The Susanne

Yeah, yeah, I know, every blog post in east­ern Norway today is bound to be all about the snow. I don’t care though, I want to write about it too! Having spent too little time and effort on my phon­et­ics assign­ment which was due today — in fact decid­ing to leave the third and last ques­tion till late last night as I thought it’d take a half hour, max — I had quite a shock when I finally did take a look and dis­covered that it was really pretty com­pre­hens­ive, and also that I had no idea what it was about! I was going to have to read pretty much the whole inton­a­tion textbook  to make any sense of it. And all this I dis­covered at around eleven last night. Yep. So I skimmed through most of the book which is thank­fully quite a little one, set my alarm to six and went to sleep — by far the most sens­ible thing I thought.

And then I woke up at six just as planned and looked out the window and saw only dark­ness except for a lit window here and there and then… a thin, red stripe of sun­rise just begin­ning to appear over the rooftops in the dis­tance. And a few minutes later, as the the world was becom­ing ever lighter, out of thin air appeared hun­dreds and thou­sands of tiny snow­flakes! Soon there was a light, white cov­er­ing on nearby roof tops, and soon after that a layer of snow had begun to build up on my window sill. How amaz­ing. I’ve never wit­nessed the first first snow before!

I got through my assign­ment, amaz­ingly made it to uni on time as I com­pletely forgot to allow extra time for the chaos which is Oslo every year (without fail) when the first snow comes, made it through my lesson, handed in the assignment… And finally had a chance to look around me. I bought a cup of strong coffee and sat down to read The Tem­pest, how­ever I ended up just star­ing out the window for half an hour, at the snow and at the people walk­ing past and two guys who had a little snow­ball fight on their way to the café entrance and a girl wear­ing a bag that would look much more appro­pri­ate at the beach than in the winter won­der­land that Blindern had become. After a while I gave up and went to meet Lis­beth at another café nearer where we live — some­how I am much more dis­cip­lined when in the com­pany of others. I sup­pose it must be because then they will know if I cheat! Leav­ing campus I came upon a quite poetic sight: roses still in mag­ni­fi­cent bloom, covered in snow. Beau­ti­ful, don’t you agree?

I made it to the café and remembered to snap a photo of Freddy the Flamingo whom I met briefly at a bar­be­cue in Fulham a couple of months ago. Charm­ing little lad, I think he has found a little girl­friend at last and has appar­ently decided to join her in Oslo for some romantic winter fun:

And now… Well I’m going to make myself some strong, black tea and settle down to Vol­pone. Last few days before the final dead­line which looms ever nearer, and as the party for Filo­lo­gen is tomor­row I shall not be able to get any work down tomor­row night. Or Friday morn­ing either, pos­sibly — depend­ing on how the party goes! Oh and have I men­tioned how excited I am to finally get my hands on that magazine? yes? Well I’m sure no one will mind just one last rant. I’m so damn excited I want to laugh and cry at once! Hon­estly! I believe the odds are quite great of seeing me jump­ing up and down look­ing ecstatic should anyone find their way to Uglebo tomor­row night from around seven.

Movie night with the sister –  what a lovely concept. And what a lovely night. A while back we placed an ad at finn.no which serves as a kind of ebay to us living in stone age Norway, asking if anyone owned (and would be will­ing to sell us) a copy of the movie Vill­hesten (The Wild Horse) from 1994. I’d write all about it but I’m simply too lazy so if you want you can read about it (in Nor­we­gian) on Nor­we­gian wiki­pe­dia here. Grow­ing up as a horse crazy little girl it was one of my favour­ite films and I even belonged to a book club called Pennyklub­ben which was all about horses, and they had sponsored the film and sent all their mem­bers the single with the theme song from the movie: Du Følger Vinden (You follow the wind). Yeah, you guessed cor­rectly: I played it non-​stop.

So a lovely girl replied to the ad and my sister bought the film and tonight we were finally able to sit down and watch the movie we’d so been long­ing to revisit. And oh what a won­der­ful film it is. It had me back in 1994 in an instant. I felt the old long­ing for my own horse, long­ing for an adven­ture like the girls in the film, long­ing to listen to the song again… and again and again! Alas — the single is long lost. I ask myself how I could have lost such a treas­ured object, but the truth is I got over my horse crazy stage at some point and prob­ably threw it out during one of my tan­trums which usu­ally occurred when I was forced to tidy my room, or maybe it was even lost long before that time. I’m ser­i­ously con­tem­plat­ing pla­cing another ad just for that little cd single. With just one or pos­sibly two tracks on it — but then I only need that one, that song that can still make me feel like a ten year old girl whose greatest ambi­tion is to own my own horse and go for long rides every day. Ah…

But my life is quite changed since then. My ambi­tions now are much higher and the pro­spect of them much scar­ier. I’ve still not com­pleted all my oblig­at­ory course work for the semester, my mind just refuses to co-​operate, every time I sit down to work my mind blanks or freezes or I get a head ache from the stress of it all. I wish I knew how to calm myself, col­lect my thoughts and just do it but I don’t — I con­tinue to doubt my own abil­ity to the point where the self doubt becomes a self-​fulfilling proph­ecy and the end result is… well I don’t know the end result yet but the situ­ation at the moment is far from great!

