Last of the Wilds

Last of the Wilds by Trudi Canavan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have started to read the book a long time ago, however I had to break it constantly (and in the meanwhile I also read other things).
I finally found time to focus on it, lately, and since then I enjoyed every single bit of it. I like the story. It is intelligent, interesting and I like the characters. I am starting to like more and more Auraya and realizing she could be one of my favourite characters, although I don't have a big recollection of the first book of the serie.
I am now looking forward to have the possibility to read the next book!


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Copenaghen Tivoli

It is quite incredible that in 10 years that I have been living here, we have never gone to the Tivoli in Copenaghen, considering that it is one of the "major attractions" of the town.
Actually, I remember trying to squeeze ourselves in during Christmas time, many years ago. The queue was so long that we resigned and decided to walk around, instead. In another occasion, we were all ready to go in, however it was closed for the season... This time, we checked that it was opened and being a Friday, we were sure there would have not been any queue.
Unfortunately, though, we got all possible rain and once back home we noticed that no rain had touched Lund ground. Always lucky, uh?

Nevertheless, we had a good afternoon. The only attractions we enjoyed had been the culinary ones and the acquarium.
The first impact constituted by an italian pizza (very nice indeed)alla Vecchia Signora. Here we had the luck to observe and study young vikings attempting to explore foreign food (spaghetti dying to have some tomato sauce on top) with their hands in a very elegant manner (lovely).

Isabella was not very convinced in letting us go up in the Demon, even though Mattias' chinese sweet tooth was ringing a bell (and we all know how much Mattias love all these reckless attractions). She was almost pushing us to try Vertigo, though, but we decided that we preferred to keep her company looking at the people climbing up on the Golden Tower. We decided to take just a stroll around, leaving the arabic thematic area behind us, when we met a couple of ducks, who wanted to show us a bit of the lake around.

They guided us towards Petzi's world (leaving the Pirate ship on the horizon), where we entertained Isabella and other kids playing enormous instruments, like a gigantic xylophone.
Pity that it started to pour rain just then and we walked then very fast reaching Woodhouse. That was a very tempting place, with nice pastries and nice menus (Isa preferred to eat those). A little shop, within the building, was selling something very delicious...dipped in chocolate and whatever else. Pity (again!!!) we stuffed ourselves with the cakes and never reached that part...

At that point, we decided to actually do something and we saw that there was an acquarium. We went there and Isabella was fascinated by the enormous fish that could be seen, like the rajiformes and was calling them all "uaua" (cat). Here we managed to assist (almost) to some octopus show (it was trying to open some jar). While waiting for mr octopus to get its food, we noticed that the clock was ticking and we had to run home. Maybe next time there will be no rain and we will actually try something more advance like the classic carousell?

Birthday cheesecake

And one year has gone since Isabella has put her charm on us.
We are possibly very unconventional parents and decided to not care about birthday party and other fancy things that most parents would probably do. We simply have a different belief over this :-)
We celebrated her very properly having a very nice day with her and preparing a cake, that she could eat.
I am not a very talented dessert-maker so I was afraid of the result, but it turned out to be a simple and fast cake, very tasty and appreciated by both kids and adults.

Ingredients:

• 250 gr of digestive cookies
• 80 gr of melted butter
• 300 gr of philadelphia cheese
• 200 gr of yogurt (or cream)
• 5 tablespoons of sugar (or less if you are planning this for a bunch of 1 year old kids)
• jam or fresh fruit as guarnish

In a bowl, whip the cream (yogurt). Add the cheese with the sugar and keep whipping. I took then a spoon and mixed with it until the mix became a nice thick cream.

Crumble the cookies in a blender/whatever device of your choice until they have a very granular consistency.

Mix them with the melted butter.

Prepare the cake baking tin and put the mix of cookies and butter, making sure that it becomes very compact (you can use your fingers ;-)) and level it.

Put on top the cream and flatten it as much as you can.

Decorate the cake as you wish (if you use fruit it is better to do so after you take the cake out of the fridge) and put it to cool in the fridge for at least 4 hours. 

Happy Birthday, Isabella ;-) (it was yesterday, of course...)

The Sword of Avalon

Sword of Avalon by Diana L. Paxson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


It is always an illusion to believe that the book is written by Marion Zimmer Bradley, but her name is just in the idea behind the book. It is obvious when reading it that the author can't be her: Diana Paxson, for how good is she and how honorable work she is doing is not able to catch the atmosphere that the Bradley was able to recreate.
This book presents the background story behind the "legendary sword of Avalon", that is, Excalibur.
It is interesting that the origin is connected to ancient Greece and it is a very interesting historical moment, between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, that is taken as reference point for the sword's history.
The characters lack the depth, the interior development and the charm of the Bradley's characters, although they are the typical Avalon's inhabitants. The Priestess of Avalon with her powers, fighting between visions, duty and wishes, the rebel girl, the hero and the villain.
It is a pity that the book gets a bit trivial, but it is always nice to drown in the Avalon world, afterall.



