Wednesday 25 January 2012
time machine
If I could go back and tell Teenage Dawn that someday there would be a website called Etsy where all the vintage sewing patterns and ephemera - stockings, bullet bras, girdles - she was always searching for would be available in one easy place, she would - well, who cares, I have shopping to do!
Sunday 15 January 2012
Blueberry pie
I was feeling unaccomplished yesterday, so just before I went to bed I made a blueberry pie. So easy, so good!
Make a pie crust using your favourite recipe, and let it chill in the fridge for 15 minutes. Then smoosh half the dough over the bottom of a greased pie pan to make a roughly flat, even crust. Bake for 8 minutes at 350. Take it out and spread about 1.5 cups frozen blueberries over the top. Sprinkle half a cup of sugar over the berries. You could also grate some lemon zest over, which is a very yummy, but not necessary, addition. Take the rest of the dough and smoosh little flat pieces of it and lay these over the blueberries. Bake for another 20-30 minutes at 350. You'll know it's done when the top crust turns golden. Of course you could also be fancy about it and roll the dough out and everything like a proper pie, but this way is so easy and so good. You end up with something between a pie and a cake. Really nice with coffee and vanilla sauce, or ice cream.
Of course it is winter, not blueberry season, and these are not frozen. They are shipped (sigh) from Peru (sigh). My dad bought them for me because he knows I like blueberries, so what could I say. I wanted to give in to my tendency to lecture - especially my tendency to lecture on my favourite topics of local, seasonal, organic. But it was a thoughtful thing for him to do, so I swallowed my lecture and baked a pie.
Make a pie crust using your favourite recipe, and let it chill in the fridge for 15 minutes. Then smoosh half the dough over the bottom of a greased pie pan to make a roughly flat, even crust. Bake for 8 minutes at 350. Take it out and spread about 1.5 cups frozen blueberries over the top. Sprinkle half a cup of sugar over the berries. You could also grate some lemon zest over, which is a very yummy, but not necessary, addition. Take the rest of the dough and smoosh little flat pieces of it and lay these over the blueberries. Bake for another 20-30 minutes at 350. You'll know it's done when the top crust turns golden. Of course you could also be fancy about it and roll the dough out and everything like a proper pie, but this way is so easy and so good. You end up with something between a pie and a cake. Really nice with coffee and vanilla sauce, or ice cream.
Friday 13 January 2012
Wednesday 11 January 2012
Every January first when I was a small child, I would get upset at the turning of the calender, and cry about how much I liked LAST YEAR, that it was so much nicer than this year can ever be, how can it be a new year already, etc. Now I look back and wonder how a very small child of four or five or six could be so perturbed by time's quick passage. I seem to have the innate sensibilities of the elderly when it comes to time. It is, nevertheless, reassuring to observe that my nostalgic impulses have always been present.
I still feel the same at the turn of the year, but I've come to like New Year's anyway. It's not the parties - December 31st is the worst night to go out. Everyone is out drunk and clumsy on the streets and it's just not much fun. Instead I prefer to stay more or less sober, and enjoy the feeling of January 1st. It really does feel special and clean and new on that day. It's become a bit of a tradition for me to go for a New Year's walk, revel in my lack of hangover, and maybe come up with some resolutions.
This year suited me perfectly. My boyfriend and I went to a party hosted by a friend who does not drink, so it was fun to stick to saft and Pommac and stay sober in solidarity with our host. The next day we watched the New Year's concert from Vienna with a champagne breakfast served by my boyfriend's parents. In the afternoon we watched Fanny and Alexander. (What a feeling to watch it without subtitles!)
As for resolutions, I made quite a few. I was inspired by this, Woody Guthrie's excellent list of resolutions from 1942. Some of them center on increasing my environmental responsibility: Eat vegetarian at least two times a week (which I generally do anyway, but it feels good to have it as a commitment); refrain from buying new clothes - only second-hand or self-sewn; use what you have - no buying new books, fabric, etc until I use what I have at home. Others are fun: to make time to see my friends in Toronto more often and to learn the banjo. The one I'm having the worst trouble with so far is number 3: Do the dishes! I really am the worst about leaving them to the side and letting someone else pick up after me. My favourite is number 9: raise chickens. This is presenting a bit of a logistics challenge as I will likely be away from home for three months over the summer, but I do so want my own hens. My dad had his own chickens when he lived in the countryside during the 70s and I think now, when I'm living at home, is the perfect time for him to show me how to keep hens.
I think I'm going to have more luck with these resolutions than I did last year, when I resolved never to ever do anything I will ever come to regret. What about you, dear imaginary readers? Have you made some resolutions?
I still feel the same at the turn of the year, but I've come to like New Year's anyway. It's not the parties - December 31st is the worst night to go out. Everyone is out drunk and clumsy on the streets and it's just not much fun. Instead I prefer to stay more or less sober, and enjoy the feeling of January 1st. It really does feel special and clean and new on that day. It's become a bit of a tradition for me to go for a New Year's walk, revel in my lack of hangover, and maybe come up with some resolutions.
This year suited me perfectly. My boyfriend and I went to a party hosted by a friend who does not drink, so it was fun to stick to saft and Pommac and stay sober in solidarity with our host. The next day we watched the New Year's concert from Vienna with a champagne breakfast served by my boyfriend's parents. In the afternoon we watched Fanny and Alexander. (What a feeling to watch it without subtitles!)
