Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Blueberries.

Though we live in the third biggest city of Norway, Trondheim, we still live on the edge of the forest. I love this change between city life and country life, and use the forest and the countryside alot. I am working this coming week-end (with programs in connection with the St Olav Festival) so when Marta asked a few days ago if we could go searching for blueberries, I decided to take today off.

I went to a midnight mess in the cathedral last night, so I slept long this morning. But after a late breakfast I packed my backpack and we were ready for blueberry hunting :-). I had been out the night before to look for the berries and found that we rally didn't have to go long to find the perfect blue blueberry fields. And right up the hill we decided to start picking. And suddenly three hours had passed, our lunch was eaten, our buckets was filled and our fingers were all completely coloured by blueberry stain.

Marta loved it all, and now she is looking forward to Sunday. Then her dad has promised another visit to the same hill with empty buckets.

St Olav Festival

The St Olav Festival starts in Trondheim today. This is Norway's most impressive  church- and culture festival and it is arranged in and around the Nidaros cathedral. My office is in the "next door" building, The Archbishop's Palace, and the past days the area has been brimming with activity. Not easy to concentrate on working with all this going on. The festival will last for 10 days, and is filled with different events, services, concerts, opera, ballet, exhibitions and so on. A total of 300 different arrangements. It is of course impossible to take part in all, but I have tried to read through the program and picked out my favorites.

The court outside the archbishop's place was filled with people during the opening today, so it was not easy to get a good picture. But hopefulle you can get a glimpse of what I am talking about.

After the opening Marta and I walked around in the historic market for an hour. All the people made it difficult to see all, so I will be back again several times next week.

Marta tried stone carving though. The Cathedral is made in a stone type called kleberstein in Norwegian. This stone is soft and easy to work with, so even children can with not much effort carve in it. Marta made an M for Marta.

After some time at the market we went downtown to meet Terje and Marta and had some pizza. And I took a series of photos of Ingrid. She usually doesn't like being photographed, so I'll take good care of these :-)

Life at cabin - eating!

An important part of cabin lafe is the food, or actually the meals. We always eat simple when we are at the cabin. With no electricity and no indoor water it is not easy to make gourmet food. But simple and plain food is often the very best. Last week-end the blueberries were ripe, and the girls were busy every day picking blueberries. They loved eating them as dessert with suger and cream, or as jam. When are you closer to heaven than when you eat hot pancakes with fresh blueberry jam. Pancakes is usually not a breakfast dush for us, but two mornings I was up early and made pancakes for the girls. And for us :-) Sunday morning we ate out on the terrace.

Making your own jam is really part of the fun.

We love fishing, both in saltwater and in fresh water. Often the fishes we get are just small trouts, perfect to be fried in the frying pan and eaten for a late supper. Doesn't this meal look inviting? I always think that a plain meal at the cabin is worth several visits at ****restaurants. At least untill we have to start the washing up.

Visiting friends is another way of enjoying food. Saturday evening we were invited to good friends who also have a cabin at Aure. To a bacalao evening. Do you know bacalao? It is a Spanish/Norwegian meal made of dried cod and potatos. Spiced with alot of Spanish pepper. I love it. And a big pot is needed of course. The kids are not very enthusiastic  about this diah though, so the son in the house barbecued sausages for Marta and Mathilde.

After the bacalao feast it was perfect to plan in the cabin garden and at the low tide bafore coffee and homemade strawberry  cheese cake.

Another perfect day at our beloved cabin!

Life at cabin - mountain hiking

My favorite way of spending the days at our cabin is hiking. We can hike right out from the mountain, which terje did on Saturday when he went out in search for cloudberries. But usually we drive a little while first to reach the day's area.

Last week we had two hikes. On Friday we tried a place where we have never been before, only read about. A hut built by a local hiking organisation. There are huts like this one everywhere in the mountains in Norway. Some are big with several people working there. Others are smaller and unattended. The one we visited, Storfiskhytta, was just a small one, and we found the key outside. Could use the hut like we wanted and paied for us when leaving. 

The weather was cold and wet, so we decided to eat our backpoack lunch indoors. A perfect place for eating, with a small attick where the girls played. One day we'll go back here and spend the night. Again - you can use the hut as you want and pay what you owe when you leave.

We brought with us a fishing rod, and spent some relaxing time fishing. Though, relaxing........the moskitos were quite busy.

Did not get much fish, but a few trouts were perfect to fry for supper when we came home.

The mist made it a little difficult to enjoy the fantastic nature. But we fell in love with these mountains, as well all all the other mountains at Aure, so we'll be back some day.....hopefully soon.

Saturday Terje wanted to work in the forest around the cabin, and also do a hike there in search for berries. The girls and I went to our favorite mountain - Høvikfjellet. This mountain  has the most fantastic view and Marta and I have been there many times. Fortunately the weather was much better. No mist, so we were fully able to enjoy the scenery.

It take us about 50 minutes to reach the top, and while there it is perfect to enjoy coffee, bread with brown goat cheese and fresh water from our hiking bottles.

It will be some time now till we go back to the cabin. Next week-end we are travelling to Italy for a couple of weeks, and then another trip to Italy in the beginning of September for only Terje and me. But the cabin is there, and is always welcomming is when we come - for just a couple of days in the middle of a busy scedule, or for a longer period. And there are many more wonderful hikes waiting for us.

Life at cabin - roses!

I am going to write a series of blogs from our cabin. And I'll start with roses.

