Cake, cake, and cupcakes

So a long time ago, I made a cake for a devotional meeting/potluck with some Baha’is in the area.  And ever since, I’ve been meaning to make a post about it, but haven’t.  Now that I’m more-or-less couch-ridden (Andreas and I have both come down with some something icky), I thought I finally would!

The cake was really delicious, though very heavy, but kept well.  The cupcakes were all eaten, but the cake was ours to take home.  It took me a week and a half to eat the whole thing, and when I got to the last piece, it was still moist, and in good condition!

 

Andreas helped me out with these, and the chocolate designs were all his idea!  He even made the ones atop the cupcakes.  I think the best part about bringing them to the potluck was sharing the compliments, and getting to brag a little bit about Andreas.

Now hopefully he can use his creativity to think of something we can eat without having to go out in the cold.  We’ll do anything to stay in our pajamas.

 

Spring Carrot Cake!

So, apparently spring “officially” begins in Denmark on March 1st.  This year, it is forecasted that the temperatures will not drift above freezing until sometime in April.  So it doesn’t feel like spring.  We did have a couple of glorious sunny almost-warm days at the very beginning of March, but since then it’s been nothing but a big bummer.

However, we have to get into the spring mindset somehow, and baking is obviously the way to do this.  So even though I’m fasting from cakes/candies/yummy things during daylight hours, I was able to volunteer to bring a cake to our Ruhi study circle last week, and therefore had an excuse to bake one!

I’m pretty sure I chose carrot cake because I wanted something to go well with the cream cheese frosting I had been daydreaming about, but any reason to make a carrot cake is a good one, and I can tell you I didn’t regret this at all!

Of course, I had to decorate accordingly.  It was pretty cute, if I may say so myself.  I didn’t want the plastic wrap to ruin my sweet little carrots while it was in transport, so I finally, FINALLY bought some toothpicks.  I have been wanting toothpicks since last August when we moved from the last sublet that had toothpicks in the cupboards.  I don’t use them on my teeth, but for testing done-ness, cleaning odd things, and, of course, holding plastic wrap away from nicely decorated cakes!  The problem wasn’t finding them.  Toothpicks are probably just as common in Denmark as they are in the US, the problem was remembering to buy them.  Ever.  But finally, I had a good enough reason to scoot out to the store just for the sake of buying toothpicks because I couldn’t stand not remembering again.

And it was a good thing I did, because they came in handy with the cake-baking I did yesterday, as well!  That’s right.  Two cakes in one week.  Luckily they were both to share, or I think I would have added substantially to my minimal weight gain.  The other cake post will be coming up shortly, I promise, but for now, here’s one more picture of the carrot cake.  (By the way, it was super delicious.)  Also, I may have overdone it with all the little carrots around the edge, but they were so fun that I couldn’t help myself!

 

I’m back! And I’ve brought a friend…

I am completely aware of the fact that I’ve been super absent lately.  It’s not because I’ve become so busy that I don’t have time for blogging.  It’s not because I’ve been so boring that nothing worth blogging about has been happening, either!  The truth is that I’ve had a secret, and I couldn’t write here without spilling all of my beans, so all you’ve gotten is my radio silence.  Believe me, things have not been silent.

I recently stumbled upon a quote by Paulo Coelho that goes like this: “Life has a way of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once. ”  Now…Paulo Coelho was kind of an eccentric, but boy did he sure get this one right.  I’ve spent the last year learning now to deal with life when nothing is happening.  At all.  I’ve learned to keep busy, and I’ve learned that time alone with my own thoughts isn’t the worst thing ever.  I’ve learned a whole lot about Danish, knitting, baking, and a little about computer programming, but mostly, I’ve learned about patience.

This will surely come in handy now that I’ve started hurtling down the roller coaster hill I’ve spent the past year chugging up.  In the fall, everything started happening at once.  I got my visa in October, and we moved in November.  I’ve started language classes, and had to adjust (yet again) to living in a new country.  I “touristed” Copenhagen, and took a weekend trip out to Stockholm on what felt like the coldest days all winter.  But most of all, I’ve been working on something else…

 

No, it hasn’t taken me three months to finish this teeny tiny project.  But it has taken me that long grow the mini-version of the baby we’ll be having in August!  So, all of a sudden, everything is happening.  Not only does that mean that the past few months have been really overwhelming, but it also means that I find myself having everything I’ve dreamed of having for the past few years (and some things I’ve been wanting since I was about 4).  Everything isn’t perfect at the moment, we’re working through challenges, and we know there are lots more to come, but we try to keep in mind that we’ve got the important stuff: each other, our wonderful families, a place to live, enough to live on, and now, the beginnings of our own little family.  What more could we ask for? (except for a TV…a TV would be nice.)

