Say cheese!

Or rather, say kwark! Maren has been experimenting with milkfermenting, to see if we can have fun making yoghurt, kwark, skyr and other dairyproducts. We started with finding out where to get raw milk that did not have any of the fat taken out yet. It did not take long to find 20L of that.

We froze half of it to use later, and are experimenting with the rest. One liter was made into an acidic culturemilk to use as a starter for kwark. Since the mix-ratio of this starter with milk is 1:100, we`ll be freezing loads of aliquots for future use. Some hours afer mixing the culturemilk into the milk we`ll be making kwark from, we added 1 drop of liquid rennet per liter and left this at roomtemperature overnight. 

The next day it had thickened, just like all our sources had promised it would. We put the "curds" into a cheesecloth and let it drip for a few hours before we put it in a jar. Our testrun with 3 liters of milk yielded 1 Kg of mild and rich kwark. We`ll enjoy dessert tonight.

Winterweather

After the lovely madness that is christmas, we have now started a new year with some good winter weather. Frost, snow, ice and beauty. I love it. Before the snow came we got some iceskating done on very nice ice close to home.

I am no stranger to iceskating at al, but I am not at all used to hockeyskates. A fun adventure.

The next day the snow had come, and we couldn`t iceskate. Time for a walk and a snowman. Even though it was a few degrees warmer this day, the wind made it feel a lot colder than before. A good day for our heatsuits and scarfs.

I fell down the hill while rolling the snowball that was to be the head.

Going to find some arms.

Since that weekend some more snow came down, so I`ll share some pictures of around the house for my mom, who would like to see them. 

Outside lights

Yes, we have been busy with outside lights again. One lamp on the corner of the house, which had not been working at all in the time we have lived here, came down from its mounting the other day.

Between removing the old light and fitting the new one I had a little adventure with unprotected wires that were apparently not operated by the switch I thought they were operated by. Some disco-moves later it was clear I had to first find out which switch did operate these wires.

Decided to protect the wires while I figured out which switch they belonged to.

After all the safety-measures were taken and the power was most definitely off, I could get started mounting the new light. Of course the new light could not be mounted on the old fixtures directly, so I had to improvise an adapter with a bit of wood. This wood I then varnished so it could survive the weatherconditions here for more than a month or two.

And finally, the new light could be wired up, mounted and tested. It is working, and it is very nice to have it illuminate the driveway when we come and go here.

Grøtfest!

Yesterday some neighbours organized a cosy little event: "Grøtfest", or in english "porridge party". The idea of this seemingly annual event is that all the neighbours within the Ådnanes community are invited to come have rice porridge in a pre-christmas setting. Many people showed up, and though the barn we were in was cold, the atmosphere was really nice. While I do not know any of the neighbours really well, there does seem to be a collection of sincere and nice people gathered in this corner of the world. People gathered, enjoyed their servings of rice porridge with butter, sugar and cinnamon, and sat together chatting for a good while. "Julenissen" showed up for a brief moment with a gift for the children that were present: A package with a mandarin and "kakemenn", which is apparently a classic combo. I did not take any good pictures because it was quite dark. I really enjoyed this event, frozen toes and all.

Christmasbeer

Yesterday we put the finishing touches on our first ever christmasbeer. We made a slightly dark beer that we spiced with pepper, clove and some cinnamon. We hope it is subtle and good, otherwise we have 14 liters of nicely labled abominable beer on the shelves in the pantry...

Chalk

We made a chalkboard on one of the doors in our kitchen so that we could make the kitchen more fun. I enjoy corny lettering excercises like this quite a bit, I have to admit. This man seems to be becoming a real pinterest-woman....

Cast Iron!

I have an inexpliccable love and fascination for old tools and cookware. Among the items I drool over on the internet are axes, knives, wooden bowls and indeed: cast iron cookware. Now I have been wanting a skillet for quite a while, and was very excited when I found a crusty and rusty poor old griswold skillet in a local recycling-store. It was grossly covered with layers of burnt oil and unspeakable things, but I wanted to restore it to its former glory. After a few days of soaking in a strong lye-solution, and some hours of scrubbing with steel wool, I had the pan back to bare steel and I could see all the marks on it. A griswold #9 710e pattern skillet, produced roughly 80 years ago. I seasoned it with some layers of rapeseed oil that formed a lovely black glossy nonstick protective layer on it, and have cooked a few loads of bacon and eggs in it since. A wonderful pan that can last three more lifetimes! We will cook a lot of glorious foor in this baby.

The seasoning on the cookingsurface came out of the oven a bit blotchy, but glassy smooth and nicely nonstick. After a few rounds of cooking breakfast in it, the inside is more uniformly black.