The country place

Yesterday me and Toine went to my grandmother at the country place, together with my parents and my middle sister Yvonne of course. We went to the forest again. My mother and sister went to pick blueberries while me, Toine and my father and grandmother went for mushrooms. Immediately when we went into the forest I found autumn chanterelles/tube chanterelles (cantharellus tubaeformis). Toine kept finding yellow chanterelles one after another and eventually he got tired of the mushroom picking.

We walked a little along the road towards my mother and sister who was picking blueberries (in the end they got 6 liters in total!). My grandmother came and picked up Toine and my sister cause they were tired. My mom got the taste for mushrooms again so me, my dad, my mom, and grandmother (when she got back) went ahead to search some more mushrooms. That's were my dad found the most amazing carpet of red-yellow trumpet mushroom (cantharellus lutescens) and he shared the findings with me! I got such mushroom fever I didn't know what to do! I don't think I've ever seen such a huge cluster of red-yellows!

We grilled sausages for dinner when we came back, and before we left for home we also picked some apples. And when I got home I had sooo many mushrooms to clean.

Today I went to my parents again. Me, my mother and middle sister welt to a "loppis" (garage sale) where the profits go to orphan homes in romania. I found 2 jars, 4 small cute tiny little bottles for decoration, a glass vase, a bigger nice looking glass bottle, 2 "berry pickers" which I intend to use tomorrow and some pieces of fabric to style up my jars a little. Then we got to my parents place, had dinner, and then my mother had to go to theatre practice. I decided to make some nice apple puree out of the apples picked from grandmothers garden yesterday. It's delicious! I made 6kg in total and I brought home about 3kg for myself. Now the jars are boiling to make them hermetically sealed!

School starts tomorrow.

Some sexy autumn chanterelles, They were huge!

Here is a sexy red-yellow trumpet! Also huge!

This is what my kitchen table looks like now! hehehe

Gold gold gold!

I haven't made any updates the past 2 days but that has a perfectly good explanation.

From the plums I got from my mother I made 2 konserved jars of rum flavoured sugar plums and 2 litres of home made plum lemonade.

I left on thursday after lunch to go to my parents place. Me and my mother was going to take a nice bicycle tour to another forest a bit further away and search for more mushrooms. There's pratically nobody going there so the forest is basically untouched. We left from my parents house around half past 2 and in the beginning it was already looking good. We found chanterelles amost immediately and the lucky streak went on. My mother even found black trumpet mushroom! (Craterellus cornucopioides). I only found that mushroom once before in my life and it is so delicious! We stayed in the forest and didn't come home until 7pm. So we had dinner and I wanted to clean the mushrooms before going home again. But in the end it became so late I stayed the night at my parents place.

Friday at 2pm me and my mother went to the same forest but a different part and once again we didn't get home until like 7pm and the havest of mushrooms those 2 days was incredible! I cleaned the mushrooms before I went home and now I have my share conserved in jars.

Tomorrow me and Toine are going to the country place together with my parents and my middle sister Yvonne to visit grandmother, pick apples, and of course to get more mushrooms! And the mushroom season has just begun!

This is the black trumpet mushroom! Really beautiful!

This is what we refer to as a "butter hole". A Cluster of yellow chanterelles!

One of the chanterelles in the previous picture. It's a little blury but it was the biggest one I've ever seen! We called it "The holy one".

2 days harvest! Soo much!

I also found a cute frog!

Plums

I went to my parents place today to pick some mushrooms together with my mother. But the weather was too bad for that and I got some plums from their trees in the garden instead. I made two jars for conservation, and they are flavored with a hint of dark rum. I'm making lemonade of the rest. Tomorrow I'm going back to pick mushrooms because the forecast promised better weather. Lets hope I can trust that.

I also got the results back from my psychiatric care test, and I passed so that is great!

Like you've never seen me before!

