Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Melting Ice - a Hot Topic, or a Sign of Hope?

 

Snow is melting on the roof, nature is making ice sculptures. There is one right outside my diningroom window. Art.

"Melting ice - a hot topic" was the name of a conference up north at Svalbard last summer. The ice on the poles is melting to fast, the oceans are rising, our world as we know her, is threatened.

Lent is for me a time to act. What can I do to make the world a better place? A safer place? Lent is for me also a time for hope. The melting ice from my roof  is a sign of hope. Spring is coming. Life is growing, life is stronger than death. Still Easter and a risen Christ is far ahead, but the signs are here for us to seek, for us to see.

 

When I look out my window this morning, the signs of spring are hard to find. When the diciples walked with Jesus his last steps on the way to the cross, the signs of life and a risen Christ were hard to find. My walk through lent is a walk where I search for signs of hope. Signs of hope of a risen Christ, signs for hope of growing life!

     

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The fresh teen-ager is doing wonderful. She is having a sleepover party and I will snow make pancakes for their late breakfast. Grandma and grandpa are also coming to share pancakes and blueberry jam with us.

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a new "blog of the week" with alot of red

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NOTE: pancake recipe will soon be posted over in The Blue Café

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Information for Norwegian readers:

More Lent reflections at fasteblogg.no

Link to "40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse"

.....and English speaking readers can flip through the book here. (and enjoy the photos)

 

Red soup for a red week

 Lent has seven weeks and the rainbow has seven colours. I have given each week of Lent a different colour, starting this first week with red. I lit a red candle on my special season table, I plant tomato seeds, I buy some red tulips and I make some red food. I am not a vegetarian and don't give up meat totally for these weeks, but I challenge myself to let as many days as possible be vegetarian days.

 I am fascinated by the red colour. Do you know that red was for a long time one of the most difficult colours to make.The old Meso - Americans found out that the blood from the female cochineal beetle together with alun made a beautiful red colour. I read about colours in Victoria Finlay's Colours. Travels through the Painbox and I am mesmerized.

 Red Vegetable Soup / Tomato Soup

Dice a red onion and braise in the best extra virgin olive oil together with two stalks of cellery. Add three chopped carrots, then four plum tomatoes cut into boatshaped pieces. Cover the vegetablas with just enough water. Add salt and pepper and dried bouillon. Let boil for 20 minutes. Add a glass of white wine if you prefere (I don't do that during Lent)

Eat with bread and butter.

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Lent, a time for silence, reflections, being

 

The snow is falling silently outside the window. Covering the trees, giving the world a carpet of silence. I sit with the Bible in my lap, but I am not reading. God is speaking to me through the silence, the slow falling snow. It is dark outside, but the white snow gives a soft light.

 

We had a rich, colourful vegetable soup for dinner, Ash Wednesday dinner. Lent is often associated with vegetarian food. I am not saying totally goodbye to meat for the 40 days of Lent, but my cooking changes. Less meat, alot more vegetables. Cooking and praying go perfectly well together. I cut the carrots and give God praise for his creation, I fry the onion while I ask His guidance, I stir the soup while God softly speaks to me.

 

Silence isn't always absence of noise. Noise means life and God has created us for living, for being. Some days I find silence while walking home from work, with cars, bikes and pedestrians all around, other days I seek silence in nature where birds sing praise. I can despaire because of noise and interruptions or I can let life liveand find silence there and then.

 

My Lent this year will be a period for silence, in the middle of my everyday life. Silence as a way of opening my mind, my heart, my senses and let God work through me. Let God's work make me being the person, the woman, the wife, the colleague, the kin, the neighbour, the stranger He meant me to be.

 

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Information for Norwegian readers:

More Lent reflections at fasteblogg.no

Link to "40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse"

.....and English speaking readers can flip through the book here. (and enjoy the photos)

 

Phots: The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens, London

Do I need words?.....like female drivers, snow in Norway, especially for Roz.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Roz. I will never again say that snow is not a problem in Norway. Without strong supermen I would be stuck!

Give Marta a camera, and.......

 

When Marta goes bowling with her two big brother, send a camera with her, and you can take part in all their fun for days and weeks to come.......