But I still treat myself. The other day I decided to buy myself a cook’s knife which I’ve been want­ing for a long time, a san­toku knife but I don’t think it’s an actual san­toku. The little leaf­let that came with it says it’s a san­toku but I’m sure that’s just a descript­ive term and it’s really a fake. It’s def­in­itely lovely though. So light, fits so well in my hand and does my every bid­ding with no trouble at all and I’m simply smit­ten with it.

I also allowed myself a little night out on Friday after spend­ing many hours read­ing and taking notes for my essay on Vol­pone (yes, still on that! Will it ever end I ask you! But then I know it will, for the final dead­line is on Sat­urday). I had made plans with Lis­beth to go out but then I texted her saying I had to stay home and study because I simply didn’t deserve to go out. — And then I changed my mind of course and allowed myself some fun. And oh, we had fun. We had moji­tos at qba, a bar at Grünerløkka where Hilde works, and the Aus­tralian boy who danced whilst making our drinks man­aged to get grass straws in our drinks. They still tasted fine though.

And we met a lovely dog who tried to eat our faces and my camera. His owner came out and I apo­lo­gised to her for get­ting him all excited but I don’t quite remem­ber her reac­tion. I sus­pect she was stone sober and found me annoy​ing.The dog loved us though! (and yeah, I’m a cat person not a dog person. And I still liked this dog)

Tomor­row is my last chance to finish my phon­et­ics paper then have to really get down to Vol­pone: I’m making myself hit the lib­rary so hope­fully that will give me that extra push. Also it will keep me away from the kit­chen which is always a big help, today I made a quick couscous soup which I read about and it just soun­ded so lovely. I used some minced beef because it was on spe­cial and some tomato paste and it was amaz­ing! Mmmm. Although I think I put a little too much couscous in there – I’ll use less next time. No photo – it simply didn’t look as good as I would have liked. It tasted deli­cious though and really, that’s what mat­ters isn’t it?

I’m des­per­ate for a study break. Today has been ded­ic­ated com­pletely to the writ­ing of my essay on Amer­ican immig­ra­tion his­tory and atti­tudes, and my head is about to explode with the massive amounts of immig­ra­tion acts I’ve looked up in the last ten or so hours. I’ve now reached the McCarthy era which has made me long to read The Cru­cible instead of all this other boring crap. I want to go out­side and sit on a park bench with The Cru­cible and a cup of coffee for a couple of hours and just enjoy my free­dom which I don’t have, and bask in the sun­shine which is not there because it’s 9.20 in the even­ing and we only have sun­light at this time during summer.  I want to run around and kick the leaves on the ground into the air and marvel at the way they catch the light, and feel the sun warm­ing my face and body, and maybe even get a little hot and sweaty because it’s such a gor­geous autumn day: but the last few days have been freez­ing and wet and stormy. I want to hold the fin­ished Filo­lo­gen in my hands and marvel at the fact that the layout was done by me and that it’s the best one so far and I want to smell it and read all the texts over and over and over, even though I’ve already read them of course whilst doing the layout. But I only sent it to the print­ers yes­ter­day and it’s not due to come out until the 30th by which time I’ll have to have fin­ished all my three essays and one phon­et­ics paper.

On Sunday morn­ing I was woken up at ten to twelve by The Ex call­ing me with the dev­ast­at­ing news that the local burger place wasn’t open yet, because appar­ently I had told him when I came home the night before, drunk as a… well, drunk person, to wake me up next morn­ing with a burger and coke. — (Dis­claimer: when I say ‘home’ I mean the stu­dent vil­lage where we both live, of course. We don’t live together any­more) — He came bring­ing coke and pop­corn how­ever and although I couldn’t actu­ally remem­ber telling him to get me a burger I for­gave him for not doing so and instead got up to make us a break­fast of fried eggs and beans. Crack­ing an egg into the pan I got the shock of a life­time when the egg had not one, but two yolks! I’d never seen any­thing like it before and at first I thought there must be some­thing wrong with this egg, I ran to get my camera and man­aged to get a few snap­shots before it died because I’d been taking so many photos the night pre­vi­ous. Crack­ing two more eggs into the pan I got even more sur­prised as they all had double yolks and I decided to look up this phe­nomenon online — which research first led me to believe that what I had just exper­i­enced was an impossib­il­ity: one person claimed that this was so rare that he had only seen two eggs like this in his 60 year long life. Then I stumbled onto a site called ‘infoplease’ where I was relieved to read that

This hap­pens when two yolks are dropped from the ovary at the same time. Because they are so close as they go through the ovi­duct, they are treated as one yolk and only one shell is made. Double-​yolk eggs are usu­ally pro­duced by young chick­ens whose laying cycle has not yet been estab­lished, but some chick­ens are genet­ic­ally more likely to lay them reg­u­larly. Sources we’ve found online differ con­sid­er­ably as to the odds, ran­ging from 0.1% to 5%.

