Birthday fun!

Christian's birthday came and went. I had planned a whole day of fun for us and it turned out great. We started of having breakfast at a cafe close by and then I surprised him with a visit to the Atlanta Zoo. I had never been and it had been quite awhile since Christian had payed a visit, so it was fun! We saw elephants, tigers, lions, giraffes, pandas etc.

After the zoo we had lunch, then went to the mall, then home and spent a few hours by the pool before I made him dinner. I made potato salad (with potatoes and tomatoes from our garden) with arugula, feta and tomatoes, sauteed asparagus and baked portobello mushrooms. It was so yummy! The best potatoes and potato salad I've ever tasted. Yum yum yum!

After that we went to see a movie, Midnight in Paris, and ended the night with a drink at a cute little European cafe.



Now? I'm sitting in the couch trying to stay calm with a nasty storm outside the window!

Are you still checking in on me?

I wouldn't be surprised if you don't. I have been away from the blog for awhile because of my darn computer. It broke down again last Saturday and I just got it back. I haven't had time for much though while it has been gone when I've been working a lot. Which has been good, I def need the money in my wallet.

Today is Friday and I've been quite busy. I made my hubby a cake (it's his birthday tomorrow, happy b-day!) last night and decorated it this morning for people at his work. I made a Pinocchio cake, a traditional Swedish cake that my farmor Siv and my mother often make. I was worried how it would turn out and it wasn't the most gorgeous cake, but oh-so-yummy! And I covered it with whipped cream and fresh berries anyways, so no one would know that the top of the cake didn't come out as good as when farmor or my mom makes it. 

hearts because I love him so! ;)

I also went to the garden this morning and harvested some tomatoes, okra, squash and potatoes. I don't know if I've told you yet but me and my cousin Lars has this "competition" going when it comes to our gardens. He has been posting pictures on his Facebook showing off his garden at home in Sweden, and I have to say that his looks really groomed and pretty. Our? Well, it started off that way, but I'm afraid that we no longer are the bosses over there. It's a mess. We're getting plenty of vegetables to harvest, but things are just growing everywhere! Our tomatoes are clinging on to our posts and fence and our squash is no growing out of it's little planter box to completely obstruct the pathways that we can hardly see by now... Oh well, I guess we need a larger space? Yikes!

this is our tomato plant furthest back, can you see how it is grabbing on to the fence and just keeps growing? In the forefront is our squash blocking the way into the garden...

yummy potatoes!

to the right is our tomatoes and squash, and to our left; peppers, okra and more tomatoes.. I think the compost (the black plastic "thingy") is the cause of our "problem". It's probably feeding our vegetables with tons of good nutrients and that is why they are growing out of control! 

today's harvest. 

That is it for today. Have a great weekend everyone!

Chicken Noodle Soup

I have heard that Chicken Noodle Soup can make wonders for a sick body, so I thought I'd test the theory. I'm not that sick, but something is trying to take a hold of my body and I'm eager to fight it off. So today I made my husbands own recipe for Chicken Noodle Soup. He makes a lot of delicious dishes and he rarely uses recipes; he likes to put in whatever he feels would be good. Most of the times it comes our tasting wonderful, but then we have no exact way of knowing what he put in there and how he made it, so the next time we make it it usually does not come out the way we remembered it. So I've told him to start writing things down we he is cooking and one time, long ago when I was feeling under the weather, he decided to make me Chicken Noodle Soup and he actually remembered to write the ingredients down. It was a hit! So delicious! So today I used the recipe he wrote down while making his soup and it was yet another hit. So amazingly good! Yum! I know a chef should not reveal his secrets but this is too good and too easy to not share with friends and family, so here we go:

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts
2 large carrots
2 celery stalks
2 medium onions
5 garlic cloves
2 chicken bouillon cubes
2 teaspoons of salt
25 twists from the black pepper grinder (yeah, I don't know how much that is, maybe 1 teaspoon?)
1 tablespoon of white pepper
1 quart (almost 1 liter) water
1 quart (almost 1 liter) chicken stock

