A Thanksgiving in Stockholm

I hope you guys had a good Thanksgiving. We had a snowy one. Very snowy.
We decided to spend our Thanksgiving in Stockholm with all our friends. We currently live about seven hours south of Stockholm and traveled by train up to Sweden's capital city on Wednesday.
We celebrated on Friday instead of Thursday since it's not a real holiday here and you don't get the day off.
In my usual obsessive-planning way, I sent out a list of typical Thanksgiving foods and asked everyone to pick a dish to make. At first G did not understand, "isn't Thanksgiving just like any potluck? You bring what you want?" "No, you can only have certain foods at Thanksgiving, it'd be like if I were to bring a bowl of hummus to Christmas dinner." "Oh. Ok."
I'm glad we got that straightened up.
I made the stuffing and the cranberry sauce. The stuffing is a family recipe and my favorite part of Thanksgiving. The cranberry sauce was a bit too soupy but got the job done.

Apparently Thanksgiving food is really hard to photograph. Especially after a glass of wine or two. So I mapped it out for you guys.
Our friend Oskar made a tofufurkey (most of us are vegetarians) which ended up being baked in a form-spring pan. We sliced it like pie and it tasted like Thanksgiving.
Anders made the sweet potatoes, he was skeptical of the marshmallow topping. It's an acquired taste.
Sofia, who hosted us, made the amazing dinner rolls and set the table with cute leopard print napkins.
Ivan and Vanja made mashed potatoes and a really cinnamon-ey apple pie (not pictured).
Also not pictured is the pumpkin pie our friends Niklas and Therese made. It tasted like home.

Despite the modern day conventions, I'd imagine that this was what the first Thanksgiving was all about. People coming together, enjoying each other's company, and being thankful. I definitely was thankful to celebrate a holiday that would've otherwise made me feel terribly homesick if it hadn't been for our amazing friends. Thank you guys.

the first glögg of the season

This is glögg. Glögg is a spiced wine you warm up and serve with almonds and raisins in little tiny cups during the Christmas season.
On Friday, we had our first snow here in the South of Sweden. It was a heavy, wet snow. Almost like sleet but a bit more solid. I didn't get any pictures because it was 4:00 in the afternoon and pitch black outside. We were out on a walk. A cold, wet, snowy walk. And even though my husband claimed it was "too early in the year for glögg" I convinced him that the first snowfall should be celebrated with a warm  cup of glögg. So we bought ourselves a bottle of glögg, lit some candles, and settled down to a cozy evening with Dexter Season 3.

Come December 1st we'll be drinking more glögg, eating saffronbuns, gingerbread cookies, and my new favorite Julknäckebröd- which is a hard bread flavored with anise and fennel. I'll be making that later today so be looking forward to that recipe.
In the mean time, you can go here to see a few photos of our apartment. Not very food related except there's a photo of our huge kitchen and the "bar" area.

Carrot Cake

You guys, my husband made this cake. Homemade icing and all. It's carrot cake by the way. It was delicious. I love cream cheese icing.

We're new in marriage. It's been a year and nine months. So it's still new. And we're learning about each other and ourselves with each other. To work as a team. It's really easier said than done. But I guess, it's also not very hard. Not when it matters. And this (us) matters.
So sometimes we take each other for granted and pick stupid fights. My favorite fight to date is the one about G using the good bread. This was back when we were newly-married-poor. I was freaking out about not having a job. G was making a SANDWICH with our FANCY bread. Fancy bread (this was actually very basic bread not that fancy) costs more money. Yes, I yelled at him about it. It was a beyond stupid fight and we laugh about it all the time now.
So sometimes there's that. And other factors too. Jobs, school, friends, family. Other factors that can be both joyous and toxic. And we forgot that working as a team makes all of the joy better and all of the bad parts conquerable.

I'm just writing to say that I'm grateful for my husband. He's nice and funny. He's understanding and motivated. He has sparkly blue eyes and is always warm. And he bakes me carrot cake in the middle of the day.

