Red Soup for a Red Week. Lent

Lent has seven weeks and the rainbow has seven colours. I have given each week of Lent a different colour, starting this first week with red. I lit a red candle on my special season table, I plant tomato seeds, I buy some red tulips and I make some red food. I am not a vegetarian and don't give up meat totally for these weeks, but I challenge myself to let as many days as possible be vegetarian days.

I am fascinated by the red colour. Do you know that red was for a long time one of the most difficult colours to make. The old Meso - Americans found out that the blood from the female cochineal beetle together with alun made a beautiful red colour. I read about colours in Victoria Finlay's Colours. Travels through the Painbox and I am mesmerized.

Red Vegetable Soup / Tomato Soup

Dice a red onion and braise in the best extra virgin olive oil together with two stalks of cellery. Add three chopped carrots, then four plum tomatoes cut into boatshaped pieces. Cover the vegetablas with just enough water. Add salt and pepper and dried bouillon. Let boil for 20 minutes. Add a glass of white wine if you prefere (I don't do that during Lent)

Eat with bread and butter.

Salted pork on Fat Tuesday

I've been away for a couple of days, so though Lent has started I still haven't posted about our Fat Tuesday tradition, salted pork, potatoes and mashed rutabaga. Since we were away on Tuesday we had this dish on Sunday. Enjoy the photos. Lent recipes will soon come.......

Herring Salad on Blue Monday

It is Blue Monday and Terje and I have just finished a late supper. We will both be travelling for a couple of days, so we have had Dagmar's Austrian herring salad one day early.

Herring Salad

Make a cream of:

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

pepper

1 tablsp mustard

olive oil

vinegar

3 tblsp majonaise

3 tbsp craime fraiche

Dice and mix in the cream:

4 hardboiled eggs

1 apple

4 spiced herrings

4 potatoes

Make a salad a few hours before you eat, to make it more juicy

I baked four grain whole wheat bread, and we had a feast.

More about Lent tradition over in the House in the Woods.

Fastelavn søndag - Sunday before Lent

In our livingroom I have an old table. I have had some empty baskets there for a few weeks, but now it is filled with masks from Venica. And my Lent book is there. As Lent unfolds the decorations on the table will change, and the pages will be turned in the book. The pages shown today are about "fastelavn søndag", some lines from the Bible where Jesus tells about his coing death and his rise, photos of fastelavnsris, traditions about this day and the recipe and a photo of "fastelavnsboller". In my blogs, some days here, other days in The House in the Woods, the Blue Garden or the Blue Bookshelf, I will take you along my walk through Lent. How I celebrate, how I walk in prayers, how I slow down, how I want to live these seven weeks before Easter. I have always "collected" traditions, and would love to hear more about how you live these seven weeks, how you prepare for Easter.
Fastelavnsboller eaten on Sunday before Lent, on Fastelavn Sunday is an old tradition. These last days before Lent and fasting is for alot of food, for food extravaganza. Tuesday I have a special dinner recipe for you, today I will share with you my recipe for the rolls, or buns (I am never sure what you call this sweet pastry in English) The recipe is from my book, "40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse"

Fastelavnsboller
150 gr butter
5 dl milk or water (i prefere water)
50 gr fresh yeast
a little salt
1 dl sugar
12-13 dl white flour

Melt the butter, add water and warm till lukewarm. Add salt and just a little sugar to the yeast to let the yeast melt. Add water/butter and stir well. Add the rest of the sugar and almost all of the flour. Knead this you get a smooth dough, add more flour if necessary.
Let the dough rest and rise to double size.
Knead, cut into 25 small pieces and make rolls
Bake at 230C for 10-15 minutes.

Whipe some cream, cut the sweet rools in two and add cream. Sprinkle with dusting sugar.
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Do you want to have a look into my book? May be it is of interest to you even if the writing is in Norwegian.
Take a look here:
http://server02.dotminded.com/dotminded/data/magazine/489032/

The book can be ordered from here:
http://www.iko.no/sider/produkt.asp?id=309&vare

Breakfast on a Saturday morning

Marta loves week-end mornings.

She can sleep long, walk around in her pyjamas, and is allowed to eat breakfast in front of the television :-)

I made her breakfast today. A piece of bread with ham and cheese, chives for a little colour, a note from mum saying "I love you". A glass of milk.

Oh yes. It is easy to see why Saturdays and Sundays are favorite days.

A Late Night Snack

I had dinner in town with a friend after work the other day. Between two appointments we met at a cafe and sat down to eat and catch up on news. I never felt I had this opportunity to eat in town after work when the kids were small, but now, when they are growing out of the nest one after the other, my life find new tracks to follow. A short meeting during a busy day is healthy food for the soul, something I can live on for a long time.
Our dinner was not a big one though, so when the night came I was hungry again.
Hungry for a snack.

Some left over bread was becoming dry, but made into an olive and cheese sandwich it was just perfect.

As I have repeated so often;
simple and easy food can often be the best!

Thanks you....can I offer you a piece of foccacia?

Thank you for your comments and email about my food blogging. It gives me alot of inspiration to hear from you. Who knows, may be I'll keep on food blogging :-) The Blue Café has just started its second year, so why stop now.........

Food, cooking, meals - it all means alot to me. The excitement of planning, the time for preparations, the joy of sharing a meal. All important moments of the day. It doesn't have to be chic or expensive, simple, plain food prepared with love can be just as good, or even better. I love to bake bread, and after finding Ilva's foccacia recipe a year ago, Italian inspired foccacia has become an important part of my bread sortiment. It is so much fun to differ the topping, try out new tastes, and it was a great positive surprise the other day when I topped the foccacia with sweet and sour herring left over from Christmas.

Here is the herring recipe.

Ilva's foccacia recipe here.