Thank you very much grocery store!
Thank you for not having butternut squash on the shelves today. I had planned on cooking butternut squash even though I have no idea how to. You saved me from trying to make a meal that would have been……….not tasty.
I hope you had a wonderful christmas! We had a relaxing one. Christmas lately has been about food and family and not so much about gifts. We have reduced the number of christmas gifts drastically and to not have to buy things to everyone has made it easier. For instance I only buy gifts for my mom. My aunts only buy gifts for their husbands and children and so on. I remember how it was before when I raced around town to find things to buy. Some are not the easiest to buy for and more than ones I ended up with buying just for the sake of buying which means crap gifts. I also waited until the last minute which was stressful in itself.
For me christmas has become more of a food event. Before I thought “lets get food out of the way and lets open our gifts”. Now I like the food more. Because I don`t eat many things on the traditional christmas table I have added some foods that I like. I always make porkribs and a brusselsproutstew.
Porkribs, brusselsprouts and red cale.
This year I also made applepie.
Apple and marzipan pie.
Of course I also ate candy!
The best thing about christmas was of course Kajsa dressed as a christmas gift.
There`s a commercial on tv where someone comes to Sweden from another country to celebrate christmas. Because of that the family in Sweden replaces some of the food they normally serve at christmas. They replace it with food that`s eaten in the guest`s country.
First I have to say that I`m not upset or anything like that by that commercial. And second, I know the family does this as an act of kindness as well as show respect for another country and the traditions there. (And I know it`s only a commercial). It got me thinking though. If I were to celebrate christmas abroad I would like to eat what they normally do. I would never expect to get swedish dishes and honestly I would prefer not to. I eat swedish christmas food every year and it would be more than great to try something else. I sometimes spend christmas in Austria where my dad lives and I like that they just serve their traditional dishes. It`s like when people travel to other countries for their vacation. Many always choose their home countries food, if it`s available, from the menue.
In Sweden we eat a lot of different food at christmas. One thing that many consider to be the most important one on the christmas table is pickled herring. I think it`s disgusting. If you`ve never heard of it, it`s raw fish in vinegar. It tastes like………raw fish and vinegar. What I mean is that I would never not serve the herring if a guest from another country would spend christmas at our place.
No wonder I look angry. My mom says I sit funny. She laughs when I sit like this. A dog needs to be left alone and it needs to sit how it wants. That`s what I think.
When it comes to cooking I`m lazy. I love to read recepies or watch cooking shows where many ingredients are involved but I`m too lazy to use more than a few things in my food. I would like to be one of those that find pleasure in cooking for hours with a lot of different ingredients but that will never happen. Often I think “today will be the day I make that time consuming dish I`ve been wanting to make” but instead I cook pasta with sausage or something.
Today I made what we call “makaronipudding”, pasta pudding. It might not sound tasty but it is. There are many ways to make this pudding but this is how I do it.
Ingredients:
Macaronis
6 eggs
5 dl milk
Bacon (I used about 250 g)
Oven 200 C
Cook pasta for four persons. Put it in an oven tin.
The amounts for the eggs and milk are not what you have to use, it`s what I think suits this dish. Anyway, whisk the eggs and milk together and add salt and pepper.
Fry the bacon.
Add the bacon to the pasta. I use a lot of butter in the pan and I put that on the pasta as well it gives the dish a nice flavour.
Pour the egg mixture over the pasta. For more flavour, add some cheese on top.
Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes in the middle of the oven.
Serve with lingonberry jam.
Delicious!
I love pancakes. I love to eat them with different kinds of jam and sometimes I even add some whipped cream with the jam. The only thing I don’t like too much is to make them. It’s easy but it takes time. You have to be by the stove the whole time to either flip the pancakes or put new batter in the pan.
That’s why I like the ovenbaked pancake! It “cooks itself” and it tastes like…….a pancake. I make my oven pancake with bacon because that makes the dish delicious.
