An old inn in Vermont, some reminiscenses

[update - now with some photos]

The most interesting and talked about experiences are rarely the best.  This might be unfortunate, but in a sense it is these experiences that make you realize what is really good and enjoyable in life.  So, this is kind of a rant, but I am not exaggerating here, this place was really over the top...

So, PP and I headed to Vermont last week.  We had decided to stay for the first nights at an old inn that his uncle and aunt had stayed at over 30 years ago.  This inn will remain nameless in this story, but I will tell you it is not far from Marlboro College near Brattleboro in southern Vermont.  It has a nice website, but very few online reviews, so it is hard to know what to expect, but the price was the usual for a stay of this kind.  I booked two nights, and we went on to Vermont...

the inn

We arrived at the old inn from the 1700s, and it turns out to be in a great location, a quiet place with a pond in the back. We were met by the very old widowed inn keeper who told us where our room was and informed us that in this place there are no locks on the doors and that everything is safe and there has been no thefts in 30+ years in this place.  OK, we go along with it and go up to our room on the second floor.  Before getting to your room you pass through a very old musky-dusty-smelly living room with 1960/70 style sofas, bookshelves with leather bound classics, and some miscellaneous mixed furniture.  It reminded me both of an old hotel in Uzbekistan, old youth hostels in Sweden, and old libraries.  Nothing wrong with that, but not what I had expected, especially not the smell and 70s flair to things.

living room

Our room was big and airy with nice windows in two directions.  The bathroom was attached to our room and minuscule, but private (well, the open window is right above the front door and anybody can hear you pee and flush... but it is the countryside and an old building, so that is OK.)  But, the bathroom door has no latch so it swings open by itself when you sit on the toilet - it really had no latch at all and it seemed to never have had one since there was no sign of a latch hook on the painted molding around the door. No latch for 30+ years?  The door to the bedroom from the hallway could be closed and latched but had no lock, but even more disturbing was that you couldn't lock the door from the inside with a secure hook.  I really like to be able to sleep in peace, and not worry about some drunk or confused person stepping into my bedroom while I am sleeping at 3 AM, especially not during a hot summer night.  Apparently this was not a concern of the inn keeper.  I am glad I wasn't sleeping alone...

OK, there is more.  There was no AC, which I understand in a old house like this, but it was a heat wave and only a small old fan was provided.  There were water glasses, but at least one was unwashed (some green stuff on the edge, what can that be?), in the room.  The wooden mantel around the fireplace (not in use) looked like it has been compressed and broken in an earth quake (how? and why not fixed?).  An orange-yellow shag rug (think 1974 color choice) was laying around and under the bed and smelled bad... obviously a clear case of 'can't be cleaned properly for the last couple of decades'.

An old painting print was hanging on the wall and it appears that neither the print nor the paper surrounding the print were acid free - all browned with age.  The wall paper, who knows how old, was not quaint and cute, but water stained.  Ceiling had cobwebs, as did the bathroom, and the wall around the tiny sink (which has loose faucets) had spots from previous people's tooth paste spit. Ick!  The bath rug was frayed in the edges and reminded me of the towels we have relegated to our basement to mop up flood waters with.  This is not what I expected to get for $100+ a night.  But wait, there is more!

During the night we realize that there is a door with an nearly inch-wide gap at the bottom near the bed in our room to another rental room  so we can see the light in that room and we clearly hear the excessant snoring of another guest.  We try to stop the sound and light by stuffing a big comforter and blanket on the floor in front of that door.  Our bed is small to be in such a giant room, and HARD.  What happened to providing a nice thin top mattress so that people don't have to sleep directly on what feels like the box spring?

