The Susanne

..from my French balcony

Isn’t it lovely? Just washed the cur­tains and all mould­ings in my flat. Feels fant­astic! And then a couple of Christ­mas Anchovies on a rye crisp bread for lunch… Simply heavenly.

One of the joys of being not quite an adult yet is being able to go home to the parents’ house to use the wash­ing machine. Six loads of wash­ing and much mummy-​pampering later I return to my own ‘home’ feel­ing ten years younger. Or maybe 24 years and a few months, as when this pic­ture was taken…

The offi­cial cakes of St. Lucy’s Day, these are expens­ive but so deli­cious they are def­in­itely worth it! This recipe is from the Nor­weigan food guru of olden times, Ingrid Espelid Hovig and yields about 30 Lussekatter.

175 g mar­gar­ine or butter
5  dL milk
50 g yeast
1/2 tsp salt
2 dL sugar
1 g saf­fron, finely ground
1 egg (plus 1 more for egg wash)
1 1/2 dL rais­ins (plus more for dec­or­at­ing)
1 1/2 L plain flour

Melt the margarine/butter, add the milk and heat to 37 C (40 C if using dried yeast). Mix the yeast with a little milk in a large mixing bowl, then add the rest of the milk, salt, sugar, saf­fron, egg and raisins.

Then add the flour until the dough is nice to work with and lets go of the mixing bowl.

Sprinkle with flour, cover with a cloth and set to raise for 30 minutes.

Knead the dough for a few minutes, until nice and springy.

Shape into ‘Lussekatter’ (inver­ted ‘S’ shapes) and place on lined cookie sheets to raise again, until doubled in size, about 30 minutes. Brush with egg wash.

Bake the Lussekat­ter in the middle of the oven at 225 C for 5 to 10 minutes. Let cool or eat imme­di­ately. Mmmmm!

Today is St. Lucy’s Day (for some very strange reason word­press is refus­ing to let me link to the Eng­lish art­icle, but you can just scroll down and select Eng­lish from the list on the left. Bah Humbug!), beloved by all Nor­we­gian chil­dren. A lucky girl is selec­ted to dress up as Lucia and head a pro­ces­sion of girls all wear­ing white cloaks and car­ry­ing candles. Lucia wears a crown of candles and every girl wants to be picked to be her. In my kinder­garten they often picked two or three girls each year so that every­one would get to be her once. I remem­ber my day as Lucia. Oh I was so proud and so happy!

Well I didn’t get to walk in a pro­ces­sion today, in fact I haven’t in about fif­teen years. The only thing I got to do was take a bus and a tube over to Uglebo to clean up after last night’s christ­mas party which I was too ill to attend. Oh Joy. You can ima­gine the self-​pity. So, to make myself feel better I decided to make Lussekat­ter. Saf­fron is pretty expens­ive you guys – just one gram cost me 60kr (£6,40 or $10,40) but it was so worth it! incred­ibly fluffy and deli­cious and a stun­ning yellow colour, these lovely little buns are sure to scare away Luci­fer! Easy! (Plus, they really did make me feel so much better)

Oh and when I’d taken the pic­ture, I looked up and noticed the kit­chen in the build­ing across from mine was full of people star­ing at me and posing, using those asian peace sign-​poses! Haha! I don’t know if it was more embar­rass­ing for me or them. As they actu­ally believed I was taking their pic­ture. But on the other hand I must seem so sad and lonely to them.

In case anyone is inter­ested I’m going to post the recipe for Lussekat­ter soonish.

Well my darlings, I am a ter­rible stu­dent. I simply can’t make myself read the hor­ribly dry art­icle by Bour­dieu that I must read in order to make sense of it all. It all being the basis of my thesis. Silly? Yes. Still can’t help it, I’m afraid. Also have you noticed that after months of silence I’m sud­denly back? And the con­nec­tion between my exam and my blog­ging? Well, I have. You see, I don’t have a sock drawer. In fact, I’ve not a single drawer in my bed­room. I’ve shelves – I’ve a sock shelf for instance – and I’ve pretty boxes for stor­ing things. But no draw­ers. I would love a chest of draw­ers. I saw one recently at the local char­ity shop and it was all I could do to walk away without buying it. It was cheap, and pretty, and quite small. But I don’t have room for a single piece of extra fur­niture! So I had to walk away, no matter how sad it made me.

Well – better get back to attempt­ing to read. Since I have no sock drawer to organise.