I often think about how lucky I am to live here, in this house and neighbourhood, with my husband. We live in the middle of three bays all within a 5 minute walk. One of them has a lovely beach, with people bathing in summer and ice skating in winter. We have a really cold winter this year with an enormous amount of snow. Some people would just stay at home but we’ve been out both days this weekend. Today we prepared hot cocoa in a thermos bottle that we packed together with something warm to sit on before heading to our beach. We stopped by our local bakery to buy two semla and then we trudged through the snow to a wooden dock where we drank our piping hot cocoa and ate the delicious semlas while enjoying the sun and snow. We returned home with frost nipped cheeks but very happy.

Hot cocoa and semla.

Happy in the snow!

Enjoying the view.

The black dots are people and children ice skating on a ploughed track.

From living here….

Paris, December 31st 2007

Even though it’s already January 6th I would like to wish you all a happy and wonderful new year, I wish you the best for 2008. Thanks for all emails and comments, they always make me very happy.

As it’s a new year, it’s time to go through last year’s food related resolutions and make up new ones. So how did I manage?

1. I will learn and dare to do Polish pierogi.
Done, unfortunately I didn’t blog about it even though I planned to for a long time. But I have photo proof over at Anne’s as I made it for last year’s Twelwth night dinner at her place. And of course I will start to make it more often and actually blog about it.

2. Hmm, actually there are a lot of Polish dishes and recipes for me to learn like pączki, barszcz, pyzy….
I did pączki, barszcz, racuchy, kalafior z bułką tartą (maybe not so Polish but still) and twarożek z szczypiorkem i rzodkiewką. I will continue with Polish cooking this year as well, for example I’m very keen on making Makowiec (Poppy Seed roll).

3. I will get better at using all left over ingredients instead of forgetting about them and finally having to throw them when they get too old.
Much better now!

4. I will get better at blogging about all those food related travels from Japan, Italy and other destinations. And of course I will blog about our wedding from a food point of view.
Oops, still not done….But I will, someday :-)

6. I will use my old ice cream maker more often. I can’t understand why I don’t use it as I really love ice cream.
I made a LOT of ice cream, even though I only blogged about it once. As a matter of fact I made so much ice cream that it’s now justified to buy a compressor ice cream maker….

7. I will make sure that we always have a nice red wine at home for unplanned and unexpected events and guests.
Much better now!

8. I will take care of my starter, named Hampus, and make sure that he’ll live a long life with many offsprings.
It died…. I didn’t take care of it…. But I did bake quite a lot of sourdough bread.

9. I will plan weekly dinner menus.
Haha, this worked for 2 weeks….

10. I will cook Fredrik a delicious Boeuf Bourgogne (He’ll get so exited when he reads this :-)
OK, a new year and plenty of new opportunities!

New resolutions for 2008:

1. I’m addicted to Macarons since our visit in Paris, so I’ll be baking and experimenting a lot!

2. I will make more home made pasta.

3. I need to find decent bacon.

4. I need to blog more often, there are so many recipes and photos that I never post.

5. I will make my own sausages!

And the last thing isn’t really a resolution, but a way to become more daring and to have more interaction with you. My plan is to every second month or so, let you readers pick a baking recipe (either sweet or savoury) that I will make and then post. More about this in a week or two!

Take care everyone!

00:05 AM 1st January 2007. In the background you can see Stockholm City Hall.

After almost a week with a broken internet connection it finally started to work yesterday, just at the right time as we were both suffering from a serious internet abstinence. I thank the poor technician who had to work on New Years Eve :-)

2006 was a year filled with many wonderful happenings; I started at new company (or actually got back to one of my former ones), Fredrik stopped commuting and we bought a flat in Stockholm where we moved from Gothenburg, I turned 30 (!!) and Fredrik surprised me with a close encounter with dolphins and a proposal, we planned our wedding, got married and for our honeymoon we went to our dream destination Japan. A fantastic year which will be hard to surpass!

A new year is a time to reflect on changes we want or need to make and as I’m happy with my life I’ll only make food related resolutions, just like a lot of food bloggers did last year. So for 2007 I resolve:

1. I will learn and dare to do Polish pierogi.

2. Hmm, actually there are a lot of Polish dishes and recipes for me to learn like paczki, barszcz, pyzy….

3. I will get better at using all left over ingredients instead of forgetting about them and finally having to throw them when they get too old.

4. I will get better at blogging about all those food related travels from Japan, Italy and other destinations. And of course I will blog about our wedding from a food point of view.

6. I will use my old ice cream maker more often. I can’t understand why I don’t use it as I really love ice cream.

7. I will make sure that we always have a nice red wine at home for unplanned and unexpected events and guests.

8. I will take care of my starter, named Hampus, and make sure that he’ll live a long life with many offsprings.

9. I will plan weekly dinner menus.

10. I will cook Fredrik a delicious Biff Bourgogne (He’ll get so exited when he reads this :-)

Happy New Year to all of you! I want to thank my dear readers for all emails and comments which I really appreciate! Take care!personal instant 10000 loankahi mp3 bolu aayushyawarmp3 tune 2playa2aazmale aazmale mp33685 canvas mp3 spillmp3 honeymoon aba dabaababa mp3 triomp3 voces 38400 Map

The evening before yesterday we came back to Sweden after our incredible honeymoon in Japan. I can’t describe in words how amazing the trip was; we have so many experiences and memories of our wonderful honeymoon including an average of 200 photos per day. Japan is a beautiful and amazing country, even though it’s almost suicide to go there in August when it’s incredibly hot :-) My arthritis got worse and my knees almost killed me, but we kept a slow pace and managed to see quite a lot. We have eaten the most fantastic meals, most of them delicous but some of them inedible as they were just too much for us Swedes :-) I will post a lot about Japan in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for Japanese food and restaurants.

And our wedding? The wedding, on August 12th in Gothenburg, was just perfect and beautiful even if I’m quite partial :-) We were both so happy and we smiled like maniacs all day. It was the final weekend of the European Championships in track and field, so we were quite stressed as the women’s marathon started at the same time as our wedding and they roped off all central Gothenburg from traffic. My dear mother-in-law did a fantastic job during the weeks before the wedding and managed to get us all necessary permits and also managed to arrange a police escort for us and our guests so we wouldn’t get stuck in any traffic jam. We had an unique and great wedding and I will write a separate post about it when I get all of the photos.