New experiments in the garden

After the bad winter, some of my plants died, especially the ones that were in the "famous" sockerlåda. Nothing to do there, even though I could have spent some time trying to resurrect what was left over of the plants I had there, considering that they were mainly herbs.

So, I have now refreshed the "collection" planting something new and experimenting with some news.
We have now a plant of chilli (hopefully more spice than the ones planted last year), a physalis (I wonder how this will turn out), rosemary and sage coming from my parents vegetable garden.

The stones are an attempt to see if Romeo will let those poor herbs be in peace :-)

Pasta with asparagus and squash

This is a really nice "spring" pasta that doesn't take too long to be prepared and that gives some satisfaction also when served to guests.

Ingredients (for 4 people):

• 400 gr green asparagus
• 1 onion
• 3 spoons of olive oil
• 100 gr of bacon (in cubes or in small slices)
• grated parmesan
• About 400 gr of pasta
• salt & pepper
• A medium size squash

Dice the asparagus, leaving the tops untouched and put them aside, after having washed them and peeled the bottom from the hardest parts.

Dice also the squash into small cubes, after washing it and having removed the ends.

Finely chop the onion.

In a pan, warm the olive oil and slightly brown the onion.

Raise the temperature and cook the asparagus for few minutes.

Then, add the squash as well, sink the temperature a little after few minutes and season it with salt and pepper. I usually then cover it with a lid and lower the temperature so that the vegetables cook a bit faster (about 10-15 minutes)

In the meanwhile, in another pan, brown the bacon (without oil). I like to have it a bit crunchy, so I let it cook until I reach that consistency.

When the vegetables are ready (both asparagus and squash should be tender) add the bacon to them.

Mix well and see if you need to season it more.
It is now time to cook the pasta, when it is ready and drained add it to the vegetables and let it slightly fry  all together.
Serve it and add the grated parmesan on top!

The arrival of Isabella

It didn't take too long for Isabella to realize which day she was supposed to come. Everything did start according to plan, but then took a little bit too much time, so at the end, she arrived with one day of delay.

Now, it is time to adjust and learn about each other and of course, also wear all those pretty clothes we bought and got :)

As symbol for our little daughter, I got this wonderful jewel from Mattias. It does shine :)

A sunny Saturday

This weekend has been really sunny and we were afraid that all the Swedes would have decided to do as us: take the car and go in some nice place near the sea. It seems though that, for once, despite the sun shining in the sky and not clouds on the horizon, they had realized that it was not that warm yet.
So, when we reached Skanör, which is in a small peninsula on the most southern part of Sweden, we were glad we had our winter clothes on, but we were sad because the wind didn't allow us to take long walks.

We had as main target to go and eat at Skanörs Fiskrögeri, which is a nice restaurant fish-oriented with a small shop.
We noticed that, once again, the menu had been changed from the other two occasions we had come there and that was nice, because at least one doesn't need to always eat the same things, although good!

We ended up trying something new, but also taking something we knew already pretty well.

We first tried Kalixlöjrom. I think it is a special, unique caviar that can be found in just few places in the world, and I think that the fish from which the eggs come from is called vendace (lavarello in italian).

We split the portion and that was not that big, but we understood why after doing some quick research on the Iphone. Nevertheless, it was all worthy because the taste was great and the roe was like melting in one's mouth. They served it with some potato-cake which tasted great and some cream, making the combination really tempting.

The main dish was a straightforward choice for Mattias, who fell for the classical mix while I attempted to eat whiting, which however had not be caught that day. I got something else similar, closed to the family of the cod, whose name I didn't fully catch (bleke, blake, bleik...don't ask me).

Here there is what Mattias took. Some herrings and sauces on the left, potatoes and Västerbotten cheese in the middle, smoked shrimps on the bottom (I am crazy about them), smoked makerell and salmon (I think) on the right with a bit of fish cake on the extreme right and smoked blue clams on top.

I really enjoyed my dish! It had black salsify and spinaches, which tasted really great. The fish was perfectly cooked and had a nice crunchyness and saltness. Finally, the scallops were a really nice addition to the whole dish, they were fresh and vibrant (as somebody would say ;D) and not chewy at all and the click of sauce on top was not destroying the harmony of the plate. Maybe maybe, even my parents would have liked this dish since it didn't have too many sauces and the fish was definitely dominating the dish.

