Lazy persons bread – because it´s so easy to make

This is a bread my mom used to make when I was a kid.  It´s called lazy persons bread because it is so easy to make.  The cinnamon and the nutmeg gives it a great flavor.  It has some amount of sugar so it´s a perfect at tea time when you feel like having something good but nothing too unhealthy.

This is a recipe that might not sound interesting but I totally recommend you try it at least ones.

Lazy persons bread

• 200 gr sugar
• 240 gr rolled oats
• 350 gr flour
• 4 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cocoa
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoons nutmeg
• 7 dl milk

Put the dry ingredients in a bowl, mix together.  Add the milk.  Mix everything together with a spoon, takes no time.  Put in 2 greased loaf pans.  Bake for 45 – 60 minutes at 200°c.

 

The blueberries and the crawberries are almost ready to pick.  And I don´t have to go far to pick them, my backyard is covered in berries.  I can´t wait to be able to go pick some them.  I am going to fill up my freezer with berries for my smoothie that hopefully can last me all winter.

Blueberries

I love the juice from the crawberries and it´s perfect in your smoothie as well to spike it with some vodka in a sterilized bottle and keep it for few months before drinking it.  Very very good.

Crawberries

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The best chocolate chip cookies ever

These cookies are the best ever.  I need to make a “best of” blog. This recipe would be for BEST COOKIES.  I´ve got quite a few favorite recipes and it would be fun to gather some of them into one blog.

These cookies are big….BIG! I tell you… and that´s why they are so soft in the centre.

I have to tell you, if you are a cookie fan, you truly have to try this recipe.  It´s my favorite cookie recipe.

The important thing here is to store the dough in the fridge for 24 hours before baking.

It´s a clever thing if you have a small household  to bake only 4 (yes, only 4 cause remember, they are big) at the time, because they are best fresh from the oven, and you can keep the rest of the dough in the fridge for  up to 3 days or you could put it in the freezer for some time.

Chocolate chip cookies

• 3 2/3 cup flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cup butter
• 1 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 big eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 120 g 70 % quality chocolate
• Sea salt

Put dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside.  Combine butter and sugar in another bowl and mix together in a mixer with the paddler attachment until it becomes light and fluffy (3-5 minutes). It´s best to use butter at room temperature.

Add the eggs, one at a time.

Then vanilla

Finally the dry ingredients.

Add the chocolate after you cut it into small pieces.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap.

Keep the dough in fridge for 24 hours

THE DAY AFTER: Take the dough and make balls, mine were about 100 gr each.  It´s about the size of a golf ball.  Like I said they are big.

Put 4 cookie balls on parchment paper on your baking sheet.  Make sure there is a good space between them, because they melt down and need their space.

Bake for 180°for 18- 20 minutes.

do not bake them for too long so they wont get hard.  We do like soft centre don´t we?

Ifyou are using all the dough make balls and put them in the fridge or the frezer

This is a recipe from New York Times.

Moist date cake with caramel sauce

My friend gave me this recipe, promising it was delicious and it was.  I made it for my husband for his birthday and thought maybe it was not fancy enough.  But it didn´t matter how fancy it was because it was very good and the caramel sauce was a treat.

For an everyday event or a special occasion, it´s just good!  But the caramel sauce is a must with it…

Date cake with caramel sauce on the side

• 235 g dates
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 120 g soft butter
• 5 tablespoons sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 dl flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Heat the oven to 180°c

Place the dates in a pot with water, enough so it´s floating over the dates.  Bring to boil, then turn off the heat and simmer for 3 minutes.

Add baking soda to the pot with the dates.

Whisk together butter and sugar.

Add the eggs, one at a time.

Add the flour, salt and vanilla extraxt.

Add baking powder and 1/4 of the dates (remove them out of the water) and stir carefully.

Finally add the rest of the dates.

Butter up some cake mold, one big or two small ones.

Bake at 180°c for 30-40 minutes.

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Caramel sauce

• 120 g butter
• 115 g brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup cream

Put everything in a pot and bring to boil.  Lower the heat and simmer for 3 minutes.  Stir the whole time.

