Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Walking their paths side by side with God.

At Tautra, a tiny island in the Trondheim Fjord, a small group of women is walking their paths hand in hand with their Creator. The women, originally sent to Norway by Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey in Iowa, came to Tautra in 1999. Since then the group of 7 nuns has been living in a small farmhouse, but a few years ago the resolution was taken to built a new monastery.

Tautra has a long history with monasteries. Around 1200 a Cistercienserchurch and monastery was built here, and played an important part of the religious life of the Trondheim area untill the reformation came in 1537. The ruins from this abbey can still be seen and visited at the island.

The new monastery is now finished. The official opening will be in spring 2007, and this September the nuns are opening up the whole monastery and inviting people in. We went there today. Took part in the prayer at "non" (the 9th hour), met the nuns, walked around in the different rooms and visited the soap factory. The Soap from the Tautra monastery is famous, and an important way for the nuns to raise money for their monastery life.

The monastery has its own webpage where you can read more about the history and the building progress.

http://www.tautra.no/

As a protestant, monastery life has| always been alien to me. But as I grow older I am more and more fascinated by it. I can never become a nun, but spending a part of my life in a monastery, far from my worldly responsibilites, close to God, a life in prayers.....yes, I could really do that.

What do you eat for Saturday lunch?

A tradition from my childhood - Saturday lunch means rice porridge, eaten with sugar, cinnamon, raisins and a teaspoon of yellow salted butter on top, to melt.

There has been many Saturdays without this tradition in our home. The porridge takes some time to cook, and often we just eat some bread with cheese or salami. But the tradition is coming back. Rice porridge is among Marta's favorite dishes, and with her asking for it I have decided it is time to let this tradition again find it's place in our family. So if you come over around 3pm any Saturday there is room for you around our table, and another plate will be found in the kitchen.

What is your traditionfor Saturday lunch

The blue and white plate is from my collection of vintage china from Egersund Fajanse.

slow food - part of our life

I was at a Slow Food meeting this week, the first of a new group, Slow Food Nidaros. Came home to the most delicious smell from our kitchen - my husband was practicing his slow food contribution, making juice from plums and berries from the garden.

He is a master doing this, and our shelves down in the cold food storage room in our basement is filling up with jars of delicious jam and bottles of the very best juice you can imagine - all from our garden.

Tonight I have been the one occupying the kitchen, making mint sauce and herb vinegar. The Blue Café is filling up to meet winter. But more about that tomorrow.

A fascination for masks.

I was in Venice during carnival in February. In Campiello San Rocco, I passed this charming window filled with masks. The door was cosed the first time I saw the shop, with a small handwritten sign saying: Out for lunch, soon back!

I decided to wait, and spent some time photographing the flowershop across the street. The soon back took some time, and I did a walk in the neighbourhood, but I didn't walk far, I was determined to have a look inside this small shop and workshop. And when I came back I was lucky. The door was open and inside I found Cueros, a woman from Argentina now working in Venice making traditional masks.

Masks have always fascinated me, the different styles and their different usage. How you can use a mask to cover a personality, or to create a quite new personality.

Every one is now in maschera, and one great convenience is, that if you fasten your mask on your hat you have the privilege of not taking of your hat when any one speaks to you; and you never address them by name, but always as "Servitore umilissimo, Signora Maschera! Cospetto de Bacco!" That is fun! From Carnevale, WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART, 1771

Bringing travels home

"Have you swam in a gondola?...If you have not, there is a wide difference between us" - FRANCES TROLLOPE

We have a corner in our livingroom where I have a collection of Venice memories - books, masks, glass beads, dices, glass bonbons. Venice, or Venezia as I prefer to call her, is surrounding me these days......and last night we started talking about going back in the spring.

I need to call Paolo to ask if Nati House is available.

Slow Food.

Yesterday morning I read in the local newspaper that the first Slow Food group here in Trondheim has been organized.

I have been interested in the Slow Food movement for a long time, and my cooking is inspired from it - to use fresh, preferably local ingridients, to put your heart into your cooking, to eat the food with friends, to share the pleasures of the table.

The newspaper article inspired me to visit the local fish market during a break at work. I bought some freshly marinated fish, and put it in the fridge at work while working extra hours. We usually eat dinner around 5pm, then we are home from school and work, and we are HUNGRY. Terje and the girls ate pancakes yesterday as we had so much blueberry jam left over since Marta made pancakes last week. And when I came home I prepared a late slowfood dinner for Terje and myself - baked potatoes, marinated fish baked in the oven, freshly woked vegetables.

Marta  wasn't in bed yet when we ate, and she had some fish together with us, instead of her usual break for supper.

Many of our dinners will be "fastfood" still, something I make in a hungry hurry when home from work. But several days a week, as| often as possible, we will keep on enjoying slow food - both the preparation prosess and the sharing of pleasures around the table.

Feasting on leftovers.

During the week-end I enjoy and love cooking. Then comes Monday, a long day at work, and the first thing I hear when I open the front door when finally at home: what's for dinner? Well, I ask myself that same question, what's for dinner?