We decided to skip the dessert since we had heard of an ice cream place nearby (which delivers ice cream to the restaurant) and it took a while to leave the restaurant, since the payment procedure was a bit slow (zzZzZz), however, also this lunch confirmed that this place has great food!!!
We went to the fish shop just in front of the restaurant, but we were not impressed by what they had and there were too many people to consider buying anything and we decided to skip a walk near the sea since the wind was a cold pain!

We went to the ice cream place, Da Aldo, but we were a bit disappointed, probably because we had ice expectations and we had been spoiled with other ice cream places in Lund and Malmö.
The ice cream was ok, but not fantastic, it was a bit too ice and not so much taste. But the worse was how the waiter (probably a young guy working over the weekend to get some money) put the ice cream over the cone or in the cup. Pico and Romeo could have done better! (Result: I didn't even have to take the cone in my hands that some piece just fell off on the floor...great).
But at least, we enjoyed sitting outside in the sun (which was too warm for me) and observe the behaviour of the people around us (they seemed to know all each other).

Hope we can soon repeat a little trip like this again!

Spring released

The temperature has finally raised and some ray of sun has started to show up. This means that it is time to take care of the plants and see what has survived the winter (especially this long and very cold one). I was actually not very positive about certain plants, since I managed to kill my beautiful pelargonium that survived until the middle of November, but you never know what will come up!

This is what survived of my pelargonium. We will see if it will manage to come up again. The strange thing is that the plant it was coming had a different leaf type.

I don't know yet the name of this (I should investigate) but this plant has been resurrected in the past years after a Pico's operation. Now it is blooming wildly!

The St. Paulia is blooming again!!!!!! 

Kalanchoes is the plant for which I should open a shop. I don't know how many small plants I could create from mine! They grow very fast and I manage to make some blooming very much also. This is an example!

This has been a bad year for my orchids. Of five I had, 3 and half survived. This is the one that is in the best shape and I treat all of them in the same way. I think it is a lot the position and the vase type.

My hortensia has survived yet another year and it is coming up again already!

I have saved some hyacint from Christmas and plant them back and I have cleaned up the asters from last autumn and found out their roots were very fine and some small plants are coming up again!

This year I have started to plant some cat grass. I hope Romeo and Pico will like it :) I haven't yet plant herbs or new plants for us. I should buy something in these days, but the greyness of the sky is not that inviting for stay out in the balcony and freeze to death while planting.

And this is the first year one of the clivia is blooming. Really beautiful flowers!

From a disappointment, to a little success

Unfortunately, the item we purchased from internet as support for our carrycot was not what we expected. It arrived after 2 weeks and yes, we could have survived with that if the item would have been working. However, it was really instable after Mattias spent a whole evening attempting to mount it and furthermore, the carrycot didn't fit as we wished in it! That is because we were mislead by the information on the website: min and max dimensions! That was not stating which were the minimum or maximum dimensions for the carrycot that would fit there, but the size of the smallest and widest part of the carrycot. Of course, we could have been maybe do some fix to make it work, but since it was instable in itself (due to some strange way the construction was build) we have asked to get a refund from the website where we purchased the item. We are still dealing with that, since it seems that, despite the refund policy written on their website, they are trying to push us to get some replacement for the current item.

Nevertheless, we decided to not care any longer about the price of such items in Sweden and instead go to a nearby shop (Barnliv) with the carrycot and take our chances. Well, we were definitely successful this time!
When we saw the support with thought it would have been too small and we were just crazy thinking it would fit there, but then we tried and it was working like a charm.

Here the result:

Sunday brioche

Living in Sweden and being in need of a proper Italian breakfast?
Here there is a recipe that could satisfy the ones searching for a "Saccottino".

Ingredients:

• 470 gr of flour
• 100 gr of soft butter
• 120 ml of milk
• 2 eggs
• 100 gr of sugar
• 25 gr of yeast
• A bit of salt

To fill and decorate:

• Jam, marmelade, Nutella, chocolate drops or whatever you like (I used just jam and Nutella)
• Pearl sugar

Melt the yeast in a bit of lukewarm milk

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and add the yeast. 

Work the mix with a fork (or a spoon) and then work it with the hands, until one gets a smooth and homogeneous dough.

Cover it and let it yeast in a lukewarm place for about 1 hour and half. 

Then, take a little ball of dough at the time and flatten it with a rolling pin obtaining a rectangular shape about 0,5 cm high. 

Spread the jam or whatever you want to use on the surface and roll the rectangle.

Put the brioche on a baking tin covered with oven paper and then brush them with some of the milk and spread on the surface the pearl sugar.

Put it in the oven at 180° for about half an hour or when they are golden.