Breakfast / Overnight oats

I've never been one of those people who have a consistent breakfast routine. It seems pretty nice though, having found "your thing", may it be coffee and toast, sugary cereals, a smoothie or the classic; oatmeal. When I was 15, I wasn't eating breakfast in weekdays. Why? I don't know, I guess I was to tired before school and valued those extra minutes in bed more than eating. What I'm even more clueless about is why I one day decided to start eating breakfast, but it was a good choice. Ever since, I've been aimlessly wandering around among all those breakfast opportunities, liking most of them, but never found one to make my soul mate. 

Now would be the perfect time to say that I've finally found it, but that would be a lie. What I have found, is another breakfast item that will definitely have a steady place in my rotation from now on together with bread, smoothies, cereals, leftover dinner and all that jazz, and I must say I think they will get along just fine. While regular old oatmeal have definitely been on my breakfast table a lot of times, I'm not a big fan. 

I first heard about overnight oats this autumn, but didn't pay that much attention to it. I thought it sounded a bit weird, cold oatmeal? But earlier this week I decided to try, and I'm so happy I did! It's very different from regular oatmeal, and so much better. It's soft, yet crunchy somehow and doesn't feel as overwhelming as the warm oatmeal can do. I believe it to be a whole world out there with combinations that I will have to try, but right now, I'm very pleased with what I had this morning. 

Overnight oats with chocolate and banana

1/2 small ripe banana

1 tbs cocoa powder

50 ml rolled oats

100 ml soy milk

Mash the banana very well in a small bowl. Mix in the cocoa powder until no lumps remain and add the oats and half the soy milk and stir to combine. Add the rest of the soy milk and mix again. Cover and let sit in the refrigerator over night. Serve with some sliced banana.

Caulipots with lingonberry jam.

I don't have Appetite for Reduction in my bookshelf, but that's only because I don't have one to put it in. Since I live my life out of my backpack at the moment and with a crappy supply of cookware, there's no room for books. But rest assure, as soon as my living is a bit more stable I will buy the book in a minute, because it seems amazing. Even without the book, I couldn't miss the hype about the caulipots. Mashed cauliflower might not be a new invention, but pairing it up with potatoes and broth makes it a wonderful substitution for the sometimes to heavy potato mash. The recipe is definitely out there, so hit the web or your book if you are lucky to have it and start cooking!

I ate it with chickpea patties, onions, spinach and lingonberry jam!

Yesterday evening I had been working late and wanted to take some photos of a sculpture park in the dark, so I set out to do it. Unfortunately, it started raining quite heavily so I hid under a tree and took only one decent picture. I will definitely have to go back.

While waiting for spring to arrive, I'm eating spring rolls.

Yesterday I made spring rolls for lunch. After finally buying some swimwear (to be able to go swimming in geothermal pools!) we went to the Vietnamese supermarket some blocks away. We stocked up on noodles and hung around at the fridge for a while looking at the weird veggies, not brave enough to buy anything this time. We also bought spring roll pastry. Martin loves spring rolls, and when I was younger me and my mother used to make them together. I decided it was time for me to try making them myself.

It's really easy. Just make a filling, I stir fried some Chinese noodles with cabbage, bell pepper and onions for a while and spiced it up with some soy sauce and hot sauce. Simple but tasty is the way to go! I guess you could put anything in there as long as it's not to sloppy. Defrost the pastry and keep it in a damp towel so that it won't dry out. Fill them, roll them up and fry in some oil until browned and crispy. Serve with sauce of choice, I did a very simple peanut-coconut thing. 

Happy spring rolling!

 Travelling! I love it, and while I've been living abroad since August, I'm starting to crave travelling somewhere. Good thing I plan to be on the road for not less than 3 months this summer! I will travel with Martin, and we will go to Washington state and Portland in May/June! I'm really looking forward to it! Then we will go home to Sweden for a short time and reload, before going to Great Britain and WWOOF! Volunteering for food and housing for about 6 weeks will be so much fun too! Until then, I wanted to share some food photos from some of my previous travels.

A portabello burger with onion rings and barbecue sauce at the Ultimate Burger in London 2006.

Amaranth pudding with vegan whipped cream on top in Split, Croatia 2009. This was the first and only time I ate amaranth, and it was lovely!

A typical meal on the train. Couscous prepared with cold water and 

One of the best things with traveling south - vegetable markets with loads of fresh and local produce.

I've learnt that you will always be able to find vegan junk food in Germany. Pictured are some hot dogs and taco cheese.