Morning and shower time... the shower stall is miniscule and the inside of the shower is covered in cedar planks, I think. Vinyl shower curtain is too short; water splashes on the floor outside the shower.  It is hard to wash your hair when you hit the wall with your elbows.  It is even harder when you realize that no shampoo has been provided...  Hmpf.  I use the soap (and buy shampoo at the store later in the day).  The towels are threadbare and old, look like leftovers from the 1970s.  When PP dries himself off, one of the towels rips along the edge, that is how badly worn it was.  Come on, new towels of acceptable quality can be gotten at Target or IKEA at very reasonable prices, so why the replacement wait at this inn?

the dining room

OK, breakfast.  The place is apparently famous for great food.  We sit down in the little dining room, dark and musky with curtains that needed to see a wash 20 years ago, and eventually are asked what we would like for breakfast.  Fruit (berries, melons or pineapple are the choices), coffee or tea, and then either eggs, waffles or pancakes with bacon.  I go for the berries, pineapple, and then blueberry pancakes.  I get the berries... looks OK, but after a while I bite into a moldy raspberry.  Not great.  I hate mold.  I can taste it a mile away, and this was really moldy for real.  Then I got my pancakes, nicely arranged - a handful of small blueberry pancakes arranged in a line on a plate.  Melted butter and warm syrup came with them, so I poured some of the syrup on.  Hmm, how can you under-cook blueberry pancakes that are only about 2-3 inches (5-8 cm) in diameter?  I don't know, but these were still runny in the center.

the kitchen

I felt bad for the old lady that tried to run this place after her husband's death a few years ago, but I really can't accept bad food and dirty rooms, not when I pay $$$ for it.  After all, this is not post-Soviet Uzbekistan, this is Vermont in USA.  Cracked plates, a kitchen with the dirtiest and messiest areas I have ever seen and full of things on every flat service gave me goosebumps regarding the lack of hygiene. I wonder if the Department of Health in Vermont has inspected her kitchen.  I have a hunch it will not pass... Oh, and the breakfast was $10 on top of the room cost, so this is not a bed AND BREAKFAST as I thought.

Oh, I didn't tell you, when I went to bed a dead moth fell out from under the cover.  There was a mouse hole in the corner of the floor molding, nice mice!  Just a few months of attention and the throwout of the 30-40 years old stuff and a clean-up of the rest would have made this place into a new wonderful place.

the living room

So, were there no good things?  Sure there were.  The location is beautiful, and the place has so much potential, it just needs a lot of attention and upgrades (which it needed decades ago).  I like old simple things, but I can't stand dirt and mold. I really wanted to love this place, but I couldn't, but I can see it turn into a fantastic place in the future...

books everywhere

It felt like a place stuck in the past, with grandfather's books that accumulate mold instead of eager fingers that turn pages, and lampshades stained by fly spit and dust rats.  I love old books, and books in general, and this was one of the best things with this place - there were good and interesting books everywhere, ready to be picked up and read.  I read Roadside Geology of Vermont and New Hampshire for two nights and learned a lot about how geologically similar that area is to Sweden.  But that is a small positive thing in the big negative impression of this place.

So, in conclusion, I hope you don't need to stay at this place until it is under different management.  I am sure the inn keeper is doing her best under her own circumstances, but this is not a way to run an inn/bed and breakfast. When you charge a fee the customer is supposed to get the value for that cost, and you should want to get your customers back and take the effort to give them a nice wonderful stay. 

(When it came time to paying the bill the owner had forgot I had sent her a deposit and also added a service fee of 10%, which I was told when I asked about it that "I had to add it since people don't tip the staff enough, but you can take it off".  Maybe that says it all...)

another room for rent, not ours

Favorite summer food: chopped salad

 

This is just great, simple food.  CHOPPED SALAD!  Add a vinaigrette and you are all set for lunch.  The dark red cubes are salami, if you were wondering. No recipe needed, just chop and arrange, then add dressing and serve. It will mix well on your plate and in your stomach during hot summer days.

A trip to nostalgia land

The Swedish Museum of Art (Nationalmuseum) in Stockholm is now closed for a several year long renovation, but we visited it one of the last weekends when it was open and I was in Stockholm.  One of the most fun exhibits was the one on functional and industrial design.  It was filled with so many items I know so well from my upbringing in Sweden, and some of them have even made it over to the US.  Here is a selection, with annotations:


When I grew up we had a Lamino chair at home, covered with gray woolskin, and it was wonderful.  I had no idea then that it was a classic bent-wood design.  The chair and its footstool is still in my mom's apartment and I sat in it just a month ago.


