Midsommar

Well as most people were aware yesterday was Midsommar here in Nordic land, and for once since i moved over to Sweden we were actually twins free. Normally it ends up with it being our weekend every year but this year was different so the boys got picked up by their dad at around 12:00 yesterday.
But before they left to go and spend the holiday with their dad we all sat down outside and had some amazing cake that Marie had baked that morning.

Sorry about the quality, don't know what she did when taking the picture.

I have to admit, i'm not normally one for eating cake. I don't know why and i'm aware that is indeed very strange for someone not to like cake all that much but hey that's just how i am, but saying that i really enjoyed this cake and there is nothing better than eating some Swedish Strawberries in the summer!

But shortly after eating the awesome cake the boys set off and we got to sit back and spend the whole day relaxing with some nice cold beer.

Nothing beats some Mariestad Export!

It was so nice to just sit back and relax for a change, without having to take the kids up to the little festival type thing they have up the road, not that it bothers me going up since it's the Swedish Tradition and well the kids should experience it but i just find it a tad boring and watching grown adults dancing around a big pole singing what can only be described as silly songs is more disturbing than entertaining.

But not only did i end up with nice cold beers but for the first time this year we fired up the BBQ and all i can say is OMG i have missed firing up the grill and cooking some tasty meat!

Just look at that tasty meat cooking away, i'm aware our grill looks a bit rusty underneath but that's what happens when your a idiot like i am and leave it standing out over the winter :( Still lucky for us that was the only part that got rusted and after a bit of elbow grease from Marie the rest of it came up nice and shiny.

  

And well this was what i ended up with for my Midsommar meal, and what can i say about it..... The meat just melted in your mouth and the potatoes that Marie made were orgasmic in your mouth, i swear i have never tasted potatoes that were so good!

To end our Midsommar day we sat around in the livingroom with our daughter Mikaela and watching a few good movies, Mikaela didn't like nearly any of them but i did so that's all that matters eh ;) You know what teenagers are like and they're taste in music/movies etc.

But i hope everyone else enjoyed their day as much as i did yesterday and as for today, well i still have a few beers left so i think they will be drunk later on and the rest of the day will be spent relaxing!

Recipe: Filled Chicken With Potato Mash.

This is not something i normally do on this blog, since the whole blog is pretty much now dedicated to my family life and the kids, not something that it started out as but i don't regret the decision at all to move it from what it was which was basically a rambling of everything into a family style blog that it has become of sorts.

However last weekend myself and Marie had the pleasure of being totally alone in the house as the twins had went away to their dads for the weekend and our daughter Mikaela was away to have a sleep over combined Birthday Party at one of her friends house, so seeing as we had no children in the house we decided that for dinner we would try something completely new and see what it was like.

Leif Mannerstöm

The recipe that i want to share with all of you is something that i had spotted on the TV one night, it was a advert for some sort of brand of chicken we get here in Sweden and the person who was making the dish using this chicken is probably the best chef here in Sweden who goes by the name of Leif Mannerström.
I would seriously urge you to try this recipe if you haven't already done so because after eating this on Saturday i have to say it is now probably my 2nd most favorite dish i have ever tasted in my life! (And that is saying something since i am what Marie would describe as a "fussy eater")


So here you go, i really hope you try it out and like it because you will not be disappointed, i just hope that i managed to get everything correct when i translated it over from Swedish.

Rolled Chicken Filled With Parsley, Bacon & Onion:

Rolled & Filled Chicken Ingredients:

16 Thinly Sliced Chicken Breast (one breast = 4 slices)

1 Sliced Yellow Onion

4 Roughly Sliced StripsBacon

1-2 TableSpoons Of French Mustard

3.4 Oz Hacked Parsley

4 Carrots peeled & chopped into big bits

17 Oz Chicken Stock

8 Skewers

1.7Oz Creme Fraiche

3.4Oz Cream

1 Tablespoon Of Butter

Salt

Pepper

Potato Mash With Parmesan Cheese:

500g Chopped Potato's (the ones you use for mash)

100g Butter

7.03Oz Cream

100g Parmasan

White Pepper

Instructions:

Filled Chicken:

Fry the bacon and the sliced onions until they gain colour and the onions have softened.

Remove from heat and let it cool for a few minutes, Add mustard, chopped parsley, salt & pepper.

Put some of the filling into the center of each slice of chicken and roll them up. Place skewers through the rolled up chicken to secure them.

Place the filled rolled chicken into the frying pan and fry them until nicely brown, once they are browned pour in the chicken stock and let simmer for about 15 minutes.

While they are simmering add the chopped up carrots and let them be in the same time until they have become a soft.

Remove the rolled chicken and carrots from the pan, Add the sour cream, butter and cream into the broth, mix with a hand blender into a broth. If you want it thicker you can use some flour and let it boil for a few minutes.

