Soft at heart

A cake with a soft heart.
Chocolate Moelleux.
I haven't tried it yet.
The local newspaper Moss Avis had an inspiring article
about this calorie bomb.
So instead of keeping the clipping , I decided to write
down the recipe here, but in my own way.
This recipe will give eight separate little portion cakes.

Stage 1: Prepare the filling
4 tablespoon of cream
100 gram chocolate
zest of 1/2 orange peel
Warm the cream, mix in the the chocolate
and add the zest of the orange peel.
When the filling is cold, make small chocolate balls
and put those in the fridge again.


Stage 2: Prepare the cake
110 gram dark chocolate
50 gram butter
40 gram rice floor or potato flour
40 gram ground almonds
90 gram sugar
2 eggs, separated
Warm the butter, melt the chocolate,
add the egg yolks.
Add the ground almonds and
the rice flour.
Whip the egg whites stiff
with the sugar.
Mix carefully.


Stage 3: Add the filling to the cake
Pour one tablespoon of
cake batter into well buttered moulds.
Add one chocolate ball.
Pour enough cake batter to encase
the chocolate ball.
Cool the cake before baking.

Bake for about ten minutes
on 180 degrees Celsius.

Let cool a few minutes before
you carefully remove it from
the mould.

Serve warm.

Now that I wrote it down, it will be interesting to see
how long it will take till I make it.

In my life, I have sometimes read a recipe,
looked at a photo of the dish,
felt as if I had eaten it,
and then never made it....

PS. The idea of a cake that looks "normal" on the outside
and seems to be uncooked on the inside,
was the idea of The Unsuccessful Cake
I used to make many years ago.

Northern lighting

A recent article in the Sunday Magazine of Dagbladet (March 16th 2008) presented Norwegian designers bringing light into the world.


There is Cathrine Kullberg in Oslo.
She creates lamps using thin sheets of birch with delicate designs.
http://cathrinekullberg.com/


There is Hedda Heyerdahl Braaten who created "Seed" with a knitted cover as a bed lamp.

"Seed" is one of the products produced by the Norwegian firm Northern Lighting.
Check http://www.northernlighting.no/

Light to the world!

Light and summertime

One of the more depressing parts of working in the wintertime
in Norway, is getting up when it is completely dark.
It feels like you are on the night shift.

But when there are more and more hours of light,
you feel very grateful .
Getting up at 5.30 and seeing the light, so to speak,
is a great help in starting the day.

Today Norway switches to summertime.
I have a hard time remembering what to do
with the clock when that happens.
One hour forward? One hour backwards?

Somebody told me that using the idea of
garden furniture can help you,
at least if you speak Norwegian.
"Om våren tar du havemøblene frem".
Frem is forward.
Perhaps: In the spring you put the garden furniture forth.

"Om høsten setter du havemøblene tilbake".
Tilbake is back.
Perhaps: In the autumn you put the garden furniture back.

After writing this, I read in VG Helg, in an interesting article
why there isn't summertime the whole year in Norway
(by journalist Anders Giæver), the following for
remembering what to do:
Spring forward.
And fall back.

So today I will look at my watch and see
tiny garden furniture instead....

Snow

A few weeks ago when I went to Germany, the weather in Moss was quite spring-like.
No snow.

There hasn't been much snow in Moss this winter. :-)

Then I came back from Germany.
Within a few days snow started to fall.
Moss became white.

Now spring has attacked again.
With the help of rain and lhigher temperatures,
the snow is now retreating.

Then I tried to remember some of the words in Norwegian for different kinds of snow, and then find possible English words .

Here are some:

Tørr snø - "dry" snow

Fin snø - powder snow

Kram snø - wet snow

Sludd - slush

Skare - crust

Slaps - snirt (?)

Many parts of Norway have a lot of snow the whole winter.
I like the Moss version of the winter -the lite version.

A mountain moving into a house

There are many mountains here in Norway.
Small and big.

Sometimes you see houses at the bottom of a mountain,
and wonder if those who live there, fear the mountain will
one day crush their house and themselves.

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article2329536.ece

In the city of Ålesund, a mountain moved and crushed a house with ten apartments.
First floor was totally destroyed.
Second floor was badly damaged.
A fire started.
Five persons are missing.

If you try to click on the numbers on the following website
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article2330652.ece
you may get an impression of what happened.
1. The building from the front.
2. The building from the side.
3. The collapse.
4. 21 persons lived in the building.
1 was away. 15 were rescued. 5 are missing.

The forces of nature.

Living here and now, on two levels

The HERE and NOW actually has at least two parts in my life,
as I guess is true for many others using the computer and internet.

There is me in Moss, in my apartment, outside on the street, on my job, with my mother.
That is the physical HERE and NOW.

Then there is me in front of the PC, writing or receiving emails from friends and others,
talking through Skype with my son, f.ex.
That is a virtual HERE and NOW.

This virtual HERE and NOW entails interaction with other living persons without me being physically next to them.
For me the virtual part is very important.

The virtual HERE and NOW helps me stay close to people I care about.

