I might have blogged about it before, but it´s worth repeating since we´re talking of my all time favourite cake! 😉 It´s a dark, melting-on-your-tongue type of cake that works wonders after dinner and keeps well in the fridge for a week or so.
Food
Baked Salmon à la Vietnamienne
Saturday we had guests and V was the chef. I got away with “cleaning the house” (which was more like tidying up, really), as well as making my now famous vanilla ice-cream. 😉 We were 7 and the fish was devoured in no time. In the mean time, Sam was the main attraction and he got so much love that it´ll hopefully last him for the entire week. 😉
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Lunch at Vino Veritas
Yesterday I had lunch with a dear friend at Vino Veritas and I liked the place so much I decided to move Vuong´s birthday party there! 😉 It´s a local tapas restaurant, just 5 minutes from our home, they have lots of space and a lovely terrace, so we can bring Sam and invite friends with kids, too! 😉 Yey! And then we can go home for cake, if people feel like it. So I can´t wait! 😉
Crappy weather and lots of baking
Summertime. Except we´re in Norway. We´ve had a couple of nice days lately, but I´ve either been working or agonising on my cheek muscles problem. (I can barely open my mouth, which makes eating very unsatisfying. And no, it´s not my wisdom tooth, I´ve had it checked.) So I´ve been baking. It´s soothing and it feeds the people. And it makes me feel useful. 😉
My brother and his wife are coming over for a week and I can´t wait to show them around and let them be a part of our regular schedule, with Sammy walks and all. Also a dear childhood friend is visiting for a couple of days from France and since we haven´t seen each other in 15-16 years, it won’t be a day too soon! 😉 Next Saturday it´s V´s birthday and we´re throwing him a party! I´ve already thought about the food, making a couple of pies, a couple of salads and a couple of cakes. Booze and bubbles are nr. 1 on the list! Take a look at those pictures here and tell me what you think! 😉
Vanilla ice-cream with sour cherries
I have this thing for homemade ice-cream. As with most things I cherish, it reminds me of my summers at my grandparents in the country side, where from time to time my grandma would treat us to homemade vanilla ice-cream from beautiful coffee cups. When I come to think of it, I´ve been making ice-cream for years: I “accidentally” put chocolate mousse in the freezer all the time and I make smoothie with so many frozen berries it´s practically a sorbet. 😉
So the other day we picked some more sour cherries and since I didn´t have time to try my skills at a real American cherry pie, I found this recipe that sounded doable, considering we had guests in the evening. 
Sour cherry cake
I´ve already shared this recipe with you on my Romanian blog, but since not all of you read Romanian and not all of you follow it, I thought I should post it here, too. 😉
A couple of days ago I picked a bowl of sour cherries straight from the tree and I felt like baking a cake, the type of summer cake that my childhood was filled of.
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Sunday in Oslo
Last Sunday we both had a day off and thought it´d be nice to spend it outdoors since the weather Gods were on our side. 😉 We decided we should take a stroll along the Aker river with Sammy, so he could run freely and take a dip here and there. There´s nothing like a bath in the river to cool off this happy dog of ours. We were heading towards the Food Court- Mathallen, but then we saw Nedre Foss Gård, a restaurant I´d just tried a couple of days before and that appealed to us now, as well. The court yard was pretty and summery, all “dressed up” in orange. 😉 The service was great and so was the food!
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Potato salad
Lately I´ve been feeling very lazy when it comes to cooking. At the same time I´m trying to opt for healthy choices to get rid of my winter belly and feel a bit more energised. So I stocked the cupboards full of quinoa, wheat grain, beans and lentils and the fridge of salad and vegetables. The result has been yummy and surprising every day.
Unfortunately I don´t have many pictures, since aesthetics weren´t my main concern. 😉 But I can guarantee you that this potato salad is a winner! 😉
Quinoa summer salad
As a child, summer equaled holiday. We used to stay with our grandparents in the countryside for two and a half months, then my parents would come and get us and we´d go to the seaside together, for a couple of weeks or so. Summer meant reading, taking care of my little garden, meeting with my friend Irina and getting tanned. It also meant loads of fresh fruit, straight from the tree, running around freely, building huts and getting “infested” with fleas from the neighbour´s cats.
Nowadays, summer for me is first and foremost a holiday somewhere in the South of Europe. 😉 For the rest of the season, wearing dresses without stockings, walking bare foot on the grass and eating yummy salads is as good as it gets in Scandinavia. If you´re really lucky, a couple of days on the beach and some holiday guests make the picture complete!
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Park life
What have you been up to lately? For the last couple of days I haven´t had any assignments and the weather has been great, so we got to be outside most of the time (me and Sam), while V has been working his ass off to prepare for SEEK (Berlin trade show).
As I was agonizing about an invoice that the state hadn´t paid in 6 weeks instead of 3-4 and, feeling I would soon burst into a fit of rage (or worse, into tears!), I took my buddy Sam to the Botanical Garden to meet with a colleague and blow out some steam. And what do you know? The money came eventually and we got ourselves a pretty awesome day as a bonus! Picnic in the park! Another friend came after a while and we chatted, browsed through magazines, threw balls for Sam to fetch and went back and forth to the café for water, coffee and ice-cream. 😉
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life in a bubble 