Spring, Moss, and Half-Rye Sourdough Bread

Considering my recent silence, you have undoubtedly wondered if I have been eaten by crocodiles by now.  Or maybe polar bears.  It’s Sweden, and the polar bears must be hungry.  Or some other grisly fate.  The truth is, however, very prosaic – I have simply been busy.

It happens to all of us, and I am entirely unapologetic for having a life outside the blog, much as I love it.

And besides, to quote a recently-seen on the internet and absolutely brilliant photo:

“IT’S SPRING.  WE ARE SO EXCITED, WE WET OUR PLANTS!”

As you can see, the plants are happily blooming – at least some of them, and others look like they are preparing to, and if you are like me and like houseplants, then it’s exciting.  What can I say, I am easily excited.  I think that’s a good thing.  Surely beats sitting there looking bored and feeling blasé about the world.

So um, yes.  I have been busy, it’s spring, which means my plants needed more attention, my studies are kicking back in, and I have not had so much time to cook anything impressive, nor, mostly, to photograph it.

I did bake a half-rye bread on the basis of my two-fifths rye no-knead recipe, and it turned out gorgeous.  I have, again, let it proof entirely too long due to the same reason (I went for a walk and returned later than planned), but it was delicious and lovely nonetheless.  One of those days I will actually bake it in time and see if it can be made taller, but between the high rye content and the high hydration of no-knead method, I am not sure.  On the up side, the narrow slices make fantastically elegant open-faced sandwiches with slices of cheese, salami, dried ham or cured fish.  Anyway, no recipe here – merely a note that the two-fifths rye recipe works exceptionally well with a half and half split between the types of flour.  And, I will try a closer to 65 or 70% split in favor of rye next.

And then there is my newly-found fascination with moss.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of conflicting and downright bad information about how to grow it on the internet.  And doubly unfortunately, I managed to spray the two original moss-homes I made with the wrong water spray bottle.  What’s so wrong about the wrong spray bottle?  Well, it used to contain agricultural soap-and-oil mix for treating bugs on one of my orchids last summer.  As a result, I think one or two applications of that instead of water are killing the moss slowly, which made me very sad.  It is still alive and struggling to stay so (and I am helping), but I am not sure it will win the battle, and it is entirely my fault.

So, I did a lot more reading, and gathered more moss.

And then I followed several other new instructions which changed or negated the things I originally found.  For example, I did not use any potting soil on this round.  Instead, I made a base out of aquarium-filter activated carbon, and piled sterilized gravel bits, re-sterilized bark chips (from my orchid potting bark bag), and pieces of terracotta (broken flowerpot that did not survive the winter freeze) on top of that.  Added aged tap water with some activated carbon swirled in it via my new, clean spray bottle, and arranged the moss on top, above the water level.

Note: to sterilize rocks and bark chips, soak in boiling water, let stand, pour water off and repeat.  This won’t sterilize them for purposes of neural surgery, but it should kill most mold spores and random microfauna present on and in them.  If you want to be more sure about it, boil a pot of water and toss them in there for a while.  Do not salt.  ;)

The second thing I found important is having a lid for your moss-growing dish.  A more reputable moss-growing website owner mentioned in his blog that he covers his moss dishes overnight and leaves them to air out during the day – so, upside-down flat candle plates were found to cover the little terraria, to maintain good humidity with periods of drying-out and fresh air.  Since, unless your moss is swamp moss (mine isn’t, it came off rocks and tree stumps), it doesn’t want to sit in a swamp.  (Deep wisdom right there, for various houseplants other than moss as well!)

And a third thing was washing the moss when I had initially brought it home, removing all debris and clinging dirt under running water, and then quarantining it in sandwich boxes with partially-shut lids for several days before using it in the arrangement – to make sure no pests or molds surface in the meantime.

The new terraria are now a few days old, and are so far doing well.  I’ll just avoid spraying them with insecticidal solution by accident and see what happens.

So, there it is.  Coming soon(tm) – posts about vanilla, and about the two entirely new to me white whole wheat flours (That is not a typo – they are whole wheat flours made from white, not red wheat!) that I have just received in the mail and all excited about – but obviously, first I need to bake something from them and see how that works out!

Moss Dish Garden Experiment – Day 3

UPDATE:  Please see this post for more and more correct information regarding moss dishes!

For those of you curious about how the moss is doing – well, so far, it appears to be doing fine.  In fact, it does not appear all that different from how it looked about 4 hours after watering – see for yourself!

