yay, houseguests!
Dec. 31st, 2017 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaThursday afternoon I spent in the kitchen--starting around the same time Stephanie, Jean-Loup, Emily, and Gilbert left Oulu I went to the kitchen and started playing. I took the left over spaghetti squash and green sauce and used it to fill bread pockets. Yum!
Then, since I had about half as much bread dough left as I had started with, I decided to invent another filling for a very different type of bread pocket suitable to take on adventures.
Caramel-Apple-Walnut Buttons
1 jar (720 g) apple sauce
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 egg
1 t cinnamon
1 T rosehip powder
1 T brown sugar
2 T powdered milk
1/4 cup grated brown cheese (Gudbrandsdalsost
Stir all of the above together. Roll out 1/4 cup of bread dough at a time into a thin round, set middle of round into a muffin cup, fill with 1/3 cup of filling, lift the dough edges up, gather and pinch it shut over the center of the cup, squeezing the middle of the dough into a button. Brush with melted butter, let rise 30 minutes, bake (175 C) till lightly golden brown, buttering once more at about half-baked, and again when they come out of the oven.
I was really happy with how these came out, nice and caramely and rich and, while sweet, not too sweet. David thought the filling was a bit too gooey and suggests that I should have added some almond meal to thicken it up. Perhaps that, or perhaps more walnuts. I also think that more of the brown cheese would have been good, but I had used the last of what I had on hand.
When I was done with all of the above baking, which I intended to have as stuff ready to take with us on the next day's adventure, it was time to start the Swedish oven pancake for dinner. My guests arrived very soon after the food was ready, and after a quick tour of the house we sat down to dinner. It was such a delight to have them here. I haven't seen Stephanie and family since my last trip to Scotland, in 2012. Emily is now 8 years old, and I seriously doubt that she remembers my last visit there, and certainly she hadn't yet developed much of a personality that I remember. Now, however, we hit it off--she is a kid who loves hugs as much as I do, and when she found out that it is always ok to give me a hug she was delighted.
Thursday evening was just visiting and catching up. Friday morning we got up early so that we could go to the SCA fighter practice, where Gilbert participated in the Fencing, but Jean-Loup opted to just relax, since he isn't into long sword and hadn't brought his equipment with him. Emily, Stephanie, and I did a little acroyoga and played "add-a-move" on the climbing wall, and visited with the other non-combatants. It had snowed during the night, so I spent half an hour before we left the house shoveling a bit of the upper part of the driveway, knowing that while the snow was light and fluffy then, it was supposed to warm up later, and therefore it might get heavier.
About half way through practice Ranghild arrived and reported that the snow was coming down heavier and that the top possible speed on the highway had only been 80 km/hr due to people driving slowly through the snow. Therefore Gilbert decided to stop fencing a bit early and get a shower, so that we would have extra time for the drive to Storforsen, so that we would get there before sunset. The rapids, as always, were beautiful, and Emily loved playing in the snow. Stephanie found a pair of slippers in the gift shop she thought worth taking home, and Emily fell in love with a little felted rabbit that followed her home, and we did, in fact, manage to finish that adventure before sunset.
Then it was home and an early dinner before Gilbert returned to Finland. Emily and I had time to play a game while her parents relaxed, and then David and Caroline, who had returned from southern Sweden that day, came over to visit for a bit.
Saturday morning JL slept in while we girls walked to the bottom of our property to look for moose tracks (one can see deer tracks right up by the house this winter), and we even saw some deer at a distance. The snow at the bottom part of the property is kinda deep, so we wound up crawling instead of walking, as it is easier going that way. I really ought to invest in a number of sets of snowshoes one of these years. Of course, once we got to the water on the other side of the property, and could walk on the snow-machine tracks there it was much easier going. However, stopping to play and for photos of tracks meant that the loop down and the home by the road took more than an hour (on my own I can do it in 25 minutes). This mean that we didn't have time for further adventures elsewhere that day, since JL wanted to be back in Finland in the early evening, so we just had lunch, packed a food bag and their luggage, and got on the road. I drove them to Kemi, where they boarded the train to Oulu. I had once considered going with them the full way to Oulu, but didn't get any replies from folk there who wanted me to visit, so instead I opted to do just half the drive, since train tickets cost about the same as the petrol would have.
