Grow your own food, a cat, a dog and food souvenirs.

Growing your own food is amazing. This summer has been a horrible one weather wise, with rain almost every day for months, and ridiculously low temperatures. There has been a few good hours in between, and last week was great, so some harvest have been possible. Above are radishes from a container on the balcony.

 Almond potatoes, grown in the allotment. I'm amazed that they grew this big and beautiful, considering they were planted in heavy mud and I've been neglecting them ever since. Amazing root.
 

When I came home from Denmark I rearranged some of the furniture, and put Lucia's cat tree in a new position. She never used it in it's previous place, but now she loves it. Maybe because she has a big plant to hide behind while spying on the birds. 

When biking, one don't want to carry a heavier load than neccessary, so I only bought some tiny and light weight souvenirs back home.  Above is finely chopped dried lemon grass and dried ground liquorice root. It's supposed to be great in chili.

Smells divine, tastes OK. 

Bonus pic! My mother's sweet little dog Goliat.

Biking vacation in Denmark

I just arrived back to Hallsberg after a well needed week of vacation. I spent most of it biking with my mum in northern Denmark! We went by ferry from Gothenburg to Frederikshavn and then biked south to Aalborg. We stayed there for two nights and then headed north to Hjørring, stayed for two nights and then headed back east to Frederikshavn to take the ferry back to Sweden once more. It was a fun trip and the weather was stunning for the whole time. 

Our vehicles. Mine (well, borrowed from my grandfather) on the left and my mother's on the right. 

 Grains growing everywhere! I believe this is barley.

 We spent all of our four nights couchsurfing. One of them had a hammock in his livingroom, heaven!



















One of the advantages with couchsurfing is the ability to cook your own food. Whole wheat spaghetti with mushrooms, garlic and parsley.

But then again, there was some pretty lame lunches while biking.

 What is a biking vacation without flat tires?

My mother and fellow biker!

It must be summer

Big stalks of rhubarb.

 
Wild strawberries and a happy old dog.

Chantarelles from the forest and bare feet, all day long.

Dog walks in Sunny evenings.

Lucia.

Birch and ferns.

Sadness about a lost cat that later found her way back home again.

Roasted veggies with more variety than roots. Cauliflower, carrots, zucchini and red onions.

Pool boys are needed in Sweden as well. Martin wishes he was in Miami though.

Strawberries

Saturday, we went to a U-pick and got ourself 5 kilos of strawberries.

A lot of them (but still a small part) went straight into our mouths, but I also managed to make a big pot of strawberry vanilla jam, and put the rest in the freezer for the future.

Basic country loaf from Tartine Bakery

A couple of weeks ago, I found a short movie about a baker named Chad Robertson. He made the most beautiful natural leavened loaves of bread, and I had to watch it twice.  I found out there was a book, which seemed big, informative and with gorgeous photos. I found all of this to be true when it arrived in the mail last week. I love cookbooks that has a lot of stories and long descriptions of the recipes, and this book has that, plus loads of photographs that are both informative and esthetically pleasing. The book revolves around one basic recipe, for the Basic Country Loaf. The instruction for making that bread is more like a short story than a recipe, going on for 41 pages. However,
it's easy to follow and in time and with practice, I'm sure it will make almost anyone with the will and ambition able to pull out the perfect loaf from the oven.

My first try came out good. Definitely not perfect, but with a crust that is definitely the best I've ever had on a homemade loaf. It's crispy, deeply golden and cracked in just the right places. The inside of the bread turned out a tiny bit dense, but still has some big holes and with a very mild acidic taste, the result from using a young starter and letting it do it's final rise in the fridge over night.

This is the most beautiful book about food I've ever seen. All the photos are taken by Eric Wolfinger.