Author: ghetran

Thai laksa my style

There are many types of thai laksa and I´m by no means any expert. Back when I started cooking for real, 12 years ago, I used to follow a recipe to the letter. Now I find myself more and more just opening the fridge putting together something out of the ingredients I already have. This one comes as a middle ground. I usually have coconut milk and some veggies, maybe even some cilantro and lime, if I´m in luck, so I mainly need to buy the fish and some extra fennel or sugar snaps. It only takes 15-20 minutes to make and it´s yummy!

_MG_8566

Continue reading →

Making a list, checking it twice

 

No, I´m not getting this for Christmas, but I love pretending I´m the type of business woman that could afford about anything I set my eyes on. 😉 haha! (that´s the diva in me speaking!) So if I could treat myself to a really nice outfit without burning a hole in my pockets, this would be it! 😉

Continue reading →

Espresso biscotti

This is one of my holiday speciality, I usually bake them for Christmas and every once in a while for Easter. I stumbled upon the recipe in a Danish food and lifestyle magazine- Mad og bolig – some years ago, and I´ve been making them ever since. It´s like it usually is with biscotti, you either love them, or you can´t get what the fuss is about. My family and some of my Romanian friends find them hard to chew, luckily many other friends usually lick their fingers. 😉 My husband´s ex-boss used to like them so much she “ordered” them one December as nibbling snacks for the shop´s employees.

IMG_8536

Continue reading →

What to wear to Christmas parties

As I might have mentioned before, December is a social affair in Norway- there are Christmas parties to attend, brunches and lunches to be devoured, Christmas markets to go to. Eating out with colleagues or friends is also quite popular. And while I used to buy a new dress for New Year´s Eve when living in Romania, in Norway it´s pretty common to renew one´s wardrobe before a Christmas party. 😉

To give you a glimpse of how busy a month this is, two days ago we were invited to dinner at our friends´ place, the day before yesterday we had dinner in a fancy restaurant with my husband´s former work colleagues and today we´re hosting a brunch ourselves. I´m not planning to buy anything new, I have too vast a wardrobe to pull that through, but if I were, it´d be a Diane von Furstenberg dress, a Charlotte Olympia clutch and a Burberry Prorsum pair of heels. What do you think?

Continue reading →

Mulled wine

December for me is cosy evenings with friends and family, baking, planning a getaway, listening to Christmas carols, going to Christmas parties and Christmas brunches. One of the must-haves in all this fairy tale is mulled wine. Drinking it from a pretty cup while blogging or reading a magazine is pure bliss. There are probably as many ways of making it as there are families.

IMG_8507

Continue reading →

Goulash à la Alina and Vuong

Goulash is probably the most Hungarian dish there is. And because it´s served all over the world, I haven´t eaten the same goulash in two places, I swear! In Romania it´s common in Transylvania, as well as in families with Hungarian ties. It might very well be on other people´s menu as well, but in the south, where I´m from, people would rather make lasagna than try something traditional from other parts of the country. I myself had it for the first time in Budapest, many years ago. There it was a thin, soup-like thing, but they served study portions, so it filled student bellies well. Later on I ate it at my aunt´s, she´s a Hungarian born in Norway and was married to my uncle for many years.  She makes it with dumplings and it was about the best thing I´d ever tasted! We love pot roast type of dinners, from ratatouille to chili con carne, so we had to make it ourselves at one point.

IMG_8500

Continue reading →

Gift Ideas for Him

What about a camera strap from EAM? The designer is no one other than my husband, his products are hand-crafted in Norway and made to last. For an exclusive Scandinavian look for the modern gentleman, go for simplicity and support a local business! You can find this and other amazing articles on: Essentialarticles

Continue reading →

Bergen

I was in Bergen on a short business trip and I thought I´d write a couple of posts about this town I love so much. An old Hanseatic harbor situated on the West coast of Norway, Bergen has got charm galore. The city center is contained by 7 mountains and preserves a small town atmosphere with wooden houses, narrow streets and lane ways, a meat market and a fish market, coffee shops and stores. It expands before your eyes as houses seem to be clinging to the mountain back. Nature is majestic and so is the architecture. And the people are so much more polite than the average Norwegian, you wouldn´t believe it!

Bergen was my adoptive home under a 3 months´trial in 2012 and I fell in love with it at once. Unfortunately, the weather is pretty bad due to the town´s geographical position- it´s raining cats and dogs and not only once in a while, either. And since I wasn´t in luck yesterday, I had to do my best with my camera and frozen feet and defeated the rain and my need to stay indoors by the fireplace.
IMG_8449

Continue reading →

All I want for Christmas

This year we´re celebrating Christmas at home to avoid too much stress and planning and to save a buck or two. The holidays are pretty intense and, with a dog and a cat, traveling is not that carefree. So we´re staying put and hoping for a calm and white Christmas. There´s usually lots to do anyway and the free days come in handy. We´re getting together with my husband´s family one of the days between Christmas and New Year´s Eve and we´re flying to Vienna in January, to meet with my family.

We´ve talked about not buying too many presents this year and rather gift close friends and family some home-made goodies. The house is getting a lamp, hopefully Snoopy by Flos, a new Italian bed linen and a Soda Stream. 😉 What do you usually offer each other or the house?;-)

Continue reading →

Christmas market

It´s official! The Christmas market season has begun and I simply adore it! The weather is crisp, no snow yet, but you can almost feel it in the air, so it must be right around the corner! The streets are lit with decorations and people come alive with anticipation. It´s the season to be jolly,  lots of gatherings every week, be it Christmas parties, dinners or seasonal beer tasting. We´re hosting a brunch next week and are otherwise jumping from one party to another in the meantime.

Yesterday I went to Bærums Verk with a couple of friends to check out the atmosphere. We had gløgg (a sort of mulled wine, except there´s no wine, just a very sweet concoction of spices and syrup, so that children can drink it, too) while walking around, the place was teeming with people,  children were sitting in a sledge pulled by a giant Bernese Mountain dog, adults were standing in waffle queues and everywhere you could smell sugar coated almonds. We had lunch at Pannekakehuset, a Dutch concept that´s very popular (since it´s the only atmospheric place there), pea soup with spare ribs and beer. They have amazing pancakes, but I had already had that for breakfast, so my stomach wasn´t ready for that much dough. 😉

The bus ride back to town takes an hour, but we talked and laughed like high school kids, so it just flew by. It was nice to soak in some nature and get into the Christmas spirit, now I´m ready for a slow Sunday until 6 o´clock, when we´re going to our neighbor´s beer tasting party. 😉

IMG_8395

Continue reading →