Simple Soup

First, sorry I haven't written in a few days. We've been eating, just not any food I've made (except a pumpkin pie but we were ate my in-laws and I didn't have my camera on me). This darkness got the best of me and finding the motivation to cook right now is just not happening. I'll get over it, but it just takes some adjusting. The sun is starting to set at 16:00 these days and it's dark by 17:00- like pitch black. It's just, you know, hard to get used to.
Anyways, last night I finally made something. Soup. I mustered up the motivation to make soup. You see, I wasn't feeling great at all last night. We were supposed to have a friend over for dinner. I was going to make cheese enchiladas. But a few hours earlier I devoured about 500 grams of cottage cheese with Sriracha sauce. I like my cottage cheese spicy. And I don't know, something about the cottage cheese just didn't sit right with me. I usually have no problem eating a whole tub of cottage cheese, spice and all, but this time I felt awful.
So we cancelled on our friend and I miserably sprawled out on the couch.
Cheese enchiladas sounded terrible. Soup sounded good.
After I awhile I went into the kitchen, grabbed everything we had in the fridge, and made some soup. It's not the most groundbreaking recipe, but it's a reminder: that sometimes the simple things are exactly what you need.

Simple Soup (What's In Your Fridge)
3 onions
3-6 garlic cloves (boiled garlic is awesome)
3 carrots
4 potatoes
8-10 cups of water
1 cube of bouillon
Salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste

Extras:
A handful of fresh spinach for each bowl
Crumbled feta cheese
Olive oil

Fill a large pot with water and the cube of bouillon. While it's getting warm (not boiling), chop your onions into long, thin slices. And peel as many garlic cloves as you want in your soup. Leave them whole. When done, put them in the soup pot.
Then peel your carrots and chop them into medium-thick rings. Set aside. Wash and scrub your potatoes. Peel off any bad parts. Chop the potatoes into medium-small cubes. You want them to be a similar size to the carrots. Set aside.
Let the water come to a slight boil and add in your carrots. About five minutes later, add in your potatoes (unless they're chopped into larger pieces, then you want to add them at the same time).
Lower to heat and let simmer for 30 minutes or until the potatoes and carrots are soft. Not mushy. You want them to be easy to pierce with fork but still a bit firm. The onions and garlic should be soft and slightly mushy.
Add salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to your taste. I prefer a saltier soup, but that's just me.
Ladle into bowls and drizzle a tiny amount of olive oil over the soup. Garnish with handful of fresh spinach and some crumbled feta.
And enjoy. It was just what you needed, right?

Cheese Crackers

Did you know that cheese crackers were the easiest things to make? Ever. I didn't. But I saw this recipe and I knew, I just knew, I had to make these. And I had all of the ingredients. Which was great because we were out of eggs and there aren't many things you can bake without eggs.
The recipe was so easy, even without us owning a food processor. I just used a potato masher and my hands.
And when I ate the first one, I almost died. How have I missed out on this? Cheese crackers! They tasted like Cheese-Its but one million times better.
They're buttery and spicy and cheesy. When G came home from work I ordered him straight to the kitchen to try them.  We had guests coming over and we did a bad thing. We hid the crackers. They were that good.  I knew I could make more. Eventually. But we wanted them all to ourselves. It was bad. I'm not sorry.

If you want to impress your guests or yourself, make these. Go here. Follow the easiest recipe ever with the stuff you already have in your kitchen. And then cry, hide, and covet these. Share them only if your nice and giving.

Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk, Rum, and Christmas Spices

I don't like white rice. At all. I hate the taste and the smell. I used to like rice. But three-four years ago I ate too much rice and got a stomach ache, a really bad one. Since then I've hated rice.
On Sunday, I felt courageous enough to buy black rice. Which doesn't taste like rice at all. It tastes nutty and is crunchy. I also like risotto rice because it doesn't taste like white rice either. I like black rice. I like risotto rice. White rice, not so much.
So you can be as perplexed as I was when last night I declared "I'm making rice pudding with coconut milk!" (I also don't like coconut milk due to a Thai food poisoning mishap a few years ago). But part of me, the really smart part of me, knew that this was going to be an awesome rice pudding. So awesome that I would enjoy eating rice with coconut milk.
Maybe I was inspired by the fact it's November aka Almost Christmas. And here in Sweden, they eat rice pudding around Christmastime. So maybe I was subconsciously being Swedish and craving a creamy, Christmas-spicy dessert? I become more and more assimilated everyday.

Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk, Rum, and Christmas Spices
I was inspired by Alton Brown's recipe but altered to become the best thing I've ever tasted.

1 cup of uncooked white rice (we had Jasmine rice so I used that)
1 cup of whole milk (plus more as you go, keep the carton nearby)
1 cup of coconut milk
50 grams of butter
1/4 cup of sugar
1/4 teaspoon of cardamom
1/4-1/2 teaspoon of vanilla (I used vanilla bean)
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of rum

Place your one cup of milk and one cup of rice in a non-stick pot). Bring to a boil with the lid on.  Reduce the heat to low and let simmer, the mixture will begin to thicken so stir frequently.
Then add in your coconut milk, butter, sugar, cardamom, vanilla, cinnamon, and rum. With the heat on medium-low let the mixture simmer with the lid on. Stir occasionally so it won't stick. The mixture will begin to thicken and once it does, taste your rice. If your rice is ready to eat then you can go ahead and serve it. I like it warm.
But, if you had rice like I did and it was still crunchy but you already had a really thick mixture, add some more milk. And let it simmer. Stir and stir. Every time my mixture got really thick and goopey, I added a bit more milk, about 1-2 tablespoons. I would then stir it again and let it simmer. This lasted about 10-15 minutes.
Once your rice is soft (not mushy), remove the pot from the heat and serve into bowls.

It's an incredibly rich and creamy dessert. It's easy to make. It's cheap to make. It's satisfying and indulgent. My husband, who eats rice pudding every Christmas, said it was the best he's ever had. And me, the white rice hater, has a new love for rice. Well, rice pudding at least.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

This morning my husband had to wake up earlier than me. I stayed in bed, pretending to sleep for about 30 minutes after our alarm went off. I might've actually fallen asleep if it hadn't been for the garbage trucks collecting the trash right outside of our window (we live on the ground floor). My husband came in to say goodbye and kissed me with coffee breath, it was fresh coffee breath and therefore it was romantic.
We usually eat yogurt and granola for breakfast but this morning I knew that we had pumpkin chocolate chip cookie dough sitting in our fridge. And pumpkins are really good for you and chocolate has caffeine so baking these cookies for breakfast was a no brainer. I've had four today so far.
We made these cookies yesterday to celebrate Halloween. They don't really celebrate Halloween here like they do in the States. But I wanted to make the most of it despite the lack of trick-or-treaters and the fact we wouldn't be going to any Halloween parties this year. Instead, we watched a lot of Halloween movies and made Halloween-ish food.
We first watched Edward Scissorhands while eating a black rice and purple cabbage stir fry. Then we watched Hocus Pocus and snacked on pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Later, we watched Scream while eating pumpkin gnocchi with lemon, spinach, butter, and goat cheese. And then we watched It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and drank hot apple cider with whiskey. The photo above was our decor, a lone candle in a dark room. Spoooooky.

We made nine of these cookies yesterday and ate them all. And I made more today and devoured four of them faster than I should've- it must be the beta carotene.
They taste like pumpkin pie cakes with chocolate chips. They are soft, like feather pillows. They are spiced like pumpkin pie but they have that distinct chocolate chip cookie taste too. They're cakey-cookies. They're good. They're addictive. The soak up milk better than Bounty Paper Towels.
I made them using this recipe. It was easy to follow. The hardest part was finding pumpkin puree in Sweden. Instead we found half a pumpkin, roasted it and then pureed it.
This is not just a Halloween recipe. You should make them for Thanksgiving, you could sandwich them between whip cream like real pumpkin pie. Or you could just eat them all in less than 24 hours which we will be very guilty of very soon.