My middle sister is going to get glasses. When she went to the optician she strangely enough only had 3/10 eyesight. I find that a little odd considering she takes such good sharp pictures with her camera. But then again it's such a good camera that even blind people can take good pictures hehe. I want one like that... Anyway she is trying to pick out glasses for herself. I actually also have glasses although I don't use them so often. Objects in the distance becomes a little blurry on my right eye only.

I bought my student train card today. Normally a train card costs 690kr/month, but as a student I only pay 1780kr for 4 months (445kr/month) so that's a pretty good discount. I had to stand in line and wait for half an hour but it's worth it.

The plan today is to make home made full grain pizza!

Like you've never seen me before! An old picture of me and my glasses.

Good night

A late post today (tonight). Just like my middle sister, I also want a dog! But Toine is basically against all animals, even my aquariums...He keeps coming with the argument that they pee everywhere, they poo everywhere, and they bite and scratch on everything, and the hairs end up everywhere. Well the hairs everywhere I can agree with but that is easily solved with the vacuum cleaner!

I brought up the idea to buy a new aquarium instead of the 130L one I already have. It has basically been handed over 3 generations I think. My grandmother had it when my mother was young, and my mother had it when I was young. Now I'm having it, and it has scratches on a bit too many places, and there are also some damages in the corners. I'm worried that maybe it's not as solid anymore and I wouldn't want all that water over our new floor hehe. But Toine thinks it's still good so I guess I'll keep it for now. Eventually I want a new one though, but it might have to wait until we have a car so we can actually transport it after we buy one. Mostly I'd want a bigger aquarium but I think that probably wont happen until we have a bigger place ourselves.

This is an old picture of the large aquarium. Now it's a bit more "wild" since the plants have grown freely for quite some time.

This was my favorite Guppy male, I named him Rhett Butler after the handsome man in "Gone with the wind". Sadly he is dead now, most likely from old age.

This is Spike. Even though he looks cool, he is actually somewhat of a sissy. He doesn't dare to come out and show himself unless it is dark outside the aquarium.

Cleaning day

Today was designated "cleaning day". Landry time was booked between 1 pm and 4 pm. Sheets were changed, everything was cleaned. Floor got vacuumed, and wet wiped. Even my aquariums got "vacuumed" and I did a water change. Toine did the dishes (good boy) and helped with the laundry of course. We also recycled all paper and cardboard in the apartment! The only thing we didn't do was dusting. Oh and we went down town. I had to pick up a Christmas present that I ordered for my middle sister. It came in a much bigger package than I anticipated, so I'm happy I had Toine with me. He carried the large package home, while I did some fun shopping at the food market hehe. I came home with salad, lots of fruit, milk, grinded meat, cream, a whole chicken, some shampoo for me and Toine, some bregott (butter), garlic and stamps.

Not that my shopping list is anything interesting to read...

Today Toine thought it was a good idea with waffles for dinner! I agreed.

Buying jars

Today didn't bring me anything special. For breakfast I had 2 farm fresh eggs and they were actually a bit better than the ones in the store. I wonder if it's because they are completely free range. Probably. My parents went to Helsingborg today to visit some old friends who just had twins. I wish I could have joined them but the timing wasn't really good. Laundry time tomorrow so I didn't really have any other clothes to bring with me and things.

Me and Toine went to ÖB (överskottsbolaget) to get some more jars for conserving my mushrooms. The full glass ones I have seem to have trouble staying air tight. But the new ones are very pretty and work like a charm.

On the way home I saw a cute little furry larvae.

More mushrooms

This morning my mother and I decided to go search more mushrooms at a different place. We took grandmother with us, and she thought it was nice even thought she didn't have the strength to walk as much as she wanted to. We didn't find as much as I had hoped, but it's at least good for 2 conservation jars! I'm already running out of jars. I should probably go to IKEA to buy some more. My grandmother was going to look if she had any at home as well.

