Finnish Cardamom Coffee Bread

I tried my hand at bread yesterday. I mean real bread, made from yeast. That is a culinary area I have not in the least developed, and I had a wary interest in attempting it. I was afraid that if my first attempt resulted in a loaf resembling something very un-breadlike, I would abort the adventure completely. Thankfully, a lovely golden loaf brought happiness to all who came in contact with it!

There are many lovely looking recipes on the Whole Foods website. I chose this Finnish Cardamom Coffee Bread, and Joel and I made a haphazard venture into the art of braiding dough. The picture is of Joel's loaf, which turned out much more visually peaceful. Mine was a bit more long and lean, and looked like some kind of twisted baguette.

It tastes light and sweet, with a subtle cardamom flavour. There is sugar sprinkled on top which makes it an oh so pleasant experience to savour a slice (pure unrefined sugar, the only kind we use). I thought I was being clever and froze one of the loaves, however it is only one day later and the first loaf is half gone already! Mmm.

On another note...
This morning was a day just like yesterday - bright sunshine with promises of warmth. The forecast said rain, but hey, did we believe them? There was no way it could rain when it looked so gorgeous. Off we went to church, me in a summery skirt, neither of us with jackets. Well, turned out it's Scotland, and it did rain. We walked home afterwards in the rain, me with a newspaper over my head. A nice rain though, it was still warm out. When I got home I thought porage sounded so good! I made porage with fresh blueberries, a touch of extra thick single cream, and topped with a sprinkling of brown sugar. Mm it was perfect and made me want chai. I would strongly suggest porage with fresh blueberries.

Yet another calorie-consuming post from Heather

Now available at our local supermarket...

This has provided us with endless hours of love and laughter.

Funny, I never even liked grape juice when I lived in the states. Now it just tastes SO GOOD!

I wonder if it is because I haven't tasted anything grape (besides real old-fashioned grapes) since leaving the states a year and a half ago. They don't have grape flavoured things here. The closest thing (Joel doesn't think it's close) is currants. They have currant jam, currant everything.

Shame on us for buying things that are so incredibly non-local. Everyone has their weaknesses.

Granola

I made some granola yesterday. It is pretty different than granola I've made previously. Instead of just oats, I mixed mostly oats, and some rye flakes, and some pearl barley flakes. This gives it a bit more of a chewy texture, b/c one of those requires a bit more cooking than typical oats. It also makes it taste a bit more healthy and interesting. For the nut and seed part, I added a mixture of
almonds, cashews, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds (I used up all the bits left in the cupboard). The sunflower seeds put in a bit of interest to the flavour. I think I put in a bit of chopped peanuts too, which I wouldn't do the second time, b/c I think it's made it a bit more salty/savoury than I would prefer (They were salted peanuts). After it all cooled, I threw in a bunch of raisins to top it off. All in all I think it's good, and it feels like it's filling up little pockets of nutrition all over my body that normally get missed (with the pumpkin seeds and barley and rye flakes and all). Mmm.

Joel's roast

Yesterday, Joel made a roast! It was his second time, and it turned out delish. It was basically a mushroom & onion beef roast, and I made roast potatoes (another reason our marriage works, pls refer to previous post re. hamburgers), steamed red cabbage (with red wine and cloves) and steamed carrots. We ate some leftovers tonight, and they were possibly even better than the original. The flavours were nice and settled in.

All the veg we used were from www.thewholeshebag.com, an organic vegetable delivery service we just started using. Our farmer is based in West Lothian, near to Edinburgh. For £10 each Wednesday, we receive a bag full of freshly pulled organic veg. He also includes a newsletter which details what is in the bag, when it was pulled from the ground, and tips on how to use lesser known veg like the fennel that we got this week. We get new things each week. I am excited to let this widen our veg eating habits, and learning to like new veg. This is definitely the next best option to growing your own veg, which is an impossibility in Glasgow. Our back garden is pavement with some admirably persistent weeds growing between the cracks, and the supply of garden plots in Glasgow is shameful - I've heard there is a 4 year waiting list to get a plot! Thankfully places like The Whole Shebag exist and so we are able to be that much closer to the ground our veg comes from.