As for resolutions, I made quite a few. I was inspired by this, Woody Guthrie's excellent list of resolutions from 1942. Some of them center on increasing my environmental responsibility: Eat vegetarian at least two times a week (which I generally do anyway, but it feels good to have it as a commitment); refrain from buying new clothes - only second-hand or self-sewn; use what you have - no buying new books, fabric, etc until I use what I have at home. Others are fun: to make time to see my friends in Toronto more often and to learn the banjo. The one I'm having the worst trouble with so far is number 3: Do the dishes! I really am the worst about leaving them to the side and letting someone else pick up after me. My favourite is number 9: raise chickens. This is presenting a bit of a logistics challenge as I will likely be away from home for three months over the summer, but I do so want my own hens. My dad had his own chickens when he lived in the countryside during the 70s and I think now, when I'm living at home, is the perfect time for him to show me how to keep hens.
I think I'm going to have more luck with these resolutions than I did last year, when I resolved never to ever do anything I will ever come to regret. What about you, dear imaginary readers? Have you made some resolutions?
Tuesday 10 January 2012
Christmas is never long enough for me!
The Swedish Christmas season doesn't officially end until twenty days after Christmas, on Tjugondedag Knut, and since I didn't celebrate at home I've been taking advantage of this the last couple of days. Staying home, with candles lit and Christmas music, and making a gingerbread house. I followed some instructions from Lantliv magazine to the letter, so it's not a very exciting project to blog about. Normally I'm not much for following directions, but in this case I was so taken with the pictures in the mag, and especially with the beautiful blue windows (which you make with crushed throat tablets) that I copied everything. I'm fairly happy with the results, but I wish I had rolled the dough better. I just don't have enough patience for pepparkakor. Once I get the dough fairly thin I just want to hurry up and cut it. I never want to spend the necessary amount of time to roll it very thin. I need a helper! I think I'll try this house again when I'm with my boyfriend again.
I want to sew some carrier bags today but time is getting away from me! I had to have my laptop repaired, and I've just got it back with a new hard drive in it. I've been quite distracted by the project of putting everything back together the way I like it - you know, installing programs and Firefox extensions, tweaking settings, etc. I use my computer quite a bit and it won't feel like 'mine' until I put everything back to rights.
Krav?
Some things seem to be much easier in Canada than in Sweden. Finding a new apartment, for example. No endless queues and trips to housing offices here, it's just a matter of browsing Craigslist and sending a few emails. On the other hand, some things are much easier in Sweden - like finding organic, local food at the grocery store.
I went grocery shopping here for the first time in a month yesterday and was struck by how difficult it is to find local, organic foods. The difference is especially striking when I've just come back from Sweden, where I can easily go shopping and come home with a (reusable!) bag full of only organic/sustainable-certified items, from milk to soap to coffee to toilet paper. I spent a very frustrating hour wandering around the huge, huge local grocery store, finally coming to the conclusion that I would only find organic foods in the few aisles that were marked with green signs as containing "health" products. I went home without ham because it was impossible to determine where the deli meats had come from - none of them had their provenance marked, and no organic options were in sight. Despite living in one of the most productive growing regions of the country, I was scarcely able to find produce that hadn't been shipped from the US, Mexico, or farther away. Although apples are currently in season, for example, I found about 12 varieties of imported apples, and had to search to find the five local varieties, none of which were organic. Why is it necessary to build such an enormous, resource-gobbling store and fill it with 20 kinds of apples? Isn't it enough to have a smaller, more manageable store that sells, for example, only the local apples? That doesn't make it an impossible task to hunt down a bag of organic lentils? I was struck by how miserable my fellow shoppers looked, but after twenty minutes in the store I understood why.
I hate to turn into one of those people who are forever going around moaning about how much better things are in Europe. But sometimes it really is true. We have a long, long way to go here when it comes to environmental awareness, and making organic, local, sustainable food into a popular choice.
I went grocery shopping here for the first time in a month yesterday and was struck by how difficult it is to find local, organic foods. The difference is especially striking when I've just come back from Sweden, where I can easily go shopping and come home with a (reusable!) bag full of only organic/sustainable-certified items, from milk to soap to coffee to toilet paper. I spent a very frustrating hour wandering around the huge, huge local grocery store, finally coming to the conclusion that I would only find organic foods in the few aisles that were marked with green signs as containing "health" products. I went home without ham because it was impossible to determine where the deli meats had come from - none of them had their provenance marked, and no organic options were in sight. Despite living in one of the most productive growing regions of the country, I was scarcely able to find produce that hadn't been shipped from the US, Mexico, or farther away. Although apples are currently in season, for example, I found about 12 varieties of imported apples, and had to search to find the five local varieties, none of which were organic. Why is it necessary to build such an enormous, resource-gobbling store and fill it with 20 kinds of apples? Isn't it enough to have a smaller, more manageable store that sells, for example, only the local apples? That doesn't make it an impossible task to hunt down a bag of organic lentils? I was struck by how miserable my fellow shoppers looked, but after twenty minutes in the store I understood why.
I hate to turn into one of those people who are forever going around moaning about how much better things are in Europe. But sometimes it really is true. We have a long, long way to go here when it comes to environmental awareness, and making organic, local, sustainable food into a popular choice.
Sunday 8 January 2012
God jul, gott nytt år, god fortsättning!
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| önskas Dawn + Joakim + Katt |
I haven't forgotten about you! I've been thinking about you almost every day! But I have just gotten back from a month away, without a laptop, on a wonderful holiday. It was a bit impossible to make time from all the fun to borrow a computer and blog. But I will begin regularly, starting tomorrow!
xoxo
Dawn
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