The cabin is situated alone in the forest, and it has always been only nature there. Trees, wild flowers and blueberries. A few years ago I decided to start a few flower beds, mostly for bulbs in the spring and for herbs and roses during the summer. We always travel alot during the summer months, which means that the cain lives its own life. And there are no one there to water the beds. Therefore I never know from year to year if there will be many roses.

We arrived at the cain one afternoon last week, and - oh my! The roses were in full bloom. Hundreds of them. And I could never get enough :-) I enjoyed the colours, the smell, the insects making themselves drunk on rose nectar. I picket bouquets and I shot photos.

So far I only have one flower bed, but Terje and I have started to work on the next one. I have collected stones and Terje has made a wall of them to prevent  the soil from just sliding down the steep hillside. I am now collecting soil to fill the bed, and as soon as it is filled I can plant more roses. More roses which means more cabin delight.

A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE.....

Wild berries!

We woke to a perfect Sunday, mild, quiet and no program ahead of us. The three of us, me, Marta and Terje, had breakfast, and then we decided for a walk in our forest. Packed a backpack with water bottles, coffee and sweet buns from the freezer and started. Marta wasn't too motivated for the hike, she would rather sit in front of the television, which we of course wouldn't allow on such a nice day.  But we hadn't walked long before we found the first ripe blueberries, and a smile broadened on her face. She loves wild berries, and of course the first ones of the season taste especially sweet. She found a straw and started to collect. It is a bit to early for berries here in Trondheim, but we were able to find enough to help her fill her straw.

I love the summer forest with all different kinds of wild flowers. I picked a huge boquet for my garden table, and it looked perfect when my sister in law and her two kids came got bbq later in the day. (Mmmm, grilled salmon with fresh picked herbs and a ruccola salad from the garden - no gourmet restaurant can make better food. And a dessert with last years currants - too early still for this years, and a vanilla sause)

But our hike went on.  I especially love to hike on narrow and dark paths like the one Terje and Marta are hiking on in the photo.

A little later we were lucky and found some wild strawberries, another treat for Marta.

The Sunday morning hike was a perfect start for hours in the garden. First garden work, then a barbeque. Tomorrow is workday again, but the weather forcast has promised very good weather, so the afternoon will be spent in the garden.

Fête Nationale!

Today is France's national day. I have always loved France, and also have one of my best friends living there - Marie Noëlle. We have spent summer vacation together with Marie Noëlle and her family several years, and she has really showed me so much of the French beauty. I have been home from work today, taking care of Marta who had such bad pains in her ear last night and have had a headache today. The weather was cool, but still sunny, and I decided to use the opportunity of "my extra day" to prepare a French meal for Terje, me and Marta.

Spent a long time looking through recipe books, but in the end I decided the right ting to do was to go to the grocery story to see what was in stock.

And there I found lamb, which is among my favorite meat. The meat was actually meat for barbequing, but I decided to make a special dish for the oven. In the herbgarden I found a huge variety of fresh herbs, and together with spring onion and fresh champignon I made a bed for the meat. It went in the oven for about 45 minutes together with a whole califlower with cheese sause.

While the meat and the califlower were in the oven I prepared a cold potato salad, and a salad with mini tomatoes, olive oil and ruccola salad from my garden. And I also made three starter dishes for us, with a slice of melon, local pepperoni, sour cream, a mini tomato and fresh herb.

The table was set in the garden, though it was hard to decide if we should rather eat inside with Tour de France on the telly. We love watching it, both because of the Norwegian syclist Thor Hushovd, and because of the beautiful French landscape. Todays sycling was in Digne les Baines, very close to where we spent our holiday with our French friends two years ago. Of course the sun won in the end, but Marta went to and from updating  us on the TdF situation.

We had three dishes, ending with Creme Bruille - my favorite French dessert. I had also bought fresh strawberries - the local sweet and very good strawberries are ripe now. But as we eat dinner quite early in Norway, the strawberries, and more fruit and ice cream can wait a few hours for our coffee time.

And coffee must be enjoyed indoors, the temeratures dropped and it started to rain as soon as our meal was finished.

Home from Malta.

We are home again from a week on the small Maltese island Gozo. Had a perfect week, and I have of course tons of photos to share.

This trip has been planned for a year now. It was my parents who invited us all, me and my 3 brithers and our families for a week. We were 18 altogether. Our two oldest sons didn't come, and also another cousin stayed at home. The rest were there. We stayed in an old, though newly renovated farmhouse, where we had 8 bedrooms, 10(!) bathrooms and two swimmingpools.  Yes, life can surely be perfect in surroundings like this. We spent alot of time near the farmhouse, life was so relaxing and good there that we didn't need much time for other things. But being an avid tourist like I am I of course also spent alot of time sightseeing. In my blog today though I will concentrate on showing you our heavenly farmhouse, and my heavenly family :-)

The four little cousins are aged 9, 8, 7 and 6, and they had of course the perfect time together. The youngest one, Embla lives in Iceland, Kamilla lives in Northern Norway - Lofoten Islands, Mathilde and Marta live in Trondheim. Their favorite occupation, day and night, was swimming, swimming, swimming.......  Marta was the only one of them who could swim when we came, but already on day two the rest swam like fishes also, both over and under water.

Then there were the two small boys, Benjamin from Norway and Agust from Iceland. They were also to be seen alot in the pool when they were not too busy eating icecream.

More about the food of Gozo, the churches and landscape will come in the days to follow. See you!