Candles production

Thanks to the massive amount of candles leftovers, that my friend Johanna gave me at the end of last winter, I have, once more, managed to start the production of candles, according to my rulebook (which, by the way, is the most popular post I've ever written).

Please, if you have candles leftovers, be very welcome to bring them over :)

Steam

Last Saturday we had the opportunity to organize a game event, by collecting a bunch of nerds and paying a board game.
This time we tried something new and the selected game was called Steam.
Trains and Germany and strategy. This is not the first time I see this combination in a board game.

The game mechanics were quite simple, after one round and a bit of concentration, it was possible to play quite smoothly, although, as we are tricky players, questions are often asked for testing the rules and the game-owner rules knowledge, of course.

Copyright Mattias Pettersson ©

We played the game following the newbie sets of game rules, and despite that, the game was quite exciting and it was not easy to predict who would win it (although, the player that was clearly leading won anyway).

The game is structured according to 7-8 rounds. During each turn a player needs to select an ability for that turn (for example, he will be the first player during next turn), then it will be time to build a railroad path, move the goods over the railroad, collect the money or get another loan.
What is quite fascinating is that there is a small economic system connected to the execution of each step. Usually, in a way or in another, one gets granted a certain amount of money. Here, instead, one has to take the risk of getting a loan and balance it up.

I am not surprised that there are several variants of the game (and the game itself is a variation of another game, Age of Steams, it seems) since the platform is quite simple and of course, the setting can variate from Germany to wherever.

I am looking forward to test the game with the advance rule set. Maybe instead of letting someone else win, I will show off my strategical skills? :-)

Physalis

Last year, I started to cultivate some things in our balcony. This year, we were with my parents in a plants shop, and I decided to try something new. My father suggested his passion: tomatoes. However, I thought that that requires too much work and in my balcony it would get too many insects/diseases/whatever. When I saw a small physalis plant, I got hooked into it: it luckily stated that it was "easy to handle" and that ended up in our purchase.

The plant turned out not that hard to handle as it promised. I planted it in my big vase in May and, since then, it has grown rapidly to become a real plant (we can't open the window anymore...).

I was expecting it to have flowers in the beginning of the summer and fruits around August/September. However, nothing happened until very late in August. When searching information about it, I read that the first year the plant doesn't produce any fruit. I was disappointed but then mentally prepared for this (and I didn't know that the plant should survive the winter) when I started to observe the first flowers. They are quite small and yellow and, unfortunately, being the plant not in the ideal environment, I lost many flowers on the go...

The Physalis requires surely sun, but not too much constant warmth. Or if it is warm, it wants also a lot of water. Many times, at the end of the day, it looked like it had been "cooked", but with a bit of water, the day after it looked very fine again. Without the sun, the leaves look pale and boring: right now, there is not so much sun anymore and, in fact, they are having a not so fancy appearance.

It needs to be planted in a big vase - if not directly on the ground (I am not sure it would be ok with the climate here, though), since the roots become quite impressive. Luckily, in the vase where I planted it I managed to squeeze just a little plant of chilly, so there has been, it seems, enough space for both of them.

It is now November and there are some "objects" that clearly look like potential fruits. I wonder if inside there there is really something, or it is just an illusion.Will we eat them for Christmas??? :)

Where to make a baby eat (or at least try to)...

Being Isabella around 6 months, we thought it was big time to buy her an high chair where she could sit and eat. Or at least, thinking of eating at least, since that is not the easiest step ever...(and different astral conjunctions haven't helped us at all, so far).

Here in Sweden, THE high chair is the Tripp Trapp - Stokke, which had almost seduced us as well. However, we resisted such expensive temptation, since we thought (clearly) that it was quite expensive (did I say already that it was expensive?) and it didn't have one of the most important features (in our little world): the brick. Yeah. We know that for a *little* sum you can get a plastic fancy tray to put on your table. But our table is too fancy for such a fancy item and we decided to save that little sum of money (not so little, if you think that that is just a piece of plastic).

We almost fell for Italian design. But we betrayed my motherland for the simple reason that the whole chair was a big, clumsy, piece of extremely-washable plastic. Probably practical, it could be also folded so it would take relatively less space. However, each of those chairs looked enormous and I was seeing already my agile husband tripping two hundred times on the extended legs.
Chicco, and its Polly 2 in 1 (Mattias had hard time to understand what was the 2 in 1 applied concept) was one of the possible candidates. However, it didn't convince me at all (and yes, it was me taking control over the operation).

Then. I decided to at least search for the high chair that my sister-in-law purchased. She said "it is like the Stokke, but with the brick". Thank God, despite being a mother and breastfeeding, I still have some glimmer of a working memory. The brand was Svan and incredibly enough, it is Swedish.
We look at the main chair, but I saw again Mattias stumbling around or me, lifting the chair up and moving it with the grace of an elephant, in order to make Isabella see her mother in her obsessive-compulsive cleaning mode.
However, exploring the website, we found the perfect chair for us: High Chair Colorline Anka, that is duck-shaped. Or at least, resembling a duck.