Day 1 on the left, Day 3 (today) on the right. (Click to enlarge)

The light is a bit different (today’s photos are taken a bit earlier in the afternoon but on a cloudy day), but the pot has not changed a whole lot.  It is not at all surprising as mosses are incredibly slow growers and I don’t expect sprouting like you’d see on higher plants.  I think I may keep taking a benchmark photo every few days – it would make seeing progress a lot easier.

Throughout yesterday and today, I have misted the containers a few times, and I have added water into the reservoirs as the moss was slurping it all up at a surprising rate – in the glass container, it nearly emptied the reservoir!  I heard that some mosses can hold up to 4x their weight in water but I did not actually see it before!  From what I can tell, it is happy.  It’s still too early to tell whether it’s going to survive, so I am serious about giving this a couple of weeks before pronouncing it any sort of success.

There is also something I’ve noticed about it after a closer observation, and perhaps a day or so indoors and moistened:

The moss is not just a single carpet of Hypnum.  It appears to have in it a few leaves of a larger, curlier species which is a little lighter in color (not pictured in this clip as they did not come out in focus at high magnification), and also tiny star-shaped deep green growths with reddish stems.  I had noticed the cup lichen (Cladonia) earlier, but it bears mention all the same for sheer cuteness – the largest cup is about 1.5mm across.  I really hope it survives as well!

I have a very mild concern that the water we have here, however pure it is, may be a little too harsh for the moss that is a non-vascular plant, so I have put 2 small buckets to gather rain outside should it fall, and will also age some tap water and check supermarket bottled waters for pH and mineral content listing and maybe buy a bottle of that till the spring rains come.

Also, I am really getting rather attached to the cute tiny green things!  T even teased me this morning about staring at the moss meditatively while we were having coffee, to which I replied that he should not disturb my “moss appreciation time”.

Whatever you say for it, it’s certainly incredibly relaxing, and soothing to look at – a tiny piece of forest of your own within arm’s reach.

Moss Dish Garden Experiment – Day 1

UPDATE:  Please see this post for more and more correct information regarding moss dishes!

Today’s post is not at all about food, but about spring, and green growing things.  I love greenery, I’ve mentioned that before, but when the days turn sunny and the chill in the air is no longer a biting cold but a refreshing breeze, my fascination with the green stuff goes into overdrive.

I literally cannot have enough green things around the apartment, and preferably new and interesting ones at that.  Yes, I did say apartment – had I had a house, and a garden, there’d be a lot more green things around.  As it is, I have to fit my desire to see things grow into a city apartment.  Which means, windowsills and tabletops and maybe balcony… actually definitely balcony, as my lavender bushes not only survived the winter outside unprotected except by what snow fell on them, but are alive and sprouting happily.  I’ve trimmed them down and fertilized them and can now look forward to an abundance of purple and white flowers and a heavenly fragrance… but I digress.

Yesterday, a friend of mine informed me that if I do not yet have a moss dish garden, I need one.  Need.  And she showed me some photos, and I realized that yes, she is right and I do indeed need one, right now.  Right then it was too late in the day to go gravel-gathering, or moss-hunting, but that is precisely what I did this morning.

Why?  Because it’s green, it’s alive and because it is incredibly beautiful, at least to those like me who think just about anything in the forest short of animal poop is beautiful.  And a moss dish garden is very far from that end of the spectrum indeed – it is as small as you want to make it, elegant and stylish, and has the certain quiet beauty much admired by Japanese gardeners (who have encouraged moss to grow in their gardens for centuries before we have gotten the idea to do this – probably from them).  And it’s supposed (supposed does not = works out that way) to be pretty low-maintenance.  This latter part, we’ll see about.  Once it establishes, that is.

Important: before you rush out and strip the moss off the nearest boulder, first make sure that it is not protected or endangered wherever it is you live.  If it is, then you may be better off buying some from a nursery or get some (legally sourced) spores online.  Of course, collecting it in your own garden or in a garden of people you know works too.  Just – make sure you aren’t breaking the law and ruining the environment by gathering an endangered species – after all, the point of this (at least to me) is to grow something beautiful because you love green things, not to destroy what is possibly irreplaceable!  For reference, in Sweden, some lichens and mosses are protected, but it is legal to gather a little bit of other varieties for personal (non-commercial) use in public forests.  The variety pictured above is a species of Hypnum genus of mosses, a very common forest and bog moss.