While searching for mushrooms I came across what we in Sweden call a copper snake (Anguis fragilis), in english it's called slow-worm. Both are actually incorrect names since it is actually a lizard without legs, and it's very beautiful and not dangerous in any way. In Sweden it's a protected species which means you are not allowed to disturb it in any way. I took a picture before it went to hide.

Toine came straight from work to my parents house since we were invited for dinner. We had some real swedish BBQ with vegetables and a large piece of meat on the grill (flinta stek). After that we watched a movie called "at least the weather was good - again" (Vi hade i alla fall tur med vädret igen). It's a continuation movie about a family who always screws up majorly when going on vacation. In the evening we got a lift home with grandmother.

A chanterelle hiding in the forest.

The pretty little lizard which I actually almost stepped on. I probably would have if I wasn't staring intensely at the ground for more mushrooms.

Grinda island

Today I got up early and went with my middle sister and my mother to a small island in the Stockholm archipelagos. We relaxed on a small beach, had a picnic next to the sheep, and took a hike around the island. It was beautiful weather, a little windy perhaps but it was nice. They had a farm on the island and me and my mother bought some farm fresh eggs from their free range hens. They had sheep, and cows as well, all very pretty to look at. When walking in the forest I saw many "baby" chanterelles and the urge to go pick mushrooms bubbled up inside me. So tomorrow I'm going to my parents again and we will go out in the forest again for more yellow gold!

A bunny was running around the main area, very tame and obviously used to all the people!

One of the cows, pregnant and very cute!

The view from the beach was lovely, you could see many sailboats passing by.

Got the sun in my face but anyway here is the new haircut and new hair color :)

Conserving mushrooms

As soon as I woke up today I prepared for conservation. The procedure goes as follows: First clean the surface you are going to use, if you have alcohol for disinfection purposes that is nice to use as well. Prepare a large pot with water and place the glass jars + rubber seals in there (or metal lids if that is what you prefer). Boil the jars for about 5-10 minutes to sterilize them. In the meantime prepare the mushrooms by heating them up together with salt and water (2 teaspoons of salt for 1 liter of water). When the jars are finished boiling, pick them out with some kind of clean tool, and place the rubber seal on the lid if that is the type of jar you have (careful it's going to be hot, and make sure you have clean hands!). Now fill the jars with mushrooms and make sure the liquid goes all the way to the top, and close the jars tightly. Put a towel in the large pot, and put the jars back in because now we are going to boil the jars again with the mushrooms inside, this will kill any living bacteria or mold spores inside the jar. It will be hermetically sealed. Let it boil lightly for at least an hour.

While the jars were boiling I took the time to color my hair (pictures will come later). Now it's nice and deep red again hehe. Then later my sister wanted me to come over and bleach her hair another time because the grown out hair still had yellow pigment left, while the rest (which has been bleached many times before) was being almost completely white. Even though we did it another time there's still some yellow pigment left.

Tomorrow I'm going on a day vacation to a small island called Grinda outside of Stockholm together with my mother and my middle sister.

Doesn't it look pretty? And I'm saving space in the freezer!

Examination day

Today I had a left over examination from last term. Psychiatric care... I missed it last term cause I was too busy preparing things for my middle sisters graduation which of course is a lot more important than one single test that I have all summer to study for. Jenny, my classmate and dear friend didn't do the test either so we were together today. After the test we compared answers and many of them were the same and that usually means it's good. I hope I will pass this one!

On my way home I stopped by in Kista to get a haircut...believe it or not, but I actually haven't done that in over two years...so yeah...it was time! It was a drop in salon and a hairdresser I've never had before so it looks a little different than I'm used to but it looks good! No wonder it looks different when I've had the same hairdresser for 23 years (my whole life...) and suddenly go to a new place :)

While I was on the bus home my mother called me and was wondering if we could go out to the forest again and pick some more mushrooms. Of course! I said and went straight for my parents house. When we left for the forest, the sun was shining, when we arrived at the forest, the rain was pouring, and pouring, and pouring. Almost felt like the Niagara falls... So we endured the harsh weather, got soaking soaking soaking wet, for only 2 liters of yellow chanterelles. :(

I got dinner at my parents place, Toine had to work overtime today and didn't get home until 8.15 pm so I stayed to bleach my youngest sisters hair as well before I headed back home.

