Friday, November 30, 2007
Baking without baking
It's almost that time again, you know what I'm talking about. Tomorrow the Christmas month begins and tomorrow almost every house in the city will be lit like a Christmas tree. Most of us northeners have a little Griswold inside of us that escapes around this time of year. Most windows will have friendly lights and the bare trees will be covered in hundreds of lights.
I usually collect a bunch of pine branches which I place on the windowsills and then I put tiny white lights inbetween the branches. This not only makes the house smell like a million bucks but also feasts the eyes.
Now this is what I felt lacked in that little Scottish town I used to live in. I never really got in the Christmas mood because it seemed that the locals absolutely lacked the essence of Griswold. There was a measly string of lights around the main shopping street but people just didn't light up their houses, which I found odd, since if anything- Scotland is even darker than my rock due to lack of that white stuff that falls from the sky here in the darkest months.
However, Christmas lighting doesn't always apply- as I discovered when my disco-loving neighbours put up their twinkling light tubes about 3 weeks ago. I also find little joy in the Spanish twinkling and Christmas tune-singing lights that have conquered the Canary Islands. Twinkling lights that sing "jingle bells" Chipmunks style are just not that tasteful people- or so I think.
But there are other ways of getting into the Christmas mood. I for one decided to celebrate the coming of the silly season and the 89th anniversary of my rock's sovereignity by baking without baking. We rock-inhabitants go cookie crazy in December, there are Sarah Bernhardt cookies, pepper cookies, butter cookies and you name it cookies. However, I tend to forget the little suckers in the oven so my cookies have in the past been "the fire department's here to see if you are OK cookies" so here's a brilliant and super easy recipe for not burning the joint down, "the kókoskúlur":
3 dl oatmeal
1 dl sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract drops
2 tablespoons cold coffee
100 grammes butter (real butter)
Blend this all together, form little balls and roll in shredded coconut and then cool in the fridge.
These kókoskúlur really are a treat and so incredibly easy and quick to make.
Bon Appetit
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tip of the day
While the mountains outside my window have snow white hats on and the day seems kind of bleak, why not light some candles and listen to the song of the day, which I have decided is Iron and Wine's "The Trapeze Swinger" from that lovely film In Good Company...
That's what I've done and believe me, this tune is good enough to be put on repeat, at least for a few rounds. If it gets tiresome, why not try another soundtrack, say Tous Les Matins de Monde, track 16, La Sonnerie de Sainte Genevieve du Mont a Paris.
Knock yourselves out via modern or medieval music- I won't guarantee that the snow will disappear but at least you'll have a cozy atmosphere in your office through candlelight and nice music to listen to while the storm outside attacks your window.
Enjoy
Friday, November 23, 2007
The secret life of the mother unit
Don't you sometimes wonder what senior citizens are up to while the rest of us are working hard? I know I do.Sometimes the mother unit starts talking about her friends that visit her during the day. I must say that these so-called friends are up to no good and the mother unit tells me incredible stories about them at the end of the day.
There's one who used to be a pill popper and had easy access to drugs at the hospital. She decided to clean up her act when her hubby re-fell in love with his ex, who had lost her memory and became an Amish lady. Anyway, the pill popping wife decided to do whatever it took to hold on to her man and faked a pregnacy. When it became blatantly obvious that her belly wasn't becoming bigger, as tends to happen to pregnant women, she went the whole nine yards (the distance between her house and the fertility clinic) and got pregnant for real...
The mother unit's best daytime friend has been married more times than I care to remember and has a tendency to marry within the same family. She's been married to the dad, his two sons and begot a child by the third son. In addition, she was engaged to the fourth brother, but that was OK as he was the dad's bastard son and didn't share their last name...
I must admit that the company that the mother unit keeps during the day worries me.
But then again, her friends are the product of CBS and as long as the mother unit just watches their unholy actions and doesn't replicate them I suppose I can't complain.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Oh get stuffed!
It's the day of American stuffings. I wish all my American buddies a very happy eating day and hope that indigestion will not play a role in their festivities.
On my rock there's no thanksgiving, sadly there were no aboriginals here to mistreat when my ancestors showed up, except for possibly a few Irish monks, "papar" who are most famous for having used the 24/7 Arctic daylight to pick lice from each others' heads. We didn't have any turkeys either so thanksgiving is a non-existent holiday in these parts.