Swedish dishbrushes!  Once I went to a summer camp with a girl whose father had the patent on the straight line on the front that you use to scrape off hard pieces from your plates if you turn the brush around.  I bet he got a lot of money from all the dishbrushes that have been made in the last many decades.


This kind of very plastic and cheap-looking lamp was common in youth hostels and rented cabins.  I think we had one too, orange maybe, and I have a vague memory that it nearly caught on fire once, but I could be wrong.  They weren't very good lamps, but popular.


The very practical Swedish queue-system.  Used at every postoffice, bank, police station, you name it. I actually like this a lot better than standing in lines.


A classic telephone, of the type that was provided by the phone company.  Back then you couldn't buy your phone, it was provided and owned by the phone company.  I think this one was made by Ericsson for the state-owned telephone company (which is no more, it is now privatized).  These were still in use in the 2000s, but I think they are gone now, since the outlets are different now.  Oh all the times I sat and dialed the numbers on the turning dial.... You couldn't hurry it, it took its time.


This line of china is one of my favorites, and we had some at home when I grew up.  Blå eld means Blue Fire, and my sister collects this brand.


This is probably the most common object in the whole exhibit.  IKEA's table LACK, which is still being sold.  We have several here at home in the US.  IKEA furnished so many homes in Sweden, it saved our budgets and book collections (thanks for Billy!).  I didn't realize that the LACK design was over 40 years old by now.


I don't know the year of this collection of dairy containers, maybe late 1980s?  Featured here are: regular milk (3% fat), 'middle milk' (1.5% fat), light milk (0.5% fat - too watery for me), mini milk (0% fat or nearly so),  'vispgrädde' heavy cream (40% fat), and 'gräddfil' (sour creme, but runnier, 12% fat).  The containers are Tetrapak, paper with plastic on the inside.  Oh, the memories....  :)

As per request: Homemade pizza recipe

We have a Friday night tradition since the last couple of years - homemade thin-crust pizza.  After maybe 100 times of making pizza dough, tomato sauce and toppings, I think we have it down to near perfection now.  So, dear readers, as per request from several of you, here are the instructions.

Our dough was initially based on this recipe by Barbara Kingsolver, but we have modified it slightly.  Look for the heading for the part of the recipe you need.

TOOLS
As for tools, we use a KitchenAid mixer to mix the dough (optional), a rolling pin (just regular wood), and a ceramic pizza stone (you can use a regular cookie sheet, but a stone makes a big difference if you are going to make pizza often).
Our stone is as large as possible and round, and so light that you can lift it in and out of the oven easily.  I wouldn't recommend those superthick real stones. I can see a lot of crushed toes and achy backs from using those in a regular kitchen. Our stone is made of ceramics, very durable, started out as white but is now black (which is normal), and less than 1/2 inch (1 cm thick).  It is very easy to lift the stone out of the oven with the pizza on it, so no need to fiddle with wooden paddles or peels and other things you don't really need. Just get a thin stone and use your regular tools to lift the pizza over to a serving plate or serve it on the stone. And of course you can bake bread on the stone of you like too.
A pizza slicer is good, but think about what is below the pizza.  Soft aluminum might get scratched, and I don't really know if you can use it directly on the stone (we use heavy-duty scissors to cut our pizza mostly).

The recipe below makes 4 wonderful 16-inch pizzas (30 cm).

PIZZA DOUGH (partly whole-wheat, healthier style)

Time (active): 10 min.   Time (waiting): 2-10 hours.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups of hot water (not boiling, about 42 degrees C, so varm but not superhot - I just use it out of the hot water faucet)
• 1 package of dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon dried basil or other Italian herbs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tsp ground flaxseed (totally optional, just adds fiber)
• 1.5 cups whole wheat flour
• 2+ cups white flour (organic bread flour is good, but any regular all-purpose flour is OK)

Environment:  Yeast is a living organism and it lives and works best when the temperature is not too hot or too cold (about 68-80 degrees F, 20-25 degrees C).  During the winter, since we have a kitchen that is colder than 68 degrees F, I help the yeast along by warming the dough bowl first in hot water, and then by putting in the finished dough into a slightly preheated oven.  I turn on the oven at 100 degrees F, then turn it off and put in the dough in its bowl.  You never want to put the dough in the oven if the heat is on, then you cook it, you just give it a little extra warmth and less cold drafts.

