain Tyson Foods has joined the Hunger Chal­lenge and is going to donate tonnes and tonnes of high-​protein foods (such as chicken, meat­balls and lunch­meat!) to food banks all over the San Fran­sisco Bay Area.

And not only that — You and I can help! All you have to do is post a com­ment here, and Tyson will donate another 100 pounds (that’s about 45,5 kg) of food! Go on, no excuses… Just do it!

…was yes­ter­day! I’m gutted I missed it. I’d even been out and bought a kilo of mutton and a head of cab­bage and was only going to take a quick little nap before I star­ted cooking… And whaddya know, I woke up this morn­ing at 8, feel­ing nowhere near rested and com­pletely hor­ri­fied that not only had I missed out on National Fårikål Day, I’d also missed the first epis­ode of Hellstrøm Rydder Opp, the Nor­we­gian ver­sion of Gordon Ramsay’s Kit­chen Night­mares. I’d been look­ing for­ward to it for months now, sway­ing between excite­ment at the show and dis­gust at the old Nor­we­gian man trying to ‘be’ Gordon Ramsay. In the end, though, noth­ing was to keep me from watch­ing the show. Oh yea, except fall­ing asleep! Or should I say going into hiberna­tion. Or a coma. Not sure what to call it, but I’m very sur­prised that I actu­ally man­aged to sleep that long. Almost twenty hours straight — I didn’t even wake up once, so when I finally awoke this morn­ing I was fully dressed, on top of my bed­spread and with only a wool­len blanket pro­tect­ing me from the frosty morn­ing air. After get­ting up, some­what gingerly, and chat­ting to my mate R on msn for a little while, I dragged my sorry bee­hind into the shower and came out fif­teen minutes later feel­ing refreshed — and got star­ted on my fårikål!

Now, just because I missed out on the actual day it does in no way mean I’m will­ing to miss out on fårikål. I just love fårikål, it’s so deli­cious in all its sim­pli­city! Mutton, cab­bage, salt and whole pep­per­corns, who knew that would make such a scrump­tious com­bin­a­tion? I know wiki­pe­dia claims you’re sup­posed to add flour to the dish to thicken the sauce, but I’ve never had it with flour and frankly I can’t ima­gine it tast­ing any better with flour in it. Actu­ally I’m will­ing to take on anyone that claims fårikål is sup­posed to made with flour — I’ll fight till death!

Boiled pota­toes, though, are a must. And a cold beer to go along with it. Luck­ily some people left behind the odd can of beer when they were unce­re­mo­ni­ously kicked out of my party on Sat­urday night (after I passed out, I’m ashamed to admit) so I’ve got the beer thing sorted. For those who want to avoid alco­hol a non-​alcoholic beer would be good, or even just a glass of ice cold water!

I posted my own recipe for fårikål way back in June when there wasn’t a piece of mutton to be found any­where. So I have had to wait until now — but good things come to those who wait and this is def­in­itely a very good thing! I think I’ll make tra­di­tional Irish Stew next — as good as the modern ver­sion with beef and Guin­ness and loads of yummy veget­ables is I do love the tra­di­tional recipe very much also. And I’m def­in­itely hoping to be able to make fenalår — cured leg of lamb. This is a lengthy and smelly pro­cess though, so I’ll prob­ably have to do it at the parents’ house.. So we’ll se if I get around to it! Mmmm, and now I’m on the sub­ject of deli­cious lamb and mutton dishes my mouth is water­ing at the thought of mum’s amaz­ingly deli­cious lamb stew with green beans and tomato. Ohh, yum! I guess I’ll be eating a lot of both mutton and lamb this autumn. What a lovely thought! I just love autumn!

Also I did end up going to the network’s web­site look­ing for a rerun date for Hellstrøm Rydder Opp. I didn’t manage to locate it, but what I found instead was much, much better: Web TV! Yey! So I’ve now watched the first epis­ode and my feel­ings about the show are just about unchanged. On the pos­it­ive side I real­ised that as this show is shot in Norway and mainly in Oslo, I’ll be able to visit some of the places after the makeover! Which is some­thing I’ve dreamt of since Kit­chen Night­mares came out. As for the enter­tain­ment value of Hellstrøm Rydder Opp, though, the whole thing was a little bland and the dia­logue some­what stac­cato. Oh, how I missed Gordon’s pas­sion­ate excalmations!  But to give credit to the poor man (Hellstrøm) it can’t be easy trying to fit into Gordon Ramsay’s shoes. And he really is an amaz­ing chef. I’m just not sure if he’s really the right man for this kind of thing… I guess I’ll just have to keep watch­ing the show to find out ;)