Fish & chips at Fly Inn, HEL

After having breakfast in Billund Airport, it was time for me during my long working day to have dinner at Helsinki Airport, before returning to Denmark having a stop over in Sweden !!! In Helsinki Airport I normally always eat at Fly Inn, Helsinki Airport, as the food in interesting and the restaurant is located away from the busy airport area full of passengers, which means I am able to relax more.

This time I decided to fish " chips with Finnish twist in form of fried pike-perch with mashed arctic potatoes and pea puree and finely chopped marinated onions. My only complaint about this main course was the actually size of it, as it was quiet small.

I paided 46 € for this main course, a medium size glass of white wine and ½ l bottle water. I will give this main course four stars for it´s great taste and excellent look, but the overall portion was to small in my opinion.

Pear cake with marzipan

The weekly vegetable box, which I received last week was full of fruit in form of apple, pears and plums, so it has been a challenge for me to eat my way through all this fruit: Therefore I went looking for cake recipe containing pear, which I located among various Arla recipes: pærekage med marcipan. I have made no modifications to this recipe as I wanted to taste the "originale" recipe, before twisting it somewhere else.

Pear cake with marzipan a la Arla:

• 5 pears - firm
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 250g butter - soft
• 300 g sugar
• 3 eggs
• 375 g wheat (cake) flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 250 g milk
• 200 g marzipan - coarsely grated
• 1 teaspoon organic lemon zest

1. Heat up the (conventional) oven up to 200'C.
2. Peel the pears, cut them into quarters and remove the flower stalk and cored. Cut the pears into pieces (about 2 x 2 cm) and turn them immediately in lemon juice.
   
   
3. Beat butter and sugar together on a mixer until it crumbles.
4. Whip in the eggs one at a time. Keep whipping until the mixture is light and airy.
5. Mix flour, baking powder and cardamom together. Sieve it.
6. Add milk and flour into the dough swifting between milk and flour.
7. Add hand gentle mix into the marzipan, pear pieces in lemon juice and lemon zest.
8. Cover a large baking tray (30 x 37 cm) with baking paper. Spread the dough in it.
9. Bake the cake in the middle of the oven at 200'C for 35 minutes.
10. After baking lift the cake out of the baking tray, and let it cool down on a wire rack.

Hannibal the Cat´s 6th birthday

Today Hannibal the Cat reaches the age of 6 years :-)

After long negotiations during spring of 2014, we reached a deal, so Hannibal has become an outdoor cat during nighttime, and when he returns for breakfast and some sleep in the morning, before I go to work. It is tough to negotiate with someone, who bites you in the toes during your sleep, in order to be let outside. Let´s see, if Hannibal will return to the warm duvets as the cold Winter night returns !!!

During warm and dry Summer days Hannibal can also completely forget time, so there can go between 2-3 days, before he returns home. During such time I would like to have a GPS tracker on the garden lion, so I had an idea, where he is staying. You never knows, if the cat has been closed in a house or shed, where the owners have gone on vacation.

So happy birthday to you Hannibal and wish you all the best in the coming year and many mice to be caught and eaten as fresh as possible.

Hunting for new kitchen

My HTH kitchen and I have now been living together for 10 years, before we moved in together, the kitchen has been through several other relationships during it´s 23 years. The only two things, which I did, when I moved in, were to paint the walls in the kitchen and replaced the grips from white square HTH-grip version 1990 with oval steel handles. With me craftsman capabilities, this is the one and only thing, which I can handle. On the other side I am really good at making jam and baking cakes.

However, I have now decided to throw myself into a MEGA project in the form of "new kitchen" !!! which means new kitchen units, new appliances (stove, oven, fridge-freezer, dishwasher and range hood), new tile floor and new wall tiles.

I have looked at the floor tiles, where I seem to have an unusual desire for a tile of 20 cm x 20 cm in white !!!! The tiles are now at 30 cm x 30 cm or even larger (60 cm x 60 cm) in those dull colours: black, gray and beige, but not white !!!! At one place I got a catalogue of 244 pages with tiles, where I could ordered sample tiles home to my kitchen to see for them in reality. I mean, how hard can it be, an ordinary white floor tile !!!!

Fortunately enough I am living in Vejle, where the range of kitchen stores are large, very large indeed. So far I have visited HTH, Designation and Svane. And now I do not want to visit other kitchen stores !!! At Svane I walked away from the store with a plastic bag containing catalogues with a total weight of 2894 g !!! And at the Designa store I got the complete catalogue of appliances from Siemens. So I am not lacking reading stuff before falling a sleep at the moment.