 

 

Marta was born into a rich life with three older sibling; Torgeir born 14 years before her, Øystein 12 years and Ingrid Elise 7 years. As soon as she opened her eyes, these siblings have been the love of her life. Torgeir has been away from home for many years, one year in the US, one year doing military duty, three years in Australia. Now he is back in Norway and Trondheim, with his own flat downtown. Øystein didn't go anywhere, except from 6 months of military service, untill he bought himself a flat not too far from us, three years ago. Marta has her best days with her siblings around.

Both boys know that The House in The Woods always have dinner on the table for them on Sundays (and everyday else if they want to come home), and most Sundays one or both of them turn up. Last Sunday we were 6 around the table. Just like good old days, and Marta's laughter flooded like music through the house. Ingrid Elise, big beautiful sister, is hermain idol every day, the boys when they come,are here to play with her, to tease her, to tell her jokes and to be totally impressed when she shows them her new knowledge in maths. Suddenly Terje and I understood her new interest in algebra during our cabin days.

 

After dinner a dream came true. The boys took her to the bowling hall.

    

    

Thank you Marta for the photos. Thank you for the love and laughter you so freely give to our lives.

 

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Note: it is birthday week in the Lindland Family. Øystein turns 25 on Thursday, Marta turns 13 on Friday. We will have a big birthday dinner on Friday night with family, aunt, cousins, male student friends, young girls on the step to become teenagers. Unfortunately uncle is busy conducting a big symphonic orchestra somewhere and granma and grandpa are busy celebfrating a sweet 70, but they will be here another day.

Fastelavnsboller

It is the carnival time, or the last days before Lent starts. A period which is filled with traditions, and often the strongest traditions, those which survive, are the traditions concerning food. On facebook this week-end alot of my friends have written about the baking of "fastelavnsboller" or semlor as Sewdish Ilva call them. I see from what Ilva has written that in Sweden they are typical for Fat Tuesday, and this differes a little from the Norwegian traditions. here they are for Sunday before lent, "fastelavnssøndag".

Traditions are important, and in The Blue Café I try to follow the traditions as best as I can. During the period of carnival the food is rich, you are supposed to fill up before Lent starts. I don't say totally no to meat during Lent, but still I try to make our menues simpler, with less meat, less sweets. Then it is nice to feast with food now, these last days before Lent starts, and the cream filled pastries which we call fastelavnsboller, are perfect for that.

fastelavnsboller

 

300g butter
1 liter milk or water

100g fresh yeast

1 teaspoon baking powder

a little salt

2dl sugar

white flour

Melt the butter, add milk/water and warm till fingerwarm. Add the fresh yeast. Mix flour, suger and salt and add the fluid. Mix/knead well. Let the dough raise for almost an hour. Bake round pastries and let them raise for at least 30 minutes. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 220C.

Eat them cold, filled with whiped cream. At "fastelavnssøndag" we always hide a miniature Venezian ceramic mask in one of the fastelavndsboller. The one who finds the mask gets a little gift.

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Music for the fastelavnsboller? It can't be anything else than Saint Saëns and Le Carneval des Animaux, can it :-)

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The recipe is from my book 40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse.

You can look through the book here

and order it here

A sock gallore, and the winner

 

The blue socks are for the winner, and the winner is............ (scroll down and her name will be revealed)

 

I had plan to make some beautiful socks in the snow photos for you today, but my coughing is bad, I don't want to go outside, and it is raining, raining, raining, on top of all our heavy and wet snow. I do have nice boots, yes, both the ones shown here and my red, very elegant ones, but today I prefere books in the sofa, and baking "fastelavnsboller"

 

I did bring out some pairs of socks though, for you to see. I keep them in an old wooden chest, grandma Olga's sewingmachine chest, and from time to time I love to open the chest to pick out a pair. For gifts or for my own cold feet.

 

..................but I will not let you wait any more...........the winner is........drumroll.......Laura Arneson. Laura is a knitter herself, you can see some of her beautiful work here.

 

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I've had alot of fun playing socks with you. The pair on my needle right now is for Marta and her upcoming teenager birthday on Friday.

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Laura, can you please email me your address.

And the winner is.......

woooops.....I'll have to take a few photos of the socks first.

