Rose Hip Soup

Have you ever eaten a rose hip before? It's the fruit of the rose, and can vary in size, shape and colour, from orange to red to purple and almost black. The rose hip contains loads of vitamin C, so eating them is really good for you! Making a sweet soup out of them is really traditional in Swedish cuisine, and you'll probably want to eat it warm with ice cream. Or cold as a thick juice. It's good for you when you have a sick stomach too. Not convinced yet? Look at the bright colour!

The variety we picked was big, round and dark orange/red. This is what they look like on the inside. The small hairs is sometimes really itchy so watch out for them or put them inside the shirt of someone you don't like.

This colour is insane. This is the boiled, mashed and strained rose hips.

Swedish rose hip soup
This is really more of a method than a recipe, because the quantities it's a matter of taste and the variety of rose hips you use. 
1. Pick the rose hips.
2. Cut off the weird ends.
3. Cut them in half and clean out the seeds. (You might not have to do this, I will get back to you when I've tried a more easy way!)
4. Boil them in a little bit of water until really soft.
5. Mix them up really good with an immersion blender or what you have on hand.
6. Put the purée in a fine mesh strainer and push them through it, leaving the stringy bits behind.
7. Put the purée back in the sauce pan, adding water until desired thickness.
8. Add sugar until sweet enough for your taste, and heat until the sugar has dissolved.
9. Eat or store in the fridge.

Heatrow airport.

Hungry, we used our last British pounds for lunch at Heathrow airport terminal 5, before leaving England for Sweden. To our great surprise, we were able to find a decently priced vegan meal, that was delicious and filling to! We ate at Itsu, a japanese place where we shared a plate of sushi and salad, and a bowl consisting of rice, coconut curry sauce, veggies, seaweed, shiitakes, cashews and tofu! To that we drank a lemonade with loads of ginger in it.

Chickpeas, b&w photos and my plans for the autumn.

I don't know if I told you, but I'm going back to school this autumn! It's a 2 year long program, which in the end will make me a water technician. Then I will hopefully work with cleaning water or something similar somewhere exciting.

 So, in two day's I'm moving to Hallsberg, a small town only famous for being one of the most important railway hubs in Sweden. I will live all by myself for the first time ever and I'm really looking forward to it! Yesterday I bought this huge bag of dried chickpeas that will hopefully keep me full for the winter.



















So not only have I been packing and procrastinating things like signing up for an electrical provider, I have also been making jam. I picked 4 kg/9 lb plums from my mothers tree, and made a huge batch of jam. And there's still so much left on the tree that I just can't take care of. I also made a very tasty plum sauce, inspired by this recipe.

I found three very ripe peaches at home, and guess what, they are now jam as well. Editing these photos made me discover how beautiful food is in black and white, focusing on the shape instead of the colours.

Mac n' Cheese Pancakes

 In June, I ended my travels in Oregon and Washington with a short stay in  Seattle. I had the pleasure to stay with two vegan couchsurfers, and they took me to Wayward Café for Saturday brunch, an awesome all vegan place with loads of breakfast options. That morning, I went for the hillbilly omelette, but their daily special was Mac n' Cheese pancakes, and the thought of them never quite left me. I decided today was the day to give it a try.

I looked around some blogs for a recipe, but they all seemed to call for some kind of ready made vegan cheese, which I did not have on hand and did not wish to pay a small fortune for at the store either. So I made up my own version, calling for no ready made vegan cheese.

First, I made the Easy Breezy Cheezy Sauce from Appetite for Reduction. Then, I made the batter for No Fail Buttermilk Pancakes from 500 vegan recipes, and added a dash of turmeric for colour. I also cooked up some macaroni and let it cool.

The the experimenting could begin. Some of the recipes I had read said to put the pancake batter in the pan, sprinkle some macaroni on top and add cheese before flipping it over. I tried, without the cheese, and it worked OK. I also tried to mix the macaroni with the batter before adding to the pan, and I liked how that made them more incorporated in the pancake, so I went with that for the rest of them. I tried mixing some cheezy sauce into the batter pre-fying, but the taste somehow got lost in there, so I skipped that.

My conclusion:

Mac n' cheese pancakes
What you'll need:
- A batch of pancake batter (no sugar or vanilla or anything)
- Cheesy sauce of some kind
- Boiled macaroni

How to:
- Mix the macaroni into the pancake batter, how much is really up to you, it can handle quite a high ratio of macaroni to batter.
- Fry them up until golden on both sides, and serve with the cheezy sauce on top!

It's delicious.

Devon and Cornwall has never left me hungry.

I've now been in England for almost 6 weeks, spending the time in Devon and Cornwall WWOOFing at three different farms. Soon it will be time to go back to Sweden, were I will move to a new town and start school again - I'm pretty excited!

Fresh blueberry juice on the blueberry farm

I've been more hungry than usual these weeks from all the body work, but has never been left hungry. The WWOOFing hosts are supposed to feed you, and they sure have. At the blueberry farm Wei Wei cooked up loads of food for 13 people every night, all her own inventions. She made us both cornish pasties and food inspired from her earlier life in China, all of which tasted great.

Cornish pasties, labelled V for vegan.

On the other farm, the host wasn't there a lot, so we were left to cook for ourselves, and can I just ask you English people what's up with self raising flour? It wasn't my best friend. The bread machine was however. I had never baked in one before, but it was so easy I couldn't believe it.

Spagettie bolognese with frozen veggie mince.

On our last farm, were we are now, Carol does most of the cooking. She's a fierce woman soon to be 70, and she cooks up a hearty tasty vegan meal for us every night, followed by dessert.

Blueberries on filo pastry.

Sticky ginger date cake from Vegan Feasts, might just be the best cake ever.

Have you read my interview with David, the cranberry farmer from Greyland, WA? Did you like it? Would you like to read a similar interview with the blueberry farmer I stayed with in Dartmoor National Park? Let me know and I'll try to set it up!

Cornwall.

I'm currently hanging out and working on a small farm in Cornwall. I'm fighting nasty weeds, petting cute animals and every morning I get the pleasure of giving the ducks more water to play with. I swear I can hear them laughing. I also get to eat a lot of good food here, but I'm not cooking myself, so there's not much to blog about really. Although, I do have a long list with posts to write in the near future, so I'm pretty excited about that.

Until then, would you do me the favour and tell me what you would like me to write about?