Chokladfabriken

I know, I know, I keep repeating myself, over and over and..., however repetition is the mother of learning, and the best hot cocoa EVER is served at Chokladfabriken (The Chocolate Factory), here in Stockholm. Period.

What I didn't realise, until recently, was that the drinking chocolate you can buy in paper bags and take home with you, or give away as a perfect gift for a chocoholic, was the exact same as they serve in the café - how perfect is that?! You can actually have the heavenly Chocolate Factory drinking experience in your own living room, hooray! Ah, to indulge in a cup when you want to treat yourself to something special, bliss... And as in the café you can chose dark, milk/light or white chocolate.

What was far from bliss was the last bag of cocoa I bought, I had so looked forward to a cup of hot cocoa one evening and opened up that new bag. I thought it smelled a bit weird when I whipped the whole thing together, then it tasted rather foul, perhaps it was the milk? Turned out it was the content of the bag with cocoa that was the problem, for some odd reason sort of rancid in taste. Disappointed snarl.

Today I finally managed to pop by to exchange that bag for a new one. A new one, I might add, I hope is up to its usual quality... And as an extra balm into that chocolate wound I got a little bag of their lovely, pricey creams. The perfect touch to get a disgruntled customer to return. Me like!

If you feel like having a chocolaty pastry of some sort instead of hot cocoa, I think they serve a both pretty as well as tasty latte too. And this new concoction of a banana-chocolate mousse with some sort of fruit compote and crispy crumbs of some kind was just divine. With a heavensent tasty physalis on top.

~ The perfect round off for the month of March! ~

Things Yellow

Easter is over - although I do believe this year's moon cycle was a tid bit too pushy for my personal taste of Easter-time - but luckily we can enjoy these beauties of Easter lilies for yet some time.

This bucket I found at one of the castles we did some spotting of this weekend - the capturing of castles I'll get back to in a later post, you can never get too many of them, but what doesn't seize to amaze me is that there are so many more or less well hidden gems of castles in the vicinity of Stockholm. So many I've never even heard of, me a castle buff, or perhaps I'm just the buff when travelling abroad or in other parts of Sweden and not in my own *backyard*, others I've visited earlier but before the age of the digital camera... - adorable, springy little thing!

The colour yellow is far from a favourite colour of mine - which might have something do with the fact that I really don't look good in it, perhaps mustard-yellow nuance being an exception, but in general yellow makes me look pasty or like a giant silly ice-cream, neither very complementary - but since I consider myself open minded in general, and vanilla yellow is rather a lovely nuance, I give the benefit of the doubt even to colours, I couldn't help myself when I started nibbling on M's chosen very yellow breakfast Tosca bun - at lovely place-of-wild-strawberries-to-eat, Café Lyran - yesterday. The nibbling soon turned into urges, it was just so. Very.Tasty. Since I refused to stop eating, M had to get himself another specimen of a bun.

And as you can probably see, this heavenly bun must be consider a very fine example of the whole food circle (kostcirkeln) in one bun -

1. vegetables = the almond and the almond-paste, the grass eaten by the cows who produced the butter,
2. fruit = the almond, which surely is a fruit since it belongs to the plum species and is closely related to peaches,
3. root vegetables = the almond tree has roots, therefor the almond can also be consider a root veggie,
4. dairy products = the milk and the butter, the latter making this bun a veritable guilt trip of an excessive amount of fat...
5. meat, fish & egg = egg obviously,
6. bread & grains = yes there's flour in this bun, and the bun is a bread, voilá!
7. edible fat = see guilt trip no 4

Admittedly I did feel *slightly* queasy after this breakfasty meal, I won't go blaming the bun though, it just might have something to do with the fact that the bun itself wasn't the whole meal for me. Even though I have no problem with leaving leftovers, I do want to sample most things and well, it was very tasty and it was Saturday after a long week, and it was such a nice way to spend a sunny, weekend morning... Anyway. Darn tasty it was. Despite being yellow. Besides, in my world there's hardly anything that can't be cured with a bit of extra orange - as in a couple of extra carrots that day.

Meet the Family

~ A case of striking family resemblance ~

Sampling

Finally, four weeks down the course line I managed to get a lovely, relaxing day - and since I'm rather easy to please, sometimes, now and then, here are three samples from that day, the last Friday in the month of March year 2008 -

Gauzy sunlight on a long walk through the Woodland Cemetery...

... a well deserved and delicious sticky chocolate cake at Bakery Bakgården nearby...

... and some hours later, waiting for the bus at the bus-station/commuter-train station at home, in my very own suburb and the sun is actually still shining, the sky is pale blue, although its late afternoon...

... happy wee me!

Touchdown in a Smalltown

As we all know, looks can be deceiving, and IMHO no, the above picture of a somewhat quaint small town doesn't correspond well with reality. The small town - or well, not that small really, but it feels really smalltownish in many different ways... - of Eskilstuna is far from a favourite place of mine. But since one of my best friends lives there for some years now, I do pop by now and then.

Apart from this obvious cantharis, some of the notable natives of this town are Frida of ABBA - explanation superfluous - and Miss Universe of 1984. And as if that wasn't enough, the city is also famous for its steel industry, its Volvo-factory and for having a zoo with white tigers. As well as offering humongous cinnamon buns.

And actually, apart from these beauties - served at the afore mentioned Café Kaka (Café Cookie) which also serves fresh food, coffee and cakes. Mm, I think I definitely feel a slight twinge of hunger just writing this, looking at those pictures...