 

 

 

Food Photos!

So to make up for a lot of posts about moving and my daily life, I thought I’d do a picture post of all the food I probably haven’t shown you yet, (and some I probably have but forgot).  Enjoy!

Mini Carrot Layer Cake

Quorn Salad

Doughnut dough

Mini Apple Pie

Pasta Salad

Potato Leek Casserole

Pretzels

Basic Scones

Apple Pie/Tart

Spinach Artichoke Macaroni and Cheese

Waffles!

I hope that was enough to tide you over for a while!

 

 

November is NaBloPoMo!

So apparently November is this National Blog Posting Month.

Now, I just realized that National probably refers to the US, in which case I will not be celebrating NaBloPoMo but rather something like InaBloPoMo (International Blog Posting Month).  I think it still counts.  Anyway, the idea is to post every day in November, and while I can hardly remember to brush my teeth every day, I’m going to try!  I’ve got plenty of things to write about, be they small daily tidbits or bigger ideas!

I also figured it’s a good way to lend a distraction to my apartment frustration and also an outlet.  It’s everything all in one!  It’s NaBloPoMo!  Luckily I happened to post yesterday, and this counts as mine from today, so follow me on my November adventures which is sure to include cozy fall baking, my Danish family’s First Thanksgiving, complaints about the weather (and wind, oh God, the wind), and knitting to counteract that weather (and WIND!)!

This is it for today, though, as dinner’s ready (and it’s homemade palak paneer, so it oughtn’t be kept waiting).

Halloween in Sweden

I wanted to start this post by making a confession. (and also with a warning that my “m” key is on the fritz, so please forgive typos)

I don’t think I’m qualified to be a blogger.  Especially when it comes to things like “insert-holiday-here in Sweden” posts.  The first thing is, I’m sort of a weirdo.  My holiday traditions are probably at least a little different from normal holiday traditions in the states, considering that I’m not Christian, and my family is really weird.  I don’t really identify with a lot of the things that make Americans American.  The second thing is also that I’m sort of a weirdo.  I tend to like to keep to myself, and my close friends and family (not a lot of whom live nearby) so I haven’t actually had a lot of contact with Swedes in Sweden.  So I feel understandably rather ill-equipped to write about the contrasts between American and Sweden society.

So why do I even feel compelled to write those posts?  Why don’t I just skip ‘em?  The truth is, I feel a bit left-out.  I’m an American living in a foreign country, and not a whole lot of people understand what that feels like.  The ones that do are the other ex-pats, the ones with blogs who also write the words that I feel like I could’ve written, and these other ex-pat bloggers also write funny, insightful posts about how the culture and traditions of their adopted country are different from those of their home country.  I want to join in, but feel woefully lacking in my familiary with either of my countries.  I sometimes feel much less like an American in Denmark (Sweden still, actually) than I do a Nervous Wreck in Any Old Place.

I think my social-anxiety angst is starting to get away from me a little bit here, so let’s bring it back.  I started this blog, determined not to deterine a theme.  I knew a lot of it would be about living away from America, but I also love knitting, and baking, and have found an outlet to write about the other occasional things that interest me.  I know that when I have kids, it’ll become a mommy blog of sorts, and I know that by being so miscellaneous I might not attract as many readers (what are the chances that any one person is interested in exactly the many things I choose to write about) but in the end, this blog has been for me.  I started it knowing that this was going to be a hard transition in my life and I’ve met people and found support through the people reading my blog, and the blogs that I read.  So it’s not really an expat blog (though we have a lot of the same issues).  It’s just a blog, and when I write about Halloween in Sweden, I don’t really have the expertise to write about how Halloween is celebrated differently here, when it started to become more popular, or exactly how Halloween was celebrated in the states.

