Ingredients

My favorite fruits to use are kiwifruit, pineapple, apple, orange/clementine, banana, pear and grapes. Almost anything goes, sweet fruits are best.

Recipe

Cut fruit into pieces, serve in dessert bowl covered with ice cream. Remember to let the ice cream melt just a little before covering it. Letting the ice cream sit in room temperature for 10-20 minutes while you cut the fruits is a good idea.

Enjoy!

Bonus tip: Yogurt works great too!

1. Blog at least once a week
2. Find a bigger apartment
3. Publish at least one of my projects as a GPL project
4. Publish an iPhone app
5. Learn more international recipes and cook more varied and healthier food
6. Upload some form of tutorial video on my website (preferably several, maybe even regularly)
7. Pick up exercising again
8. Drink less soda (and generally eat less sugar)
9. Save more money each month
10. Find a tenth item for my list

Salad lunch pack

I should’ve written this one earlier, but I just didn’t have the time. Last year I started to make some more comprehensive lunch packs, compared to the Norwegian traditional lunch pack with a couple of slices of bread.

I was just tired of eating dry, tasteless bread, and wanted to try something else. I have two variants I use now, one of which is pictured above.

The salad lunch pack is easy, and takes from 5-20 minutes to make, depending on what you put in it. My favorite is the one on the picture, with chicken and pasta.

Recipe #1 – Chicken salad lunch pack

• Pasta (I use Macaroni or Fusilli, but any pasta will do)
• Lettuce (I use iceberg or crispi)
• Red pepper
• Grilled or cooked chicken meat (you can often buy salad-specific chicken meat. If not, a whole grilled chicken works too)
• Onion
• Maize
• Spices and/or dressing (I use salt and ground pepper, sometimes a little bit of garlic powder)

Cook the pasta. Cut the chicken, red pepper and onion into pieces. Rip the lettuce into pieces (this way it stays fresh longer, compared to cutting it). Mix all ingredients in a airtight lunch box, and add spices. If you use dressing, you can put that in a separate box to preserve the salad better. Remember to bring a fork.

Tip: If you make the salad the night before, make sure to put the driest ingredients on top, and don’t blend them until you are ready to eat. Store the lunch box in the fridge. That way you will have the freshest possible salad.

Recipe #2 – Home-made baguette with ham and cheese

This one requires a bit more preparation, but it tastes great and is really cheap. You can bake baguettes twice a week and have one for lunch every day.

Baguette:

• 3/4 white wheat flour
• 1/4 coarse wheat flour
• yeast (50g per liter of flour)
• milk
• salt
• whole grain and seeds (optional)

If you use fresh yeast, mix it with lukewarm milk. If you use dried yeast, mix it with the flour. Mix together the ingredients until the dough lets go of the bowl. Let the dough raise for about an hour. Roll into sausage-shapes in the size you want. Remember that it will raise. Let it raise for another hour. Put on some whole grain and seeds if you like. Wet them slightly with water before you put them in the owen at 220C. They are ready when they are crispy and brown. Let them cool down before eating. Put them in a plastic bag if you want to use them later.

• Lettuce
• Red pepper
• Ham
• Cheese
• mayonnaise (optional)

Cut a baguette in half. Add ripped lettuce, slices of red pepper, ham and cheese. Add mayonnaise if you like. Wrap in plastic and bring as a lunch pack.

Both of these are great options to paying for expensive lunch in the cafeteria or bringing plain old dry bread.

Easy food presentation #1

Easy food presentation #2

Now go and make some tasty and good looking meals!

Fårikål (image from wikipedia, I was too hungry to take a picture)

Today I bring you a traditional Norwegian dish. In fact, it is the Norwegian national dish. And it is so tasty and simple to make!

Fårikål literally means mutton in cabbage, and that is exactly what it is. The secret is the way you cook it.

Ingredients (per person)

250g mutton meat with bone
250g cabbage
Spices: Whole black pepper and salt
1-3 potatoes

Recipe

Cut a cabbage in roughly 1/8 parts. Add mutton meat and cut cabbage in layers, the thickest meat at the bottom, with the fat down.

spice with lots of whole black pepper and salt for each layer. End with a cabbage layer. Cover with water. Heat until it boils, and let it cook at low heat for at least two hours. Serve with boiled potatoes.

Stage 1

Did you love my potato gratin, or maybe you haven’t tried it yet? Here is another gratin, which is a full dinner in itself. I made this dish myself, so I would love you to try it and give feedback. It tasted great in my opinion.

Ingredients (for two)

• 2 dinner sausages
• 2 potatoes
• 4-6 dl milk
• 1 egg
• 1 shallot
• 1 garlic clove
• spice (salt, pepper and oregano)
• Sliced cheese to cover
• part of a broccoli
• part of a cauliflower

Finished sausage gratin

Recipe

Slice the potatoes in 1cm slices. Cover the bottom of a casserole dish with a single layer of potato slices. Slice the dinner sausages in half and put them on top of the potatoes. Add the rest of the potatoes around the sausages.

Mix egg, milk, chopped shallot, chopped garlic and spices in a bowl. Pour the mix into the casserole dish until it nearly covers the potatoes and sausages (see first picture). Put it in a preheated oven at 200C for 15-20 minutes.

Take the casserole dish out of the oven and add slices of cauliflower and broccoli. Add a layer of sliced cheese on top. Put back in the oven for 20 more minutes.

Enjoy.

Creamy Potato Gratin

Time for food again. This is one of my favorite ways to cook potatoes. It tastes delicious, and it is really easy. It takes a bit of time though, almost an hour from start to finish. But it is worth it.

Ingredients:
- At least two small/medium potatoes per person
- Milk
- Whipping cream
- Garlic and/or onion
- Spices (pepper, salt, whatever else you feel like)
- Grated cheese

Recipe:
Peel the potatoes and cut them into slices (about 1/2 cm). Ad a layer of potatoes into a casserole dish, then ad spices and finely chopped garlic and/or onion.

Pour milk and whipping cream (about 50/50 mix, more milk if you are afraid of fat) until you cover the potatoes. Continue adding layers of potatoes, spices and milk/cream until you are out of potatoes.

Let it cook in the oven at 200C for about half an hour. Take it out, ad a decent layer of grated cheese, and put it back for another 15 minutes. Serve with any kind of meat. Great together with beef or pork chops.

Warning: This may very well become the main dish of your meal, so remember to make enough!

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Cinnamon rolls

In Norway we have a saying: A dear child has many names. This is one of those cases. The Norwegian cinnamon roll (I call it kanelbolle) is one of my favorite pastries. My mom used to make tasty cinnamon rolls when I was young, and the taste now brings back happy memories from my childhood. Here is the recipe I use:

Sweet dough:

• 50g yeast
• 100g melted butter
• 4dl lukewarm milk
• 6 table spoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon cardamom
• 11dl (660g) flour

Filling:

• Butter
• Cinnamon
• Sugar

Warm milk until it is lukewarm. Melt the butter. Mix the butter and the milk in a bowl. Add the yeast and stir until it is mixed in. Add the sugar. Add a little bit of the flour together with the cardamom. Stir while you pour in the rest of the flour slowly. Knead the dough until it lets go of the bowl. Let it rise to double size under plastic.

Split the dough in three or four parts. Roll the parts into rectangles. Melt some butter and spread it in a very thin layer on the dough. Add cinnamon and sugar. Roll the rectangle into a tight roll and cut in 3/4 inch slices. Put the slices on an oven pan at least an inch apart (they grow). Put them in a preheated oven at 240 C (464 F) for 5-8 minutes. Repeat for all the dough parts.

Enjoy!