A quiet day in Tromsø

Since I had stayed up all night on Thursday before catching the early morning train on Friday I was a bit tired by the time I finally got to my room in Tromsø, and so I slept for 9.5 hours last night.

This morning I took it easy and did only the abs section of my phone ap exercise set (about 17 minutes of mixed exercises), and set out for a walk just before 10:00. My first priority was to find the museum for tomorrow's talk. It is right where Google said it would be, down the hill at the bottom poi t of the island, 22 minutes from my room. Sadly, it turns out that it doesn't open till noon on Saturdays, so I didn't get a chance to check out the inside.

Instead, since I was already at pretty much the shore level, I opted to walk around towards the city center, on the eastern shore of the island, keeping my eye out for grocery stores along the way.

I found one about 3/4 of the way to the part of town where the bus had dropped me off yesterday, and stopped in. Since My room has a two-burner stove, but no oven, I thought about buying some flour, eggs, and yoghurt and making some stove top pancakes. However, when I found the eggs (which one can buy by the half-dozen here), I noticed that they had little blocks of fresh yeast, and I remembered madbaker's recent post about a medieval pasta recipe involving yeast dough, and I decided this would be a fine time to experiment with it.

I choose the smallest bag of flour they had--a blend of wheat, oats, and rye that sounded good, and picked up some zucchini, mixed salad greens, snow peas, and tiny tomatoes to go with it.

Then I walked the rest of the way around the hill and back up the hill to my room by the same path as yesterday. Once there I introduced a bit of the flour to the yeast and some hot water, but, since the room didn't come with a mixing bowl, I put them into the plastic water jug. Then I put some of the yoghurt into one of the empty plastic containers I had packed road food in, and set it into a container of hot water to warm up a bit.

After a bit, when the yeast was quite active and the yoghurt no longer cold, I mixed the bread sponge with three of the eggs and the warmed yoghurt and added flour. Perhaps I used too many eggs/too much yoghurt, since it wound up using the full bag of flour, and could have taken more.

By this time I realised that I had failed to buy butter, so I popped the dough back into the jug, covered it with a damp paper towel, and went to the closest grocery store (opposite direction from this morning's walk). They had the really good Norwegian butter made from soured cream that introduced me to a couple of years back, so I bought two blocks to take home with me.

By the time I was back to the room the dough had risen several cm higher than the top of the jug, so I put some water on to boil, and asked the owner if they had a colander I could borrow. He gave me a bowl, too, so I didn't need to use the jug for the cooked pasta.

The recipe madbaker shared said to roll the dough out as thin as possible and cut it into wide strips. However, after experimenting with a small ball of dough and a drinking glass, I decided to save that steo for a time when I have access to a rolling pin and a decent sized counter.

Instead I cut chunks of dough straight into the boiling water with a spoon. Since this room has only a small and a medium pot I cooked the noodles in batches, draining the water into the second pot and putting it back on the stove for the next batch.

I mixed each batch with some of the butter, and they were so good just like that that I ate quite a bit while still cooking them. After I got the last of them cooked I chopped the zucchini and quickly cooked that and the peas in the hot water, then mixed the pasta, hot veg, salad greens, and tomatoes.

I am quite happy with the result, even thoughI had no spices available, but there sure is a lot of it. I know what I will be eating tomorrow and on the train ride home Monday.

Of course, by the time I was done cooking, eating, and putting away the leftovers and clean dishes, it was too late to try the museum again, so I will just have to go early (they open at 11:00 on Sundays) tomorrow.

Tonight's entertainment included finally doing some mending on my winter coat. Then I went out for a walk to test it. How much nicer it is now that the top two buttons stay shut again!

Then I did the "extra bodyweight" section of my phone app exercises, followed by a shower and yoga. Therefore, I will probably go to sleep fairly promptly after posting this.

In the morning I will pack up, head to the museum, where the talks are scheduled for 13:00, and, depending on when they are done, take either the 16:00 or the 19:20 bus to Narvik, so that I can catch Monday morning's train home.

I hear it has been snowing at home, and lord_kjar is in Göteborg helping C pack for her move north, so I may have a fair bit of shoveling to do when I get home.