Time: Most often I just make the dough in the morning, leave it out on the counter the whole day (8-10 hours), and when I come home for dinner the dough has risen and is ready.  You can of course make the dough 2-3 hours before you want to make the pizza, that is fine too, but then you might have to put the dough in a slightly warmer place than we do.

Using a standing mixer or not: This is totally up to you.  If you don't use a mixer, just mix by hand and knead the dough very thoroughly.  No clumps here.

Making the dough:

1. Put the hot water in the bowl. Add the dry yeast. Let sit a minute or two.
2. Add olive oil, salt, and dried herbs. (And flaxseed if you use it). Mix thoroughly.
3. Add 1.5 cups of whole-wheat flour.  Mix thoroughly.
4. Add white flour 0.5 cup at the time and mix in-between.  How much you need to add depends on how dense your flour is.  So go slowly and add enough so that the dough becomes soft and slightly sticky, not dense and not sticky at all (=too much).  You should be able to lift up the dough in one ball without it falling apart, and the dough should not stick to the wall, but it should still be slightly sticky.  Most often I add about 2 cups of white flour, sometimes slightly more, sometimes slightly less.  
5. Let the dough sit in peace in the bowl under some plastic wrap and or kitchen towel for a few hours (up to 10 hours is OK).  Don't put it in the fridge.  The dough will double in size, so make sure your bowl is big enough.  Some people spray or coat the dough with olive oil, I put plastic wrap over the bowl instead to avoid it drying out during the day.

TOMATO SAUCE (homemade from canned tomatoes)

Time: 1 hour

We like chopped or strained, fire-roasted, San Marzano, plum or any other kind of Italian tomatoes for our sauce. Pomi is a good brand.  Watch out for canned tomatoes with a lot of salt or other things added to them - you just want plain tomatoes (with none or a little salt). Fresh tomatoes in the summer are wonderful, but need to cook down a bit, since they are quite watery, so add cooking time then.  Don't even try making this from flavor-less tomatoes from the store in the winter, then just use canned tomatoes.  Your own sauce will be better than store-bought pizza sauce, but if you don't have time, buy a good brand of good sauce without funny things in it. 

Ingredients:

• 1 large can of tomatoes (28 oz or so, or use two small cans)
• 3-6 cloves of garlic
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• fresh basil (chopped, as much as you like)
• black pepper
• salt (maybe)

How to make the sauce:

1. Chop up the garlic into tiny pieces.
2. Add the olive oil to a pot, heat it up a bit, and then add the garlic.  Stir and let the garlic become yellow (not brown!), and then add the tomatoes.  
3. Let it all simmer on low temperature for a long time (the longer the better), but don't let the sauce become so thick it burns at the bottom, then just turn it off.  You start out with a thinner sauce and the simmering will make it thicker.  
4. After simmering for a while, add cut up fresh basil leaves and black pepper, to taste.
5. When the sauce is done, check if you need to add some salt. It all depends on how much salt was in the canned tomatoes.

Hints:  If you use chopped tomatoes, then your sauce will be chunky.  If you don't like that, run an immersion blender or use some other tool to smooth the tomatoes first (blender, etc.).  If your sauce is too runny, just let it cook longer. 




TOPPINGS

All our pizzas have some kind of cheese on them, and this layer is added last, on top.  Mostly it is grated mozzarella, sometimes parmesan, and sometimes ricotta or goat cheese.  We never use other kind of 'regular' cheeses, like cheddar, jarlsberg, etc.  They just don't act the same good way on top of a pizza and are only emergency-cheeses.
For all ingredients (except the sauce), try to make them as dry as possible.  Remove wetness by draining them or blog away fat with paper towels.