Tomorrow I'm going to try conserve the mushrooms in glass jars for easier storage. As I mentioned earlier, the freezer is not as big as I'd like it to be hehe.

Coq au vin

I decided to try the Farmville application on facebook and it was actually more fun than I expected, now I keep farming and farming...

Toine went to take passport photos today so he can apply for his new passport at the embassy tomorrow. He has to get a new residence permit as well, and his old passport is only valid for another half a year, thus the new residence permit can only last for half a year. So new passport = longer residence permit! Toine is not happy with the pictures since it has to be a ''neutral face'', so no smiling. He thinks he looks grumpy hehe, I think it's as cute as always.

I did some nice cooking today as well.

Coq au vin (chicken in wine)

As much chicken meat as you need in large pieces
150g bacon
1 yellow onion
1 bottle of red wine
1 pinch of salt
1-2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon of pepper
2 teaspoons of thyme
1/2 teaspoon of rosemary
2 cloves of garlic
1-2 chicken bullion cubes
200-400g of mushroom
1-2 tablespoons of flour

First Fry the chicken in large whole pieces to give it some color only, put it in a large pot so all pieces fit nicely on the bottom. Fry the onions in large pieces, and the mushrooms if they are fresh and not canned and then add the flour (it will later make the stew thicker). Add it to the large pot with the chicken. Put the salt, bay leaves, pepper, thyme, rosemary and pressed garlic in with the chicken and pour the red wine over everything.

Now start boiling the stew and add the bullion cubes, taste to make sure it doesn't become too salty. Either use a thermometer in a piece of chicken to know when it's done (79 C), or boil about 15-25 minutes depending on the size of the pieces. Check yourself when it's ready ;). In the mean time fry the bacon so it's nice and crispy. When the stew is ready, add the bacon, top it off with some parsley if you like, and serve with rice or potatoes!

It doesn't look too apetizing, but it tastes delicious.

The gold of the forrest!

This morning my mother called me and asked if we wanted to go to my grandmothers country place! Toine was feeling tired and wasn't really up to it, but I didn't even think twice about it! It was my chance... my chance to collect some of the forests most precious treasures, "yellow chanterelle" (Cantharellus cibarius). I packed with me some papers for study in case I would have the time...

Anyway, I went there together with my parents and my middle sister. When I got there I noticed that the neighboring farm finally started using their land cause there was a new electrical fence right on the border to my grandmothers garden. I thought it was pretty fun and my grandmother also got handles on the fence behind the house so she could easily get past the fence and take a walk in the forest if she wanted to. My grandmother bought cookies and cake to celebrate my dad who had his birthday recently and after that it was time to go to new unexplored mushroom grounds.

At first I didn't have much luck in finding the pretty little mushrooms, I did however find a cute frog. My mother kept sending me pictures and message after message that she found more and more mushrooms. My dad picked his whole bucket full of the yellow gold, and I only had a few tiny small ones. It was getting annoying hearing about their luck all the time when mine clearly decided to go elsewhere. My luck didn't come until the last place we went to, there I was able to fill my bucket and I also found some "red-yellow trumpet mushroom"(Cantharellus lutescens) and some "tube chanterelle" (Cantharellus tubaeformis). When we got back to the house, the cows decided to pay us a visit, they were really pretty.

The mushrooms are now slowly boiling on my stove and then I will freeze them. Next time I will try conservation in a glass jar since my freezer is too tiny to keep the excessive amounts of mushrooms I'm planning on picking this autumn!

The mushrooms, ended up being 3 liters after it was cleaned and cut to nice pieces.

My sister took some pretty pictures in my grandmothers garden.