All I can tell you is that when I was little, we wore our costumes under our winter coats as our dad drove us around the countryside in the dark where at each house we got a little goodie bag filled with candy because the houses were so few and far between that they could do that.  There was that one house that gave out cans of soda and bags of chips, and the one that always gave out full-sized candy bars.  We had bins of old dress-up clothes and makeup in the attic, and a week before Halloween (after much begging) our dad would drag the down and we’d spend hours wrecking the living room and patching together costumes out of clothing that was too-big and too-small, clip-on plastic ties shaped like fish, the three wigs–one dark, (known secretly to me as Papa hair), one rainbow, and one plain old “old man,” and the witch’s hat which I was always worried would get ruined before I was big enough to wear it.

Featured are the witch’s hat, and rainbow and “old man” wigs.

That was my childhood Halloween.  Now I’ve grown up and moved to Sweden, and while I’m not celebrating perhaps, as the Swedes do, I will still write about our Halloween.  The more I think about it, the more I realize that it’s not the very general traditions that make holidays special.  It’s the weird ones that are specific to our own celebrations with the ones we love.  Going trick-or-treating is all well and good, but what made Halloween special to me was getting home, dumping all of our candy on the kitchen table and sorting it together (into things like “chocolate” “chewy” and “hard”), something that not every family does.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a scan of the photo of us gathered around the table sorting our goods, but I do have me dressed as a sheep!

So this Halloween, I decided to bake a Halloween cake!  I even made chocolate Halloween-themed decorations!  Unfortunately, it’s dark at 5 now, so the cake wasn’t done in time to get any good photos, so I made do!

Frankenstein silhouette! (Okay, so it was originally a bat that went a bit wonky, but still…)

I surprised Andreas with this when he got home, and we had a super hyggelig evening.  We watched The Spiderwick Chronicles (spooky enough!) by candlelight, ate cake and candies, and even had a couple of cute trick-or-treaters for whom we wrangled up a few Werther’s Originals and a roll of Haribo gummies.  It was really a perfect night, and considering I’ve been a bit in the dumps lately, it was really refreshing.  I’m sure it was a relief for Andreas to see me cheered up a bit, and I’m hoping I can ake the Halloween magic last!

Cookies, Colds, and Being Really Frustrated

The 5k on Sunday was fantastic!  Unfortunately, it was also cold, and I seem to be welcoming fall with open arms and a very, very runny nose.  When I was really tired on Monday, I figured I was tired from the race.  On Tuesday, I wanted to keep up my momentum and went for a run.  It was awful.  I could hardly run, and couldn’t wait to come home.  Turns out, I was pretty sick.  The rest of my week looked like this:

I’m now at that point where I don’t think I’ll ever stop blowing my nose or recover from my earth-shattering sneezes, but…we’ll see.

We’re also dealing with challenges concerning our Danish visa process (they sent a letter asking me to come in next week, which I can’t do because I don’t have my Swedish visa, so I was asked to go to the embassy who told me they were booked solid the next month, and to call the Danish migration office.  Again.)  I handled it all pretty well until the embassy said they were booked and we couldn’t do it there.  Then I added watery puffy red eyes to my already shiny red nose after a healthy crying session.  We’ll make some more calls, and hopefully get it all figured out next week.

Last week, I had a sudden and intense craving for something baked.  I was also slammed with a truckload of emotions or hormones or something, an dwas convinced that I would be grumpy and mean until I got. some. cookies.  So I made some!  They didn’t help that much but, I mean, they helped a little.  They are cookies after all.

My Spoiled Knitting Group

Like I mentioned in my last post, it had been quite a while since I’d felt “up to” going to my knitting group.  But I’ve hit a streak of optimistic days, and I knew it was time to host again!  Besides, I’ve been wanting to make a really big cake, and if I get other people to eat half of it, I only get a bit fat after eating…you know…the other half.  And since the cake I wanted to make used many more egg whites than yolks, I obviously had to make cream puffs to use up the yolks…obviously.

 

And, luckily for you guys, I remembered to take pictures!

The first cake I made is the same cake as this cake that had my father-in-law raving, but I decided to add lime curd to the middle!

The cakes ended up slightly deflated in the middle, so although they weren’t as fluffy as the first time I made them, they were still light, moist, and delicious.  The craters also helped a lot to hold the lime curd in the middle without it leaking out the sides, I just inverted the top cake and voila: secret lime curd containment unit!

This picture may not do it justice, but this frosting is just the silkiest, whippiest, marshmallowiest frosting I’ve ever had.