Then, since I had about half as much bread dough left as I had started with, I decided to invent another filling for a very different type of bread pocket suitable to take on adventures.
Caramel-Apple-Walnut Buttons
1 jar (720 g) apple sauce
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 egg
1 t cinnamon
1 T rosehip powder
1 T brown sugar
2 T powdered milk
1/4 cup grated brown cheese (Gudbrandsdalsost
Stir all of the above together. Roll out 1/4 cup of bread dough at a time into a thin round, set middle of round into a muffin cup, fill with 1/3 cup of filling, lift the dough edges up, gather and pinch it shut over the center of the cup, squeezing the middle of the dough into a button. Brush with melted butter, let rise 30 minutes, bake (175 C) till lightly golden brown, buttering once more at about half-baked, and again when they come out of the oven.
I was really happy with how these came out, nice and caramely and rich and, while sweet, not too sweet. David thought the filling was a bit too gooey and suggests that I should have added some almond meal to thicken it up. Perhaps that, or perhaps more walnuts. I also think that more of the brown cheese would have been good, but I had used the last of what I had on hand.
When I was done with all of the above baking, which I intended to have as stuff ready to take with us on the next day's adventure, it was time to start the Swedish oven pancake for dinner. My guests arrived very soon after the food was ready, and after a quick tour of the house we sat down to dinner. It was such a delight to have them here. I haven't seen Stephanie and family since my last trip to Scotland, in 2012. Emily is now 8 years old, and I seriously doubt that she remembers my last visit there, and certainly she hadn't yet developed much of a personality that I remember. Now, however, we hit it off--she is a kid who loves hugs as much as I do, and when she found out that it is always ok to give me a hug she was delighted.
Thursday evening was just visiting and catching up. Friday morning we got up early so that we could go to the SCA fighter practice, where Gilbert participated in the Fencing, but Jean-Loup opted to just relax, since he isn't into long sword and hadn't brought his equipment with him. Emily, Stephanie, and I did a little acroyoga and played "add-a-move" on the climbing wall, and visited with the other non-combatants. It had snowed during the night, so I spent half an hour before we left the house shoveling a bit of the upper part of the driveway, knowing that while the snow was light and fluffy then, it was supposed to warm up later, and therefore it might get heavier.
About half way through practice Ranghild arrived and reported that the snow was coming down heavier and that the top possible speed on the highway had only been 80 km/hr due to people driving slowly through the snow. Therefore Gilbert decided to stop fencing a bit early and get a shower, so that we would have extra time for the drive to Storforsen, so that we would get there before sunset. The rapids, as always, were beautiful, and Emily loved playing in the snow. Stephanie found a pair of slippers in the gift shop she thought worth taking home, and Emily fell in love with a little felted rabbit that followed her home, and we did, in fact, manage to finish that adventure before sunset.
Then it was home and an early dinner before Gilbert returned to Finland. Emily and I had time to play a game while her parents relaxed, and then David and Caroline, who had returned from southern Sweden that day, came over to visit for a bit.
Saturday morning JL slept in while we girls walked to the bottom of our property to look for moose tracks (one can see deer tracks right up by the house this winter), and we even saw some deer at a distance. The snow at the bottom part of the property is kinda deep, so we wound up crawling instead of walking, as it is easier going that way. I really ought to invest in a number of sets of snowshoes one of these years. Of course, once we got to the water on the other side of the property, and could walk on the snow-machine tracks there it was much easier going. However, stopping to play and for photos of tracks meant that the loop down and the home by the road took more than an hour (on my own I can do it in 25 minutes). This mean that we didn't have time for further adventures elsewhere that day, since JL wanted to be back in Finland in the early evening, so we just had lunch, packed a food bag and their luggage, and got on the road. I drove them to Kemi, where they boarded the train to Oulu. I had once considered going with them the full way to Oulu, but didn't get any replies from folk there who wanted me to visit, so instead I opted to do just half the drive, since train tickets cost about the same as the petrol would have.
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Date: 2017-12-31 10:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-01 04:42 pm (UTC)