Baby animals!!!

So the big excitement around here lately is that a baby bunny is coming to live with us!

I picked her out a few weeks ago but have to wait until she's eight weeks old, and weaned (around the 22nd) to bring her home. It's so so hard to wait! I've always wanted a pet rabbit of my own so I'm really excited to be getting one.

She's a mini lop so her ears will eventually flop over, although I've heard it sometimes happens that one ear flops over and the other doesn't, which would be so unbelievably adorable!

Names currently under consideration: Tailsie, Hoppy, Trixie and Cricket.

Majorna

The sun was finally shining today! We've been in Gothenburg almost three weeks and this is only the second or third time I've seen the sun.

It was also Friday. Hurray! Fridays are the best, even when you're on vacation.

We walked around in the Majorna neighbourhood, a nice area, pretty quiet, with cool second-hand shops and neighbourhood bars. Majorna is what I think cities must have been like in the 70s.

 With neat small shops like this greengrocers. The sign says, Eggs, Potatoes, Vegetables. What more can you need! They also sell pickled herring. So Swedish.

One of the best record shops I've ever been in is in Majorna, it's called Majorna Skivhallen. They had sooooo many albums I was dying over, including an original pressing of Wanda Jackson's first record! I was swooning over this James Bond record. For one thing, I love any "music to do something by" album, and for another I love James Bond and the music from the movies is actually great, unlike a lot of those Music for whatever albums. I didn't buy it though, I only had 20 crowns on me today. Bummer. I need to start moonlighting and earmark all the extra cash for record shopping.

 In Majorna you can also find tiny hot dog stands (famous ones, this one was in a Julkalender (Christmas tv program) with Robert Gustafsson) and camera stores that have been around forever, to judge by the signage.

Tire pumping station. That shade of blue is really the colour of Gothenburg. It's on all the streetcars, among other things.

 These were in the window of a closed antique shop (it was after five pm). Cool, eh?

 We bought a deck of cards from a bookshop and  played gin rummy on a patio while drinking beer. I love fresh cards! Real dockside feeling to this place, with the awnings and cane chairs.

 "Order sandwich cake here." I love smörgåstårta!!!

And that's Majorna! I just have my fingers crossed that the sun will shine tomorrow too so I can finally take my new bikini into the water!

Amaranth, and garden eating

I harvested a handful of massive amaranth leaves for my dinner.

I mentioned before that I had never heard of amaranth until I began growing it this summer. Now I love it. It grows so quickly, doesn't mind the heat, has been bug-proof (knock on wood) and despite being eaten down to the quick by rabbits last month, the plants are now all about 30-50cm high and covered with big leaves. If you garden, grow amaranth! I have only a few plants, in a tiny area, but they are so vigorous that I seem to be getting a large harvest anyway. You can eat the young leaves like lettuce, which is great now, at high summer, when lettuce is a bit fussy about high temperatures, and cook the large leaves like spinach, good for when the spinach is not yet ready (at least mine isn't).

Amaranth is popular in all around the world. I found and made this Indian curry recipe (the first one on the page). Try it with spinach if you don't have amaranth. Yum yum yum.

Of course curry doesn't exactly 'go' with the insalata calabrese I served alongside it. That's just how it is with garden cookery. Sometimes you simply have a basket of rapidly ripening tomatoes, a basil plant that's longing to be eaten, a small jungle of amaranth needing to be picked, and a serious craving for buffalo mozzarella all in one day. Of course there are surely ways to work all these things into a single cohesive meal, but I don't have anything against a mismatched salad and main course. After all, it's just me I have to please!

lounge

I took the life-affirming decision this morning that even a girl with a thesis to write can have a lazy Sunday now and then. I'm not sure I can call this a conscious decision. When I saw that I'd slept in almost two hours past my dutifully set alarm, I took it as a sign and kept my pyjamas on, lounged around and listened to Radio Deluxe with John Pizarelli, the jazz guitarist, and Jessica Molaskey.

I sewed these a while ago from a vintage pattern. They have this beautiful yoke and little puffy bloomers.

Yesterday I dried my white laundry in the sun. There's no feeling like sleeping in fresh pyjamas in a freshly-aired bed. These ones make me feel like I fell asleep in the 60s and just woke up, which is a sensation I like to cultivate whenever possible.

My motto

♥

cocktail hour

I was looking around on the internet to find a nice drink recipe, something refreshing to beat this heat, and I have thus learned about a great drink, the Country Club Cooler. Don't let the posh name put you off, it's really good: simple and refreshing. Just 2 oz of dry vermouth, a teaspoon of grenadine, ice, and a twist each of lemon and orange zest. Top off with club soda. The drink is pink and fizzy, and it's a great way to put that bottle of vermouth that you keep around for martinis to use. Personally I hate having things around that see no action, although you wouldn't know it to look at my house.

Incidentally, sorry for the lack of posts around here lately. I have been having some technology issues (card reader refusing to read for a while) compounded with time management issues. Everything should get back on track after today though.

Happy sipping!

♥ Dawn

it's saturday!

♥ Dawn

breakfast

Yoghurt with brown sugar and strawberries from the garden, toast with gooseberry jam, water and tea.

Those strawberries were so lovely but I kind of wish I had saved them for tomorrow, so I could have a proper strawberries-and-cream breakfast-with-Wimbledon Saturday morning! Perhaps some more will ripen by Sunday.

♥ Dawn

översättning: min frukost: yoghurt med hemodlade jordgubbar, te och rostat bröd med krusbärssylt.

mums and dads

On Saturday I went with my dad to a barbecue at our family friend's house. Their daughter was turning thirty. She is just a few years older than me and when I was around 11 we spent the summers together, as she babysat me quite often. We haven't seen each other since I started high school. It was so exciting to meet again, and to find out that she grew up into the nicest person I think I've ever met. 

Our families have known each other for longer than anything. In fact, my parents met because our mums were co-workers, and our dads good friends. So I have to credit them with the fact that I am alive, really! It's quite an odd and nice feeling to be able to trace your existence back to such a specific occurence. I learned this weekend that my mum used to get in trouble for going to work in bare feet.  Hippie mum, she makes me proud.

Fast food at the beach

During the week I had to run errands in Burlington and so I stopped at Hutch's for lunch. It's a kind-of-famous super popular place on the shore of the lake, with a good fifties feeling and masses of french fries and hamburgers and ice cream and booths with small jukeboxes that you can listen to while you eat.

 (If you want to follow me on Instagram I'm dawnanthony)