Potato Mash:

Boil the potatoes in salt water. Drain and steam the potatoes, force it through a potato ricer. Sit in hot cream, softened butter and finally add the parmesan. Season with white pepper.

And Serve.

Well that is it, once again i really hope that you enjoy this meal. It has certainly got my vote as one of the best tasting meals ever and even just the filling that you put inside the bacon can be eaten on the side it is really that great! But give it a try and let me know what you think.

So until next time have a great day.

I Made Dinner!! - Mac 'n' Cheese

At the end of last week i made a blog post asking my fellow bloggers and followers to give me some hints, tips and some recipes to help me get started cooking, the reason behind this was that Marie my fiancée became very ill on the Thursday and it occurred to me that i had no idea how to make dinner for myself or for the kids, because i have been so reliant on Marie to take care of that type of thing.

So feeling a bit down i decided to call upon everyone and then yesterday after a horrible day in town doing the weekly food shop i came home and decided that i would give cooking a whirl, and what better dish to start off with than the American classic Mac 'n' Cheese! I have no idea why i wanted to make this but i have seen it on several cooking shows like Master Chef etc and it has always appealed to me and i have always said every time that i see it, i really want to make it, so yesterday my adventure into the land of cooking began.

Let me first start off by saying, anyone that thinks cooking is easy is absolutely insane! It is now on my top 10 list of the hardest things i have ever done in my life, i honestly can't believe people that do it as a profession or on a daily basis. You would think that following a recipe would be one of the easiest things there is but when there is more than one step for example: Stick X in oven and wait 20 minutes it becomes a bit overwhelming, well at least for my first time it did lol.
Not to mention the strength it takes, i honestly can't understand now looking back to the chef's that i have seen who are not exactly in the best shape of their lives how in gods name they manage to stir a pot of "x" for "x" minutes.

But my lovely friend from America "Holly" gave me the recipe and off i went:

1 (8 ounce) package macaroni 
4 tablespoons butter 
4 tablespoons flour 
1 cup milk 
1 cup cream 
1/2 teaspoon salt 
fresh ground black pepper, to taste 
2 cups cheddar cheese, shredded good quality 
1/2 cup breadcrumbs, buttered 


Directions:
Preheat oven to 400°F Cook and drain macaroni according to package directions; set aside In a large saucepan melt butter. Add flour mixed with salt and pepper, using a whisk to stir until well blended. Pour milk and cream in gradually; stirring constantly. Bring to boiling point and boil 2 minutes (stirring constantly). Reduce heat and cook (stirring constantly) 10 minutes. Add shredded cheddar little by little and simmer an additional 5 minutes, or until cheese melts. Turn off flame. Add macaroni to the saucepan and toss to coat with the cheese sauce. Transfer macaroni to a buttered baking dish. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Bake 20 minutes until the top is golden brown. (You can also freeze this recipe in zip-lock bags for later use - once you have mixed the macaroni along with the cheese sauce allow to cool to room temperature before adding to your freezer - I generally pull it out the night before and allow macaroni and cheese to reach room temperature; I then add the macaroni and cheese to a buttered baking dish, sprinkle with bread crumbs and then bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until golden brown on top and bubbling.

The ingredients!

Now it seemed simple enough nothing to challenging, or at least so it would seem, the whole put this in a saucepan and stir for 2 minutes constantly followed by adding this to the saucepan and stirring for a further 10 minutes constantly wrecked my arm, admittedly i got Marie to help me out and take over some of the stirring and adding stuff while i stirred because I DON'T HAVE 3 ARMS!

I cannot for the life of me figure out how you are meant to stir, while holding the handle so that the saucepan doesn't go spinning around and around as you are stirring away and then on top of that adding more ingredients it just baffles me like you wouldn't believe (Insert Laughing Here!)

It turns out that i made some fundamental mistakes as i used the same pan that i had just cooked the macaroni in to then cook the sauce let me just say DON'T DO THIS! i didn't put 2 and 2 together to come up with 4 and realise that adding butter to a already heated pan would make it stick no matter how quickly i was at stirring it, but i managed to salvage it and get the sauce to come up pretty nice if i don't say so myself, but next time i do this i will make sure to cook the sauce and the macaroni in 2 separate pots, i also think i made a slight error with the top crust, either that or we don't get the same breadcrumbs over here that you do in the states, but although some of it got hard and nice and golden brown after 20 minutes there was still alot of loose breadcrumbs lying around, so i think i maybe never added enough butter on top with the breadcrumbs or maybe i wasn't meant to do that at all, but that is what Marie had written so i followed what she wrote.

The finished product.

