I officially moved

Change your links and rss feeds and go follow me at http://souffle-girl.blogspot.com!

This blog is moving!

From now on, you'll find me under Soufflé girl. The new page is still under construction but I'll try to complete it this weekend.

"Do you want to go to the seaside? I'm not trying to say that everybody wants to go"

Well, I already talked about autumn but first, let's enjoy the last bit of summer, ok? Here's a post I had saved up for a while. Now seems like the time to finally post it.

There are a few dishes that absolutely epitomize a certain time or place. Salmon cakes do that with summer at the seaside. Not a hot, dry Mediterranean summer but a northern european one. A summer at the Baltic sea, on the coast of Sweden, on a Danish island or in an English seaside town. They remind me of white sand and piers and windy, sunny days, striped shirts, old fashioned villas and dozens of seagulls. They're practically perfect in every way. (Props to you if you got that reference)

This recipe is, once again, stolen from Sophie's first cookbook and it works just as well with crab meat or halibut (but psst: the colour is nicest when you use salmon).

I'm back!

First post in 2 months! I really am a horrible blogger ...!

But in my defense: I cooked nothing, honestly NOTHING, exciting this summer. I basically lived off cereal, fruit, salads, chocolate, and variations of the Hungry Student's Pasta (it's amazing with diced halloumi!). 

Also, I decided to postpone my postgrad studies and do some actual work for one or two years before I go back to university. Might even study abroad next time. There's a very interesting Master's program in Edinburgh. But first: work. Got myself a nice (paid!) internship at a publishing house in my hometown. Anyway, I kinda moved back home to live with my family for a little while until I find a place of my own or until we start beating each other's heads in (personally, I hope for the first rather than the latter). Advantage: More mouthes to feed meaning more recipes to try out, more cakes to bake, more pies to make. And autumn's coming up. My all-time favourite season. Let the madness begin.

Lemon parmesan herb pasta

Stolen, stolen, stolen. Before you get bored with all of my recipes, here's one I found on one of my absolute favourite blogs who in her turn got it from the Martha Stewart website. I modified it a bit to make it less of a theft and a bit more of a creative effort. Erm.

 

Cleansing Day

I'm back, I'm back. And so sorry. But at least I have a decent excuse: I've been working at a factory for the last three weeks and had trouble squeezing in a tiny bit of a social life between work and sleep so blogging really was out of the question. Also, I've practically been eating the same dish for lunch/supper for the past month so there really wasn't much of a point in writing a new post. 

Speaking of work: I've been working the night shift (10 pm to 6 am) for the past week and retained a somewhat unfortunate sleeping pattern that keeps me awake till dawn and makes me sleep till the afternoon. At least I managed going to sleep at 5am on friday/saturday and at 4am on saturday/today. I promised myself to go to sleep at no later than 2:30 am tonight. This has to stop.

Although, staying awake that long has its benefits. My window faces east and has an amazing view, so it's pretty great for watching dawn and sunrise. I even took a picture last night although it turned out a bit blurry. Mainly because of my lack of tripods. But you get the general idea.

Also, my healthy eating program came to a bit of a collapse yesterday: Had fish fingers for lunch and then an extremly unhealthy movie night with a friend and red wine, loads of crisps, chocolate and chocolate biscuits. My body’s so not pleased. Ugh. My intestines have been rumbling and grumbling all night and morning and I feel bloated and puffy and urghs.

Yoga this morning, then pre-soaked oatmeal and flax seeds for breakfast. And ginger tea. My bowel’s slowly feeling better, thank god. Looks like my body really can’t tolerate junk food anymore. I’ve decided to take this as a good sign.

So far so good. I'll go complete one of my draft posts and post it sometime soon. Today or tomorrow.

Nectarine blue cheese summer salad

All hail the queen of salads! Here comes one of my summer favourites:

Couscous sweet potato salad with halloumi

Let me just say: I adore, I love, I worship halloumi cheese. It doesn't melt when you fry or grill it, it has that wonderful squeaky feel when you chew it and an indescribable salty taste. It's just heaven.
Pair it with some couscous and sweet potato and enjoy your perfect arabian-style supper. 

Cooking in summer. An utterly philosophical essay on the idea behind this blog

Sorry for the lack of updates during the past month. It's not like I've been particularily busy, I just haven't really felt like blogging in a while. Beats me why.

Also, I haven't made anything special for a while now. Summer (or something that, apart from the temperature, very closely resembles summer) has officially arrived and neither the weather nor the stuff in the grocery store makes me particularily desirous of spending hours in the kitchen preparing a meal. And I don't mean this in a bad way: All the spring/summer veggies and fruits look and smell so amazing that all I'd like to do with them is tossing them together in a bowl and eating them right away. No frying or glazing or pureeing (is that even spelled correctly?) or drowning them in fancy cream sauces. Just steamed asparagus with an egg, a simple, fresh radish salad or nectarine with a splash of yogurt. 

Long story short: All I eat at the moment are simple, effortless, basic dishes with no cooking magic involved, and I just didn't feel like any of them was worth a blog post because they're so, well, simple. But, on second thoughts, why does simplicity make them unworthy of a blog post? Because a food blog should only consist of surprising, new stuff? Well, it got me thinking about what kind of cooking I actually want to promote with this blog. I mean, there's a hell of a lot of food blogs out on the internet and most of them have a very decided philosophy. They're about fancy cooking or unusual, creative cooking, traditional cooking, healthy, vegetarian, vegan, protein-rich, low-carb, sugary, child-friendly cooking. Whatever kind of cooking you can think of, I'm pretty damn sure there's a food blog for it.

But me? I don't know. I like fancy food, I like creative cooking, I like unusual ingredients but that doesn't mean I need or even want to use them every time I cook. In fact I don't. And the longer I thought about it, the more I became aware of the fact that the simplicity of cooking is the message I want to get across. Eating right and good and healthy doesn't mean that you have to spend all your money on groceries, fancy spices and expensive kitchen equipment. Neither does it mean that you have to spend hours in the kitchen to prepare a good meal nor that only non-standard combinations of ingredients can make a good meal.
I could write another essay about the importance of food for our bodies but I'm guessing that most of you know the gist anyway, so basically: You are what you eat. And if you are what you eat, then I only wanna eat the good stuff. (To quote Remmy from Ratatouille). With "good stuff" not referring to sugar, pizza, chocolate and beer but healthy stuff. Fruits. Veggies. Whole grains.
So, back to my basic message: I want to make this blog about healthy eating that isn't expensive, doesn't take hours of preparation and includes the occasionally sweet treat that my humble self wouldn't be able to live without.

Here's to simple cooking! (And now good night.)

What feels amazing

• running for several minutes to catch a connecting train and getting neither sweaty nor out of breath nor having trouble to keep running but instead overtaking most of the other passengers running to catch the same train
• not being winded after climbing the 6 flights of stairs to the flat
• running 5 k in one go for the first time
• cheekbones
• realising that my resting heart rate has dropped 12 beats in 2 months
• reaching a new level on Nike+

Though it may not sound like much to some people, it's a huge deal for me. Looks like 2.5 months of running are starting to pay off. Am very happy about that and just wanted to share.