At this point in the cake-making, I was in awe of how smooth and glossy the frosting was, and was going to flatten it all nice and smooth and perfect, but I realized that the coconut was going to go on top.  However, I do wish that I had smoothed it down some, because the coconut here is in smaller bits, and the uneveness in the frosting-job showed through.  A lot.  Luckily, it was delicious enough that I don’t think anyone noticed.

I should also probably add that this was the second batch of coconut I toasted.  The first ended up in the trash, too brown and burny.  Consequently, I ended up having to sheepishly buy some more, and when Andreas asked if we hadn’t already bought coconut, and I told him I burned it, he plopped an extra bag of coconut into the basket “just in case.”  Guess I can’t blame him, but fortunately I didn’t burn the second batch, and now have a bag and a half of coconut to use…any ideas?

Before I started the cream puffs, it was definitely time for a cup of coffee.  Now, I just use instant stuff that my sister-in-law looks at with disdain, but I’m having fun mixing up coffee drinks, and I’m definitely getting better…

The cream puffs were actually much, much easier than I expected.  I’ve made eclairs before, and although the choux pastry behaved, I had a lot of trouble getting the filling the right texture, and filling the eclairs.  I have to say that the cream puffs were a dream!  The shape makes them so much easier to fill (they were all completely full, no big ol’ air bubbles or flat bits of pastry), and using a pastry cream recipe with just egg yolks made the filling much less tempermental and liquidy.

Andreas wasn’t crazy about the cake (even though that was the star of the show for everyone else) but he loved the cream puffs.  Unfortunately, he’s now suffering the wrath of his allergies (sugar and dairy) but he claims it was worth it.  They were really delicious, and even though I ran out of pastry cream, I filled the rest with a bit of sweetened whipped cream, and they were also lovely!
The treats were delicious, and I’m glad everything turned out.  The rest of the night was great, too.  We might be renting one of my knitting-friends’ apartment starting in December-ish, and we’d probably lease for 6 months which sounds like an unbelievably (and wonderfully) long time to stay in one apartment, and it would be great to have something lined up so early, and not have to worry.  I also re-caught the knitting bug and have knitting fever!  The fact that I recently received my KnitPro set in the mail doesn’t hurt…Today I finished up a project that’s been on my needles for a long time, and I have a couple more that I’m setting out to either buy yarn for, or just jump into!

I’m really grateful to the wonderful people in my knitting group.  I may be introverted and shy, but I’m starting to get quite comfortable with them all, and was really looking forward to seeing them.  It got me thinking about how grateful I am to my previous knitting group as well, and above all, my dear friend who started it all, and taught me to knit one sunny day in Wisconsin.

 

 

My First Race

It’s official!  I’m signed up for my first race!  I’m going to be a part of the American Women’s Club team for the iForm 5k/10k run in Malmö.  I’ll of course be running the 5k, since I’m a beginner runner, and I’m super excited!  The race is on Sunday the 23rd of September in the afternoon.  I thought I would have a week after I’d finished my program to work a bit on speed, but as usual, I was off on my estimate of which day/week/month of the year it was, and the race will be two days after my “final workout”  I’m really excited anyway, and am hoping to do five kilometers in the park this coming weekend, and see how I’m doing on time.  My goal is to be around 30 minutes, but I realize that since I’ll only just have finished the program, I might be a bit slower than that.  Regardless, that’s my goal time, and we’ll see how I do.   I’m a lot more nervous about the time leading up to the race, finding my team, saying the right things, etc.  and the time spent with them after the race than I am about the race itself, but I’m sure I’ll do just fine.  I’m expecting an exilerating day, and I can’t wait to report!

For now, running is still going well, although today my knee was giving me quite a bit of trouble towards the end.  I took a different route than usual, and did a few hills which I think isn’t very good for my knees, so I’ll avoid them as much as I can until I can get a knee brace of sorts in the future.  I’m still feeling really good about how I’m doing, and get excited for each run.

Since I last posted about my various accomplishments, things have sort of slowed down a bit.  We haven’t had much time to read Harry Potter together, and I’ve hardly read my book from the library (so my goal of 50 books by the end of 2012 is looking more and more unreachable).  However, I’m not feeling discouraged about it.  I think I’m finally realizing that life, hobbies, accomplishments, come and go in waves and cycles, and I don’t get down on myself for not doing more when I’m in a lull-state.