For the pancake today I started with the bacon. I fried it in a pan until it was cooked through. -Don’t put uncooked bacon directly in the pancake batter! That just gives you soft bacon pieces that are rather bland in flavour. I then mixed 4 eggs with flour and milk. I can’t give you any measurements (other than the eggs) because I didn’t use a recepy but the texture should be like a thicker white sauce.
I added the fried bacon to the batter and put the whole thing in an oven tin. I baked the pancake at 200 C for 30 minutes in the middle of the oven.
Serve with lingonberry jam.
I think it’s easy to be a vegetarian these days. Or at least easier than it was a couple of years ago. I have been a vegetarian from time to time and I remember how it was long ago. There were only a few products out there and they were often disgusting. I remember a bolognese sauce you could buy that made me feel sick because it tasted bad. Restaurants didn’t have much to choose from and what they did have was some watery tomato sauce or something like that. I’m not a vegetarian today but I like to have some meatless days. I feel that I can’t eat too much meat and with all vegetarian options out there it’s easy to make a tasty green meal.
Today I made a vegetarian bolognese sauce. I used minced quorn as base. It doesn’t taste much as it is but with spices it’s delicious. I made my sauce with my quorn, tinned tomatoes, onions, milk and cream. I served it with fresh pasta.
I almost never eat a whole piece of beef, I prefer it minced. I think a whole beef almost tastes like blood and that`s why I have to cook it all the way through. In a restaurant I always order my beef well done otherwise I can`t eat it. And I don`t like a big steak because it`s to meaty. What I do like is a minute steak. It`s thin and easy to cook.
Today I made minute steak and potatoes. I fried the steak until it was done and after that I put it in an oven tin. I poured cream as well in the tin in order to get a sauce. On a baking paper I put potatoes, peppers and tomatoes and I cooked the whole thing in the oven. The beef came out soft after having been first fried and then slowly cooked in cream and the sauce that “made itself”was tasty.
Tasty!
I think that bacon makes food delicious. The salty flavour gives almost all food a richer taste. Pasta goes especially well with bacon. I like vegetarian pasta sauces but bacon sauces I like even more. And to serve a bacon sauce with fresh pasta is my favourite meal. I don`t make my own pasta because I`m too lazy and also because I think the ones you can buy are tasty.
This is an oven cooked pasta dish. Like I said I`m lazy and this is easy to make. I make a sauce with vegetables and bacon. In this sauce there`s peppers, fresh tomatoes, tinned tomatoes, bacon, onions, milk and cream. I fry the fresh vegetables and bacon for a while and then I add the tinned tomatoes, milk and cream. I also add salt and pepper.
I put the fresh pasta in an oven tin and pour the sauce on top of it. I put some cheese on it and cook at 200 C in the middle of the oven until the cheese has melted.
I should eat fish more often. I don`t know how to make fish tasty and that`s why I seldom cook fish dishes. I think fish needs a good sauce and there`s the problem. With meat you can just make a sauce out of the meat juices in the pan but with fish you need more. There are many ready made sauces but I often don`t like them. And then there`s the fish itself. I don`t like them all. My least favourite is salmon. Almost everyone likes it but I find the taste over welming. Whatever you do with salmon it just taste salmon.
This fish dish started as a sauce for baked potatoes. We had it with potatoes, butter and salt. Because I`m lazy I thought that baked potatoes required too much of an effort to eat (I said I was lazy). Then I began frying potato pieces to go with the sauce and that`s what I do now. To make it even easier I cook the potatoes in the oven while I make the sauce.
I can`t give you the amounts of the ingredients cause I don`t use a recepy but here`s what I put in the sauce.
Creme fraiche
Tinned tuna in water
Tomato purèe
Red onion in small pieces
Dried dill
Salt and pepper
I mix it all in a bowl and serve with fried potatoes.
Kajsa's and Cecilia's world 