The Susanne

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.

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: