stones, songs, sitting

Friday during the day we had a delivery of stones:



These will be very useful in building the earth cellar, we are thinking of turning a couple of the long ones into benches, and we are also considering them for the edges of the terraced garden that doesn't exist yet on the hill down to the field. We actually ordered them a few weeks ago. We had seen some old bricks for sale cheap on blocket, so we decided to buy them to fill in the back sides of the large stone rings we are using as interior cabinets in the earth cellar. But when we went there to pick them up they also had lots of cobblestones, so we bought some to finish our walkway, and they had several pallets of large stones, which we also bought, but couldn't take with us in the car. The seller said he could deliver, but it was necessary to wait for delivery till the dirt road we live upon had dried a bit more--in the spring it isn't permitted to drive vehicles on it which weigh more than 4 tons. I am looking forward to building with the stones now that they are here. That will have to wait till after we get his dad's tractor though--I don't care to try to move any of those stones without one. His dad still needs the tractor to do this year's wood splitting and to grade the (private) dirt road out to his house once more before we get the use of it for the summer.

Then in the evening we hosted the Aurora band at our house again. I continue to love playing music and singing with others; it is so fun! Since one of the girls in the band can't eat gluten I baked a gluten free apple crumble, using butter, oats, spices, and a hint of sugar for the topping. The kids ate all but one serving, so I guess it turned out well.

Late last night, when I needed lord_kjar to do something on my computer for me, he tried to sit down in my chair and in the process managed to bump into the improvised keyboard stand I had attached to my computer chair months ago, and the attachment point had... issues. Therefore this evening, after we got back from visiting his parent's house, where two of his brothers and their families were also visiting, we built a new, improved keyboard stand for my computer. It is ever so much nicer than the improvised stand had been. It used to be that it was necessary to put a pillow on my lap under the keyboard to keep it from wobbling too much, but now it is nice and stable as is, and I can type as fast as I want without it moving. This makes me happy:



And in other news, the moraharpa should arrive soon--we paid the import tax on Friday, so they should deliver it on Monday...

reading

Yesterday, while at lord_kjar's parent's house I read three kids books in Swedish. This brought the total number of books read so far this year to 13. While that number still looks pitifully small to me, since, back when I was young and had more free time, I used to read paperback novels in 1 to 4 days, it still makes me smile, and is clear evidence that my reading speed in Swedish has picked up, since I read only 13 books total last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. Yes, that is correct, since moving to Sweden, when I set the rule "no fiction in English" (other than when reading out loud to a friend), I have only been managing to read 13 books a year. This is in marked contrast with the 60 books a year I read during the first half of my PhD (and I have no records of how much I read before that, but I know it was more, because I had more free time and fewer hobbies in those days). Given that this year isn't yet half over, I am optimistic that I will double the number of books read (and don't intend to make very many of them books which are short enough I can read them in an afternoon and still be social with the people I am visiting).

( full list of books read so far this year, with comments )

ice cream with skyr

I was hungry for ice cream today for the first time in a long time (the home made strawberry ice cream we made last September wasn't finished till February, and I have had no ice cream since then). I was also in the mood to experiment, just a little, and did a variant on my favourite oat-almond ice cream. This time, since we had just come back from the store, where we had purchased a container of skyr (the Icelandic variety of yoghurt, which is higher in protein and lower in fat), I decided to use that. I was running low on various types of almonds, so the amounts given are how much I had left of each. I was also feeling low energy and couldn't be bothered separating eggs, so this one has no egg yolks, and I opted to use the toasted oat flour, rather than grinding oats like I usually do. Note that these days I use a hand-crank grater to grate my almonds, rather than chopping them small in a food processor like I used to do--I use a lot of this, so I grate up a fair bit at a time and then when it is used up grate some more.

Skyr, toasted oat and almond ice cream

2 T melted butter
1/3 cup grated almonds
1/3 cup almond flakes
1 tablespoon almond slivers
2 tablespoons toasted oat flour
1/2 dl sugar
400 grams skyr
250 ml milk

Mix them together, one at a time, in that order, stirring well after each addition. Add only a little of the milk at a time and stir it well in before adding more. Freeze in an ice cream maker.

This batch thickened up fairly quickly; it made enough to fill nine silicon muffin cups, and there was a 1 to 2 mm thick layer frozen to the bottom of the ice cream maker, which I ate straight away. Yum! Only a hint of sweetness, a hint of sour from the skyr, a hint of the toasted oat flavour, and enough almond flavour and crunch to keep me happy.