Month: January 2014

D-14

This is crazy. In 14 days, we are getting the keys of our new appartment. We have been waiting 4 months, it has been killing me and as you may know, I am not good at waiting, but I have to!

Today, we met our bankman and we almost know how much it will cost us to own this flat. We will have a drag for some years, but this is kind of crazy to compare the cost of this flat in comparison to the cost of our living now, in a flat we are hiring: there is almost no difference, so far the economical market is stabil. We don’t know how it will turn and our plan is to pay every loan as soon as possible. Anyway, this felt good today.

I am feeling really in love with M, happy to move in our common appartment (and not just him moving in my flat) and I am also very sentimental about a lots of things. For exampel, yesterday evening, I was reading a book (yeah, it’s getting well that with the smartphone out of the bedroom!) and the story was a little too sad, so I was reading and crying like a little girl. Today, I watched a picture of a friend, who just got a baby, and pouf, I cried, Or this video from a nice wedding and my eyes cried a river. Or Sting when he was young and I transform the living room in a pool. I don’t know why I am so sentimental…

And oh, you get an old Sting for tonight, this is how I feel about M!

Though I’ve tried before to tell her
Of the feelings I have for her in my heart
Every time that I come near her
I just lose my nerve
As I’ve done from the start

Every little thing she does is magic
Everything she do just turns me on
Even though my life before was tragic
Now I know my love for her goes on

Do I have to tell the story
Of a thousand rainy days since we first met
It’s a big enough umbrella
But it’s always me that ends up getting wet

Every little thing she does is magic
Everything she do just turns me on
Even though my life before was tragic
Now I know my love for her goes on

I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day
And ask her if she’ll marry me in some old fashioned way
But my silent fears have gripped me
Long before I reach the phone
Long before my tongue has tripped me
Must I always be alone?

Every little thing she does is magic
Everything she do just turns me on
Even though my life before was tragic
Now I know my love for her goes on

 

by leiaot

Improve your well being – Part III

Today was a day with a lots of little “plus” everywhere. I am actually on vacation, but I thought that I would go to the hair dresser at 9 inte the morning and then go to work, in order to put some order around me for my first real day of work of 2014 on monday. I also wanted to get up early and go out for a run before all that. That was the plan yesterday, when I switched off the light in the bed room, the phone sleeping in the living room and my eyes tired of a little reading of a real book.

I slept like a baby, the whole night, from 21h30 to 6h30 this morning and when the clock rang, I did not really knew where I was. For real. M was not by my side (normal, he was in Ljungby, as every tuesday and wednesday) and it was raining hard outside, I could hear the rain against the window. Now, hold on, here comes a confession. I was lazy. I staid in my bed and read of this book “en man som heter Ove” and which I find pretty funny.

At 7h30, I got up, took my shower and received a text-message. This was the hair dresser who asked me if it was ok for me to come tomorrow instead of today as planned. Well, nothing much planned tomorrow except studying, so no problem. My plan of the day had suddently changed and I decided to go to work right away, but to pack my clothes to train on the way back home.

A song for a little soft paus:

I had a nice day at work, made a lot to prepare the coming weeks and feel axcited about working again on monday. Then, I decided to go to the gym. At this right moment, I realized that I forgot my locker at home, so no possibility to change myself and run at the gym. Except if I would find a 10kr coin somewhere. I had no one, so I began to ask my colleagues one after the other and the 15th had a coin to borrow me. So no excuse, I went to the gym.

It was my last ticket there, and it costs like 100 SEK for each time, so I decided to make it last, with a long pass. I ran 10K there inside, listening to the radio program I call “communist radio” which is actually called “Là-bas si j’y suis” and talks about actualities. Today, I both listened one program with a philisoph talking abour drones, killing people and the definition of war contra crime and one program about the growing extreme right in France and how this political part is growing without doing anything special, just waiting for the other parts to tired off all their partisans. Both programs gave me a lot to think off and it distracted me from how boring it is to run 10K at the gym.

Then, I walked home and here I am now.

This day is far from finished yet, M comes at 22h tonight, so I will pick him up. But so far, it was a good day. I feel good, tired but good. My old body likes the gym and my head liked the radio. I will now look in a lots of books about cooking in order to find some nice things to make tomorrow and this week end.

OK, time to shower myself, have a nice evening!

by leiaot

Expeditionen, min kärlekshistoria – Bea Uusma

This is the last book I read and it was mervellous! A  really exciting reading about an expedition of 3 Swedes who wanted to fly over the north pole with a baloon. It did not go how they wanted and more than hundred years later, a young woman, who was fascinated by this expedition tried to find out what they died of. It was really well done, with a lots of facts, very beautiful pictures and story telling.

by leiaot

Improve your well being – Part II

We have now been in vacation during 2 weeks and I would say that only one was enough to turn my sleeping pattern upside down. Since friday night, I have been unable to fall asleep before 2 or 3 in the morning. It is no big deal when I don’t need to get up the day after, but the first day of work of 2014 is approaching (next monday) and I can see myself sleeping until 12 oclock or being very tired during the day…

Well. M went to Ljungby yesterday evening, so I took a radical decision: nor smartphone neither tablet around my bed from now and for ever. If I remember well, I got this smartphone 2 years ago, meaning that I have been falling asleep without in like 30 years. It should be possible to make it back, right? It was hard yesterday and the Swedish radio went to bed before me, but I finished to read one book and I have faith in the future: it will also work tonight! I got up at 6h30 this morning, so I am very tired tonight. This is good. My plan is to read some other unread books I have begun someday and at 21 or 22, pouf, night!