Crawfish party! (Kräftskiva)

Yesterdays movie with my family (- youngest sister, she had already seen it) was really funny. It's called "sommaren med Göran" (the summer with Göran). The movie is about this guy, he is a quite awkward and strange person who really tries hard to make the best out of everything but it doesn't go very well. For an instance he ended up arguing with his girlfriend while he was proposing.

Today it was time for the traditional "kräftskiva" together with my family. When it's season and the crawfish newly changed their shells, they are fished for, cooked and enjoyed on Swedish tables together with beer and a lot of schnapps (occasionally some bread and cheese is also consumed...). My parents came to pick me and Toine up after they were done shopping for some things so we were there quite early. I helped out by making a delicious cheese pie, a chicken pie, and vegan vegetable pie. I also made a cheese cream to spread on the bread, or dip the crawfish tails in.

Some long time friends of the family and my youngest sisters boyfriend was also with us and we had a quite good time. We ended up playing trivial pursuit in the evening and my parents + middle sister, who teamed up, won the game...*sigh*. The game questions was from the 80s and not really up to date so it was pretty hard for us young people!

This is what a kräftskiva could look like, ours didn't look like this, but I forgot to take photos :(

Me and my two younger sisters on the party this evening!

On my way home I saw a quite little toad. I had to pet it for a little and take a picture before I put it back. It actually didn't want to jump out of my hand so I think maybe it liked me :)

Evil gods of rain and thunder...

I saw the dark cloud coming while i was starting the laundry machine already but I thought it was going to pass next to us. However it was only getting closer and closer until it was right upon us...well...upon me, Toine is working so i have to do the laundry all by myself. I heard some thunder long time ago but as I was booking the tickets for the cinema this evening that I and some family members will go to, a nice "little" hailstorm started.

... and after that, the rain came...

I hope it blows over before I have to go and pick up the laundry again!

Happy Birthday!

I was planning on spending the morning together with my psychiatric-care books, studying for my test on Tuesday...somehow I got stuck on the 5th season of sailor moon... Why does that always happen? When it's time to really study for school, my interest is as far away as the Himalayas... oh well, so far I haven't failed a test from lack of knowledge so I'm sure it will go well after all. No stress!

My parents came to pick me up at 4:30 pm today cause we were going to celebrate my dads birthday! Toine came to my parents house straight from work and was of course exhausted already. The first week of work after a holiday is always the hardest. We grilled some nice "flinta" steak together with paprika, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions and corn-cobs. We had boiled potatoes with that. Later in the evening we had some home made "daim" cake (except my youngest sister who had some vegan cake thingy which probably tastes like play-doh clay as always...I can't believe she actually likes it...but whatever rocks her boat so to say hehe). My dad got his present which was a large compost grinder of some sorts. We all chipped in on the money since it wasn't really cheap. My dad seemed happy with it so I guess it's all good!

Tomorrow we are planning to see a movie on the cinema. Toine wants to stay home and rest so I will go together with my family. Time for good night now!

Lovely play-doh clay :)

Just another day

Today didn't really bring me much. I woke up in the most horrible way however cause they are trimming the trees outside this week. Imagine sleeping deeply and suddenly hearing a roaring chainsaw... Anyway...

I helped my youngest sister to get tickets to Coldplay and Winnerbäck for her and her boyfriend. The Coldplay concert was sold out long ago but they just released some extra seats today. At the first try i didn't get any, they were all booked up within 10 seconds, basically. However, the tickets can only be booked for 5 minutes (unless you play for them immediately) so after some update-button-clicking-frenzy i managed to score 2 tickets which i at first thought were quite bad ones, but my sister wanted them anyway. Later on she found out that section A is apparently one of the best places to sit so it looks like it will be all good after all!

I went to the food store as planned as well...Maybe i bought with me a little too much cause it was rather heavy to get up the stairs but it was things we needed anyway. Oh and i was planning on studying today but...well...somehow i didn't get to that...I'll try again tomorrow!