Having wonderful experiences of purchasing "blindly" from the internet, we really wanted to see real-life this chair. Unfortunately, it was not possible.
After some extra thinking (a couple of seconds), I decided that it was worthy a try. The chair was relatively cheap, the shipping cost included in the price, it was in wood as we wanted, washable as the obsessive-cleaning-freak behavior required and with the holy brick.

What can I say? The chair arrived, the package was lighter than I thought, once opened there was very little to mount (a strange Swedish product, if I may say so...) and it is very very compact. Isabella seems liking it very much and, even though it is not as fancy as the (in our opinion) overrated Tripp Trapp (yeah, it is overrated also when bought through Blocket and repainted!), it suits all our extremely peculiar wishes.
I am actually astonished that Swedish people are not up to a Swedish product and do prefer a Norwegian one?! What happened to the world???? :)

Char cartouche

I must say that the Google translation of the name of this dish sounds incredibly fancy. I had no idea how to say this before today! Anyway, the dish consists simply of cooking a fish from the trout family, in the oven, sealed in aluminum foil. The specific fish here is what I would have called simply salmerino, in italian, and röding, in swedish.

The dish in itself doesn't require too much preparation, but is quite tasty and has a "built-int" nice presentation.
The trick consists in buying the right fish, that is, it has to be fresh enough or the result will be miserable.

Ingredients:

• a fish of the desired size, headless and cleaned
• a bunch of rosemary
• a bunch of fennel seeds
• half a lemon
• a spoon of olive oil
• black pepper & salt

After cleaning and drying very well the fish, I put it on the aluminum foil. I cover it with the spoon of olive oil and I start to season it with fennel, rosemary, pepper and salt, putting them both in the inside of the fish as well as the outside.
I squeeze the lemon juice on the fish and I slice a couple of slices from the half-lemon. The slices can be put both on the fish and inside the fish, I think inside the fish gives more taste.

After the fish is properly seasoned, I close carefully the aluminum foil and I put it  in an oven pan, in the warm oven, previously heated to 180 degrees. I let it cook for 20 minutes, then I switch the oven settings to grill and let the fish grill for 10 more minutes.

Once the fish is ready I take it out of the oven and open the foil.

It is now time to clean the fish. Since it is cooked, it is quite easy to remove both the bones and the skin, although with this type of fish it is almost impossible to have it bone-free.
Once that is done, the fish is ready to serve!

M.E.A.T

It seems it has become more and more trendy in Sweden to propose restaurants with focus on meat. The latest entry is M.E.A.T., in Lund, which is supposedly a grill. Recently opened in the center of Lund, managed by owners who have already their hands in other restaurants in Lund, it is a quite interesting alternative in a almost static lundensis culinary offer. We have been there just for lunch, so I can't really judge the standard menu. What came in our eyes was that biggest part of one of the rooms is occupied by a big bar and I really can't understand what for. If the focus is food, why should there be such a big bar? And why reducing the space for more tables for a bar? Well, choices, I would say! We took two different dishes, I took an open sandwich with a lovely confit pork and some red cabbage. The dish was simply amazing and I just wanted to eat more. Pity, for that price, I think, there should have been two open sandwiches! In fact, I was quite hungry after that... Same same, but different (dish), for Mattias. He took the "today's special" which was quite good, but still, too little (just a bunch of potatoes?) food for too much price. Hungry as we were, we even tried the (again) overpriced desserts. A mini (but extremely mini) cupcake, whose base was extremely compact, although the flavor was very nice and the apple pie, which was very tasty, but very apple pie. A summary of the experience? Nice with a new place, nice with a steakhouse in Lund, however, totally overpriced even though the quality is good. Maybe there should be more balance? We should probably also try the dinner menu!

Chili peppers

It is now two years that I manage to cultivate a plant of chili peppers in our balcony. Last year it was supposed to be cayenne pepper, but it was not that strong. This year instead I have a variety that produces a smaller fruit, which turns after a while red and that eventually is a bit spicy.

I planted the little plant around May and it started to bloom in July. Already after few weeks, watering the plant regularly and exposing it to some sun and the warm temperature of our balcony, some fruits were popping out. If I count nowadays I can see around twenty chilies.

Last year the plant was affected by red mite. This year, I manage to not get the insect on this plant by spraying the leaves with some water.
That happens since there is not so much hair circulation in our balcony, due to the glass all around it.

I think we will manage to eat this harvest in reasonable time, by preserving the chilies in the fridge. However, it is a good strategy to dry them out. I have tried to do that in the past, but the environment here is simply too humid for that. A good technique is then to put them in the oven for 10 minutes at 180 degrees.