- the town has a few decent places for food. Like adorable Café Tingsgården, where I had a lovely lunch some months ago. The place offers light food, homemade bread, coffee and great cakes. Apparently afternoon tea during winters. Though, if that time of the year, beware of their foul lenten buns, only briefly mentioned here...

Goodmorning Thursday

When I'll reach Karlberg c-train station in an hour or so I know it'll look just like this - crispy winter and glorious sun!

A Tiny Case of Retail Therapy

First of all, it's flipping crazy that one year ago on Lady Day a k a the Swedish Waffle Day it was sun, green grass, being able to eat those waffles on the porch wearing shorts... One year later it's freezing snow and slippery streets. Alas.

Now, with today's whine out of the way, let's continue with a slight case of retail therapy. Only very useful things of course. Must-have-things in the inexpensive price range. First out is a lovely little plate for tea bags - well, I consider it to be a teabag-plate, anyway - from the small Swedish Stockholm-based company/shop Yorrik. The name derives from Hamlet's court jester, the famous to-be-or-not-to-be-skull.

They mainly sell baby/children clothings but also household items and pottery. Small scaled, handicraft, ecological thinking, just the way I like it. My aim when entering the shop, which I'd thought of for ages, was to find a suitable gift for a friend's daughter - I opted for an adorable bright orange jersey Yorrik cap (much appreciated by the tiny gift-reciever). And then I stumbled over the pottery sale and ended up with this must-have-teabag-plate. You can never have to many of those. Period.

The Yorrik pottery range is made in collaboration with the pottery at picturesque summer trip islet in the Stockholm archipelago, Fjäderholmarna (fjäder = feather, holmarna = the islets). A lovely place definitely well worth a visit, and not only for the wonderful restaurants and the handicraft studios.

The other must-haves are simply towels. Size small. One colourful with chickens, perfect for the Easter kitchen. I'm not much for primming, but a new towel and some tulips, oh that's just a perfect touch. This one I found at the big department store, Åhléns, at a measly price.

The other two are perfect small terry towels for the toilet, with my childhood favourite Swedish cartoon character, the honeyloving bear Bamse, which I wrote a bit about here. Suddenly using the toilet-facilities is so much more appealing, when you can wipe your washed hands with either pink or blue smiling Bamse, don't you agree? These towels, and a whole range of Bamse-items, can be found at the Swedish home textile chain, Hemtex

WCB - The Strange And Wonderful World Of Having Pets

The only, of course, reason for this probably not being a mindblowingly brilliant blog-post is the fact that I suffer from acute ammonia poisoning due to litter box cleaning. I have no idea why some days of litter box cleaning offer this extra sacheted indulgence, the same hairy bunch using the boxes, same food, same drink, same ol' living - and still, now and then I get an odour knock-out feeling all faint over the boxes. The risk of someone finding the neighbourhood's weird cat lady drowned in the cat litter feels strangely graspable.

Still, it hasn't happen as yet, touch wood it never will. Admittedly the odour knock-out somehow noteably clears my organ of smell. So when I've fought the risk of cat-litter drowning the side-effect is only a positive one.

I should think that that once upon a time experience of breaking an arm whilst bathing a cat was enough of a public-weird-effect-of-pet-owning - and I sure cheered the ER staff up that day when I tried to explain the somewhat unusual reason for me ending up with that broken arm. Cat, bath, slippery slide, ouch.

And that time another cat had actually peed in my sewing machine - may he rest in peace, although it was years later he passed away from something other than his legal liability and the consequences of peeing in a sewing machine - hence I had to have it mended. Including explaining the awkward reason for it. A case of wee-wee.

The same cat once involuntarily ran away from home - involuntarily as in I had forgotten to close the gate to the garden and he felt inclined to have a look outside and then I became really anxious scaring the poor one in to running into the night. Me in some really trashy clothes running after, trying to be very kind and calm when eliciting him from the shrubs outside the house.

Though apparently I scared him even more and when I finally, looking like the bride of Frankenstein, caught up with him I refused to let him go and ended up with deep scratches and blood running all over my arms - then some neighbours walked by and felt it very appropriate to feline-clueless-chitchat. Oh my what a pretty cat, oh my is he angry. Growl, hiss. Please shut up and go away.

Oh, mustn't forget that one time many years ago when my first Persian moved in and the two housecats of mine felt it very appropriate to show her just who were in charge of the house. Bless her, that little one didn't have much of a wit and in all that confusion of moggie-bullying she mistook one of my shoes for a litter box. It felt all mushy in my shoe when I was late for an appointment. Turd alert.

So not only do these furry darlings offer a sight for sore eyes, neverending comfort cuddle for the sad and weary, an end for wearing black, navy or velvet, dry feed elbow, Sisyphean challenge of cleaning litter boxes, they also grant all sorts of strange and exciting events that'll spice up any day and life on a regular basis.

... add to that list, also being the perfect lovable accessory on the Easter broomstick

Happy Easter

* * * Happy Easter * * *

The Mighty M's

*Swooosh*

There, safely back from The Brocken, having done my witchy duty, a bit of chanting, a bit of cooking invigorating broths and all that. A witch gotta do what a witch gotta do. I think the look of the gateway to this year's assembly hall was quite lovely. As seen above, what do you think? Oh, there's all sorts of interesting brewing going on inside such a gateway... Although I'm of course sworn to secrecy, mum's the word.

But I can give you a semi-secret picture of a few of this year's covenant participants, that go by the name the Mighty M's - their witchy scheming is particularly good. Inventive, vivid intellects with more than a dash of magic. Legendary even. Scheming extravaganza. Or at least, so I've heard. As by whistle through the pine crowns.