lemon balm

I wrote this last summer and never posted it! Now I don't have any lemon balm in my garden this summer, but after reading this I'm going to plant some! It's so tasty and it smells wonderful.

I brought home a lemon balm plant a few weeks ago, because I wanted to bake some cookies from a recipe that called for it.  When I bought it it was a tiny, tiny little plant, so small that I was almost afraid to pick from it.  The nursery tag said it would thrive best in shady, moist places, and apparently that was true because it grew lightning-fast into a big, healthy bush.

Lemon balm is not an herb I have used a lot before, so I've been trying to think up new uses for it. Should you find yourself with a similar glut, here are some tips!

1. The lemon balm lemonade I wrote about here.  Also good in iced tea.

2. In fruit salads or green salads.

3. Pasta with lemon, parmesan and lemon balm.

4. Vanilla ice cream with fruit, fresh or frozen, and lemon balm is heavenly! 

5. As a hot tea - pour boiled water over lightly bruised leaves and allow to steep.

Or just enjoy it in the garden. Brush your hands over the plant as you walk by for an incredible, summery lemon scent.

Lemon balm works almost anywhere you'd use lemon or mint. In my experience it can be a bit hard to find at the grocery store, but if you've got a shady spot, a pot from the garden centre will grow like a weed!

finished cordial

Last week I posted about making cordial. After letting it draw for several days, it was finally ready to strain and tap into bottles. Here's the result! It's so summery and tasty!

Gunnebo Slott

Time for another day trip! I could get used to this vacation business, I tell you. Today's destination was Gunnebo Slott in Mölndal just 8 or 10km south of Gothenburg. The manor house was build in the 1800s by a British merchant family, so it has that English country manor vibe and extensive gardens. I'll spare you my many photographs of the incredible kitchen gardens (seriously they grow every herb I've ever heard of, and there's huge beds of asparagus, gooseberry bushes, enormous currants ... I was in heaven!), but here's a quick look around:

Those gardens!

The castle/manor house. We didn't go inside.

Varieties of basil in a cold frame.

Seriously, these gardens!

After touring the grounds (and playing in the kids' playground) we had a little picnic on the lawn. Here's a few menu ideas and a recipe for your next picnic!

Sandwich Fillings:

- Baguettes with sliced tomatoes, sliced hard boiled eggs and brie are one of my favourites. Douse the bread in vinaigrette first and season liberally with salt, pepper and thyme. Wrap well in waxed paper and the bread will be tender and moist by the time you eat.
-Creamed fillings with chopped pickles, egg, relish etc are tasty and long-lasting.

Make sure to take a big bottle of water or some other cold drink along with your themos of coffee! 

Currant Cake for a picnic

Recipe adapted from Bonniers Cookbook, 1960

3 egg whites

3 egg yolks

4 dl flour

2 dl sugar

200 g butter

150 g currants

Preheat oven to 195C. 

Cream the butter and sugar so it is light and porous. Blend or cream in the egg yolks one at a time. Mix the currents with a little of the flour and blend them in, then add the rest of the flour. Beat the egg whites to a froth and carefully fold them into the batter. Pour/scrape the batter into a buttered and bread-crumbed baking pan and bake for about 1 hour at 195 degrees. 

Yum!

Beautiful retro Nossebro!

Today we took a day trip with our friend Anders to Nossebro, about an hour (8 Swedish miles) northeast of Gothenburg.

It's a really small village that has saved a lot of shops, cafes and other stuff from the 50s and 60s unchanged, and it's really cool! I love small towns, the more vintage the better! There were tons of signs pointing to flea markets (loppis in Swedish) on the way there, but since it was raining and I'm tending towards broke these days we didn't stop anywhere. Rats!

The highlight of the trip was definitely the apartment, "Andra våningen," a three room and kitchen apartment which two women have decorated like it was the 60s. It's so amazing! Every cupboard and drawer is full of vintage surprises, from a handkerchief still in the packet to a soft-core porno mag in the telephone table drawer (not sure what kind of husband would stash that in there!). The apartment has a kitchen with a walk-in pantry, main bathroom, guest bathroom, kids' bedroom and teenager's bedroom, and a living room-dining room with a sewing corner. The living room couch pulls out into a bed for the parents to sleep in, which was apparently quite common.

 

I took soooo many pictures but I was so excited to try and get a pic of EVERYTHING (decorating ideas, you know!) that I don't think they turned out very well. Not a lot of thought went into composition on my end! Anyway here are a few:

 

 

 The teenager's painfully cool room.

 Kids' bunk beds.

Bathroom

 Beside the hall telephone, a little box for you to put coins in and pay for long distance. It says something like, "talking is so easy to do, saving is the right thing!"






String shelves and a well-stocked pantry. 

 Pretty much exactly how every kitchen sink in Sweden still looks.

That little dish thing on the side table is actually a recessed fake-pond thing. The 60s were a creative time...

 
Love this! Small bread boards with bread knives for each place - great idea! 

 Afterwards we walked around town. The rain held up so we were able to look around. Nossebro also boasts the world's largest pair of functioning scissors! There are a lot of cute cafes and restaurants in town, but we got off to a late start this morning, and most places close at 1pm on Saturday, so after we finished at the apartment they had all closed. Instead we went to a cute little hot dog kiosk where I had a most delicious burger and fries. I've been craving one! This place was so nice, just one table and counter inside and picnic tables outside. Not sure how old it's been there but it felt vintage.