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Arianna's salmon pasta

I have been in search for some tasty and quick pasta, a bit different from usual. Since, here, finding smoke salmon is a relatively easy task that is the main ingredient of this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of smoked salmon
• pasta (preferably spaghetti) for two people
• 1/2 glass of white wine
• an handful of raisins
• a teaspoon of curry
• salt and peppar
• a garlic clove
• a spoon of olive oil

Warm up in a big pan the olive oil and let fry lightly the garlic, while in another pot we start to cook the pasta.

Add the salmon, after slicing it up in small strips and let it fry until it gets color.

Add the wine when the heat is on medium temperature. Let it fade and then add the raisins.

Remove then the garlic and add the curry. Let it fry for some minute. If it gets too dry add a bit of the water from the pasta.

Once the pasta is ready and drained, put it in the pan with everything else and mix it properly with the sauce.
Then, serve and enjoy ;-)

Restaurant Les Halles, Saluhallen, Lund

It is since February that they have opened the new Saluhallen (market hall) in Lund. In reality, the old part of the building is still under "construction" and still, some new places are not yet opened.

One of the new names that can be found next to the ones that already existed in the old Saluhallen-days is the Restaurant Les Halles. It has a very great position, being the first place that one sees when entering the building from the new entrance. It is elegant and cosy and sophisticated at the same time. And incredibly popular, so much that there were rumours stating that it was necessary to book lunch as well (and that is not true).

We managed to squeeze ourselves in (with stroller and Isabella) few weeks ago, for lunch. The menu is obviously french style and while waiting for our food to be served, we enjoyed some very nice bread and the usual salad (sorry, Swedes, I don't like this tradition!).

I took a soup (as often ;-) ) which was having a salmon tartare, and A (!!!) single clam. It was supposed to be a clam soup. It tasted quite fine, but it was slightly blend (I think there was a too strong "background taste" of the fish fond that had been used to make the soup) and it was a pity it was not that "meaty". The salmon was just smoked salmon (or tasted as such) and I was hoping for some nice fresher piece.
Mattias, instead, took the "dish of the day" which was a plate of ribs and potatoes pure'. I tasted the potato part of the dish and it tasted pretty good, according to Mattias the ribs were nice but nothing revolutionary on the culinary world.

The best part of the meal was the dessert: we took a chocolate pie which was delicious and served in a very original way: in a glass bell (making it a bit harder to share the cake... :-P)

The main problem: we were quite hungry (strangely enough?) after this lunch and, considering the price (a bit higher than the "average") we would have expected a bit more tasty food, although it was quite classy.
Let's hope though that the quality will continue to be decently high and not "degenerate" as often happens after a place has been opened for a little while.

Our savior: IRobot Roomba!

Every spring (more than any other period of the year) we live in a nightmare: cat hair clouds shaping in front of us with the speed of light!
This can be stopped (or at least reduced) with an extreme frequent combing of both Pico and Romeo, which is time taking (...), not always pleasant (you get a cat-fur for free on you) and they are not always very cooperative.

This year, though, we have decided to change our lifestyle and make a "long term" investment in a vacuum cleaner robot, after hearing a couple of friends of ours doing such purchase and being happy about it.
We have discussed for years to buy something like this! It was about time to actually make such plan concrete. After evaluating the different models on the market, we decided to go for an IRobot Roomba 564 Pet, which has some extra feature to be pet friendly and hair collector.

After charging it, we were eager to try it and it was enough to press a little button to start the "magic"! The cats and Isabella have been reasonably terrified the first week, while now they are getting used to the device (Isabella enjoys putting objects on it) and although the instructions are for the general robot and not the specific one, and some functions are a bit mysterious (but can be investigated on the internet), we have observed it in action.

The result is great! Making it start every day guarantees a decently clean apartment. Corners and "hidden places" can't be reached, but our cleaning is sensibly faster and the floor looks generally clean, considering that before we were drowning in cat sand/cat hair/bread crumbs which needed to be removed very fast and very frequently.
We don't have to remove objects from the floor: it usually pushes them around, if in the way and if it gets stuck (which happens very seldom), one has just to "get afloat" the robot.
It communicates quite clearly when the brushes need to be cleaned, and that happens not as frequently as I was afraid. Doing that operation is also very comfortable since there are two specific tools included that are very helpful for cleaning the brushes.

It is a bit noisy, but it is not that loud that one get disturbed and I feel safe to let it go when I am not home, since, most of the times, it reaches its dock station when the batteries are exhausted and it is built in such a way that it won't harm pets.

Our robot has also some scheduling function, virtual walls, which we haven't tried yet,  and can be enhanced with others accessories (and I don't think we will do such an investment).

It is now a couple of weeks that we have it and I can say that we are surely satisfied of the purchase (although it was not a very cheap product) and we feel relieved from a lot of daily cleaning, which was hard to cope with.
A lot of people give names to their little robot, but we haven't yet come up with one for it? Has anyone a good suggestion? :)