• Italian sausage, hot or mild.  Cook this in a frying pan before adding to the pizza (this also gets rid of a lot of fat). (Swedes: this is NOT hot dogs.  This is ground up meat sold as fresh sausage, uncooked.  If you want to imitate this in Sweden, buy ground meat, add lots of spices and herbs, and then fry it up so the meat is  all in little chunks).
• Pepperoni sausage or chorizo (cut up, not cooked)
• Thin-sliced onion, raw, or cooked so it caramelizes
• Thin-sliced mushrooms, fresh (we NEVER use canned)
• Fresh basil
• Fresh green or red peppers, thinly sliced
• Roasted red peppers, canned, drained and dried on paper towels
• Olives, pitted and cut in half, drained. (Black olives are best)
• Artichoke hearts, canned, cut in half and drained
• Shrimp, thawed and shelled, dry on paper towels (you cook these on top of the pizza, so you add them raw to the pizza)
• Anchovy, drained on paper towels
• Very thinly sliced eggplant
• Arugula leaves, fresh (to add at the end)
• Spinach, cooked, or fresh spinach (which can be watery)
• Tomatoes, fresh from the garden in summer, great, but watery :)
• Asparagus, fresh or slightly cooked

Let your fantasy go wild, there are many more options here. 

Here are some of our favorite combinations (all have tomato sauce):

• Margarita:  tomato sauce, basil, and mozzarella.
• Prosciutto special:  Bake a pizza with tomato sauce, basil and mozzarella. When 2 min are left on the baking time, take out the pizza and add large thin slices of prosciutto over it, and a little parmesan.  Then back into the oven for a minute, then take out and add fresh small arugula over it. 
• Mushroom, sausage and onion:  This is just what it is called.  Yum!
• Anchovy and onion heaven:  Add lots of sliced raw onion and then anchovy and parmesan plus mozzarella. 
• SAR combination:  Shrimp, artichoke and roasted red pepper. 
• Burger pizza:  Instead of sausage, cook burger meat and add to pizza with some onion.  Then the pizza is cooked, add fresh, chopped lettuce on top.  Eat. Good. Food.

MAKING THE PIZZA AND COOKING IT
(Start this at least an hour before you want to eat.)

1. Put the pizza stone in the oven.  It needs to be put into a cold oven, not hot (this is important!), and needs to heat up for at least 30 min.  (Skip this step if you don't use a stone)
2. Turn the oven to highest temperature (450 F for us).  [This is why you should NOT use baking paper for pizza.  It might ignite at these high temperatures). We have a convection oven, if you don't, just use the regular setting for overall heat.
3. On a large clean surface, add some white flour and put the dough on top of it.  If the dough is very loose, you can knead in some more flour now, but usually you don't have too.  It depends if it sticks or not.  Cut the raised dough ball into 4 pieces, and put three pieces aside.  Take one of the balls and roll it out into a round area with a rolling pin, use flour underneath and flip it over now and then so it doesn't stick.  When the size is right, stop. The dough is thin, this makes thin-crust pizza (so, much less carbs than thick crust pizza.)
4.  When the oven is hot and the stone has warmed up, take the stone out of the oven. It will be very hot.  Put the rolled out dough on the stone, let it sit for 2-3 min to cook on the lower side, then flip it over with two spatulas so the other side can cook a little.  Add tomato sauce and all the toppings.
5. (Note for people that don't use baking stones.  Add your dough to a floured cookie sheet, and cook the dough by itself in the oven for 5 min or so, than take the dough out and add the toppings, and then back in the oven.)
6. Put the pizza in the oven, cook it for 8-12 min (this depends on your toppings and your oven).  You want the edge to be a little brown and the cheese to have started to brown on top.  If your pizza is done but still very wet and saucy, that is probably because you used very wet ingredients (shrimp, fresh mozzarella, fresh peppers, etc.).  Don't worry about it, just eat it with fork and knife. 
7. Take the pizza out, slice and eat. Enjoy!
8. If you want to make more pizzas (you have 3 doughballs left!), just remove the pizza you made from the stone, put the stone back in the oven to reheat for 5 min, and make one more.  We eat and make 3-4 pizzas every Friday night and make them as we go along, since they only need to cook for such a short time.  

What about leftover pizza slices?   Save for next day lunch or freeze. We put baking paper between our slices so they don't stick together.