The twin eggs tasted just fine and I guess they must have been more nutri­tious than normal eggs as they had two yolks, at least I lasted until quite late that day before reach­ing that point of star­va­tion at which I had to eat some­thing so I wouldn’t pass out.

I sup­pose I’d better get back to my essay now as the dead­line looms ever nearer and I am determ­ined to make a proper attempt at this one, my two previus essays being such fail­ures that I’ve pretty much noth­ing to go on coming up to the final dead­line after which my essays will be marked and the respect­ive lec­tur­ers will determ­ine whether I shall be allowed to sit my exams at the end of the semester. Oh, and by the way it seems like mum and I are going on a long week­end to Stock­holm for my birth­day, very excit­ing and a little scary as I have exams on the two days fol­low­ing that week­end and I’m not sure if there will be any time to study whilst there, well in fact I doubt there will be. Sup­pose I’ll just have to study hard before we leave!

I’m work­ing hard these days, on essays, layout, and my two jobs. I enjoy it but my head tends to fill up too much some times and it feels like it all won’t fit in there and then I have trouble con­cen­trat­ing on one task at the time because I’ve got everything else hanging over me like a thun­der­cloud. And then I let off some steam or finish a task and I feel better again. And that’s when I notice the gor­geous little details of autumn. The light on the tree I can see from my kit­chen window, and a beau­ti­ful little leaf with a pat­tern that looks like two Very Hungry Cater­pil­lars. As I walked to work from the train sta­tion this morn­ing there was mist on the river, and I wished I had my camera with me. But I didn’t. The image is in my mind but I can’t share it. So I guess it’s just mine. That’s nice too…

These deli­cious little snacks can be the per­fect way of sat­is­fy­ing that intense chocol­ate crav­ing without the intense guilt which usu­ally fol­lows. Made from ‘puffed rice’ as we call it in Norway (I have not been able to come up with a suit­able word for it in Eng­lish, although I believe you’d be able to make it your­self by put­ting rice in an air popper for pop­corn) and melted chocol­ate, mixed together and cooled in little tops on a cookie sheet or in cup­cake tins, it is a staple of children’s parties and a loved snack by kids coun­try wide. My mum never used to make them so I only had the luxury of tast­ing them when vis­it­ing friends’ houses on spe­cial occa­sions such as birthdays.

I’ve put together an adult ver­sion with dark instead of milk chocol­ate, mixed with a little vanilla sugar to sweeten it a bit.

Yields 15-20:

• 1,5 L puffed rice
• 250 g dark cook­ing chocol­ate, in small pieces
• 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
• 1 tbsp margarine
• 0,5 dl water

In a small sauce­pan, melt the mar­gar­ine and add the cook­ing chocol­ate. While the chocol­ate is melt­ing, add the water a little at a time to get a smooth, not too thick yet not too runny con­sist­ence. Add the vanilla sugar.

In a bowl, mix the rice with the melted chocol­ate until well covered. Place in cup­cake tins or spoon onto a lined baking sheet. Leave to cool com­pletely before serving.

Think­ing about Hellstrøm earlier today reminded me that I’ve been want­ing to try making risotto for a while now. Risotto has always been one of my ‘scary foods’, espe­cially since watch­ing Hell’s Kit­chen where it seemed as if not a single epis­ode went by without someone get­ting yelled at by Gordon for making inedible(according to him) risotto.

The net­work (TV3) pub­lish a recipe from each epis­ode of Hellstrøm Rydder Opp on their web­site, and the recipe for the first epis­ode was risotto. I decided to try it, but couldn’t figure out the meas­ure­ments (8 small cups? what’s that? espe­cially as we use the metric system here in Norway and a ‘cup’ might be any­thing from an espresso cup to a huge mug). So I fol­lowed the recipe on the back of my rice packet instead.

Also I’d been plan­ning to make this for dinner today — so I settled on a com­prom­ise: risotto with garlic and tuna! I added some carrot to get some colour in there as I didn’t have any fresh chilli, and I must say I’m quite pleased with the result. The risotto turned out creamy, the rice was cooked per­fectly al dente, and the fla­vours of the tuna, garlic, and parmesan com­ple­men­ted each other really well. Deli­cious! Will def­in­itely be making more risotto in the future now I’m no longer intim­id­ated by it! And because tuna is so inex­pens­ive I do believe I’ll be trying to eat more of that, too. I really do love a piece of warm toast with tuna and salt — but today’s risotto suc­cess has inspired me to get out of my com­fort zone and try dif­fer­ent things. What else would be good with tuna, I wonder?