Dice the garlic, onion, carrots and celery. Place the chicken breasts in bottom of a large pot and put in all ingredients but the chicken stock (the chicken breasts will be covered with water). Bring to a boil while covered and boil for 20 minutes. Take out the chicken breasts and shred/cut the chicken into little pieces and then put in pot again together with the 1 quart of chicken stock. I let it boil up again for a little while. While all this is going on I boil some pasta on the side (I used orzo this time and that was wonderful in it) and put into the soup pot last minute. And that is it. Yum!

doesn't look like much, but it is SO good!

The Great Smokey Mountains

Here are some pictures of our ride home from North Carolina and the Smokey Mountains. Beautiful ride!

Home Sweet Home

Yes, we're home after a weekend in the woods. We had so much fun with our great friends. We started our trip early on Saturday morning when we all met up and took off for Rosman, North Carolina. It was about a 3 1/2 - 4 hour trip but the ride was well worth it, the place was beautiful. We set up camp and then we headed to the rental place where we got out canoes and then we were driven to one part of the river where we put in our canoes and took off. We paddled for about 3 hours before we reached our campground. That night we made burgers and smore's by the camp fire before we headed to bed in our tents. The next morning we got up and had breakfast and then we started our 5 hour canoe trip down the river. It was a beautiful ride and we had a ton of fun! We got picked up by the canoe rental people and was driven to the camp ground again for one last night in our tents. We woke up to a grey sky and a little bit of a drizzle but after a few hours everything was back to normal and it was hot again. We packed up our stuff and headed to a huge waterfall in the mountains where the guys swam in freezing water. After that the rest of the group kept on going on their vacation but we had to head home and took a drive through the Smokey Mountains which was beautiful!! 

Such a wonderful trip!

it was a beautiful ride

our campsite

our backyard for the weekend was a field of corn

I was rocking my America-bathing suit. It was the 4th of July weekend after all.

the water fall and the ICE cold water

where is Christian

We have a tons of pictures from our drive through the Smokey Mountain and I'll show them a little later on today. 

Oh do you know the muffin man, muffin man, muffin man.......

Yes, today I'm making muffin's. We have so much yellow squash from our garden that I'm running out of things to make with them. You can only have so much steamed, sauteed and cooked squash... I need new ideas. So this morning I turned to one of my best friends; Google.com. What would we do without it? I found a recipe for Butternut squash muffins made by the very British Jamie Oliver. I decided to exchange the Butternut to plain old yellow squash. It turned out really yummy and will definitely go back to this recipe if our squash plant keeps on producing for us. It's a pretty "healthy" recipe as well, no butter and he uses light brown sugar (is that better than regular white sugar? Let's pretend it is). 

Seriously squash, what to do with you all!?

The recipe called for 14 ounces of squash, which means two squash, so there's plenty more left... sigh..

Me and my polka-dot apron mixing it up Giada (or Leila if you're Swedish) style

In to the oven they go. Here my "farmor" would shake her finger at me telling me to shut the oven door! :)

Voila!

I'm enjoying mine with some tea in front of the TV watching the hottest man (sorry babe!) alive (Rafa) trying to get to the Wimbledon Final.

Recipe:

  ( 1 cup is 250 ml, 2 1/2 dl)

• 14 ounces squash, shredded
• 2 1/4 cups light soft brown sugar
• 4 large organic eggs
• sea salt
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• Handful of walnuts, chopped
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

I put the shredded squash with the eggs and sugar and mixed it all up. Then I put in all the other ingredients and mixed it up. It said to not mix it up too much, so I made sure not to. Then into the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 25 minutes.So easy and so good, and a good way to get some veggies in you.

I'm bringing some of mine tomorrow to North Carolina. Yeah, we're going hiking/canoeing in the NC woods. We'll leave tomorrow with four of our good friends and will be coming back on Monday. Two nights in tents will be fun, but I'm a little nervous too, it was a while ago. Wish us luck!