You can freeze the dough, just put it in a plastic bag and seal.  To use frozen dough, remove from freezer, thaw at room temperature or slightly above in a bowl with some flour.  Remember that the frozen dough has already risen, so it will not get bigger than the piece you have.  So roll it out, and make the pizza bottoms as usual.  I find that fresh dough is better, because it is slightly fluffier when you bake it, but frozen is OK too.

The dough is also perfect for flatbreads, pierogies, and other small pockets of food. 

RESULT


 

Stamp of the Day: Julbak

Swedish Christmas traditions includes a big baking day - the 'Julbak', where the most common thing to make is 'pepparkakor' (gingerbread cookies).  Here on this Swedish stamp Pippi Longstocking ('Långstrump') is baking on her kitchen floor with the help of her monkey Herr Nilsson. Pippi is my favorite character in Astrid Lindgren's children's books.  We haven't made any cookies at all this year, but plan to make hazelnut bread, a family tradition from my grandmother, and maybe the kids will make some cookies too.  In Sweden ginger bread cookies are called "Pepper cookies", but they have no pepper in them at all.  I wonder how that name came about. 

Quote of the Day: rainbows

Recently heard in our kitchen:


"Bacon is like a rainbow of flesh and fat..."

(from someone that really loves bacon)

Textiles from the past

Earlier this summer I had to change the fabric on my kitchen sofa. The blue checkered is my old fabric, probably made in China, bought in IKEA around 15 years ago. Under that was the stripes one, in white with yellow, red and blue lines. Might be bought, but probably home woven on a loom. Maybe my grandma did weave this, since I got the sofa from her and she knew how to weave. The next is certain to be home woven, brown, okra and black in patterns. To my surprise the oldest fabric is a printed one, with lovely roses, very romatic feel. The rose fabric I left on, and a new Ikea-fabric on top. This time striped in white, blue and red.

Maybe some day I can put a handwoven fabric on the sofa. My grandma´s loom is out of the barn and put into the guesthouse. I have decided to try to learn how to use it, with some good help from my aunt. Lots of new terms to learn, I´m reading up in borrowed books.

Stamp of the Day: Then and Now

Then: Phone booth.  Now: iPhone

Then: Printed maps. Now: GPS.

Then: Ice boxes.  Now: Refrigerators

Then: Black and white TVs.  Now: Flat-screen TV.

Then: LPs and record players.  Now: iPods.

The technological development during the last 50 years is featured on these Australian stamps.  I can write a million words on this, about its pros and cons, but that will have to wait.  In the meantime, I'd like to point out that phones used to function without having to have batteries or being plugged into an electrical outlet, maps work when the power is out, and I don't think anybody would like an icebox in their regular kitchen.

2011, the year of the Dishcloth Knitting Frenzy

2011, soon over, was the year I discovered the Ballband pattern for dishcloths.  This is a pattern from the 1950s that was printed on the back of the band around the yarn balls. So, I started knitting some, then some more, then changed the patterns a bit, then knit, changed more, and so far I think I have made about 25-30 of these.  They are now spread out over the world, among families and friends, and maybe 8 are left here to be used in the house. As far as I know we are the only ones using them to wipe out old coffee and other things on the counter with, since most everybody else are using them as pot holders or hotpads in the kitchen.

If you make the dishcloths in cotton, then you can throw them in the laundry once a week, and I think the handmade cotton ones are a lot better than soggy, old-milk stinky Wettex wipes (that is a Swedish thing, for you Americans and other readers; OK, OK, I like them too, but these are much better). I bought a large box of the American-made Peaches and Cream cotton yarn, in many different colors, including some variegated ones and started knitting (while watching old Law and Order and other shows on Netflix and DVD...). And now I am out of yarn, so it is time for another project.  I am working now on two bathmats, also in cotton, but thicker, so we will see how they come out soon.

This is the original pattern:

And here are some of my variants on the pattern:  

And this is how one of my new patterns looks up close:

No more stinky Wettex!

