It´s all Denmarks fault

You must think I am crazy or something, a hiatus again. But this time I have a better excuse than just lacking inspiration; just a few weeks ago A came home from work (a certain Swedish telecom company) and said that they wanted him to work in Denmark for a while. Then we heard almost nothing for a week, and then it happened all at once. The Danes wanted them (there are two more of his colleagues) to start in late November, so could we just leave in five days? Ummm - yes...?
So a lot of quick packing and preparing and looking up the best way to get to Denmark with a 8 months old baby - last Sunday we were on our way in the car. We drove to Varberg on the west coast and the baby slept almost the whole time(!) and then after meeting a dear friend and spending the night at a very nice hotel we took the ferry over to Grenå, Jutland, Denmark on Monday morning and then drove down to Aarhus where D and I now is spending our time in best possible ways until daddy comes home from work. Our kitchen is tiny with almost no kitchen utensils and food prices are insane so the most exciting thing I have made the last week is potato soup (I decided after much pondering to buy a bag of onions so I could add one to it - it was really too expensive. I mean. Onions. Yellow onions! And they are so expensive!) Nothing to blog about, in other words!

Now don´t think I am complaining too much, or that I don´t like Denmark because I do! I like the city Aarhus and the nice people and the language (oh yeah, really) and I might even blog occasionally - but well, I am not sure. We go back to Sweden for Christmas and then I hope to get going again.

Japanese surprises from San Fransisco!

It was such a long time since I participated in a BBM exchange, almost two years! And I almost missed this one too - if not the lovely Stephanie had let me in at the last minute...what a stroke of luck!
Anyway, on Mondays I am out with the other mums taking a walk with our little ones and when I got back to the house there was a message from Federal Express that they had been there with no luck but they would try again "automatically" three times and also they left a warrant to post on the door that I allowed them to leave the package on the doorstep if I wasn´t at home. So far so good. On Tuesdays we go to a baby singsong thing where the kids have fun and get tired and the mums can have coffee afterwards, very nice. And I got home to - nothing. OK so maybe on Wednesday. No. So I called them, and it turned out that to get that second "automatic" delivery you would have to call them. So this Thursday, finally!!! I got my longed-for package from Bonnie of Kumquat connection who very thoughtfully had put a large box toegther for me, filled with her own favourites. And mine, as it turned out! "Japanese I wrote in the title for this - it wasn´t all Japanese but lots of it. And I happen to looooove Japanese food, and I happen to not buy Japanese things very often because all the shops are in Stockholm and it is quite expensive and you don´t know how to use everything (Thanks to my friend Maiko I know some at least, after a guided tour at JFK, Japan Food and Kitchen a couple of years ago. Ocha-zuke, ocha-zuke!).

Well, Bonnie also has got me addicted to Trader Joe´s "Everything" Pretzels which probably are impossible to get hold of here - very inconvenient. I will have to get a wishlist here on the blog like Anne does, in hope for nice people over there to send me a new bag now and then. Sigh.

Enough said: here are the full contents of my package!

• Large bags of Pretzels like I told you, incredibly tasty!
• Box of Bonnie´s favourite crackers, Ak Mak´s - similar to Swedish hardbread and also very nice, my man has already finished most of it
• Bag of candy corn, seasonal this time of year. Bonnie said people tend to love or hate it, she loves it and I do too, this bag exists no more
• Small bar of chocolate with bacon, intriguing! Bonnie said that this probably was the craziest thing in the box but actually I had already heard of it. I am a big fan of chocolate with salt so also this one exists no more
• Jar of grilled bell peppers from Trader Joe´s, looking very tasty. Grilled peppers are a staple also at my house so I really appreciated this! I love to use it for example in a feta cheese spread.
• Udon noodles, which I have wanted to try for a very long time but never got round to, but with Bonnie´s guidance they exist no more. I made a delicious soup on that very evening!
• Noodle soup base with that fantastic Japanese umami taste that makes you want more and more - I hope to find something similar when this bottle is finished
• Japanese chili spice, also for the soup. A little smoky, a little sweet and very hot!
• Rice spice mix with wasabi and seaweed and other things, to sprinkle over rice
• And finally that delicious tea I always drink at sushi restaurants but have not found - it is hard to know which is which at a Japanese shop with no Swedish or English instructions! Bonnie included neat little unfilled teabags, like a small pillowcase to fold in a little of the tea and soak in hot water.

