The Susanne

…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 ;)

I find myself sit­ting in my comfy arm chair, knit­ting, sip­ping on a cup of tea and listen­ing to Harry Potter read by Stephen Fry. Such per­fec­tion. Today has been the most gor­geous day in a very long time. Clear blue skies as far as the eye can see (and that’s pretty far from my room…) lovely and warm, and I’ve spent it in pre­par­a­tion for tomorrow’s Knit & Pimm’s night. I’m quite excited about it — C, J and I star­ted the tra­di­tion about two years ago but we never really man­aged to have both Pimm’s and get around to knit­ting in one night. Usu­ally we ended up eating loads of mini pizzas and tiny Greek meat­balls and drink­ing copi­ous amounts of wine. This time though, we’re doing it right: we’re actu­ally going to knit, and we’re actu­ally drink­ing Pimm’s! Finally. Also a few more girls have joined our ranks since our little club’s humble begin­nings and I believe we’re going to be eight people gath­er­ing in my kit­chen tomor­row night. Although maybe only seven as my sister cur­rently hates me (appar­ently) and seems to have cut me out of her life. Hope­fully she’ll change her mind soon.

I was going to make the usual mint-and-garlic lamb meat­balls with an assort­ment of other little snack-​style foods. But then I got to think­ing about Pimm’s. It’s really a very Eng­lish drink. And then I thought, since we’re finally doing this right I’d like to go all out. So I’m taking the theme of the night even fur­ther and serving tea sand­wiches! And tea! Yep, that’s true — I even bought some milk for the tea (should anyone choose to brave it). I’ll be post­ing some photos from the event as soon as it’s over, along with lots and lots of bab­bling about my sand­wiches and the Pimm’s. I’m so excited about the Pimm’s — I first tasted it at The Globe when I was in London and I fell in love with it. Brought back a bottle from the duty free which C, J and I pol­ished off the night I arrived home. And now it’s finally time for some more. Yey!

I just had dinner — spa­ghetti with some thin ’strands’ of cour­gette and home made pesto. Instead of just going with the tra­di­tional basil pesto I added some chopped sun-​dried tomato and it was deli­cious! The cour­gette had been hiding in the bottom of my veget­able drawer for so long that I don’t even remem­ber buying it. It was still fine though, so I decided that instead of leav­ing it there to die I’d eat it! Cut­ting it into spaghetti-​sized strands took a little prac­tice as cour­gettes are some­what brittle, but I didn’t break many strands and it all turned out very lovely.

I awoke this morn­ing feel­ing fam­ished. And a little ill. After care­fully weigh­ing my options I decided to stay at home and write off today as an invest­ment in better health the rest of the week. After a few hours of relax­a­tion and Gilmore Girls I decided it was time to head to the super­mar­ket for some­thing to stave off the unbear­able hunger. I wanted to get fresh eggs, some bacon and maybe some veget­ables, although my fridge was already packed with the stuff. What I ended up buying was a kilo of mus­sels! Yum! Just from seeing the little nets of fresh, lovely mus­sels my stom­ach did a little flip and my mouth watered. I ran home and made Cozze alla Mar­in­ara. By the time it was done my hands were shak­ing so badly I couldn’t lift the spoon to my mouth without spill­ing. But some­how I man­aged to get a whole, deli­cious bowl down, the shak­ing stopped and I feel so good! There really is noth­ing like some fresh sea­food to turn a bad day around.

I had to make some slight changes to the recipe today as the market didn’t have any fresh pars­ley (what the?!) so I used a little dried pars­ley and then added some fresh cil­antro. I prob­ably should have left the cil­antro out, but the fresh chili I added with the tomato really gave the dish some lovely heat. In fact, I think I just might have room for one more bowl ;)

After a long day at uni filled with frus­tra­tions and with no oppor­tun­ity for eating (from 10 am till 4 pm) I got home crav­ing some­thing filling and autumny. A quick stop at the super­mar­ket gave me the answer: Shepherd’s Pie! Mmmm! I used Gordon Ramsay’s recipe with a few alter­a­tions: I used twice the amount of both onion and carrot, as well as loads of green beans, as I wanted more veget­ables. I also didn’t grate the onion and carrot, but rather chopped them quite finely so that I had small pieces which still had some ‘bite’ to them. Lastly I changed the butter for non-​dairy mar­gar­ine. It turned out great! This is one meal I won’t mind eating night after night (as there’s so much it’ll prob­ably take me all week to finish)– no prob­lem at all with some­thing as good as this!

My oral exam for the phon­et­ics course went really well. It was basic­ally just a pro­nun­ci­ation test and I do have pretty good pro­nun­ci­ation. My lec­turer opened by saying it was really a little unfair to those of us who had to do the test this early in the semester as we haven’t covered the things we’re being tested in, but that she didn’t think I’d have any trouble as I’d prob­ably just get it right instinct­ively. Which I took as a com­pli­ment! And I did get it all right. She said she noticed a hint of my Aus­tralian accent as I pro­nounced the name ‘Carl’, and my Scot­tish accent as I said ‘Scotland’. I was intrigued by the fact that she was able to point it out so accur­ately and explain to me how and why she noticed it. I really like her, she and Juan (my lec­turer in Shakespeare) are my def­in­ite favour­ites this semester. I really love having lec­tur­ers that inspire me to do well. I notice it more and more, but espe­cially this semester as it’s the last semester of my BA — that extra little incent­ive to do well really does make a dif­fer­ence in the amount of effort I put down! Now let’s just hope my inspir­a­tion stays up until the end of the semester and through­out the exam period, and I’ll be look­ing at some pretty spec­tac­u­lar exam res­ults. Yey! (Yea please bear with me and let me toot my own horn a little. I’ve no one else doing it for me at the moment ;) )

As I made may­on­naise last night I had a couple of egg whites left over. Of course, this meant egg white omelette for break­fast! Quick, easy, yummy and good for you, what’s not to love about egg white omelettes? What I did was I sautéed some chopped green beans, added a little chopped leek and then the egg whites which I’d whipped up a little with some salt and pepper. I cooked it for a few minutes on each side then grated some parmesan over the top — good­ness me, it was deli­cious! And I don’t feel heavy-​full as eggs usu­ally make me feel. Lovely :) I feel ready for any­thing this day can bring! (Such as a four hour sem­inar on The Winter’s Tale, a quick pro­nun­ci­ation test for my phon­et­ics course and the biweekly edit­or­ial meet­ing of Filo­lo­gen. Life is good!)