The renovation (Flashback)

Before me and Toine left to the Netherlands, we spent two weeks renovating our living room and changing floor in the hallway. It was hard work, but the result was very rewarding.

• Start with tearing down old wallpaper, only to figure out that the last layer is rock solid stuck...
• Go to Jula to by a wallpaper steamer
• Steam away remaining wallpaper
• Fill up nail holes and other visible damages on the walls
• Put up protective wallpaper in corners and over cracks
• Plaster all 4 walls (phew this must be the hardest part!)
• Grind down all uneven parts after the plastering (ouch this was way harder!)
• Fill up small uneven parts and then grind the new areas when dry (phew at least the hardest part is done now)
• Time to paint the ceiling. We do it two times, and also the window frames
• Three of the walls will be painted three times with antique white, and then the fourth wall gets three layers of a darker sort of Kahlua colored paint
• Last step, putting down the floor! Toine did most of this hehe
  

Living room and hallway "before".


Taking down wallpaper! Toine is working hard, but I was doing my share of the work as well!


Walls are now painted, and the floor is starting to form.


This is what the new living room and hallway looks like. Some new TV furniture as well, which will soon hold a nice flat-screen TV.

Finally home

The plane home yesterday left at 4pm from Weeze in Germany. The Netherlands is such a small country and when you're situated almost in the middle, you'll have a little over an hour traveltime to each border or major city, thus it doesn'n matter which airport you choose. And then you can fly cheap!

We left the house at 1pm already since we wanted to check in well in time to get some good seats. But even though we were among the first to get onboard, the people with priority boarding already took the best seats (the ones by the emergency exit, with all the goodie legspace), so my poor, tall boyfriend had to squeeze in with his legs and knees in the tight space that ryan air so generously provides (sarcasm). Maybe cheap isn't so good after all hehe? Toines mother cried a little when we left but they will be visisting us in october so she comforted herself with that fact.

The landing got a little turbulent since we passed some thunderclouds during the descent. I really wish i had a camera at that point, i could've taken some really cool pictures inside the cloud. The rest of the way went very smooth, the bus filled up quick and we left on schedual. The lady driver also knew her traffic information, cause we took a little detour, racing past the kilometers of still traffic on the highway. We arrive at the central station about 5 minutes before the train home is about to leave, perfect timing once again!

Back home in the apartment everything was perfectly cleaned. My youngest sister and her boyfriend really did a good job so we rewarded them with loads of presents. My parents got over here as well and got their presents too, not as much as my little sister got though.

And after only one night of sleep, Toine has to get up early and head for work. And I'm sitting here by myself trying to pass the time...i guess I'll have some breakfast now.

Sunday in NL (Flashback)

For you who don't already know, I've spent almost 10 days with my boyfriend's family in the Netherlands. Apart from back home in Sweden, everything in this country is closed on Sundays. Even the food markets! Maybe you get a bit spoiled when you live in Stockholm, but there is absolutely nothing to do here. The morning disappeared together with "Extreme logging" and "Extreme demolition" on Discovery channel.

Right now the CD "Ljuva Svenska Visa" is played on the computer in the kitchen. My (hopefully) future mother in law is humming to the melody without really knowing what they sing. We are in the kitchen preparing for "Swedish BBQ". I made a godly potato salad and prepared stuffed mushrooms, marinated paprika, and spiced tomato halves. It will all be grilled together with an assortment of dutch meat (all except the potato salad of course). I is as close to swedish as it gets. My boyfriend, Toine, is relaxing out in the garden. Tomorrow we will be heading for home.

The youngest of my two sisters + her boyfriend has been looking after the apartment and my fishes for me. We bought with us a lot of goodies and things as thanks for the help. I hope they will like it!

Hmmm

So I've created a blog...Never thought i would, but here I am. And how many others didn't end up the same way? Oh well, guess i have to do the best of the situation, something good might come out of it after all!

The blog will by the way be in english so my non swedish speaking relatives can read if they want to.