so nice to be at home on a weekend!
Mar. 16th, 2013 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaWe had no where else we had to be this weekend, so I celebrated by turning off the dawn light when I went to bed last night, and slept in till nearly 09:00. After breakfast ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lord_kjar and I played briefly on the sledding hill (since it is still, happily, winter here--it was -19 C) before getting distracted talking about how we want to change things in the yard when we borrow his dad's tractor this summer. (The biggie is that the low spot in the middle of the walking path has got to go--I don't want to have to go through puddles to get to the house any time it is wet out).
After lunch we ran a couple of errands. Whilst at the Tip Shop we found a good old fashioned potato masher of the kind mom had when I was a kid, but one can't find in stores today. I have been wanting one, and regretting losing mom's in a move some unknown number of years ago, so I was delighted to find it. Of course this meant that we had to go buy some potatoes, since we were out at home.
I am pleased to report that the masher works every bit as well as I expected it to (and WAY better than the dreadful bent wire thing he had when I moved in), and since we had some left over roasted garlic to add to them the mashed potatoes were really good (and so was the barley steamed broccoli I made to go with them). I curled up with a book while eating, and then kept reading till I finished the book (Astrid Lindgren's "Bröderna Lejonhjärta"). It was about damn time, too--I first started reading that one 437 days ago! However, for a long time it was the paperback that lived in my backpack in case I ever needed something to read while I was out, and it kept happening that I was too busy to even think of pulling it out, so that is mostly 437 days of NOT reading it. Since it is a kid's book I suspect that had it been in English I could have finished it in an afternoon, and even in Swedish if I had actually been READING it, I could certainly have finished it within a month.
Still, that makes three books finished this year, and it is only the third month. I should be able to keep up that rate for the rest of the year, even if I don't have time to read like I used to.
After finishing the book he and I put on our skis and took a loop through the forest and out onto the water, where we were rewarded with a truly lovely sunset--the kind where the sky overhead is rich dark blue, the trees on the far side of the lake are a rich, dark green, the snow on the water is brilliant white, and the sky over the trees is rich reds, pinks, and purples.
And the day is still reasonably young, so I think I will go do some early yoga, and then probably gather the supplies we will need for the wax tablet class next weekend, since I did something vaguely resembling a handout for it last night.
Oh--I nearly forgot the yummy cookies! While waiting for the potatoes to cook I mixed up some lovely cookies. I am just guessing at the amounts, of course, but I want to take notes so that I can do it again some time:
Almond flake cookies
1 cup soft butter (I used half salted, half not)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
2 cups ground almonds
1 cup oats
1/2 cup corn starch
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup thin almond slices
more thin almond slices
Mix butter and sugar, add egg. Add ground almonds. Add corn starch, vanilla sugar and baking powder. add oats and almond slices. Roll into balls (I measure them to be one tablespoon each, because it is easier for my food log to know their size) and press more almond flakes on top. Bake at 150 C with the oven fan on (probably hotter if your oven has no fan) to golden brown. They came out both soft and crisp at the same time, and really yummy, too. They also are gluten free (if one uses gluten free oats, which I did), so one can feed them to people with the one food allergy that I REALLY don't want.
lord_kjar and I played briefly on the sledding hill (since it is still, happily, winter here--it was -19 C) before getting distracted talking about how we want to change things in the yard when we borrow his dad's tractor this summer. (The biggie is that the low spot in the middle of the walking path has got to go--I don't want to have to go through puddles to get to the house any time it is wet out).After lunch we ran a couple of errands. Whilst at the Tip Shop we found a good old fashioned potato masher of the kind mom had when I was a kid, but one can't find in stores today. I have been wanting one, and regretting losing mom's in a move some unknown number of years ago, so I was delighted to find it. Of course this meant that we had to go buy some potatoes, since we were out at home.
I am pleased to report that the masher works every bit as well as I expected it to (and WAY better than the dreadful bent wire thing he had when I moved in), and since we had some left over roasted garlic to add to them the mashed potatoes were really good (and so was the barley steamed broccoli I made to go with them). I curled up with a book while eating, and then kept reading till I finished the book (Astrid Lindgren's "Bröderna Lejonhjärta"). It was about damn time, too--I first started reading that one 437 days ago! However, for a long time it was the paperback that lived in my backpack in case I ever needed something to read while I was out, and it kept happening that I was too busy to even think of pulling it out, so that is mostly 437 days of NOT reading it. Since it is a kid's book I suspect that had it been in English I could have finished it in an afternoon, and even in Swedish if I had actually been READING it, I could certainly have finished it within a month.
Still, that makes three books finished this year, and it is only the third month. I should be able to keep up that rate for the rest of the year, even if I don't have time to read like I used to.
After finishing the book he and I put on our skis and took a loop through the forest and out onto the water, where we were rewarded with a truly lovely sunset--the kind where the sky overhead is rich dark blue, the trees on the far side of the lake are a rich, dark green, the snow on the water is brilliant white, and the sky over the trees is rich reds, pinks, and purples.
And the day is still reasonably young, so I think I will go do some early yoga, and then probably gather the supplies we will need for the wax tablet class next weekend, since I did something vaguely resembling a handout for it last night.
Oh--I nearly forgot the yummy cookies! While waiting for the potatoes to cook I mixed up some lovely cookies. I am just guessing at the amounts, of course, but I want to take notes so that I can do it again some time:
Almond flake cookies
1 cup soft butter (I used half salted, half not)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
2 cups ground almonds
1 cup oats
1/2 cup corn starch
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup thin almond slices
more thin almond slices
Mix butter and sugar, add egg. Add ground almonds. Add corn starch, vanilla sugar and baking powder. add oats and almond slices. Roll into balls (I measure them to be one tablespoon each, because it is easier for my food log to know their size) and press more almond flakes on top. Bake at 150 C with the oven fan on (probably hotter if your oven has no fan) to golden brown. They came out both soft and crisp at the same time, and really yummy, too. They also are gluten free (if one uses gluten free oats, which I did), so one can feed them to people with the one food allergy that I REALLY don't want.