The past month or so, I haven’t been able to make it to knitting group.  I didn’t have the easiest time with the move, and I was left feeling stressed and anxious, and couldn’t add to that voluntarily by going out.  I used to also be hard on myself for how silly that would sound, and how fragile I would sometimes feel, but I’m realizing more and more that that’s just how I am.  Andreas helps a lot by being supportive and encouraging without making me push myself too far, and I’m noticing how I recover a lot more quickly and work through issues better when I let myself take it a bit easy instead of challenging myself too much.  However, I really missed my knitting group, and I’m excited that I’m doing better now.  I’m hosting this week, so I’m making a couple really fun treats, and am having fun filling my days with baking.  I’m doing my best to take pictures along the way, and I’m looking forward to sitting down on Wednesday to do a bit of editing and post-writing!

Fall is definitely coming, and even though we didn’t have much of a summer here weather-wise, I’m ready for fall.  I’m feeling encouraged and happy that time is plodding on, and I’m looking forward to the race, more knitting (with my new knitpro set!!), introducing my in-laws to Thanksgiving, two new nieces, and hopefully a visa or two!

For reading this, you get a cookie!  Better pictures of better goodies coming soon!

General Update *salute*

Sorry if you didn’t get the vague How I Met Your Mother reference in the title, but I couldn’t help myself…

So, I’m planning a couple more “themed” posts in the near future, but honestly, I’ve been a bit of a mess recently, and couldn’t manage it.  Sometimes, I surprise even myself by how fragile I can feel.  Any change (at all) is really difficult for me, and even when I’m in the midst of change, and I know that it’s just all the unsteadiness that is making me feel anxious, sad, upset, angry, nervous, and homesick in turn, I still can’t manage to feel okay.  It’s times like these when I’m ever-so-grateful to Andreas and his endless patience and support, and when the storm is over, as I am tentatively hoping it is, I always feel the urge to somehow reward him, and I’m never quite sure how.

Anyway, my first week in the new apartment was only okay.  I wasn’t used to living with people who aren’t Andreas, and having to close the door when I pee, or not feeling comfortable going into the kitchen to have kitchen adventures whenever I please (which is one reason for the shortage of bake-y posts recently).  I had a couple of breakdowns, and felt much better afterwards, and am doing so much better now, but it wasn’t fun for a while.

Anyway!  I’m much more cheery these days, and getting used to sharing spaces, and trying to start going about my usual routine without feeling lazy, or guilty for not being more social.  I started knitting again, and have now finished the pieces for a sweater for my nephew, and now just need to get a zipper, put it all together, and knit the collar on!  When that and a few other small projects are off the needles, I’m hoping to have heard the news of whether I’ll be having a new niece or a new nephew come January, invest in a set of KnitPros and be up to my elbows in baby knitting!

Also: Andreas has a work “teambuilding” sort of activity tomorrow, which is going to take his entire Saturday.  From what I’ve heard about it so far, I’m pretty sure it’s going to make a pretty good blog post, so I’m excited to share some of his stories.  He’ll be getting home likely in the wee (or maybe not so wee) hours on Sunday morning, so although I’m losing most of my precious Andreas-weekend-time, I’m hoping some of the outrageous stories he comes back with are worth it!

Since I’ll be home alone for most of the day tomorrow, I’m hoping I can find something exciting to bake!  Hopefully some sort of double-layer cake.  I decided to forget about the fact that we’re only three(ish) people to eat whatever I make, and bake something large anyway.  I’m a bit tired of making miniatures, and my sister-in-law has a lovely springform pan that I’m dying to use, so a whole, large cake it is!  Here’s to hoping I remember to keep my camera nearby!

Speaking of the camera…I’ve been meaning to take more pictures, but I’m so used to not having a memory card and not bringing my camera with me when I go out.  I even forgot it when we went to an awesome concert on Monday, which I’m definitely bummed about.  I want to make sure I get shots of some of the cool things I pass every day without thinking about it, and so hopefully I’ll have a photo-tour of Malmö coming soon!

I’m doing much better these days, and even though some things are tough and not getting any easier (i.e. having patience while waiting for a visa and not knowing where we’re going to be living come December), right now I’m in an okay mindset to deal with it all.

But…you know…Migrationsverket, I really wouldn’t mind hearing some good news sometimes soon…say, Monday?

And now, as a reward for reading my recent, drab, photoless posts, here’s a picture of me and Andreas “smoking” some hazelnut-filled wafer-roll cookies that we bought specifically so that we could pretend to smoke them.