Thank you so much for all this Bonnie - and above all the small tips you gave on how to use everything. Now I feel inspired to use also the soba noodles I have in the cupboard, and I will certainly approach the shelves at JFK next time I am in Stockholm. A special thank you also to Stephanie, who arranged this event and very kindly let me participate although I was one day late...

My first bread pudding

Bread pudding seems to be quite common to serve in for example UK but here in Sweden you seldom hear of it. Since I had some bread going stale today and planned on the not so very filling dish baked potato with prawns for dinner I decided that it was time to try it - all recipes I have seen sounds so good. But now when I was in a hurry I couldn´t find a single one of course, except one in Nigella´s Feast which just this time seemed a little wrong with lots of eggs and stuff. None of my basic Swedish cookbooks could provide me with what I wanted and my last hope was the very old cookbook from 1925 I bought at a flea market last year.
Bingo! Apparently even Swedes made bread puddings back then. I altered the recipe just a little, soaking the raisins in a little rhum inspired by Nigella and replacing kidney suet (something I can say with perfect confidence that I will never ever buy. Eww.) with some butter. We had it with vanilla custard and I knew from the first bite that I will so make this again. Stale Lucia buns would be very nice for this I think! The result was perfect: warm and comforting, soft with crunch on top and a subtle taste from the raisins. A real carbohydrate schock too, I could feel my eylids getting heavier....and heavier...

There you see what can happen when you for once open a cookbook from 1925!

Bread pudding
Serves 4

Stale bread, I used about 3-4 rolls
100 ml of milk
about 100 ml raisins soaked in a little rhum for about 10 minutes
25 grams cold butter, diced
3 tbsp sugar
zest from one orange, the original recipe called for candied peel which would be nice
1 egg
225 ml milk
pinch of nutmeg

Peel off the bread crust with a sharp knife and dice the bread. Soak in a little milk for a couple of minutes (the original recipe recommended 30 minutes and then to stir the bread to a mush - I wanted a little crust and decided to keep it diced!) When the bread has absorbed the milk add in the raisins, sugar, butter. orange peel and nutmeg. Stir carefully and then add in the milk and the egg. Mix again and pour into a dish lined with melted butter and breadcrumbs. Bake in 180C for about 45 minutes and serve with custard.

A broken promise

No, I don´t mean that I promised to write more often and then didn´t because I told you I have so much to do with the baby and all. I mean my foodie resolutions for 2008, which I just imported from 2007 when I didn´t keep them either. Make my own pasta, take a fish class, wine dolmadas? Fat chance! Maybe possibly we will make sausages but I am not sure.
And the last one: "I will not feed my baby food from a jar unless it´s an emergency". Blah. I have changed the resolution to "I will not feed my baby food from a jar if I wouldn´t consider eating it myself" and everyone is happy at the moment. You see, I have found that the jars are sooo fantastic- even when I am not in an emergency. Especially the ones with porridge. Oh I love the porridge you just bring along to cafés and activities. And when you try to find out what the baby likes and not it is so much easier to open a jar of lasagna than making a whole lasagna with no salt and then maybe he doesn´t like it, or is allergic to tomatoes. I have come to terms with the jars, they will be part of our lives. But not the veg ones! Oh no. Not after trying broccoli!

You see, I had heard that babies like broccoli and wanted to try it but thought that maybe I could buy a jar the first time. I opened it, frowned at the terrible smell of it but heated it and stuck a spoonful of it in D´s mouth at which moment he just looked at me with a "You have got to be kidding" look at his face. I tried it and agreed with him. The contents went into the kitchen sink and I made broccoli for him from scratch which he didn´t like either but at least I don´t risk teaching my child that broccoli is brownish and tastes like a fart smells. Look at the picture and try to guess which is which!

Salmon with pink peppercorns and root veggies

I really do have enough cookbooks, but recently I treated myself to another one, anyway. Ha!
I got a gift card from someone and really wanted this: Saras kök, Sara´s kitchen, by Sara Begner. She was the chef of the Swedish TV show Toppform some years ago, and then she has had another TV show with the journalist Ann Söderlund about family food. I wasn´t too impressed by them, but her cookbook is nothing but excellent. Tempting recipes, nice photos, nicely written - it inspires me!
A and I have tried several of the recipes and some of them will show up on this blog - first out is this delicious and easy salmon, baked in the oven with three different kinds of onion, wine and my favourite; pink peppercorns. Serve it with just boiled new potatoes or try the root veg mash - although you have to use winter potatoes for that. I like recipes where you can serve each part on its own - the mash would be good with meat, the onions with rice served as a vegetarian dish, and the salmon with a cold sauce perhabs...