After the ethical and legal concerns are out of the way, putting together a moss garden is apparently very easy – you just need a ceramic or glass dish, some gravel and pebbles, a bit of non-alkaline potting soil, and the moss.  However, and that’s a big however, I imagine it will take more than just putting it together to get it to establish and thrive.  So, this is my moss dish garden experiment – day 1.  I will update over the next several weeks on how the mosses are doing before I pronounce this a success *knocks on wood*.

So, what does one need to make a moss garden?

Apparently, not that much.  Mosses don’t like alkaline environment (at least most of the common ones don’t), and they dislike direct sunlight but like a bit of light all the same.  They also do not develop true roots the way higher plants do, and so must be kept moist but not waterlogged (except bog mosses that sometimes just float in bogs).  Most websites recommend watering with filtered or rainwater.  I agree in theory, but in practice, the tap water in Stockholm is clean and soft enough that it should not be a problem.  I did put a bucket outside to collect a bit of rainwater should it fall, but in the meantime, the moss will get the same water as my orchids do.

The basic idea is a layer of pebbles in the bottom of a shallow dish, then a bit of gravel (this is to provide a place for excess water to drain into, and also a reservoir for keeping the soil moist), then a little bit of soil on top of it, and then the moss itself.

After I have put everything together around lunchtime today, it looked like this:

It hasn’t rained for over a week before I went out today to collect it, so the moss was looking a little dry but not dead – we have a beautiful patch of untouched forest behind our apartment building, a landscape feature I love about Stockholm.  It’s very common here to build around old boulders and between them, leaving the actual forest biome intact between the houses.  It makes for a beautiful view out the windows as well.

So, as per instructions, I constructed the base, watered it thoroughly, and then gently pushed the moss patches onto the soft and wet soil.  For a while, nothing visible happened.  I took the above photo, then sprayed the moss thoroughly with a spray bottle and wandered off to do other stuff.

Then, after a few hours, I came back and looked at my dish garden – and the somewhat-unexpected (but not unwelcome!) has happened:

On left, photo taken at half past noon. On right, photo at half past four in the afternoon.

The moss has soaked up water, plumping up visibly – and turned a beautiful lush green!  And while I know it’s too early to be happily assuming that the moss will survive, it certainly does look happier already, which means I am happier too – how can you not be, looking at something turn beautifully alive nearly before your eyes?

All that remains now is an exercise in patience.  Check moss daily for drying out, mist and admire.  Water weekly (or as soon as the glass container looks dry on the side) by pouring water in.  Wait to see what happens.  I’m sitting on the edge of my seat here with impatience – I have never been the patient sort, ever.  I’ve always been told that patience is a virtue.  I suppose at least where growing moss is concerned, that has got to be true.

Wish me – and the moss! – luck.

The Cat That Got At The Canapes – Happy New Year! And, Bloggers Unplugged tag!

This blog has been quiet over the holiday season.

Ramses and The Salmon Snacks

This is why.  Because in between all the preparation, running around, baking, making tiny snacks, and two bazillion other things, this is, perhaps, the only photo of what we’ve eaten that got taken.  And, right alongside it is the fact that not only did I not have a chance to photograph the food, I didn’t want to be bothered with remembering.  After all, this blog is something I do for fun, and while I frankly enjoy the heck out of writing this, when I am entertaining or being entertained, it may not be the first thing on my mind – nor should it be.

So here, you get treated to a photo of the Cat That’s Got At The Salmon Snacks – and yes, both of them (he has an equally beautiful other half, who is even more pampered) are well-behaved gentlefelines, who do not stick their noses into the food – and they did get treated to both, salmon and snippets of silkily-pink entrecote (ribeye) roast that was served, and much happiness and prosecco (because I like it better than champagne) was had by all!  Belatedly, I also realised that since I was the one taking the photos, I do not have a single one of myself in my floor-length black dress, but fear not – both the dress and I survive, and the one for whom I put it on (other than the mirror!) got to see it, and that’s what matters.

The salmon snacks in question were my real-quick solution to “we need canapes and we need them an hour ago and I am not at home” – tiny crostini topped with bits of folded smoked salmon, dill leaves, a bit of fish roe (not beluga caviar, I’d not treat it so!), and sprinkled with lime juice.  Instant classy canapes!  No recipe needed, and feel free to add what you like – a dab of cream cheese under the salmon, sub lemon for lime or parsley for dill – the crostini is your canvas!