While on the subject of turkeys I must admit that when I moved to Alabama I was enjoyably surprised to see how multicultural the Southerners were and how open they were to Southern European/Asian cuisine; there were Turkish restaurants everywhere and being a fan of Middle Eastern food and such, I very much looked forward to dining exotic dishes at the "House of Turkey". Alas, there was pretty much only one dish on the menu: turkey (not from Turkey).
Yes, indeed I was a stupid foreigner!
However, now my friends and I from my needlework club (where we mostly just play cards and talk about girlie things + the occasional bad-mouthing of other women), well we've decided to do our annual club celebration American style with turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. I bought a big ass turkey for an insane amount of money (around 35-40 quid) and have been surfing the internet for recipes, preferably ones that don't include canned pumpkin, store bought stuffing mixes and sausage meat (as the first 2 are not sold on my rock and the third I don't eat due to many things). So, if anybody knows of a recipe that is kosher and un-canned, please let me know.
Hell, if all else fails we'll just off a few puffins and stuff them with sour sheep's testicles, burn them over a fire and chant viking tunes about pillaging and burning the English...
Thursday, November 15, 2007
The Musical Psychopath
This morning on the way to the office I was singing along with a Celine Dion song playing on the radio- pretty loudly actually. However, I did not realize this until I found myself waiting for the green light and accidentally looked to my right and saw the man in the next car giving me a strange look. Then it struck me that the car I was driving is not soundproof, especially when the window on the driver's side is partially open. I suddenly stopped singing in the middle of "Look back before you leeeeeeeaaaaaaave my liiiiiiiiiiife", switched the channels, turned down the volume on the radio -and myself and hummed quietly to RATM "F**k you I won't do what you tell me".
It sure is embarrasing when someone catches you singing Celine Dion songs early in the morning, but what can one do, I mean: I love the songs of Celine in the morning, erm that is I love the smell of napalm in the morning...or something.
Oh, to hell with it- I'm outing myself as of today as a musical psychopath: Hi, my name is Björk and I love Celine and Rage Against the Machine equally!
While I'm on the subject I would like to recommend two favourites of the musical psychopath- these days I'm listening to Jan Johansson's: Folkvisor- a fab, albeit not a super original jazz take on Swedish and Russian folksongs and then it's the alltime Bowie classic: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust... I especially like Lady Stardust (Original Demo). If you have confidence in my musical taste, also check out Echo and the Bunnymen's golden oldie: Killing Moon-
In other news: check out my debut on kistan.is and also, has Barði found the prescription for Iceland's appaling outcome in Euro-trash-vision? This boy wonder put together a super discusting Euro-techno tune that should fit the profile of southernmore-than-Scandinavia-European taste. Seriously, this one's got it all: beef-cake guys who left their tops at home, a cute girl singing and big drums that have gone down well in post cold war Eurovision.
Enjoy!
Thursday, November 08, 2007
They complete you!
That lovely TV miracle man, Dr. Phil, seems to have implied at some point that women need to have babies (or so I've heard...I mean would I watch lousy daytime TV?!). Anyway, isn't this the purpose of our existence, you know to have babies, watch the little angels grow and then after they've had babies, we can drop dead content and at peace knowing that our legacy or at least our genepool will continue to walk the face of this earth?
I beg to differ. Sure kids are cute but why do people think that there's something wrong with you if you don't want some of your own? Questions and comments like "Use your mother-instinct" and "You'll get it and feel fulfilled when you've got little ones of your own"... If there are two people in the room, a man and a woman- both childless, and also a kid that suddenly starts crying or doing whatever kids do...why is it that the childless woman is SUPPOSED to know what to do. I mean, don't men have "father-instincts"?
Let's look a little closer into the whole having kids thing.
Step one: You bring the little buggers into the world through your hmmhmm; they show their gratitude by having enormous heads- yippee!
Step two: They puke and poo all the time, who doesn't love stinky nappies, a tonne a day for say 2-3 years?
Step three: They start walking and talking which means that they'll break stuff in your flat (who doesn't recognize the joys of cheerios in the dvd player?)and throw tantrums in shops when they don't get what they want.
Step four: The school years...one would think they turn nice at some point but no, they still break stuff, throw tantrums and now you also have to answer to the school authorities when they behave like little bastards outside your home.