Before it closed, we popped into the store "Gamla ting" (Old Things), a second-hand furniture and knick-knacks type store. I bought a really small little Scouts almanac from 1931 for 5 crowns. Normally I don't go for '30s things, but this is in perfect condition and has the most beautiful handwriting inside - I want to try to copy it! Plus I like Scouting things. There are other second-hand stores in town and it would have been cool to have more time to look around, but I have a feeling they charge a little extra since Nossebro is known as the "retro town."

There's also an old theatre (built 1919) that's been beautifully restored. It shows a picture every night at 19:30 and on weekends they sometimes air the Met's opera broadcasts. I could really get along alright living in Nossebro! Another cool place is an old paint store that still has the same kind of assortment they had in the '60s, that closed before we had a chance to go in, unfortunately. One thing I think Nossebro is missing is an old "retro" bookstore! Maybe I should move out there and start one? The first Saturday in June they have a big classic car rally and every Wednesday there's a market in the town square.

A mile or so outside town we pulled over for a roadside fika (coffee and pastry break). So 50s! I had baked a currant cake for Joakim's name day yesterday so we had that plus hot coffee from the thermos in these cute little cups, standing around outside the car with the radio cranked up. The sun even came out for our little picnic!

Midsummer pole outside the church where we stopped.

All in all a great day in Nossebro, if you're in the area check it out!

flädersaft - elderflower cordial

This morning we went out into the yard to pick flowers from the elderflower tree and make cordial! If you don't know what that is, it's a sort of juice syrup that you blend with water to make a drink. It lasts a long time on the shelf or in the fridge and is really popular here in Sweden, you can make it (or buy it made from) strawberries, raspberries, oranges, sloanberries, rhubarb ... well pretty much anything!

Anyhoo, although I think they have elderflower cordial in England too, to me it seems like the most Swedish thing ever! And people have been making it for generations! We used a recipe from recepten.nu but they are all more or less the same, if you have a swedish cookbook there will definitely be a recipe in there! Here's a look at the steps involved:

First collect your flower clusters, we used this pretty basket that's usually used for mushroom picking. Most recipes call for 30-40 flower clusters per 2 litres of water.

When you bring your flowers inside you can lay them out on a white tea towel and let them sit for fifteen minutes or so, this gives any little bugs that have been hanging out inside the blossoms time and opportunity to climb out. Then rinse them well!

Meanwhile you can cook up 2 litres of water with 2 kg of sugar (it feels so wild to empty a whole 2kg bag of sugar into the pot! That's what you need to preserve the saft and make it tasty and syrupy, though).

Pretty!

Cut the flower clusters off the stems into a big metal bowl or bucket and add the lemons.

Pour over the hot sugar-water. Then the hard part - you have to let it sit for three days before you can sieve the liquid and enjoy your cordial!

The perfect summer drink!

 The little flowers go everywhere - afterward you'll have a lot of floral decoration in your kitchen!

a day in town

I'm in Gothenburg for a few weeks and today we took the streetcar into town. It's so exciting to go shopping in a big city sometimes! I got the latest issue of the magazines Min Boudoir and Vintage Rock n Roll, which I have never ever seen in Uppsala! I'm so excited to read them, I'm going to go to bed right after I write this and start enjoying them!

I also got to go shopping for the sewing group I lead back in Uppsala, we get a little bit of money from an organization called Folkuniversitet and I get to spend it on things to help make the group better! Today I found a book about several types of handiwork (weaving, knitting, embroidery, etc.) at the second hand shop along with bags of different coloured wool, and I picked up a book of crochet patterns for small, cute animals and some basic sewing notions to fill out our stocks. It's so fun to shop for the group and try to find the best, most fun and useful things!

After that shopping spree we partook of an afternoon beer at a place called 7:ans Ölhall (beer hall), it's a real authentic old beer hall in the centre of town that's been there forever. It actually opened in 1900. The prices are not shocking to a small-towner like me and the atmosphere is great, check it out if you're ever in Gothenburg!

Speaking of, one of the cool things about this town is that certain corners of some neighbourhoods seem to have been left in a time warp. Especially one called Majorna. I'm going to go for a walk there one day soon and have lunch, I'll take pictures of all the cool vintage-y stuff I find!

And now for some reading!

a vintage day

I have a strange hobby, or maybe you can call it a pastime. When I'm just sitting around and my mind starts to wander, I sometimes try to imagine what my day would be like if I were living it in the '50s or '60s. Why? Well, I don't know, part of it is just my vintage obsession I suppose. But for me that goes beyond say wearing vintage clothes while living a completely modern life, you know? I want to try to live (some aspects) of my life the way it would have been back then.

For another thing, I read a great novel a few years ago about a man who learns the secret of time travel - surround yourself with sights and experiences that you would see the year you want to go to. Live in that mindset for a couple weeks and one day you'll wake up, look outside - and really be there! (I forget the name of the book but it's by Jack Finney, check it out!). That thought always sticks in my mind - hmm how could I make today look just like a day from the 50s, if I so desired!

Usually I don't "score" very high on getting a real 50/60s type day! Most days start off with checking my phone and doodling around on it - a habit I'd like to break! Take today - woke up and used my very modern phone. I made a casserole for lunch and went grocery shopping by car - would have been better to walk, no?  I also played a computer game, and here I am blogging, with Pinterest and Etsy open in the background! Other days seem a little more 60s-esque, like those days when I ride my bike to work and come home and listen to records or something.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really try to "score" myself on if I am living a real authentic vintage lifestyle or something like that, oh no! It's just a fun way to occupy myself if I can't fall asleep or am at work with nothing much to do, you know, a thought game. On the other hand, it's also a useful way to think about what aspects of my life and the way I fill my time I enjoy, and which habits I'd rather change!