Salmon with pink peppercorns and root veggies
Serves 4
600 grams fillet of salmon
1 tbsp pink peppercorns
2 tsp flake salt
1 leek
1 red onion
1 yellow onion
200 ml white wine
100 ml cream
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sugar

Cut the salmon in four pieces and put them close together in an ovenproof dish. Crush the pink peppercorns and salt to a coarse powder and spread it over the salmon.Cut the leek in slices, the red onion in wedges and the yellow in rings (or as you wish). Mix it all and spread it around the fish.Pour wine, cream (use any fat content you are comfortable with, I used some cooking cream) and olive oil over the onion and sprinkle over the sugar. Bake in 175C for 20 minutes.

Root veg mash
800 grams potatoes
200 grams parsnips
200 grams celeriac
1 cube veggie stock
juice and finely grated zest from one lemon
1 tbsp olive oil
pinch of white pepper
1 "bunch" of dill - hmm. Maybe a good handful is enough? Parsley is good too

Peel and cut all the root veggies in pieces and boil them until soft, about 15 minutes. Drain.Melt the stock cube in 100 ml boiling water, pour in lemon juice, lemon zest and olive oil. Spice to taste with white pepper. Pour it over the soft root veg and mash it up coarsely.Chop the dill and stir it into the mash. Serve with salmon and enjoy.

Carrot coconut soup

Some things are just not photogenique. Like this soup, or most soups come to think of it. A fish soup can be nice to look at but not many more.
Anyway. One of my current favourites on my cookbook shelf (ahem, shelves more like) is Tillsammansmat, a great book published in close cooperation with the Swedish church. Tillsammans means together, and the book is meant as an inspiration for all who wants to take back the opportunity to meet around the table, share a meal together - instead of just watching TV and running around not caring for each other. A nice thought, I think!
I didn´t take a photo of this soup from the book but I recommend you all to try it anyway, it is well worth it! Very tasty, very easy to make and with ingredients you probably keep in the house most of the time (at least I like to have a tin or two of coconut milk at home). The recipe in the book is for 10 people so I have cut down on it, plus I don´t use more than one tin (usually about 200 ml) of coconut milk, for me it is enough. The recipe calls for 1500 ml for 10...

Carrot coconut soup
Serves 4-5
2 large yellow onions
about 12-15 carrots
500 ml water
1 regular tin of coconut milk
2-3 cubes of vegetable stock
salt and pepper
Peel and chop carrots and onions. Fry it until a little soft in a big pot and pour over boiling water, coconut milk and the stock. Boil until soft, it doesn´t take long, and then wizz it with a mixer or in a blender or something. Spice to taste with salt and pepper and garnish with some parsley.

Chicken dill casserole

I have written before about the very Swedish dish dillkött, a stew with a subtle sweet-sour taste and lots of dill. It is traditionally made from beef, but during my pregnancy I stumbled upon a recipe where you use chicken instead. The recipe is from the book "Mat för gravida och ammande", food for pregnancy and nursing, by Gunilla Lindeberg and Marie Löf.

Even though I like beef it just is a little easier to use chicken, not so much carving and trimming involved. Also, the mild meat is excellent to use in this stew and I have made it several times now...you try it too, wether you are pregnant or not!

Dill chicken
Serves 5-6

1 whole chicken, fresh or thawed
about 2000 ml water
2 tsp salt
5 whole white peppercorns
3 whole cloves
dill stalks
1 carrot in large pieces

Sauce
500 ml stock from the chicken
100 ml cream (or milk)
3 tbsp flour or 4 tbsp corn starch
100 ml fresh or frozen dill, finely chopped
1-2 tbsp vinegar or lemon juice
salt and pepper

Bring the water, spices, salt, dill stalks and carrot to the boil, put the chicken in and let it simmer for 40-45 minutes. Remove skin and bones and cut in nice pieces. Strain the stock and reduce to 500 ml, or take 500 ml and make it stronger with one of those very handy stock cubes. Whisk cream and flour together and stir in the stock. Let it boil for a few minutes until it thickens a little. Mix in the dill and spice to taste with the lemon juice or vinegar, salt and pepper.
Serve with boiled potatoes and some salad.

