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!

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!

My parents’ cat loves play­ing with other anim­als. Since the bunny arrived he’s been trying to get at him to see if he’s a poten­tial new play­mate, but as the bunny is almost always inside his predator-​safe cage, the cat has been increas­ingly frus­trated. Last night we let the bunny out on his leash to have a trumble in the garden. The cat was ecstatic, but the bunny couldn’t care less. The cat tried chas­ing him a few times but he didn’t bat an eyelid. The few times the bunny jumped over to have a sniff at the cat, how­ever, the cat ran away in fear. It was hil­ari­ous. Today the bunny has stayed in his cage, mostly inside his little house in fact. The cat found him­self a lovely spot to lie and wait for the bunny to appear:

Now for some­thing very dif­fer­ent: I have posted a bunch of my recipes. I hope the col­lec­tion will grow stead­ily but I must admit I find writ­ing them a little boring. I prefer making the food and then eating it, and writ­ing about how good it was! Writ­ing about cook­ing just makes me long for the kitchen… Yes­ter­day I made Irish stew for the whole family which was a huge suc­cess. As soon as I get around to it I’ll write out a recipe and maybe if I make it again I’ll take some pic­tures to accom­pany it.

On a some­what other note, I have noticed that some people out there don’t have a prob­lem with copy­ing other people’s things and passing them off as their own. I hope I never stoop to that level. Whilst I might make things that are very common and that many have made before me, at least I hope to keep my integ­rity safe in the know­ledge that I do not steal. And then there’s the fact that many of the ‘fakes’ aren’t as good as the ori­gin­als, and often a little cheap look­ing. Kind of like in fash­ion, I guess…

I have news! I have decided to start with recipes! At the moment I am trying to figure out a good way of post­ing them out­side the chro­no­logy of the blog itself - right now I’m think­ing I’ll use ‘pages’ but that will require some help from The Boy­friend as I’m cur­rently using pages just as photo albums. So I’ve star­ted writ­ing down how I make things… It felt really com­plic­ated at first but I sup­pose it will get easier as I do it more. Have also star­ted taking pic­tures of the cook­ing pro­cess, to accom­pany the recipes. I’m well excited.

As I’m writ­ing this, there’s an exhausted bunny asleep next to me. We took him out today for the first time after let­ting him get used to the har­ness for a few days. I sus­pec­ted he’d like being out­side but I also thought he’d be a bit scep­tical and maybe even a little scared at first; not so! He abso­lutely loved it out­side and he wasn’t afraid at all. He ran, jumped, inspec­ted the dif­fer­ent plants and the cigar­ette butts on the gravel (oh how I love my neigh­bours who smoke…) and basic­ally seemed just in his ele­ment! It was def­in­itely a great suc­cess and some­thing we will have to keep up. When I go to stay at my parents’ for the summer they’ve agreed to help me build a cage for him out of chicken wire so he can be out­side all day. It will be more restric­ted than run­ning around almost freely on a leash (with me trying to keep up), but I’m sure he’ll like it. And the com­pany of The Cat, of course! Here’s my ickle bunnykins enjoy­ing his first taste of Mother Nature:

Since Wed­nes­day, I’ve com­pleted two of my four exams. I’m utterly exhausted but it feels amaz­ing. We’ve been eating a lot of meat lately because it’s what’s been on sale and also The Boy­friend is much more of a meat eater than a fish eater. So when I met mum for dinner on Wed­nes­day night after my first exam, she gave me some money to buy some fresh fish. I haven’t really had a chance to until today because of my second exam which didn’t finish until half six last night, so I finally made the trip to Laksen Fisk og Vilt and bought two Hard­anger trout. It’s basic­ally alpine trout caught on the Hard­anger­vidda, and it tastes divine! I fil­leted it myself which was quite the adven­ture: I got to use the fil­let­ing knife from the set of chef’s knives dad gave me for christ­mas, and I got to figure out how to get all the bones out without mutil­at­ing the fil­lets! I had loads of fun and I’d even gotten pretty good at it by the third fillet. I pan fried the fil­lets in butter (for that lovely crisp skin!) and served with twice baked pota­toes filled with bacon, onion and chives. I’ll be post­ing the recipe as soon as I figure out how I want to do it.

Earlier in the week we had pork cut­lets (again). I wanted to use my home made bouil­lon and some of all the pork I’ve piled up in the freezer, and this is what I ended up with:

I’ll read­ily admit it: I’m a cat person. If my love life doesn’t work out I will be the old lady that shares her house with a hun­dred cats. And I might even pos­sibly end up refer­ring to them as my babies.

Right now, though, I live in a flat so I can’t have a cat. It’s so incred­ibly mean to keep a cat locked in a flat. A cat should have loads of room out­side to run around, climb trees and kill loads and loads of birds, rats and mice! At the same time, I’m long­ing for a kitten. I’ve had cats all my life, the last one was with us for 13 years and I still miss her even though she passed away four or five years ago. My par­ents have a new cat now, a boy, but he doesn’t acknow­ledge me as family: I’m just the vis­itor who if I’m lucky will get to pet him a little if I stay for sev­eral days.

Soooo… I want a bunnyrab­bit! I’ve been to the pet­shop and met a gor­geous little girl, she’s incred­ibly cute and looks just like a little dust bunny. When I was there she did this thing where she lifted up one front leg like a gryphon while she made a huge yawn - she looked like a roar­ing lion! (or gryphon…)

I’m just going over and over it all in my head: should I buy her or will it be a mis­take? One moment my heart over­rules my brain and I decide I will, the next my brain takes back con­trol and tells me of all the work, all the incon­veni­ence, and all my elec­trical cords which will be gnawed. Yet I still want her. I wish I had a photo of her to put up, she’s so incred­ibly beautiful.

Might just have to pop back down the pet­shop tomor­row and bring her home! Oh and her name? Ramsay. After Gordon, of course. It sounds equally cool in Eng­lish, South­ern Nor­we­gian, West­ern Nor­we­gian and East­ern Nor­we­gian. Yea, they are different.