The Susanne

Work so far this week has been such a dis­ap­point­ment! Yes­ter­day was pos­sibly the longest day of my life, with today not far behind. Yes­ter­day I simply put it down to the fact that it was Monday and so people were obvi­ously going to be a little tired and more quiet than usual. But then today came, the hours seeming to pass backwards, and I had to reconsider. Is it that the people I worked with last week haven’t been here? I’m not sure but I guess I’ll find out tomor­row when I’m work­ing with Frank again.

It could be that I haven’t slept very well. This morn­ing I kept waking up in a panic every ten minutes from around four am. Yeah, insane. I have no idea how or why it happened. All I know is, by six I was so fed up with it I just got up and went in the shower — and I still man­aged to not get upstairs until a quarter to eight!? Strange.

Today has been spent mostly on the inter­net, trying to dis­cover new food blogs worthy of my atten­tion (no I’m not ser­i­ous. What I mean is of course food blogs that touch on the same things I like. I’m just in a pissy mood today)  as my google reader was empty this morn­ing after a very work-​empty and internet-​filled yesterday.

I’ve also been able to cook again (oh, the joy!) since mum left and I swear, noth­ing calms me quite like plan­ning and coko­ing meals. Cook­ing meals that others have planned for me stresses me out as I have to try and get things the way they want them (it’s espe­cially bad when they say ‘I don’t mind how you do it’ because I know they really do mind when it comes down to it and without any hint as to how they want it it’s just plain scary!) But when I get to do my own thing, oh man, I’m in heaven. Last night I made some chicken thighs for dad and myself and they turned out beau­ti­fully, the skin incred­ibly crispy and the meat so juicy and deli­cious I’ve ser­i­ously never tasted any­thing like it. I braised them and they got to hang out with some assor­ted veg in the oven (swede, car­rots, pota­toes, onion and green cap­sicum). I made a sauce from the cook­ing juices which just added that extra little some­thing to the already scrump­tious plate­ful. No picture - there was no time to waste on photos when I smelled that chicken.

I did, how­ever, get a photo of my first meal after mum left. Spaghetti with cured ham, veget­ables and a tiny bit of Jarls­berg. I even posted the recipe, it’s under pasta. Here’s the plate of overflowing, light goodness:

Ok, I sup­pose I should get back to work. I mean, read­ing food blogs. Who knew even that could get boring?

I came up with this last night when I was crav­ing pasta but also saw there were loads of veget­ables in the fridge that had to be eaten. I even threw in a little cheese even though it makes me ill, just because cheesy pasta is so yum. This made one huge por­tion that I couldn’t finish, so I sup­pose it will feed two girls or one man.

• 1 por­tion spaghetti
• 1/2 cap­sicum (green bell pepper)
• 1/2 onion
• 6 cherry tomatoes
• 8 small broc­coli florets
• 1 dl grated Jarlsberg
• 10 slices cured ham

Slice the cap­sicum and the onion thinly (about 1-2 mm thick). Cut the toma­toes in half. Cut the ham slices into 1 cm strips.

Boil the spa­ghetti in 2 L water with a little salt and veget­able oil.

In a skil­let, sauté the veget­ables (except the toma­toes) for about five minutes. Add the toma­toes and sauté for another minute. You don’t want them to turn to mush.

When the spa­ghetti is done, drain and put it back in the pot. Add the veget­ables, the ham and the cheese and toss. Serve imme­di­ately on deep plates.

Yum!