Bread buns made in minutes…

I am one of those who could live on bread.  I love having bread with dinner, but it has to be a good bread, not the cheep store bought bread with 40 ingredients.  When I make lunch or dinner that would go well with bread, like soups or pasta and I don´t have a good bread I make these buns.  Because they take no time to make and bake.  There is no yeast so it doesn´t have to rise at all.  It is also easy to mix, just with a spoon for half a minute, until everything is mixed well together.

It is full of good stuff.  I use a seed blend ( flax seeds, sesame seeds and more) and lots of pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.  You can use any seeds you want of course.

You can make a bread or buns, this time I made buns.

These buns are best when they are fresh from the oven because they are not light an fluffy at all, but if you like seeds and bread you will like it.

Easy buns

• 1 dl rolled oats
• 2 dl spelt flour or any flour you like
• 2 dl seeds
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoons good quality maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 dl water

(1 cup is 2,4 dl)

Mix ingredients together in a bowl.  Make buns or a loaf.  Bake for half an hour or so at 200°c.

I hardly leave home without my camera.  This time I saw it on the table and thought, ooh well, I will probably not use it anyway so i didn´t take it.  On my way home one of the bull on the field was posing so perfectly, standing alone on  the top of the hill, like he knew I was driving by without my camera.

I had a camera phone and I took few snapshots, no zoom so the bull looks like it´s miles away… but lesson learned.  NEVER leave home without your camera.

Homemade self watering pots for herbs – it´s working!

It´s really cool how this self watering pots truly works.  I left them for almost a week without doing anything and when I got back little herbie thingies were peeking out of the muddy thingie… (I need to google translate few words…)  The Soil…not mud, right?

I put down basil, coriander and mint.

How to do this?  You can read about it here.

Inspired by Aloo Palak

I have a garden full of spinach and it´s growing so fast that I need to find more spinach recipes.  Soon my potatoes in the garden will be ready as well.    I found a recipe for Aloo Palak and used it as an inspiration for this dish.  If you have a garden full of spinach and potatoes you need to use, then this recipe is perfect.

 

Spinach potato dish

• 1-2 handfuls spinach
• 2 tomatoes
• 1/2 onion
• 1-2 cloves garlic
• 1-2 teaspoon good Indian spice blend
• 5-6 boiled potatoes
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• Little bit of milk, 1/2 dl or so
• Salt and pepper
• Bit of butter

Wash the spinach and heat it on a pan with little bit of water.  Mix it in a blender.  Set a side.

Brown onion on a pan with little butter and garlic.  Add the spices, then finely chopped  tomatoes and sugar.  Add the spinach, splash of milk and stir.  Add potatoes, salt and pepper if you like.

I added extra pinch of butter in the end because they say everything tastes better with butter 😉

 

Ready to eat, I served mine with cod.

This is one of my favorite photo, called Sierra.  It wasn´t planned or posed, It was more of a snapshot.  The light outside was beautiful and a great contrast in shadows because of the trees in the yard.

Smoked salmon in a bowl

Smoked salmon and raw is not for pregnant woman, but now that I have my little new born sleeping on my lap I can eat all the raw and smoked salmon I want.  This was one of the dish I made this month with food I have been avoiding for the past 9 months.

Smoked salmon is very popular in Iceland, and so is gravlax – cured salmon.  I need to make that soon and give you the recipe.  But until then here is an awesome recipe for smoked salmon.  It is originally made with raw salmon but it works so well with smoked one if you don´t have  a really fresh salmon.  It is  a sushi type of dish.

Smoked salmon in a bowl

• Smoked salmon
• Spring onion
• Fresh ginger, finely chopped
• Sesame seads
• Cucumber
• Avocado

Cut the salmon and the avocado into small bite size bites.  Finely chop the spring onion, ginger and the cucumber. Mix it all together and divide into individual  bowls and add the sesame seeds, a teaspoon or so into each bowl.  Serve with pickled ginger, wasabi and soy sauce on the side.

If you got some caviar that would be a nice addition.

I used to live in Madrid and I love the tapas bars there.  The napkin culture is one of a kind, where people throws the used napkins on the floor.

HEY!  

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Banana Ice cream – 1 ingredient

And that one ingredient is…… BANANA!!  When I see recipes this simple, and again healthy for kids I must try them.