 

 

Meanwhile you can enjoy a new Blog of the Week: plezier met papier

A Literary Walk........and Reading the Classics

 

The morning in London was wet, wet, wet. I had to check out from the hotel before noon, and then I would have a few hours with my suitcase before my conference started near Richmond Park in the evening. I was up early for a literary London walk without the heavy, red suitcase, just my two feet, a guidebook and a map and a backpack with purse, camera and diary.

 

My hotel was in Bayswater, and by walking through Kensington Gardens, passing by the Peter Pan statue, I soon found myself in Kensington, former home of many a great writer.

The more I dive into litterature, the more I want to learn, the more I see what I don't know, haven't read. Like Peter Pan. Familiar title, but a book I have never read. What about you? Do you know the story? Have you read the book? The Peter Pan monument in Kensingtom Gardens is one of London's most unusual literary monuments - it was erected in great secrecy, under cover of darkness, on the night of 30 April 1912. The idea was that early May morning strollers would think that `the boy who never grew up`had arrived by magic and a fairytale atmosphere would pervade the spring air. The workers had been hired by Peter Pan's creator, J.M.Barrie (1860-1937)

  Among my classic favorites are several books by Henry James. I discovered him first because of his love for Italy, especially Roma and Venezia. Some years ago I bought a biography of James and also a book with letters between him and the American/Norwegian sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen. Some years ago I had some time alone in Roma and I spent a morning searching for James' home there, which is now a museum showing many of Andersen's sculptures.

Henry James (1843 - 1889 ) moved into No 34 in De Vere Gardens in March 1886. The garbage trucks were busy on my Monday morning, but it was still possible to half close my eyes and catch a glimpse of Henry James and his neighbour Robert Browning ( 1812 - 1889 ) wishing each other good night after a late dinner.

   

   

My walk kept on. Turning a corner right here, left there, passing a square, looking up to see signs with familiar names, T.S.Elliot, W.M.Thackeray, Ezra Pond........ Trying the best I could to protect my guidebook and my map with my umbrella. I didn't succeed, and love the way my guidebook show signs of good use. Just like dogears. I love books with dogears. And I always read not only with my two eyes but also with a pencil or a feltpen. Stopping for a caffe au lait at a small French cafe, trying to warm my wet and cold feet, writing my diary, then out again.........James, Joyce, G.K.Chesterton, Siegfred Sassoon, P.D.James. I swam in paradise river, surrounded by images of words and famous writers.

 

Have you ever tried a literary walk? it is a great way of travelling. You not only see a city or a place like it is today, you can keep on when you are back home, reading the books by the authors, imagining their lives, their places, knowing a tiny little bit more about the man or woman behind the creating hands and mind.

 

I am back in Norway. With my books and my memories. William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair is among the books I have never read, but which I have now started. It is a huge brick of a book though. I am not sure if I will be able to finish it.......

 

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Note: my Walking Guide: Walking Litterary London, by Roger Tagholm

For further reading:

Henry James: Portrait of Places

Henry James: Beloved Boy. Letters to Hendrik C.Andersen, 1899-1915

Colm Tòibìn: The Master

David Lodge: Author, Author

and a few Henry James novel (among many, many):

What Maisie Knew

The Bostonians

The Portrait of a Lady

 

Mussels, opera and big brother

 

There is a small town at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, south of our cabin, Kristiansund. One hour by car, 25 minutes ferry ride. W go there during the summer to eat the tradition baccalao, but never in winter. The days are too short then. Untill this week.

    

Torgeir, our first born, is in Kristiansund during the month of February for work, and we decided we would use the opportunity to visit him, and to take him out for lunch. Baccalao, and also a special type of big fish balls, are the traditional food of Kristiansund and the area. We couldn't find baccalao on the menue in the lunch restaurant we visited, but blue mussels tempted both me and Torgeir. He ate his almost plain, mine were mixed with stockfish. Delicious.

 

 

Kristiansund is known for its seafood, but it is also known for its opera. For two weeks every February the town turns upside down and you find opera around every corner. The Opera Festival.

 

The ferry timetable prevented us from going to a night concert, but in the afternoon there was a performance at the city mall. We found a table at the cafe there, ordered coffee and sat down to enjoy the music. Marta was not too sure about opera music.......

    

 

........but when the beautiful female singer came over to sit on Terje'a lap, singing about her hot, red lips wanting to be kissed........well, she couldn't stop smiling :-)

 

What I love about life - you never know when you open your eyes in the morning what life will bring, do you?