To live the moment - another quote

From Henri J.M. Nouwen's book Here and Now:

“. . . we always have a choice to live the moment
as a cause of resentment
or as a cause for joy.”


Some personal thoughts:
This was probably one of the main reasons I had to
reexamine my life.
I was feeling a lot of resentment, of bitterness, inside.
It probably showed on the outside too....

So I realized that in order to take care of my physical,
mental and spiritual health, I had to practize
feeling joyful and having fun as conscious actions.

Journaling is one way of making myself more aware
of what I am doing and how I am feeling.

This blog is also a part of the learning process.

Living here and now

First I wrote this sentence:
Writing this blog, and limiting myself to describe what I see, hear and experience HERE, forces me to concentrate on what is happening to me NOW, and to make the IFs and the WHYs smaller in my head.

Then I thought a little more about what I had written, and decided to do a Google search.
That way I found a book called "Here and Now, A Spiritual Journey" by a man named Henri J. M. Nouwen .
I found out that Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932 - 1996) had been a priest, an author and a professor who wrote about 40 books on spirituality.
Through Amazon I could read some of the pages in "Here and Now. A Spiritual Journey" online.
On page 17 in his book I read Without the "Oughts" and "Ifs"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0824519671/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link
(Hope this link works.)

Without knowing about other aspects of his writings, the following part felt true to my present way of thinking.

You ought to have done something other than what you did, you ought to have said something other than what you did.
These thoughts keep us feeling guilty about the past and prevent us from being fully present to the moment.

Worse, however, than our guilt are our worries. Our worries fill our lives with "What ifs": What if I lose my job, what if my father dies, what if there is not enough money, what if the economy goes down, what if a war breaks down.

I do NOT feel bad about the choices I made.
There were good and bad choices.
But that is the past and cannot be changed.
I learnt a lot from the journey itself.
I have had an interesting life so far.
I don't feel guilt for the "Ifs"

When I think about it now, I feel the worries of "What ifs"
for the future became, through the years,
so strong I could not enjoy the present.

Thanks, Henri J.M. Nouwen for helping me sort that out.

Reunion of brother and sister from Moss

Life is sometimes complicated.
Things happen that we have no control over.
Bad things and good things.

I just read in the local newspaper how a brother and sister, both born in Moss, had recently been reunited.
Reading the article, I understood that this family had experienced more than their share of tragedies.

In 1950 a Norwegian seaman and a Danish woman married in Denmark.
Their first son was born there. He grew up with his Danish aunt, not with his parents.
Around 30 years later this son died in a fire.

In 1952 the couple settled in Moss and a year later their second son was born. This son lived with his paternal grandmother, not with his parents. He died of cancer, only seven years old.

In 1955 a third son was born, and for reasons not quite clear was given up for adoption in Norway , straight after his birth.

In 1959 a daughter was born. She grew up with her parents.
In 1961 a fourth son was born. He also grew up with his parents. Unfortunately this son died in 1993, only 32 years old.

The children in the family never heard about their brother who had been given up for adoption.

The family seems to have moved back to Denmark at one point.

In 1990 the father died.
In 2003 while the mother was dying , she told her daughter about the brother in Norway.

A year ago the chairman in Moss Genealogical Society received a letter from the sister in Denmark who by then knew her unknown brother was born in Moss around 1956.

In the end of January 2008 this genealogist from Moss located the brother in another part of Norway.

Now the two siblings have met and feel so good about being together, they know they will keep in contact.

Five children, all born after 1950, and only two still living.
One son died at the age of 32, one of cancer at the age of seven and one in a fire at the age of around 30.

I wish the Norwegian brother and his Danish sister many good years of positive contact.

Gravestones

Old gravestones fascinates me.
Really.
The following are a few hundred years old and from a Protestant cemetery in Hessen.
After serving as gravestones, they had been reused as steppingstones in a a stairway leading up to the cemetery.
The grandfather of my host had "reclaimed" them and they were now displayed along the path of the cemetery.


Each stone displayed the family members of the person who had originally been buried under the stone. Imagine the man and the woman standing next to each other on this particular stone with seven sons to the left and three daughters to the right.
A small cross above the head of one of the figures indicated who had died.

This was a smaller family - the parents with two sons and one daughter.

Here the parents with their three sons and one daughter.

This man had been a stonemason, and if I remember right, the baby in the middle had died as a baby. Nine children altogether.

Family portraits from long ago - in stone.

Visiting Germany

The five days I spent in Germany were very special to me.
First of all because all the detailed planning made by the hosts,
but also because the wonderful group of guests I became part of.
The activities, the meetings, the programms - perfect.
But the feeling of everything being so special comes from the persons involved, both hosts and guests.
I was extremely lucky in being invited!

Something I don't need

Alcohol has never been much part of my life, so this gadget of a Digital Alcohol Detector is definitely not on my list of what to buy.
Imagine, this ad was part of one local supermarket's promotion!

:-)
What a bargain - less than 90 US US dollars!
So sneeky - making it look like a mobile telephone.

A quote I found

Wherever you go, there you are.
Your luggage is another story.

PS. That was prompted by having two countries,
not by my recent trip to Germany.