The traffic on the roads is bad these days, so shortly after the summer holidays, and I had no energy for shopping after work for something to cook. I open the fridge and ask myself again: what's for dinner?

Well, I find some leftover "fishcakes", we have alot of fabulous cheese from our Denmark trip which needs to be eaten soon, there are some potatoes from yesterday, the old grey and blue Delft pot always contains onions, there is macaroni in a drawer.......My cooking mood rises, and it doesn't take long untill I find myself humming together with the music on the cd player (Giuliano Carmignola playing Concerto Veneziano by Vivaldi, Locatelli and Tartini - perfect Monday music) making a white sause rich with melted cheese, and soon the Monday leftover dish is in the oven, and I go out in the rain to pick some fresh flowers for the table.

Four around the table this Monday, me, two daughter's and a friend of one of them (dh is working extra hours) and we enjoy a Monday Leftover Feast. ......and in my mind I memorise Gandhi's words: Live simply, that others might simply live.

Planning is half the fun.

I always put alot of work into the preparations of a travel. It gives me fun before I go, it gives me alot more during the travel, and it is alot of fun afterwards the gather the information I have and write about it in my travel diaries.

In October I am going to The Holy Island, Lindisfarne in UK for a week. I have already bought a few books on amazon to read before I go; The Lindisfarne Gospel by Janet Backhouse, Painted Labyrinth, The World of the Lindisfarne Gospel by Michelle P. Brown, and 100 Days on Holy Island, A Writer's Exile by Peter Mortimer.

I was up early yesterday morning, and had a couple of quiet hours while my nephew watched children's television (yes, when you are 4 1/2, sleep over at your aunt's and wake up at 6am Sunday morning Disney Channel is permitted - even for two hours [I do hope that my brother and sister in law don't read this.....]). I started to read about the Lindisfarne Gospel and soon got the inspiration to start my next travel diary. I am no artist, but have a travelbox with art supplies, and really enjoyed making the frontpage.

Reading about new places means that you learn things you didn't know. Today I have learned that Lindisfarne Castle has a walled Gertrude Jekyll garden. So now my diningroom table is filled, not only with travel books, but also British garden books. I am learning more about this legend in British Garden life, Gertrude Jekyll

Walking the Garden Path.

I have a pair of old, black Ecco shoes. They followed me for years, on work, on travels, on walks. They were expensive, bought a period when I didn't have very much extra money to buy shoes, they were soft, they were comfortable and I loved them. One day they were too worn to look very good any more, but I didn't want to through them away, and as my old garden shoes were worn out then I decided to use my Eccos as garden shoes. And so they have followed me for more years, when I work in the garden and it is not too wet, when I do my daily garden walk or when I just run out to get some herbs for the kitchen, roses for the diningroom table, colourful bouquets for the livingroom.

Soon my Eccos are totally worn out and the only choice for them will be the dust bin. I will miss them, but at the same time I have some beautiful new gardenboots which are just waiting for my "green" feet. I bought my new rose boots in Sweden earlier this summer, and for three months now they have been a charming spot in the garden, a little whimsy which makes me smile every time I see them. Too beautiful for garden work? Well, may be they are, but their whimsical beauty make my heart smile and my feet dance, and I know that the grass will enjoy being the carpet for such boots and will show it through it's sparkling green.

I know there is alot of different garden boots out there. Let's celebrate them with a special "gardenboots party". Are you coming?

My Venice.

I got an sms from my Austrian friend yesterday, she was in Venice on a day trip together with her mother. The sms brough back so many sweet memories for me from my Venice travels. Later in the day I got an e-mail from Roz. She and a friend is going to Venice in six weeks, and they will stay in Nati House where my husband and I spent a fabulous week a year ago. Then today when I went over to Paris Breakfasts, well, there I found Venice again.

I was in Venice again in February this year, this time staying, not in Nati House, but in Paolo's other flat in Cannaregio.

It is impossible to describe Venice in words, nor in images. You have to feel it, taste it, love it, dream it. And when you are bitten there is no way to let her (Venice is always described as a female)go, you will be dreaming of going back, and back and back.

What captured me the last time I went there was how I could walk around in the city for hours alone and without a map. Got lost, found my way, got lost again.....Venice is always crowded with tourists, but they are all following the same main roads. As soon as you get out of them you can almost feel alone in this fairytale city. Paris Breakfast underline that you must never go to Venice without your art supplies. I don't draw or paint much, but in Venice I brought my moleskin for drawings, and sat down several places to capture images - just for my own pleasure. And my writing notebooks followed mr everywhere. One day I will write "my" book about Venice. I am tempted then to start like Henry James started his travel memoire from Venice in 1882: Venice. It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure there is not a certain imprudence in pretending to add anything to it. Venice has been painted and described many throusand times, and of all the cities in the world it is the easiest to visit without going there. Open the first book and you will fin a rhapsody about it; step into the first picturedealer's and you will find there are four high-coloured "views" of it. There is nothing more to be said about it.