As a person I am having a holistic overview, so all these many tiny details are less interesting for me as personality, but this is not an option in a kitchen store !!!! What I need is a white kitchen without gloss, drawers and no cupboards and a worktop, that I can cut directly on without a chopping board. Is the type of information enough for a kitchen seller ? NO. I have to make up my mind concerning all these other questions:

• should the elements be with or without grips/handles ? 
• should the elements be painted or in laminate ? 
• should the drawers giblets be in wood or plastic? 
• should the stove be induction? 
• do I a cooking island? Oh, how the heck do I find the room for such a thing !
• should it be Swedish country kitchen or trendy Italian style? 
• will you do the dismantling of the kitchen yourself ? NO !!! And I will neither put the kitchen on my own or I will end up with all kitchen modules in one big pile on the floor. 

Every time you walk through the door to a kitchen shop you easy spend 1 hour answering all sorts of questions. Perhaps it is easier to buy a new house instead off ? 

The good thing is, that I know which tiles that I want for my kitchen wall :-) I saw some smaller tiles during my summer vacation from a potter located in North Jutland, who had made ​​a mosaic in four different colours, two blue and two green. And she is willing to make such tiles to me :-)

I also am considering to use various ceramic handles instead of the usual metal handles on the kitchen units.

And I am under no time pressure at all ? Well, if I would like to use the craftsman tax deductions I have to be finished before 31 December 2014 !!!

So right now I am anxiously awaiting the various drawings and price estimates. And when I will start to hyperventilating !!!

På køkkenjagt

Mit HTH-køkken og jeg har nu boet sammen i 10 år, men før det har køkkenet været igennem flere andre forhold i løbet af dets 23 årige historie. Og det ene, som jeg gjorde i forbindelse med min indflytning var at få malet væggene i køkkenet samt udskiftet greb fra hvide firkantet HTH-greb version 1990´erne med ovale stål greb. Mine håndværkerevner rækker nemlig ikke længere end at udskifte greb, til gengæld er jeg rigtig god til at lave marmelade samt bage.

Jeg har derfor besluttet mig for at kaste mig over et MEGA projekt i form af "nyt køkken" !!! hvilket betyder nye køkkenmoduler, nye hårde hvidevarer (kogesektion, ovn, køle-fryseskab, opvaskemaskine og emhætte), nyt flisegulv og nye vægfliser.

Jeg har kigget på gulvfliser, hvor jeg tilsyneladende har et usædvanligt ønske om en flise på 20 cm x 20 cm i farven hvid !!!! Fliserne i dag er nemlig 30 cm x 30 cm eller endda større ( 60 cm x 60 cm) i de der kedelige farver: sort, grå & beige, men ikke hvid !!!! Det ene sted fik jeg et katalog på 244 sider med fliser, hvor jeg efterfølgende kan få bestilt prøvefliser hjem til selvsyn. Jeg mener, hvor svært kan det være, en ganske almindelig hvid gulvflise !!!!

Heldigvis bor jeg i Vejle, så udvalget af køkkenbutikker er stort, rigtig stort endda. Indtil videre har jeg besøgt HTH, Designa og Svane. Og nu orker jeg ikke at besøge flere køkkenbutikker !!! Hos Svane gik jeg ud af butikken med en plastikpose indeholdende kataloger med en samlet vægt på 2894 g !!! Og hos Designa fik et komplet katalog med hårde hvidevarer fra Siemens. Så jeg mangler ikke god nat-løsning i øjeblikket.

Som person er jeg nemlig helhedsorienteret, og alle de mange små detailjer er mindre interessante, men det går ikke i en køkkenbutik !!!! Overordnet så vil jeg have et hvidt køkken uden højglans, skuffer og ingen skabe og bordplade, som jeg kan skære direkte i. Er den type information nok for en køkkensælger - NEJ. Jeg skulle tage stilling til en masse andre spørgsmål:

• skal elementerne være grebsfrie eller med greb ?
• skal elementerne være malet eller i laminat ?
• skal skuffernes indmad være i træ eller plastik ?
• skal kogepladerne være induktion ?
• skal jeg bruge en kogeø ? Nej, hvor pokker får jeg plads til den henne ?
• svensk landkøkken eller trendy italiensk stil ?
• vil du selve pille dit køkken ned ? NEJ !!! Og jeg vil heller IKKE selv montere mit eget køkken, for så vil det ende med, at alle køkkenmodulerne kun blev sat ovenpå hinanden på gulvet.

