It’s time for weekend cat blogging again, but this is actually my first time. Each weekend food Bloggers around the world share pictures of their cute cats. Just send your permalink in a comment to Clare at Eat Stuff and add a “Weekend Cat Blogging” tag to your post.

On the photo above you can see Tanuki, one of my two British Shorthair cats. He loves to sleep and eat, just like me :-)

One more hour to go… Then it’s time for a three week long summer vacation! Hurrah! Three weeks with relaxing, cooking, food blogging and just a great time. When I return to work in August I will still have 3 more vacation weeks to take out later on during the winter or when ever. (In Sweden there’s a 5 week statutory vacation for everyone each year and my company gives me an extra vacation week as I don’t get any overtime pay).

Honey with Elderflower and Champagne

(Fredrik just mentioned that flapjacks in the US and UK differ. The US flapjacks are pancakes and the british ones are cakes. This post is about cake flapjacks, just so you know if you wonder where the pancakes are…)

This month’s Sugar High Friday is hosted by Nic at Baking Sheet and the theme is honey. I like honey, especially in tea. But I seldom use honey when I’m baking. My first plan was to bake the Polish cake Miodownik which is a honey cake with layers of yummy cream. But when I realized that I had to go to the store for some of the ingredients I decided for a recipe from New Vegetarian by Celia Brooks Brown, Honey flapjacks. I adjusted the recipe it a bit as I didn’t have any plain porridge oats, only porridge oats with roasted wheat bran. I neither had ordinary honey so I took my honey with Elderflowers and Champagne that I bought at a market some time ago. As expected the honey has a delicate and wonderful taste of Elderflowers and Champagne, and maybe it was a waste using it in the flapjacks :-) But they are really good and they are just soooo simple to bake! The cheewy and moist flapjacks are rather sweet, but excellent with a cup of tea or a glass of cold milk. For recipe, see below after the photos.

Elderflower and Champagne Honey Flapjacks

200g (7¼ oz) unsalted butter
200g (7¼ oz) demerara sugar
200g (7¼ oz) Elderflower and Champagne Honey
400g (14¼ oz) porridge oats with roasted wheat bran
50g (1¾) oz nuts

20cm x 30cm cake tin, greased

Put the butter, sugar and honey in a saucepan and heat, stirring occasionally, until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Add the oats and nuts and mix well.2. Transfer the oat mixture to the prepared cake tin and spread to about 2cm thick. Smooth the surface with the back of a spoon. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C/350F/Gas 4 for 15-20 minutes, until lightly golden around the edges, but still slightly soft in the middle. Let cool in the tin, then turn out and cut into squares.

Chłodnik

Chłodnik is a typical Polish soup eaten in summer. I can’t remember if we’ve ever had it at home when I grew up, but I definately ate it when visiting relatives in Poland. The soup is served cold on hot summer days and today was a perfect day to make this soup. This recipe is my own, inspired by several other ones that I’ve seen on the internet. The result is a delicous and refreshing pink soup. But be careful and don’t spill, beetroot stains are not fun…

Chłodnik

300 gr peeled beetroots
500 ml water
1 vegetable stock cube
5 radishes
2 red spring onions
2 tbsp chives
1 tbsp parsley
juice from 0.5 lemon
350 ml Kefir (or natural yoghurt)
50 ml sourcream
salt
pepper

Grate the beetroots and cook them in 5 deciliters of water, a stock cube and pepper. Cook until the beets are soft. Put aside the beets and the water, let cool, then transfer to the fridge to cool completely.
Chop the radishes, chives, onions and parsley. When the beetroots together with the beetroot water are cold, add the vegetables, lemon juice, sourcream and kefir. Salt and pepper the soup. Put it in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Serve the cold soup with boiled eggs.

The main ingredients for Chłodnik.

Let the beetroots cool before mixing all ingredients together.

Kungsparken, a central park in Gothenburg.

The latest week has been really hot here in Sweden. I only have two more weeks to my vacation, but I still decided to take a day off yesterday. My thoughts are with all people in London. Luckily Fredrik has been in Gothenburg all week, even if he now has moved home he works at the british EA office every second or third week and works from home rest of the time.
As I said, all week has been hot and sunny so I decided to interrupt Fredrik’s work for a picnic in one of Gothenburg’s central parks. After reading Anne’s and Johanna’s blogs about the Euro-food bloggers picnic I really wanted to try Johanna’s pastami bagels and the Jägerwecken. As most people know, I’m usually a vegeterian. Some years ago I also ate chicken, until I got ill. The last months I’ve had a craving for chicken again, so for Fredrik I made a bagel with Pastrami and for myself I used chili flavoured chicken breast (I always call it chicken ham :-) from Swedish company Kronfågel that claims that their chicken are tested for Campylobacterias. In the Jägerwecken I used Swedish Prästost and also smoked cheese, and substituted the ham with the above chicken. The result was delicious! I decreased the amount of gherkins in both recipes as I’m not so fond of them. The bagel mayonnaise was perfect and we liked it a lot, we will definately do it more times! To the picnic I also made a Zucchini Frittata with Sardelles, found in the Swedish magazine “Allt om mat”. For recipe, see below. The picnic was really perfect and we had a great time. The food was delicious!

Bagels, Jägerwecken and Zucchini Frittata with Sardelles.

Jägerwecken.

Zucchini Frittata with Sardelles

4 eggs
4 Sardelle fillets
1 onion
2 deciliters grated Zucchini
black pepper
1 tbsp fresh Thyme
1 tbsp butter

Beat the eggs, chop the sardelles and the onion. Mix the onion, sardelles and zucchini with the eggs. Season with pepper and thyme. Fry the omelette in a buttered pan until it’s starting to stiffen. Turn it with the help of a lid and fry the other side. Slice the frittata and serve it in pieces.

Ingredients for the Zucchini Frittata.

Zucchini Frittata with Sardelles.

What a wonderful day it was.

Pasta with fresh tomatos, olives, chili pepper, onion and feta cheese.

Cottage cheese with sour cream, radish, and spring onion.

Tzatziki.

Sorry about the photo quality, the photos were taken with my cell phone.