Berlin I love you! How could you not love a city that brings you vegan döner kebab and burgers at Yellow Sunshine?

Turkey 2010. Fresh bread and sun warm strawberries eaten in a park.

Falafel in Sofia, Bulgaria. We asked our couchsurfing hosts to write us a note that said "no yoghurt sauce" in Bulgarian, and when we showed it to the man at the falafel place he laughed a lot and gave us some extra falafel in a little box because he thought it was so funny.

Halva! I love love love this treat. We ate it all the time in Turkey. It's great to bring along to hikes in the sun, since it wont melt in the heat.

One of the great thing about staying with couchsurfers during your trip is that they might serve you fresh baked home made sour dough bread for breakfast.

Reykjavík eats.

 Is anyone still reading this blog? It has become so utterly boring that even I don't. I could make up a lot of excuses, but I won't. Instead I will try my best to shape up and share more interesting things with you. Until then, I just wanted to show you two things I've been eating the last week.

1.  Organic non-dairy hot chocolate, from Alaska! I have a German friend here in Reykjavík whom I met on the Faroe Islands, and she gave this to me. She had got it from a couchsurfer who had been staying with her, and since she doesn't eat chocolate, she gave it to me. Hooray! It's lovely. It tastes like rich milk chocolate and I'm sad to admit that we've almost drunk it all already.

2. A giant apple. The small apple on the picture isn't actually small, it's your average apple. The big one on the other hand, was a beast.

Íslensku grænmeti / Icelandic vegetables

 

It's nice to find locally grown vegetables in the super markets. They are actually as cheap or cheaper than the imported ones, I guess it's due to hight costs for importing stuff. It's not a great selection of stuff, but we have been able to find some basics like potatoes, carrots, cabbage and cucumber! They grow cucumber in green houses which are cheaply heated up with water from the ground which are heated by all the volcanic activity going on here.  

 

This Sunday, we were out on an excursion with our co-worker and his brother in law. We got to see the volcano Hekla, Eyjafjallajökull and some other stuff like waterfalls. Pretty great! Suddenly my co-worker turned around and offered me a slice of raw rutabaga. I hesitated but took it and found out it was actually pretty tasty to eat it raw. Who knew!

The big mountain with snow on top is Eyjafjallajökull, and you could actually see smoke coming up from the top. It's still hot inside since last spring!

Uh. I arrived to Reykjavík Monday evening, and has been ill ever since. I guess it's "only" a bad cold, but I've felt horrible. Not only physically, but also for missing out on my first week in this new place. Well, I'm starting to feel a bit better now, so hopefully I will be able to take advantage of everything that's offered soon. We live in a room with shared kitchen and bathroom, and although people here seems to have no idea of how to clean up after you, it's ok. It's incredibly central, and the room is nice and light. Since we're only here for three months and nothing in the kitchen is shared property we have a very limited amount of kitchen ware. So I have a feeling that our food will be quite basic during our stay here. However, there's a lot more to choose from in the supermarkets here, it's fresher and a lot cheaper. We've also located two Asian supermarkets nearby so I have big hopes for the food anyway. Since I've mostly been tied to my bed for 5 days, I have nothing exciting to share with you, up there is a picture of the first food I cooked here, penne with tomato sauce. Hope to be able to get back to you with more interesting stuff really soon!

2011

2010 was the year I moved abroad, and with that came a lot of fun stuff. What it didn't bring was good food. Living in the Faroe Islands is great for those who likes sheep and fish, preferably the dried/rotten kind, but for me, it was a challenge. I have learned a lot about making interesting food from limited resources, which I hope to bring with me to future situations. The supermarkets here carry a lot of the stuff I'm used to at home, but it lacks greatly in three departments.

1. Fruit and vegetables. The selection is rather small, and what you can find is not very high quality. Everything is being imported and ripened somewhere on a ship.

2. Asian food items. The selection in the supermarkets don't go further than taco stuff and noodles, and special stores for this kinds of food? No way.

3. Special vegan items. Sure you can find soy milk, margarine and sometimes even ice cream, but everything else either won't exist or cost it's weight in gold.


So, for 2011 I wish for great food. I will be moving away from here in two days, to Reykjavik, Iceland for three months, and then I'm not sure where I will end up.

2011, please bring me:

A huge amount of fresh fruit and vegetables. Like these in Turkey.

Sushi! I LOVE sushi but my intake has been very low here. I will do whatever it takes to eat it on a more regular basis this year.

Barbecues!

A birthday cake like the one I had when I turned 18.

Happy New Year everyone! What are your food-wishes for 2011?