As to the several gorgeous roasted joints of meat we’ve eaten over the holidays – the rack of lamb over saffron rice, the tenderloin with horseradish, and the entrecote roast for New Year’s Eve … no photos.  I will just have to get another one (or several!) and photograph it before it gets eaten!

Oh and speaking about roasts – and gifts – I may not be very commercial-oriented but everyone loves gifts, especially thoughtful ones – I give people fudge.  They think it’s lovely and thoughtful.  Everyone loves fudge!  But, as it happens, I received two amazing foodie gifts from T’s parents – a butane kitchen torch (the pyro in me is hopping up and down like a crazed squirrel!!!  BUTANE TORCH!!!  And, it’s RED!), and Hugh Fearley-Whittingstall’s (aka The River Cottage dude’s) monumental Meat book.  A short browse told me I am as in love with this book as I thought I’d be, and there will be recipes cooked and posted from it, I promise you!  And, I totally need to figure out what to do with the torch.  I am not a fan of creme brulee, but we’ll figure something out!

And now, the other thing!  While I was off partying, cooking and eating and petting the cats, the illustrious deft-fingered Ping of Ping’s Pickings has tagged me in one of those Bloggers Unplugged answer-questions-about-blog things!  And, knowing myself, I do not want to get sidetracked with the eleventeen projects I have planned for after New Year’s (i.e. now), so here we go!

1. What, or who, inspired you to start a blog?

The who is easy – the veritable army of my friends who love eating my food and wanted recipes and all told me I should start “one of those food blogs with pictures and all” and that it’d be great.  They were right.  It is!

The what was slightly different – and it was wanting a place to say what I think about food, eating, food industry, food scams, and other things which outrage me professionally and personally and make me want to stomp my feet and throw things.  That, in combination with loving the idea of typing up my recipes with pictures and all (as suggested) is what resulted in this blog.  Thanks to all those who encouraged it!

2. Who is your foodie inspiration?

There are many.  Since I am entirely self-and-book taught, I do not have a foodie inspiration in my family (no offense, folks, I cook better than any of you!).  So, in no particular order – and at a risk of sounding cliche – of the well-known ones, I have Nigel Slater, Ina Garten, Nigella Lawson, Hugh Fearley-Whittingstall, Andreas Viestad and Marcus Samuelsson.  But, and I would say even more so, I would have to thank a host of other great but lesser-known (perhaps they are less photogenic, or just don’t have what it takes for TV fame, I do not know) cookbook writers such as Debra Mayhew, author of the Cook’s Encyclopedia of Soup, Michele Scicolone for Italian food, Joanna Farrow and Jacqueline Clark, and Louis P DeGouy, whose ancient (originally published in 1911!)  “The Soup Book” taught me what I needed to know years ago when I realised that I love soup and can’t, for the life of me, cook it.  In fact, I think I will have to write several blog posts about my favorite cookbooks and why the are such to do them all justice – watch this space!

3. Your greasiest, batter-splattered food/drink book is?

Mediterranean: A Taste of The Sun by Jacqueline Clark and Joanna Farrow.  With several runner-ups.

4. Tell us about the best thing you have eaten in another country, where was it, what was it?

“Another country” to someone like me who’s lived in five different ones, is an interesting thought.  All right, thing I’ve eaten in a country where I haven’t lived – I’ve had the most amazing rock lobster tail broiled with lemon and garlic butter in Yucatan, Mexico.  The special thing about it was that it’d been fished the morning of the day I ate it – and nothing, nothing compares to shellfish when it is this fresh – nor does it need any more frills or trimmings to make it truly shine!

5. Another food blogger’s table you’d like to eat at?

Uuu… so many!  There’s Ping of course!  Though at her table, I might just stare at all the pretties she makes and be afraid to touch them!  There’s Zoe (tag coming your way, Zoe!), whose taste is a near mirror-image of mine (I’m sure I’d eat most anything found on her table at any time!), and there’s Gary whose passion for good meat and wine I share wholeheartedly!  There’s Rufus at whose table I would probably get spectacularly and gloriously drunk on beautiful cocktails and fall under said table happy.  I could go on but like Ping said, it’ll be one humongous table and that’s that – the only caveat I’d add is that I am not sticking any “huge” names on this list.  Why?  Because I suspect some of those people’s tables would be like a tasting menu – lots of frills and not much substance.  Call me eccentric, but I love having some food in front of me, not just a fancily folded napkin on a plate decorated with chocolate sauce and gold sprinkles!