To Germany for a few days

On Tuesday I am going to Germany to attend some interesting events.
I will be back on Sunday.

This is a situation where it is nice to know that my nephew can babysit my apartment.

Definition of laziness

Just read this:

Laziness is nothing more
than the habit of resting
before you get tired.

1950's : Superwoman Karin

This photo I took last year at the Railway Museum in Hamar, Norway.

Today my mother told me a story I cannot remember having heard before.

At the time I was around two and a half and my baby brother just a few months old.
My aunt had been staying with us in Moss since my brother was born, and now the four of us, my mother, my aunt and us two children were going to my grandparents who lived around Stockholm.
First we took the train from Moss to Gothenburg.
In Gothenburg lived Karin, then around 50 years old, married, without children.
A family friend.
We spent some hours at her apartment and she then followed us to the night train to Stockholm.

At that time (now too?) there was something called Barnekupe (Norwegian) or Barnkupe (Swedish) - a special compartment for families with children.
My mother and aunt entered the Barnekupe on the nighttrain and settled down with us two young children. Karin was standing in the door of that specific compartment. We must have come fairly early.
Then came another family with children, and they of course wanted to enter the same compartment.
Oh no! Karin filled the whole door opening and explained in an assertive manner that this compartment was now full.
The arguments from the family did not help.
Karin did not move from the door opening.
The family then brought the conductor.
But Karin explained in the same assertive manner that this compartment was full.
The conductor came no way with this superwoman.
Behind her, crunching on the seats, my aunt and mother felt very uncomfortable...
The conductor then brought the man in charge of the whole train.
But even he could not persuade Karin to move from the door.
"I", said Karin, " have worked as the private secretary of Mr. So-and-So (she mentioned the name of a former director of the Swedish Railways system SJ) and I know how the company cares about their small passengers. There will not be enough air in this compartment during the night if you put more people in here!
You better move those two men who have already fallen asleep in the next compartment somewhere else and make that compartment into another Barnkupe."
By now, the train personell was exhausted and took her last suggestion.
We stayed - two grownups and two children - in our compartment and the other family got the next compartment.
When this was settled, Karin moved from the door opening, went off the train, and waved goodbye.
Finally the train could start its journey towards Stockholm.

PS. She had fought as a lioness, even telling a lie about having been a private secretary for the director of the railways. But it had been done in very educated and assertive Swedish and she had pulled it through.

Moss canal March 2, 2008

Three daily rituals?

Today I heard about three daily rituals worth trying out.

1. Every morning ask yourself:
What do I really, really, really want to do?

2. Every evening write down the happiest moments
of that day.

3. If your present mantra (what you tell yourself about yourself)
is not helping you, consider changing that mantra.

My bucket

About two years ago I found this picture on the internet.

At the time I felt it symbolized me.

Holes in my life.

Energy slipping away.

Today I found this picture again.

Now I feel differently.

Of course, some of my energy has to go to what I consider

less important tasks.

But even those tasks are now more in balance.

Each action is needed to make my whole life OK.

Since Jan 1st 2008 I have recorded as many

as possible of the specific actions I have

done during each day,

instead of what I planned to do.

Focusing on accomplishments, instead of plans, leaves me

a happier person at the end of the day.

For each action I have done, I also categorize that action

according to

HAVE FUN

EARN MONEY

DO GOOD

By doing this, I am more conscious of the balance between

the three.

You think I am crazy writing it all down?

For me, now is the time to focus on living

a more balanced and happy life.

Writing it down, slows me down enough to make

this a learning experience.

Conclusion : I have repaired my bucket fairly well during

the last year.

March 2nd - family birthdays

http://www.mariepedersen.com

http://www.nevlungbakeri.no

My father loved cakes made with a cover of marcipan (marsipanlokk in Norwegian).
So I found these two photos on the internet.
I think he would have loved those.
But these virtual cakes I want to send to some living family members.

Today is March 2nd and this is a day with family birthdays!
Congratulations!
Gratulerer in Norwegian!

When I was a little girl, we celebrated my father's birthday on March 2nd.

Then in the beginning of the sixties little Sylvia started to come to us each year.
She instantly "adopted" my father as her own.
So imagine what a happy coincidence it was that she too was born on March 2nd!

We grew up.
We married.
My sister married Darek.
He was also born on March 2nd!

So here they go - one cake to Sylvia and one cake to Darek.
Congratulations!

This is also the day to remember my father - a very special man.
He is always with me.

A bread box by Johan Verde

Yes, this breadbox costs more than 100 US dollars!
It is made of recycled silicone, and you roll down the front cover
and use it for cutting the bread. Smart.
Red, black and white.

Designer: Johan Verde, born in Norway in 1964.
I will learn more about this designer.
Here are some of his thoughts about design
http://www.verde.no/
His portofolio can be viewed here
http://www.verde.no/html/portfolio.html

As for the breadbox, I am not going to buy it.
Not enough bread in my house.
But there is something in the design that fascinates me.

The firm Kitch'n has a website http://www.kitchn.no/ where you
can look at other expensive and wonderfully designed items for
the kitchen, f.ex. in their online catalogue.