Always Estonia!

Back home again after almost a week in Estonia, as usual for us in summer. And as usual we have brought home some beer and salted cucumbers and lots of happy memories. The photo is from lovely Haapsalu, where you can see the men in my life walking towards The Wiigi Kohvik to have a light dinner. It was a lovely summer´s evening and we sat on the veranda having a salad of peaches and shrimps (me - it was a little too light but beautifully presented) and something with duck breast (my man - he liked it very much). The little man had some milk, so far he is more a gourmand than a gourmet.


Estonia is really special to me although I don´t have any family history there as A does. I like the nature, the sea, the beaches, the people, the food... And yes - I had the great pleasure of meeting Pille too!

Just salad...

A quick lopsided photo today: the kid is hungry! I was at my parent´s recently and went out to pick some things in the garden for dinner; when I came back in I noticed that it looked fantastic - just chives, salad, parsley and dill.

Summer is here!

P.S. Can you find the kitten?

Back again

I don´t know which time in order I say: "hello, remember me? I am back again, and this time I will really try to blog more often!" but it is my blog and I write when I want to. Or when I have the time, as is the case now when my life is changed rather profoundly by a very small person.

On March 10th I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, and we now spend the early summer days together in lots of lovely ways. Walking, eating, sleeping, changing nappy and then eating, sleeping etc. Life is sweet, simple and blissful with my little D. One of many many good things about him is that he lets me cook and bake almost as usual. Meanwhile he lies in his "gym" and play with the toys, or keep me company in the kitchen sitting in the baby sitter. My little sidekick.

On our way home from the hospital we bought some bread, but since then we have baked our own daily bread as a matter of fact. My man is rather absorbed by this bread-baking: keeps reading recipes and trying them, buys all kinds of flour and he also borrowed his parents large kitchen machine, I don´t know what it is called in English but you use it for kneading. They use it once a year, we use it once a week!

This is a very nice bread to make when you want a luxury breakfast or expects guests for lunch and want to greet them with the wonderful smell of fresh bread. The recipe is from Allt om mat, a well-known Swedish food magazine and an article on how to get going with your baking by the journalist Peter Streijffert. My man read the article over and over again and then tried this, and then some other breads. Thank you Peter!

Morning rolls
Makes 10

12 grams fresh yeast
50 ml cold water
1 tsp salt
100 ml graham flour, this is a wholemeal wheat flour
540 grams strong bread flour, "Vetemjöl special"

1. Crumble the yeast into a bowl, add some water and dissolve the yeast.
2. Add the rest of the water, salt, graham flour and the wheat and work the dough for a couple of minutes. It is supposed to be sticky: nothing to worry about!
3. Cover with cling film and put in the fridge over night
4. Warm the oven to 225 fan oven or 250 "ordinary" oven. Spoon out the dough on a baking sheet: 10 sticky lumps the size of tennis balls. Bake for 20 minutes in the middle of the oven. Let them cool on a rack.

The rolls have a lovely crust the first day, but then sadly they get a little boring so make sure to eat them all very quickly. Not a huge problem, really!

Poached pears with saffron, ginger and vanilla

For dessert when I had my girl´s lunch recently I decided to finally try poaching some pears, inspired by Pille who just had posted about ginger pears. Ginger pears are a real classic here in Sweden as well but I have never made it myself.

My recipe of choice this time was - surprise - one from my cooking guru Anna Bergenström. Here the ginger goes together with vanilla, saffron and spices in a delicious syrup! The recipe is easy and very practical, the pears can be made up to a week in advance! They can also be frozen in their syrup. Just make sure you try if the pears fit in the skillet before you start, and watch the pears carefully so they don´t get overcooked.

Ginger pears with saffron

Serves 6-8

6-8 nice, firm pears
500 ml water and 50 ml sugar
1/2 vanilla pod
about 2 tbsp fresh, peeled, chopped ginger (I think I used a little more)
a 5 cm piece of a cinnamon stick
0.5 grams of saffron, ground with a sugar lump in a mortar
(Then I get confused because the recipe mentions 1/3 lemon in slices but not where to put it! I just skipped it and it was fine)

Boil a syrup from the water, sugar and vanilla pod for about 5 minutes without a lid. Peel the pears but keep the stalks and the little thing on the other end where the flower was. This will prevent the pears from getting all mushy! And it looks pretty.
Put the pears close together in a skillet and pour over the syrup carefully. Add the ginger and cinnamon and let it simmer on very low heat, under a lid, for 20-25 minutes. You may want to turn them over once or twice but be careful! Put the saffron in the last 10 minutes. When the pears are all soft, but not more, let them cool in the syrup. The day after they will have a much more intense yellow colour!