6. What is the one kitchen gadget you would ask Santa for this year (money no object of course)?

I am greedy.  What I would like, is a larger kitchen, to be very honest, or a house with a yard where I can have a properly huge grill.  Barring that, I would love an Electrolux Assistent (Swedish answer to Kitchenaid Mixer), or another large stand mixer like it – I am tiny short (154cm in my socks!), and though really high heeled house slippers help (15cm and platform!), using a hand mixer over a bowl on a counter made for people 15-20cm taller than me is exhausting to the back.  That said, my original wish was for a dishwasher for same reason – handwashing dishes over a tall sink is painful! – but my amazing bf bought me one already.

7. Who taught you how to cook?

Self taught, entirely.  See #2.  As I don’t watch TV (haven’t owned one in years), it’s cookbooks all the way!

8. I’m coming to you for dinner, what is your signature dish?

A large piece of good beef, roasted medium-rare, with green salad and homemade sourdough bread.  Preceded by some sort of soup, and followed by either a cheese board with fruit, or a cake.  That said, I now have a new favorite signature dessert and that’s Margarita cookies!  Ye gads, and now I want to go make a batch of those again!  No!  Not till the happy pounds are off!  Only meat and fowl and seafood and greens and tons of butter and cheese till then!  :D  Don’t you just love my weight-loss habits?  The boyfriend does!

9. What is your guilty food pleasure?

Cola (coke or pepsi) light (sugarfree) and Twix™ Ice Cream Bars.  I did say diet because I can’t stand the sugar in the regular – but I still think that the drink is a vile commercial brew that I shouldn’t touch.  Yet when I am out and it’s hot and I need caffeine, there I go.  And the twix ice cream?  No words.  Just try the stuff, it’s dangerous!!!

10. Reveal something about yourself that others would be surprised to learn?

Uhm… other than things that really don’t need to get mentioned on a food blog, I am not sure, actually!  I babble a lot about everything, and I tend to be really upfront about my origins, education, likes, dislikes, etc.  But… there was this one time that I got so distracted chatting over skype with my then freshly-new long-distance boyfriend (still my much-beloved boyfriend I live with now) that I burnt an entire potful of fudge.  Completely and irreversibly ruined.  The horror!  The sacrilege!  Yep, I was already that much in love!

I hope you enjoyed reading the ramblings and babblings, and didn’t fall asleep till we got to this point!  And now, for the last bit:

Zoe – tag, you’re it!

New Goodies!

So, I’ve gone and done what I should’ve a long time ago!

Wild Sweet Cherry - Prunus avium

No, not just posted a picture of local wild cherries.  (Though those are gorgeous and definitely qualify as “goodies” if you ask me!  Or they did till they were all eaten.)

What I’ve done is gone through my entire “Recipes” category, and created a Recipe Index page for the ease of your browsing!  Look at it, isn’t it shiny?

Anyway, hope it makes searching for a recipe or just flipping through those more pleasant than the endless scrolling of the category pages did.  And who knows, maybe one day when I have time on my hands again, I will even make a photo index or somesuch!

I’ve also added an Eat The Roses button/badge code to the blog, in case you’d want to put it up or some such (I’m vain, you know!), and reorganized the pages menu to make a little bit more sense.

Hope you enjoy my tinkering!

P.S.  The gorgeous (and oh-so-delicious!) cherries are just a photo I took of a bowl of cherries we picked last summer in a forested area about 15 min walk from our home.  Isn’t it great living in Stockholm, the city with nature preserves inside it?  I think it is!

A Few Of My Favorite Things

I’ve been up since too early for consciousness.  I mean, I’ve been awake since about an hour before the sun bothered to peek up over the horizon.  I’ve consideried going back to bed.

Why would anyone in their right mind do this (be up) if they didn’t have to?  Normally, I’d say they’d have to be out of their mind, but as it happens, T has gone to Canada for a seminar and his taxi to the airport was leaving at 6:40am.  So we’ve been up since 5:40am, and I made him coffee and then shared it, and so here I am, waiting for a text message, missing him already, and not asleep.  Normally, however, I would be.  Asleep.  I love sleeping.

And so, with my brain running mostly on neutral (and how well does your brain function this early in the morning?!), I’ve decided to write about things I love.  Other than sleep, that is.  The inspiration for this post came from the blog of the illustrious Sophie, which had a post somewhat like it, which I enjoyed reading.  A lot.  And not just because Sophie is a friend, but because reading the post way back last summer, I realised that it’s a list that is very much worth making for myself.