Og der er går nemt 1 time, hver gang du bevæger dig ind af døren i køkkenbutik med at besvare alle mulige og umulige spørgsmål. Måske det er nemmere at købe et nyt hus i stedet for ?

Til gengæld ved jeg hvilke fliser, som jeg vil have til væggen :-) Jeg så nogle mindre fliser under min sommerferie hos en keramiker i Nordjylland lavet som mosaik i fire forskellige farver, to blå og to grønne. Så jeg har haft i den pågældende keramiker, og hun vil gerne have disse fliser til mig :-)

Desuden overvejer jeg kraftigt at få diverse keramik greb i stedet for de sædvanlige metalgreb på køkkenelementerne.

Og jeg er jo slet ikke spor tidspresset, vel ? Bestemt ikke, hvis jeg skal have udnyttet min håndværker fradrag, der udløber d. 1. januar 2015.

Nu går jeg spændt og afventer de forskellige tegninger og overslag på priser. For så kan jeg komme i gang med at hyperventilere !!!

Eating breakfast under time pressure at Gastro, BLL

This week I had the "pleasure" of full working day spend in Finland = flying out of Billund Airport at 06.20, returning back in Billund Airport at 22.30. Such a full working day also meaning, that you are buying everything, that you eat and drink at the various airports from breakfast to evening meal. Having most of meals in airports can either be a disaster or good experience.

So I start my "eating programme of the day" having breakfast at Gastro in Billund Airport after the security check, having something like 35 minutes, before I needed to board the plan, so I thought, that I time enough to enjoy the breakfast menu. The breakfast menu consisted of salmon from the island of Fanø, Greek yogurt with muesli & maple syrup, organic Gouda cheese from Naturmælk, bread roll, rye bread, butter, strawberry jam and a fresh fruit salad.

To be seated took approx 5 minutes, as the waiter is guiding you to available setting location, when you have to wait to the same waiter to take your order. So when I finally got the tea, juice and breakfast menu I had 12 minutes to stuff all the food and drink into my mouth and stomach !!! Eating under stress is not a pleasure for me (and I assume everyone will feel the same as I do), as I get the feeling, that the food is getting stuck somewhere between the mouth and the stomach !!!

The breakfast menu is looking delicious, it tastes good and is quiet filling. But having to eat and drink everything within 12 minutes, before you have to go, is not a pleasure at all. I did pay upon receiving the food, so I did not have to panic about hold of the waiter, before running off to catch my flight to Copenhagen.

This breakfast menu incl one cup of tea and orange juice costed 146 DKK. And I will this experience 2 stars, not due to low food quality, but due to stress coming from the time pressure !!!! I have no idea if, this time pressure comes from to few waiters or too long time to prepare the breakfast menu, but looking at it, most of this breakfast menu can be prepared in advance, so it could take very little time to serve.

Welcome to Autumn - Welcome to September

Welcome to Autumn - Welcome to September

Autumn begins with the month of September. And September is somehow the Autumn version of April for me. One day can be amazing as a day full of sunshine and blue heaven, and the next day is just grey, windy and rainy. You have to enjoy every single day with good weather :-)

First apple harvest of 2014

It is also in September, that I can start to pick apples from my two apple tress in my little park. The first tree is of some unknown sort and the second tree is a family meaning one tree seeded with three different apple sort: Aroma, Ingrid Marie & Fillippa. The apple harvest of 2014 is lot looking to be as excellent, as last year, where the family apple almost was laying down on the lawn due all the many apples on it. And I could enjoy these apples well into the Winter.

Since the September 2013 welcome posting I would like to share these suggestion having apple as main ingredients as inspiration for you on how to use the abundance of apples in your kitchen.

If you have any suggestion to me, what I would be trying out in my own little kitchen during September involving the use of apples or other September produce, please feel free to leave a comment to this post :-) My friends in Horsens have suggest me to get hold of aronia fruits, so a big thank you for this great suggestion :-)

Traditional Danish apple cake

Scones with apple and walnuts



Apple "break" - bun with apple

Have a great apple harvest and enjoy your own use of apples :-)