Serve with a dollop of good vanilla ice cream.

Kamut wheat salad

Oh dear dear, over a month since last time I managed to post something here! What a lousy blogger I am, compared to others who just keep writing and writing! But really, it is my blog and I´ll write once a month if I want to... Even if I hope to be more frequent for a while now, being ordered to rest by my doctor! Not much to do other than cooking and taking slow walks. Then in about six weeks The New Foodie will make his/hers entrée into our lives and then we´ll see what happens with everything!

I had some girlfriends over for Sunday lunch a few weeks ago and made lots of big plans of involtini with beef, or some finger food, or maybe a soup? It was a lot of fun to make plans but then my health started to sway and I went for a simple salad instead. No use to cook a large meal for friends if I would have to spend two hours in bed to recover! This meal was ready after just over an hour in the kitchen, plus some dessert preparations the night before (I will save that for a separate post).

Salads are really typical Clivia-meals - easy to prepare, fresh and always appreciated. I love to explore all the different kinds of grains and pasta and rice you can use, and then I just pair it with a good dressing and vegetables and a good bread. Then depending on the guests I serve meat or fish on the side, more veggies and often some different kinds of spread for the bread. This time my guests got home made foccaccia, creamed feta cheese and some salmon. The featured grain was a new product from the store I wanted to try: Kamut wheat. Apparently some grains were found in the Egyptian pyramids and now they grow it again! Very tasty, but maybe hard to find. You could subsitute spelt wheat, or bulgur for example. The recipe is from the back of the Kamut wheat box, we are into trying recipes from boxes right now since A made an excellent chicken curry after reading on the small box for the chicken stock cubes...

Kamut wheat salad
Serves 4

200 ml Kamut wheat, or other kind of whole or cracked wheat
400 ml water
2 carrots
a bunch of sugar snaps, trimmed
some fresh green asparagus
100 ml chopped fresh basil
50 ml chopped flat-leaf parsley
3 spring onions, chopped
100 ml of toasted cashew nuts
Juice from half a lemon
salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

Dressing:
100 ml olive oil
50 ml apple cider vinegar
1 pressed garlic clove
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp sugar
salt and pepper

Boil the wheat in the water until just soft, about 10 minutes. Rinse in cold water and stir in some olive oil. Put aside. Cut the carrots in nice chunks and boil them until just soft in salted water. Do the same with the asparagus and sugar snaps. Rinse in cold water.
Mix everything for the dressing.
Mix the wheat, veggies, nuts and herbs and arrange in a nice bowl or on a platter. Pour over some dressing and serve the rest on the side. Some olives never go wrong!

Nigella´s involtini

Getting rid of: cheese, aubergine, raisins


This is, seriously, one of the best meals I made 2007! Nigella Lawson´s Feast is a book I leaf through at least every other week, just to enjoy her excellent writing and compensate myself during hard times for not having time to cook or having parties.
When I came home in late November after a particularly hard day at work I reminded myself that I a) had two large aubergines lying about in the fridge from the veggie box b) should grab the opportunity to make something proper even on a Tuesday. Involtini is maybe not the thing you should attack under these circumstances, but the name kept floating up in my brain all the way home and since I had most of the ingredients I simply jumped to the task. Nigella´s recipes are never scary - that helped! But do make sure you have a sandwich or some nibbles on hand before you start off - this will take you at least an hour! Count in that when you are finished and the involtini has cooled enough to eat you will remember nothing from your hard day at work, it is all obscured behind a joyful time of cooking!

