Snusmumriken

Today started with two questions fighting their way through my head. One was “It it possible to grow your own grapefruit tree?” The other was “why don’t people make grapefruit marmelade, when oranges have so little ‘bite’ in them?”. The two questions could be answered with one experiment. I bought a grapefruit, made marmelade from it. Found a grapefruit stone. And as an added bonus, - made a grapefruit cake from the pulp remaining after the making of the marmelade.

<b>1. Grapefruit marmelade</b>
I followed VeganYumYum’s marmelade recipe, and while I don’t think orange marmelade is suitable for anything, except perhaps flavouring sauces, which is what I use it for, - I was having big hopes for the grapefruit. The conclusion is that grapefruit marmelade is awsome! It has a pretty honeylike colour. It tastes a bit more bitter than orange marmelade, and if eaten warm, it marmeladize, jellify, whatever you call it - inside your toast. Does it get much better?

If my camera had been functional, you would have seen a photo of the deliciousnes

<b>2. Grapefruit tree</b>
I found one seed. I’ve put it under a glass bown on a piece of wet cotton. I hope it’ll sprout. I already have a calamondine tree in a pot on the windowcill, and am in the process of making liqueur of the fruits. According to online sources, it takes seven years before it starts blossoming, and I’m likely to kill it before then, but ir’ll be fun.

<b>3. Grapefruit cake</b>
Epic failure. If you use too many appliances and create a distracting powerout: Don’t assume you’ve added enough sugar. You most probably haven’t. Cake should taste sweet. Although the pulpy leftovers from cooking marmelade will make the cake more juicy, - remove the big chunks of white stuff. They won’t taste too nice in cake. It’s not a good cake if you have to dip it in sugar and pick it apart to remove thick, white grapefruit rinds. Bad cake. I wonder what to do with it.

Around twelwe today, I realised that I wouldn’t be able to finish my exam, as the probably-phneumonia had prevented me from working enough during the first four days of it. And as I actually had been ill, and as i actually had the sick leave in the pocket i wound up using it. I think it was a wise thing to do, and I think it’s all solving itself for the best. My advisorperson is letting me retake the exam before starting my summer holidays, which means that the only big consequence will be me starting my summer holidays later than planned. I’m rather relieved by that. I was expecting this to have the rather unfortunate consequence of me having to have a round of exams in august, which would be pretty stressful.

As i’m feeling alot better than I did, I got a good deal of work done on my other school stuff, which felt good, and around nine I went home feeling rather accomplished.

After coming home, I’ve had a really nice time. I’ve repotted my plants, and they look alot happier than they did before. I found a big flowerpot on my way home from school, and thought it would be fitting for my chilli plant. Unfortunately, I planted it about two inches too deep. Changing soil and cutting it back must be pretty stressful for it, so I guess I need to wait a few weeks before adding more soil to the bottom of the pot. It looks like a sick kid in a too big pyjamas.

I’m pretty fond of the little birds eye chilli. It has provided me with nice smelling nice tasting oddly pungent mini chillies for a year, but lately, it has looked a little under the weather. Lene pointed me in the direction of the hagegal forums, and the people there were really helpful, and has given me tons of advice on how to prevent it from dying. Hope it works.

On another note, the bread I baked today raised to about twice the usual size. I think this “baking all the bread I eat”-project of mine is giving me some sort of baking-superpowers. Unfortunately this also means that it takes more time to bake, so I’m circling the oven and knock the bread every 5 minutes hoping that it’ll be done soon.

1. If you image google “worst” you’ll get some pretty nasty images.

2. If you make flour with more besan (chickpea) flour than wheat, you’ll get a bread that not only tastes of peas, but which also has a strange texture. If you refuse to throw away food, it will also mean that you’ll have slightly weird food to eat for a long time. Thank god it’s a small bread! I need to retry and make a better one next time.

3. If you have write at home and hold a lecture about it - exams. The band you have been wanting to see live for more than five years, but haven’t been able to, because they just play in really small and remote places of sweden will come to sarpsborg without you being able to go.

Past
I’ve been planning a few posts, but i haven’t gotten as fas as to write any thing. Things are happening. I’ve gotten a part time job at NLI. I’m going to stockholm next thursday. Me and martine have bought tickets for finland in april, yesterday was a nasty snow-storm, and today my parents came visiting.

Present
This evening, i went to the housewarming of a friend of mine, and we ended up going out, and as there were people under 20 around, finding somewhere to go. The end of the story is that i ended up paying to get into some RnB place, and as I had paid to get in, for the first time in my life, i decided to enjoy it. I tried to dance and all. Fortunately there were likeminded people around saying “i know we paid to get in but… i really don’t feel comfortable here. Could we find a pub or something?” So we did. But I forgot my lovely home knitted westham scarf at the scary RnB place. I guess i need to return there later.

Random
Stevia is a sexy weed, in case you didn’t know. Sweeter than sugar and grown on the windowcill. Unfortunately, they are not in common sale in Norway. I got mine from Lene last year, and you can get one form me if you’d like to.

As virrvarr mentioned, I just made baby stevias, so if anyone in Oslo would like a stevia baby, they will be ready in some weeks.

Of course, you can’t exchange a spoonful of sugar iwth one of dried stevia. Stevia, beeing thirty times sweeter can make your food taste too sweet and rather bitter. You also have to add some other sort of emulgator. I’m still learning to use it, when i find some recipes that work well, i’ll post them here.

I thought it would be nice to start the day by scrambling an egg without breaking it.

Just to give the pessimists a symbolic finger.

Yesterday, fortid arranged a debate about wartime history. It went well. There were people watching from the corridor, and even after the break, there were plenty of people who didn’t have anywhere to sit. And the audience really took part. NRK even talked about it on Kulturnytt this morning.

To celebrate that it was a wednesday, and that the debate had gone well, we had a few beers. And then some port at Ernsts place. And it was late, but not cold when i walked homewards. When I walked past Kristines konditori, the baker had already started working.

When I was six, I started reading The Bobbsey twins, and just like every single book I’ve ever read, those books put funny ideas in my head. In one of the books, they were eating fried ice cream. Me, being quite the sweet tooth, always wanted to follow their example, but I never got around to maing it. For some time the idea of fried ice cream grew bigger, and bigger, although my mum said it wasn’t too tasty at all.

Last night me and mikael went out to eat sushi at some place I had never been before, and which was really fancy, although it was in torggata on the second floor. After dinner, while drinking coffee I was lazily browsing the dessert menu, and there it was, the fried ice cream.

Sometimes, when you have been wanting to do something for years (17 in this case), and you finally get to do it… it’s just as awsome as expected. I ate fried ice cream. It was warm and cold at once. It was awsome.