Why?  Because we all have a busy life.  Really busy.  Even me, studying from home as I do, I don’t actually have that much “free” time.  I have time to do things I want (read, write, study, cook, cuddle T, water my flowers, etc.), but I don’t have time I don’t have anything to do with.  In fact, I’ve always wondered about people who go “I’m bored…” and expect the world at large or their friends to entertain them, but that’s a story for another post entirely.  Back to the list of favorite things – after reading Sophie’s, I came to the conclusion that if one writes one’s favorite things to do, eat, have, look at, etc. down, they are on paper, and then they are much harder to forget about/ignore in the hamsterwheel of day to day life.  And before you protest that you don’t forget about your favorite things – I don’t know about you.  I know that when I think about it, I realise that I do, and if I don’t think about them, I don’t do them – the things that I enjoy.  Which is, let’s face it, pretty silly in a not-good way.

Another thing which I’ve talked to a friend about recently is how a lot of people have one favorite everything – a favorite color, a favorite flavor, a favorite X.  I realised that while I do have preferences, I don’t actually have singular favorites, and so listing the variations became even more of a good idea, in the sense that perhaps I am overlooking something I’d like if I thought about it more.

Also, reading someone else’s list made me think of a handful of things which I hadn’t ever considered, but which really ought to end up on my list.  And so, I am writing it.  In no particular order.

• Coffee.  A lot of it, medium-roast with loads of milk, sweetener, and possibly whipped cream.  Or a good latte made so it’s not bitter.
• Sleeping.  Sleeping well, at night, in a cool but not cold room, in a huge pile of bedding.  Preferably with T to curl up next to.
• Tea.  Green, oolong, black.  No, rooibos (red ‘tea’) is not tea!
• Really good shampoo and conditioner.
• Long black dresses which, when worn, make T stare happily.
• Writing.  Blog, poetry, prose, nonfiction, whatever.
• Reading.  A lot.  I’m a very fast reader, so fat books are a plus.
• Sharp bladed weapons (swords, daggers, that sort).  I guess good kitchen knives go under this category, too.
• Cast iron cookware.  Also doubles as blunt weapons or home bread oven.
• Really good lip balm.  Or just pure shea butter out of a jar directly onto lips.
• Cacti.
• Leaves turning in the autumn.

• Quinces.
• Coconut ice cream and saffron-honey ice cream.  Also, fresh strawberry ice cream.  And … ok, good ice cream in general.
• Bath+unlimited hot water supply.
• Bras in correct size.  Pretty ones.  With matching undies.
• M&S hold-ups with lace tops.  Black.
• Meat.  Preferably beef, preferably not very cooked.  Steak cooked bleu or rare is amazing!
• Cured meats (charcuterie) – French, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, you name it, I want it.  Let’s not leave out the Germans and the Austrians, either!
• Oil paintings – mostly of pre-1930s.
• Mushrooms.  The sorts you eat, not the sort you get high on.
• Apricots.
• Outdoor swimming pools (with weather/climate to match).
• Candlelight.
• Beautiful ceramic dishes and vases.

• Dragons.
• Arugula (aka rocket or rucola)
• Curling up in a warm pile of blankets on sofa when it’s snowing or raining outside.
• Skinny dipping in natural bodies of water.
• Fancy dress-up events.  Or any rason to wear beautiful clothes.
• Cats.
• Tobias.
• Citrus trees.
• Soup.
• Wide-brim hats.
• Spending time with friends.
• Long dresses in colors other than brown, beige, pink, turquoise or teal.
• Really high heels.
• Fur.

• Old buildings.  Or ruins.
• Men in formal wear.
• Jewellery.
• Food magazines.
• Expensive scented candles.  Good perfume in general.
• Sunlight – at any time of year.
• Very cold prosecco in crystal flutes.
• Waterlilies.
• Restaurants that cook better than I do.
• Milk chocolate.

Meet my ORANGE dress. Also in this photo, an orange soup I met last summer.

• Really bright colors.  Especially purple, crimson red and orange.
• Egyptian cotton sheets.
• Being right.
• Libraries, bookstores, and any place full of books, old or new.
• Roses.  In any color that’s not pink or dyed.  Also to eat.
• White star chrysanthemums.
• Stationery.  Preferably Italian, preferably very pretty.
• Cast iron things other than cookware.
• Shiny, sparkly lip gloss.  I just wish it’d not get all over T’s face when I wear it.  (I swear, teenagers get away with this sort of stuff because they don’t actually smooch anyone a whole lot!)
• Boots No. 7 eye shadow and mascara – they stay where you put them.  Really, I kid you not!
• Cooking for people.
• Lanterns.
• Fresh blue mussels, cooked by me.
• Cashemere scarves.
• Leather gloves.