It seems like a trivial thing to do, and maybe most of you, “older” readers, may think I am acting like a teenager, but you know, this is so nice to lay in your bed and read a lots of uninteresting things instead of sleeping, or getting up and so. What I had forgotten was how much easier it is for me o get up when I am awake but I have nothing to look at. The rule is that I may use the tablet during my breakfast to read the news, and I can eat a slowly breakfast, but the most important thing is to get up.

I have been studying the whole day and my brain is almost purée. I am getting a bit nervous for this exam coming in 2 weeks but I have to make all what is in my power in order to succeed. No way that I rewrite this later this spring or so!

OK, time to shower and read! Have a nice evening!IMG_67522 - Kopia

 

by leiaot

How to improve your well being

In the line of my little project “no regrets”, I would like to share one tips with you. This is absolutely nothing special but it makes most of the time my day. I like good food. Period. And I hate to private myself. Then I also know that I cannot weight 2 tons to feel good either but if I eat what I like in normal size parts and try to move my ass regularly, the positive aspects of the good food win over the bad consciouness I could have because I ate too much too good. This is maybe not working for everyone but here it is.

Last thursday, I had studied the whole day, was totally tired and unmotivated to cook somehting advanced, so I passed by a cheese shop we have in Liköping and bought these:

0012

 

It costed maybe 150 SEK and we just ate 2/3 of it this evening. Three cheese, that you smelt in a pot with a littlegarlic and a little dry white wine (a bottle for 66 SEK) and you obtain a wonderful fondue au fromage. It takes 15 min max to cook and then, you are happy until breakfast the day after.

fondue

 

The picture above was not the best in the world, but you can see that it was totally human to make. The only thing: when you don’t have a special pot for fondue (as we), then you have under the dinner to get up and put the cheese on the warmth again, in order to make it easier to eat.

An important thing as well is the bread you eat with. The best is to have a one day old bread, a little dried already, it keeps itself better on the fork.

Anyway: make your stomach happy from times to times and you won’t regret that you only ate bad things or went on diet your whole life.

Tout abus d’alcool ou de calories est dangereux pour la santé. À consommer avec modération.

by leiaot

Mars 2013

Sorry for the time not writing here, it was a lots of studying for me.

Time to retell what happened in mars last year. Not that much more than I had birthday, we bought our first car and went to take a daylong walk in Omberg. It was snow at this time of the year here.

 

by leiaot

Mille-feuille

First of all, sorry for the bad quality of my pictures…

When I was living in France, I liked to eat this pastry, le mille-feuille. I remember though that it was difficult to eat, so it was nothing I bought like that, to eat on the street, more some dessert for the nice occasions. When Xmas came, I thought of which kind of dessert I wanted to eat and since I don’t like the traditional bûche de Noël, then, I decided to explore the mille-feuille.

The most difficult part of it is the puff pastry. I tried once before to make croissants and it worked pretty well. This time, it was a little bit more difficult, since the butter went through the pastry, so I had to repare it. I guess I had the luck of the beginner the first time. I made the pastry some weeks in advance and froze it. The day before xmas, it was time to make hte mille feuille, so I took my pastry off the freezer and here you see:

IMG_20141206_190358

Time to make it really thin (afterwards I think I should have made it even thinner):

IMG_20141224_095348

A good trick I discovered was that it was much more easier to thinner it on a plastic film instead of on the table with flour. Much more cleaner and easier to move and so. Definitivly something I will do more often! Then, I cut the pastry in 3 pieces, they were enormous but fit in my owen plates. ( I had more than 1 kg of pastry, which is much more than the pastry you can buy in shops and definitivly much more than in the video bellow, but we were 6 starving adults).

Time to cook each part of the pastry, individually. This part took a long time: I had to cook every layer once on each side during 10-20 minutes, so count by yourself: it takes time. Plus that it was kind of difficult to handle with them, since they were big. The result was like this:

IMG_20141224_104300

Then, you let everything cool down and you make a vanilla cream. IT takes a little time to make, but it is not very difficult. You can find a good video for that with this link. When this is done, you just do as in the video bellow: one layer of pastry, one layer of vanilla cream, one layer of pastry, one layer of vanilla cream, one layer of pastry and you finish with icing sugar and decoration with cacao:

IMG_20141225_010033

As you can see on the picture, our mille-feuille was enormous. The pastry plates were not really rectangles, that’s why it got this rounded egdes. The size of the mille-feuille made also that it wanted to slide apart. So a lesson for the future: reduce the size of your mille-feuille to the half on the one in the picture.

The decoration with the cacao were a little thick as well but we have to blame it on our bad cissors. Explanation: we used a freezong bag and cut a corner to let the cacao run through the hole and the hole was a little too big, because the cissors wouldn’t cut properly. We laughed at it and made the decoration with a glass (or two) of champagne in the stomach, so this is totally something we accept.

What’s about the taste: it got approved. Everyone ate his/hers part and another one the day after. The mille-feuille was even better after a night in the frigde. I was a little bit afraid that it would be all soft but not at all.

Conclusion: definitivly something I will do again!

You can find here every step well explained of the mille feuille:

(to flip the pastry was not that easy that on the video though).

by leiaot