When you watch old episodes of the classic TV series Law and Order on instant Netflix I needed to have something to put my hands to work with. There is nothing better than mindless (well...) knitting so many cotton kitchen dishcloths being knitted up. You can make make about half of one during one evening, so pretty fast too. This is the old classic Ballband pattern (more examples here, not mine; pattern here).

They are made in 100% cotton, so throw them in the washing machine when they start to be dirty or smell bad. No more self-disintegrating, sour milk-smelling Wettex dishcloths in our kitchen. OK, I admit, I used to love Wettex, but not any longer. I hope I will never have to have a slimy Wettex cloth in my kitchen. The Wettex wipes kind of take on their own (microbial) life after a while, and these handmade knitted dishcloths works a lot better!

If you  blog reader know who I am and want one or two dish cloths, send me a note and they'll come in the mail (well, depends on how many of you that respond). Which color combination is your favorite?

Stamp of the Day: Espresso

In honor of our new machine in the kitchen! Swedish stamps of Italian espressos.  Yummy!

Bits and pieces from the internet

The stone age people ate plants, not just meat! ("Of course", is my comment to this.  What is easiest, hunt down a mammoth or dig up some cat tail roots? File this scientific paper among the ones classified as"obvious research results published in major journal due to the sexy topic". And the idea that cooking came before hunting has already been suggested by Wrangham.)

Inspiration for pumpkin carvings can be found here.

And you can check out the Fearless Dishwasher here.

Gorgeous things from Sweden

Some of my recent finds, more kitchen towels for our collection, which we use all the time. These towels are from Ekelunds Linneväveri and building on hundreds of years of weaving tradition.  Of course the designs are new, but the methods are old.  And they are sustainable and environmentally friendly! You can see more of them here.

OK snapshot: Dagens fångst

Today's catch... in the pantry (at our house in NJ, USA, where OK is visiting). Our cat Smokey turns out to be more of a pointer dog than mouse catcher since she marked the presence of the mouse but then refused to catch it, that was left up to me. The mouse was scared to death and refused to move, so it was easy to catch, release (outside) and photograph it. The biodiversity of the fauna of our house is immense... /LS

Very good food and very good food things...

Yesterday a very smelly package arrived in the mail - a Tennessee Smoked Ham from Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams, a small company that is recreating the old-fashioned smoked hams without any modern additives. Our ham was 14 months old and weighed about 15 pounds (that is about 7 kilo for us Swedes, so like a 1-year old or so). Heavy! But the smell. Close your eyes (oh well, you are reading, but imagining that you are closing your eyes and open your nostrils). Breath in - suddenly you are in a old smoky log cabin with bacon cooking on the stove, and the smoky smell is not that kind of annoying smoky flavor when you put wet spruce branches on a little fire in the winter and the smoke burns your eyes, but long-slow good smoke from a burning wood that has penetrated everylittle pore in the log walls of the house. You can't buy anything even remotely similar to this in any store around here. We haven't tasted our ham yet, since it is for Christmas Eve dinner ('julskinka' for 'julbordet'), but I am sure it will be heavenly. Thank you Benton's!

The day before Lucia (Dec 13) I made saffron buns ('lussekatter'), typical for Lucia in Sweden. They turned out great!

The beginning of a braised beef dinner from oxtail and short rib pieces, from our local supplier down the street. We bought a quarter of a calf that had fattening himself up over the summer here in the Sourlands, so now we have about 120 lbs (55 kilo) of grassfed, organic lean beef in our freezer for the rest of the year. And it is cheap to buy it this way. And yummy. Tomorrow we are making Cajun-style meatloaf from some of the ground meat.




I have tried to make Tarte Tatin (an upside down French apple cake) three times now, and everytime the apples stick to the pan at the very end. But it tastes great. Here is the beginning, when you slow-cook apples with butter and sugar for hours so they caramelized. Later you put dough on top, cook it in the oven, and then turn it upside down after it has cooled a bit.




One of my most favorite things in our kitchen is the superduper out-foldable pantry PP custom-built. It looks like two doors, but when you open you have shelves on the doors and inside, and the inside shelves fold out too. You can see every little can, pasta box and pepper jar, and all the spices are accessible and just right there when you need them. It is amazing how much food you can store at a little space with this. It is mouse proof too.