• Orchids.  Looking at, owning, growing.  Getting to bloom.
• Things made of terracotta.
• Koi ponds.
• The way I feel after a yoga class.
• Seeing new places.
• Canadian maple syrup.

I could go on.  And on.  And perhaps at some point I will, but this has gotten long enough already to make me think of things I should do, should do more, or haven’t done in a while because I’d not thought how much I enjoyed them in ages.  So, I am going to rectify that, starting with making myself some lunch.  Involving arugula.  And some prosciutto crudo as well, why the heck not?  Life’s too short not to do, see, eat and enjoy your favorite things.

Saturday. Fruit Harvest. Dendrobiums in Season.

Good morning!

Or, as it may happen, afternoon, wherever you are.

So, as it happens (every week, I might add!), it is Saturday morning here in Stockholm, and we are being treated to a rather beautiful one, with occasional spots of sunlight and not yet near-zero temperatures.  It is those temperatures that permit, among other things, the happy prospect of dressing up in beautiful fall clothes and not getting overheated.  So, in a short while we shall be going out to run errands, hit the immigrant market at Skarholmen for the large quinces, Cydonia (they may have finally arrived!), and generally walk around town, look stylish, and hopefully take some photos of Stockholm in the season of the turning leaves.

Most of our friends are heading out, in the Swedish habit of trying to catch the last of not-too-cold weather over the weekend, and the fruit trees scattered around here (we think there was an orchard here, oh, some 70-80 years ago before the neighborhood was built around WWII) are dripping with apples.  And dropping them, to be picked up by yours truly, because who in their right mind turns down perfect, ripe heirloom apples for free?

One of the very nice people who subscribe to this blog (I am so flattered, by the way, just so you know!) has emailed me about the fruit trees in his neighborhood, planted by previous tenants, that go unharvested by supermarket-shopping yuppies (those weren’t the words he used), and his plans to save some of the fruit from rotting – I think that’s a fantastic initiative.  I think if you have fruit growing around where you live, you should, too.  It’s good for the environment (less fruit shipped from South Africa or America), it’s good for your wallet, and when you consider how nice some of this fruit is (compared to what you’d buy), it’s most importantly, good for you.  So, you should totally do it!

The shortening days also mean that Dendrobium orchids, if you have one at home, are happily bursting into bloom, as my white one did over the course of the past few weeks.  Its unabashedly tropical looks make a beautiful mood counterpoint to the fall and harvest colors outside the window.

So, happy Saturday, and happy October!

Recipe Test, Success, Sourdough!

Earlier today I’ve posted my current recipe (with some rather lengthy and detailed instructions) for Stockholm Sourdough bread, along with a promise to test it again later – so, the result of said test just came out of the oven.

Stockholm Sourdough

I’d say this is proof positive that the recipe does, indeed, work!  Currently it’s scenting the entire apartment to the point where though I am not too hungry, I want to go and tear a piece off… but, banish the thought!  This one is going to cool well, get wrapped up really pretty and come with us tonight to be given away as a present.

Saturday Walk

Today the morning has dawned almost ridiculously sunny, with a few fluffy clouds here and there, and an early-autumn chill in the air that is very much encouraging for taking a long walk in town.

So, today we will be visiting the Stockholm Haymarket (Hötorget), and possibly Essencefabriken, the old spice shop in the area.

Image courtesy http://blogg.passagen.se

The historic haymarket is now an interesting place for buying unusual food ingredients, and consists of the open-air market as well as a market hall.   There are also a few specialty food shops in the vicinity, such as my favorite oriental supermarkets.  In the hall itself there are spice merchants, a South-American butcher, and cheese shops – and the open-air market tends to have just about anything you can ask for provided it is in season (and some things which are not).  I’m hoping to find a few quinces, since I am planning to make quince preserves for the winter, and see what else is interesting and available.

I promise to take pictures.

The Art of Happiness

The morning dawned a perfect August day – none too hot, but warm, slightly breezy and with bright sunlight under the ridiculously blue Stockholm sky.  And, sitting in the view of an open balcony door with my huge mug of coffee (I ingest the holy-bean beverage in half-liter installments, including loads of full-fat milk), I came to think of how sometimes people do not appreciate moments (or days, or times) of happiness when those happen – and that it is not necessarily due to the lack of such moments.  And I came to think of the fact that many people, despite not starving or being abused, and in generally having a decent life, are not happy – simply because they do not know why.