Step five: Puberty...A good one. The tantrums continue and now they also start stealing money from your wallet alongside throwing parties for their likes in your house when you're not home and let's not forget five finger discounts in your booze-cabinet, while trying to cover it up by refilling your priceless bottle of whiskey with some water.
Step six: The grown up years...If you're lucky they'll ignore you altogether, never visit you etc. If you're unlucky, they'll turn the tables on you and start parenting you financially, socially, the works. If you're really unlucky they'll lock you up in death's waiting room, a "foundation for the elderly" where other people's fully grown offspring will continue to push you around, regardless of whether you use a wheelchair or not.
Now, seriously, are you going to tell me that I'm crazy to lack motherly instincts and not wanting kids, or is it perhaps that people who've fallen into the parenting trap want you to suffer too?
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Oh what a night
Last night I was kidnapped by some criminals. They took me to the airport and hid me somewhere inside duty free. There they made me solve some realistic law dilemmas, which I did with flying colours. I managed to escape tree times and complained loudly that my kidnappers were pretty lousy at their job.
When I woke up at 8.30 and it was still dark outside and I didn't get my coffee until 10, which is very bad indeed.
I never dream about squirrels and bunnies, just vampires, carnivorous sheep and lousy kidnappers.
No wonder I'm sometimes tired in the morning!
Thursday, November 01, 2007
wakey wakey lemon shakey
I don’t know why, but this is a sentence I say every morning. Maybe it’s because the world is messed up and sour like an over-ripe lemon. How sour and sick depends on which part of the world we’re talking about, but we can pretty much find unsettling things everywhere we look. So, in a sour world we need to wake up from our slumber- hence wakey wakey etc.
I just finished reading a very disturbing book called Conversations with Americans. This book is almost 40 years old and is on a war that ended before I was even born. Why would this book make me so uneasy?
That’s simple, it’s because it’s about how war turns ordinary people into monsters and the horror of war is something that millions of people like you and me have to face every day. It’s a recurring theme that soldiers have gone crazy on the battlefield since the dawn of time but in modern warfare the battlefields are cities where innocent civilians are tortured and killed.
In the past soldiers were trained to dehumanize the “enemy”, it’s easier to commit murder if you think the victim’s not even the same species as you. In boot camps rookies didn’t get dinner unless they screamed “Kill, Kill, Kill” first. The psychology of warfare and war training is beyond my comprehension- I just see it as pure evil and I fear that not much has changed since Mark Lane interviewed US servicemen back in the sixties. We get news regularly about airplanes that supposedly had prisoners on board stopping in Iceland before they went on to a country where torture’s allowed.
I suppose many historians want to write their books on the past in order for people to actually learn from their ancestors’ mistakes. How naïve! Greed and stupid world views prevent us from ever evolving into better animals- we continue to be the greedy ape- sadly.
I grew up fearing the mushroom cloud and The Bomb. Back then, the Soviets were the enemies, now there are new enemies and new hardships.
Bottom line- before jumping on the war train, read about what war does to people that are just like you.
Peace!
I just finished reading a very disturbing book called Conversations with Americans. This book is almost 40 years old and is on a war that ended before I was even born. Why would this book make me so uneasy?
That’s simple, it’s because it’s about how war turns ordinary people into monsters and the horror of war is something that millions of people like you and me have to face every day. It’s a recurring theme that soldiers have gone crazy on the battlefield since the dawn of time but in modern warfare the battlefields are cities where innocent civilians are tortured and killed.
In the past soldiers were trained to dehumanize the “enemy”, it’s easier to commit murder if you think the victim’s not even the same species as you. In boot camps rookies didn’t get dinner unless they screamed “Kill, Kill, Kill” first. The psychology of warfare and war training is beyond my comprehension- I just see it as pure evil and I fear that not much has changed since Mark Lane interviewed US servicemen back in the sixties. We get news regularly about airplanes that supposedly had prisoners on board stopping in Iceland before they went on to a country where torture’s allowed.
I suppose many historians want to write their books on the past in order for people to actually learn from their ancestors’ mistakes. How naïve! Greed and stupid world views prevent us from ever evolving into better animals- we continue to be the greedy ape- sadly.
I grew up fearing the mushroom cloud and The Bomb. Back then, the Soviets were the enemies, now there are new enemies and new hardships.
Bottom line- before jumping on the war train, read about what war does to people that are just like you.
Peace!