Banana Ice cream

• 3-4 bananas

Cut the bananas into slices.  Put them in the freezer.  Make sure they don´t don´t all stick together when they come out of the freezer.

Put them in your mixer and make a puree.

Shortly after it looked like a powder that very soon ended up looking like an Ice cream.

It´s a great  Idea. Perfect for little kids, people who don´t eat sugar and just everyone alse.

Only thing… When the ice cream is out too long and not frozen anymore it´s just like a slimy banana pure, so serve little at a time and keep the rest cool.

Easy recipe that is fun to play with, add chocolate, maybe peanut butter or some almond milk and make a milk shake…

Pregnant or not? …Tomato soup with broiled peppers and homemade croutons

It´s funny to see how my cooking changes depending on if I am pregnant or not.  If not I am into gourmet food paring it with some good wine.  If… It´s all about baking and desserts.  So now you can figure it out by browsing through my Icelandic blog  for the last 9 months or so (if you don´t speak Icelandic the pictures will tell you…)

Of course I  eat food as well when I am pregnant, but it´s  often “dull” healthy food like simple boiled salted cod with potatoes and butter, recipes I don´t think many would be interest in. And I love making homemade pizzas.  In between I do some good stuff like a Tomato soup with broiled peppers, and of course the homemade rye bread and the crisp bread.

But once not pregnant I have no urge for the sugar in desserts and cakes and bake very little for the sweet tooth I don´t have.

I have been eating lots of good veggie soups, this is one of my favorite.  It´s tasty and easy to make.  The essential part is the broild peppers.  I did tell you how to broil peppers here.  That is a total must for this recipe.

Tomato soup

• 1-2  cans tomatoes, some good organic, I like the ones from Eden.
• 1 onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 red pepper
• 1-2 dl heavy cream
• Good olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper

Cut the red pepper in half, put it in an oven prove dish, with the cut down, season with olive oil salt and pepper if you like. broil it.  See here how it´s done.

Heat olive oil in a pot, on medium heat cook some onion and garlic.  Add tomatoes and the red pepper (after you remove the skin). Simmer for 15 minutes.

Place everything or half of the soup in a blender. Or not at all if you like it chunky.

Put it back in the pot, add the cream, season with salt and pepper.

What also makes this soup really good are the croutons, because I have the soup mild in spices the croutons totally spice it up.

Croutons

• A day old bread, like baguette or something good
• Italian spices, like Basil, Oregano or Rosemary
• Salt
• Fresh black pepper
• Extra virgin olive oil, as much as you need.

Cut the bread into bite sized squares.  I used bread, baguette,  I made from a home made pizza dough

Fry the bread  squares on a pan with oil, we are not deep frying, just add 3-4 table spoons at a time to the pan, if you find the croutons dry, just add some more oil, little at a time.  You can also use butter.

Serve with the soup

And for the last extra touch, a fresh Parmigiano Reggiano…NOT the fake powder in a box…it has to be fresh and real 😀

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Sushi – but nothing raw

I know of many people who don´t eat sushi because they don´t like eating raw food, and of course pregnant women don´t eat sushi because of the raw food.  But you can mke sushi without the raw stuff.  For example, cucumber, avocado and spring onion is a great combo.

Then I can recommend the omelette on a bed of rice, tied with a string of spring onion.

Egg sushi

• Omelette
• Sushi rice, boiled
• Spring onion

Omelette:

• 4 eggs
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon Mirin
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
• Oil for the pan

Put all the ingredients in a bowl.  Stir together with a fork until it becomes light and fluffy but not foamy.

Heat some oil on a teflon pan.  Pour the egg mixture to the pan.  We want the omelette to be about 2 cm thick.

Pour the egg mix to the pan and cook on medium heat, both sides.

Cut it into little squares, about 2 x 3 cm.

After the rice are boiled and have cooled, make a bed of rice, as if you were making rice for nigirizushi.  Put the omelette squares on top and tie it together with a string of spring onion.

Serve with pickled ginger, wasabi and soy sauce.

What I love is to add a little bit of Mirin to the rice when you are boiling them.

I use spring onion a lot with sushi, it´s great for making a nice presentation.

Use your imagination and bring your own touch to the Japanese cooking.