Beauty in shades of purple

You’d think – “easy for you to say, lazy blogger, I have problems…“, but before you say that, remember that said lazy blogger is also a human being, and, by definition, too, has had problems.  In fact, I’ve had scores of them, some brought on by my own stupidity, and some visited upon me by misfortune and other people – in short, I’ve had a normal life, problem-wise speaking.  I still have problems, too.  What I have also had – and still very much do – is a happy life.  And though, like anyone, I’ve had times when I’ve wanted to whine and been miserable, that makes it no less so.

Though, it has taken some effort, and time.

The quest for happiness, for me, started years ago.  Like any teenager, I was searching for a place in the world, and it was then that, in my incessant reading, I came across the quote “Two men looked through prison bars – one saw mud, the other saw stars.“  I no longer remember where I’d read it, and chances are that it was not even the original author, as a search on the net suggests the author is either unknown or one of a number of 20th century self-help quacks who attribute it to themselves (yeah, right!).

Being teenage and even more impressionable at the time than I am now (hard to imagine I was even more so!), I took the words very much to heart, and have decided that I will not waste my life being unhappy – and to such end, that I will make sure to notice the proverbial stars, and all other beautiful things around me, day in and day out.  And I’d promised myself that I will not stop noticing the beauty of everyday things, no matter how dragged-down by aforementioned problems I’ll become.

... I tend to photograph them, too

It hasn’t always been easy keeping that promise  (I’m human, remember?), but it has certainly been worth it, for in all the places I’ve lived and all the problems I’d gotten into, I refused to stop seeing the sky, the flowers, to stop enjoying the new and interesting food found there, and to reject the good things about the place (however many or few they have been).

This philosophy has also translated into my love of food, which, considering that my teen years ended in the ’90s – heyday of the starving models – was unintentionally rebellious and against the common trend of problem and difficult relationship with food and weight, and the fact that having an eating disorder was in vogue among the trendier of my classmates.

Along with the refusal to hate my body, food, the universe and everything, I also decided that I will not be afraid to pick myself up and move.  Why is this important?  Because moving around, in many ways, has made me who I am today.  Moving between countries since I was quite young, and between houses and apartments before and after that, and then moving to another continent and then countries on my own has taught me that there was actually no reason to have been afraid – and that there is far more happiness to be had from going to where you want to be, than from staying where you do not wish to stay (and complaining about it).

Another large aspect of learning to be happy was, and is, the willingness to embrace what is simple and silly – the colors I love, squeaking and hopping when I am happy (ok, maybe not in formal settings, but any other time), and not being afraid to ask for what I want (if you don’t ask, you don’t get) if I want something.  It may sound silly, or simple – but that is because it is.  It is also rather great to feel happier just because there is something purple, or orange, or red (or whatever colors make you happy) around.  This led to not being afraid of bright colors – in one of my previous apartments, my bedroom walls were painted a medium purple color just because I liked it that way.

Phalaenopsis supermarketensis

I grow orchids.  Not professionally, the way some collectors do, and not any difficult sorts of them – just the regular run-of-the-mill supermarket Phalaenopsis hybrids.  Why?  Because they are large and showy and beautiful, and because seeing them come into bloom in my own home (rather than buying them that way and then disposing of the plants when the flowers have faded) makes me happy.  They aren’t actually difficult to grow – but I think that in a way, they symbolise one of the most important things I’ve learned on the way to being happy: the fact that in order to be happy, one should first learn to not be afraid.

In the case of orchids – one should not be afraid to get one and try to keep it alive.  It’s a learning process, but if you don’t try, you’ll never get there.  And, to reflect on things I’ve mentioned above – one should not be afraid of surrounding oneself with bright colors.  One should not be afraid of moving from where you don’t belong to where you do.  One should not be afraid of food, and of other pleasures in life, or of seeking them out.  And, most importantly, in order to be happy, I think one should learn to not be afraid to seek and keep happiness in whatever form it comes to you.

In parting, I will share a Jewish joke with you:  There was once a good and pious Jew who prayed to God over and over so that he may win the lottery and become rich.  And because he was such a good Jew, one day the clouds parted, God looked down at the Jew, and yelled: “Yes, yes, I will let you win the lottery – but do me a favor, and at least go buy a bloody ticket!“

Those who do not seek, will not find.  And gods help those who help themselves.