Here is Nigella´s recipe (for those of you who has not yet got the book) with my own tweaks and changes

2-3 large aubergines cut lengthwise in thin slices
1500 grams tomato passata (I used less, see below)
200 grams mozzarella (I used leftover filling)

Filling:
100 grams crumbled feta cheese
100 grams mozzarella
25 grams grated parmesan (I didn´t have any mozzarella in the house so instead I scraped together 225 grams of other mixed cheeses; feta cheese, another excellent salad cheese from Jarseost, and parmesan)
75 grams pine nuts (I used chopped walnuts or almonds if I remember correctly)
50 grams raisins, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp breadcrumbs
1 garlic clove, crushed or finely chopped
zest from 1 lemon
a good pinch of dried mint
2 tpsb parsley
1 egg

Brush the aubergine slices on both sides with olive oil and grill them until soft and nicely patterned, I used my beloved cast iron grill pan for this. Put aside and let it cool.

Mix everything for the filling in a bowl, yes, raisins too. I was soo sceptical to these raisins! I am not a huge fan of Fruit in Food you see, and warm raisins are...yeurgh... But I decided to stick to the recipe the best I could and go with the raisins which really was t-a-s-t-y, surprise surprise. In the meantime I decided to make a cooked tomato sauce instead of just using passata, because I had so many odd aubergine slices and some old onions and whatnot in the fridge. I simply chopped it all up, sautéed in olive oil, poured in a packet of passata and let it boil with some dried thyme, salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar while I made the involtini. Put about a tablespoon of filling on each aubergine slice and roll it up firmly. Put in an ovenproof dish. When all the slices was gone I put the rest of the cheese filling in the tomato sauce and poured it over the involtini, and then baked in 190C oven for 25-30 minutes. The involtini should be served lukewarm according to Nigella, or cold - all but boiling hot from the oven! That way you will be able to really taste everything in these marvellous little rolls.

My new kitchen

This is me, or 2/3 of me, in our new kitchen on Gooseberry road. Since December 8th we live in a small radhus, which means a house connected to other houses in a row, I don´t know the correct term in English for it. We have four rooms and a kitchen and a small toilet and a bathroom and storage room in the front yard and a garden shed in the backyard, and a small pond and a glass room which will come in really handy April-October since it is so well built you can sit there while it is still a little too cold outside, or too hot, since we both have a fan and a heater in there. We also have a grill, and furniture enough to house 12-16 people for a garden party. Very nice!

For now we have to stay indoors though, and work to fit in all our belongings in cupboards and boxes in time for the baby´s arrival in just over three months (yikes, so soon!). Last week I crawled inside the kitchen cabinets to fit in a new basket shelf which you can slide out to reach what´s in it. I have already some problems reaching my own feet and in a month´s time I certainly will not be able to reach, say, a bowl from this cupboard which is very deep and very deep down. After much twiddling around I took the basket shelf and tried to fit it in - bah, the cupboard was 50 cm and the shelf was 60 cm! So I had to crawl back and take away everything and move it to the other cupboard and try not to swear too much, the baby can hear me now. We will have to go back to The Large Swedish Furniture Warehouse and buy a new shelf! Sigh.

But to make a long story short: I really like this kitchen even if we have slightly less space in it. It is what we call a parallell kitchen, stove and washing on one side and fridge and another working space on the other. When I am at the stove and need something from the fridge I simply turn on my heel and get it in two seconds instead of having to run some metres to the right and squeeze myself in between the kitchen table and the fridge (which also was smaller). This is so so much more practical! When you have all the shelves in place, mind. And above all, the eating area is just outside the kitchen and opens up into the living room - equals lots and lots of space for having lots of friends over who never again will have to hear the phrase "oh could you get up, I have to get something from the fridge".

Last year - I dared...nothing?

Hahaha, I just re-read my foodie resolutions for 2007 with a grin on my face. What has become of them? Absolutely nothing! But since I am good at forgiving myself for things I did (or did not) that didn´t harm anyone anyway I am simply putting them up again for 2008! Isn´t that neat? Some of them will be easy, some of them not. But then there is always 2009!

1. I will make my own pasta
2. I will take a class in how to handle and cook fresh fish
3. I will make sausages from scratch (that will have to wait until Christmas)
4. I will make sourdough bread
5. I will make wine leaf dolmadas
6. I will make pear preserves with ginger and lingonberries this autumn
7. (new) I will not feed my baby food from a jar unless it is an emergency

And I have made other things this year, really! I have further explored Lithuanian and Estonian cuisine, I have ordered veggie boxes, I made my own red cabbage for Christmas for the first time, I have become a cooking teacher... And above all I lost my job, got a new one, became pregnant and bought a house and moved. Christ, 2007 has been busy! Not sausage-making, though.