All in all it actually turned out really well, myself and Marie enjoyed it and the kids well you know what some children are like with trying new things, it looks weird and i don't like it! But i think i shall try it again and perhaps make a small batch without the breadcrumbs since that is what my oldest daughter and Alexander (one of the twins) didn't seem to like about it, and see how it turns out, and perhaps add a little extra cheese just to give it a little more cheesy flavour as i felt there wasn't enough cheesy flavour in it, although that was perhaps because of my small mistake with using the same saucepan twice without letting it cool down.

But for my first ever time attempting to cook a dish from scratch, i think i did a pretty damn good job! Granted i got lots of help from Marie, but i think i will be confident enough next time to perhaps do it all myself, especially knowing now what to do and what not to do.

But for now i think i shall bid you all farewell and leave it there, so until next time!

Why I Shouldn't Go Shopping!

I had got a phone call the other day from my job coach to schedule a new meeting since she had been sick for our last one and it has now been 3 weeks before our last appointment. With Marie being sick she decided to take it upon herself for some revenge. How did she get her revenge? She gave me the weekly shopping list and told me to go and get the shopping done.

One of most hated things i know off in this world is food shopping, it's not that it's difficult but let me just tell you why i hate it so much:

• Marie writes things like "Sausages" now everyone is probably thinking ok, what's the problem with writing sausages, well in Sweden going to buy sausages is like going into a liquor store to buy beer, there is about 300,000 types of sausages, so when someone in Sweden says or writes go buy sausages i'm like WHAT BLOODY TYPE??!??!

• It is the same thing for bread, if she asks me to go and buy bread i am literally totally bloody lost, i have no idea what type of bread because in Sweden you have about a million different types of bread, from normal loafs to bread that is like rock solid hard, you probably get it in another places around the world as well, but certainly in the UK buying bread is a easy task, but in Sweden it is like doing a mathematical equation.

• People shopping in Sweden annoy the hell out of me, literally you are walking down a isle and next minute your stopped dead in your tracks by a shopping trolly, just sitting there with food and all sorts in it, the trolly apparently doesn't have a owner because there is nobody around until you see someone 4 isles over walking back to it, like WHY OH WHY would you leave your damn cart in the middle of another isle and go off on to another one?? I'm totally confused! I've actually had tendencies to take there trolly and walk away with it and place it somewhere stupid in the supermarket just to teach them a lesson.

I honestly could go on and on with this list, and probably fill a book with reasons why i should never go food shopping but i think i will stop there because i think everyone gets the idea, i'm guessing that i am probably the only person in the world that has all these problems but if i'm not share your food shopping hates! So i feel like i am not alone lol.

But until next time... i shall bid you all farewell.

Needing Help! Cooking.

Yesterday came and it turned into a not so great day, why did it turn into a bad day? well my partner Marie came home early from work totally and utterly destroyed, whatever i had caught over the weekend she had got but it had came to her with a vengeance ready to destroy her, honestly i have never seen her so ill, she spent pretty much the whole day yesterday lying in bed in between rushing to the toilet to be sick.

Not really the best thing to happen when i am completely useless without her or so i found out, it's not that i can't handle the children alone that's the easy part and takes almost no effort but after collecting them from school it came to the point of the day i have no idea about DINNER!

For anyone who knows me and for those who don't, i am completely useless in a kitchen. It's not that i don't want to cook or anything like that it's just that i have no idea how to, or well i know the basics but when it comes to looking in the fridge and freezer and saying oh we have this and that, ok i'll make this it's just a complete and absolute no go, i just draw a blank every time, and with Marie not being any help (couldn't really expect her to be) i was left a lone soldier to fight this war.

Turns out i gave the kids the choice and they wanted noodles so i managed to whip them up for the kids and that was their dinner, ok i know not exactly the best meal, but they had already eaten a few hours before at school so it was no big deal, but for me? well i ended up having a nice dinner of a cup of tea and 4 slices of toast. Normally it wouldn't bother me but i had not eaten the rest of the day so sitting down to 4 slices of toast was just crap.

So i have come to realise i really need to learn to make some dishes that are simple and easily made and then maybe from there i can expand and learn to cook nice meals, because right now i am useless, so i am appealing to my fellow followers and blogging friends, help me out here. I need some simple dishes that i can whip up that don't require to much skill, and by skill i mean that it takes me about 20 minutes just to chop a onion and even then it's more like i have hacked it to bits with a cleaver.

For my American friends, i would love to be able to make Mac & Cheese, and from what i gather you guys are the master of it, so any tips on this dish would be awsome, i'm not to sure if it's easy to make but i'm guessing you guys can help me out, but as i said any help with any dish that is easy to make would be great so i can at least begin to learn how to cook.

So have you guys got any tips, tricks or recipes that you think a novice like me can whip up quickly in times of need?

But for now i think i shall bid you all farewell... Until next time, have a great weekend!