I hope you agree...

You are in a grocery store. You see a package of delicious grapes for £2 (or $2). Then you see a different package of equally delicious grapes for £2.50 (or $2.50). Which one will you choose?

I am guessing the answer would be the cheaper ones. And rightly so. However, what if you found out the grapes that are a bit more expensive actually benefited the grower, the grower's children, and the grower's community?
What if you found out by buying the more expensive grapes, you were actually contributing to building schools for children who don't have access, or getting clean drinking water to small villages, or ensuring the people's fields are cared for properly so they can keep producing the grapes?
What if you found out by paying the bit extra, you knew the grape growers would work in better conditions, receive decent wages, and live a decent life?

You may have guessed, the more expensive grapes are Fairtrade. By buying Fairtrade products, we can know we are contributing to the benefit of disadvantages families in generally poorer areas. I spend time thinking about this, and I want to challenge myself, and you, with this. If we know that by paying a bit more, we are benefiting people in many ways, is it not our moral responsibility to do so? As fellow humans, and for some of us, as people who strive to live with Christ's mercy, doing good when we are able, should we not buy the Fairtrade label products when we can?
I don't think this is something to feel obliged to do. In fact, I think it is a wonderful opportunity to do good in others' lives. And easily done.

"Anyone then, who knows the good he ought to do, and does not do it, sins" James 4.17

I do not see this as a political issue. I am not trying to preach politics. I see it as an issue of humanity, of bettering our world and our communities. Of giving people opportunities. I want to enact this in my life more and more. I have a long way to go.
If you see these labels on a product, you can know it is Fairtrade and the money you spend is benefiting communities and families. Our stores here in Glasgow stock many Fairtrade products, usually bananas, grapes, limes, coffee, tea, sugar, etc. Lots of different things. I'm sure the store you usually shop in does too. Have a look! You can know you are doing something good for minimal cost and maximum rewards.

What makes our marriage work:

Hamburgers.

There have been times when Joel is not so emotive, if you know him you know this is fairly often. Sometimes he's a bit flat, and if you are looking for an exuberant response you better just go elsewhere...
Well in those cases, I have found the solution...
suggest we can have hamburgers for dinner soon!

I did this last week and Joel went from about the excitement of a nervous turtle straight to the unharnessed hype of a chihuahua.

Maybe we should have hamburgers every night.

Names I Have Been Called

Jesus: Is He really a true Irishman?

Since moving to Glasgow, the variety in names I'm called by strangers has increased dramatically. In Seattle, I admit, the 'Jesus' count was pretty high, but, other than one lady on the Ave who asked me if I was a 'true Irishman', Seattleites have been fairly unimaginative.

Contrary to the opinions of many Americans, I actually do not 'fit in perfectly' in Scotland, and my (suave? distinctive? grotesque?) appearance has elicited comments from people on the street with surprising frequency. Among the more imaginative names I can now claim - in addition to a still-rising 'Jesus' count - are 'Hillbilly Willy', 'Scooby Doo', and, oddly, 'Kelsey' (the person who called me 'Kelsey' also asked if my thumb was broken and whether I was Amish). Other helpful comments directed my way have included 'your face is on fire' and 'look at the state of him...'

Yesterday was a two-pointer, with one more 'Jesus' and an entirely new one to my experience: 'Worzel Gummidge'. I was particularly surprised at this last comment, because, personally, I had never seen the resemblance. For those of you who don't know (probably nearly everyone who reads this), Worzel Gummidge was the main character in a British children's TV show from the 1970s. He was played by John Pertwee, who some of you (Dad?) will recognize as the third (and third least annoying) Doctor Who. The Worzel Gummidge character is perhaps even more perplexing than the Doctor: he is a mischievous talking scarecrow with a set of interchangeable heads. My friend James' experience verifies that, despite the (ostensible) good intentions of the show's writers, such disturbing imagery often had a traumatic effect on children.

Presumably, my similarity to Worzel Gummidge is limited to my shaggy hair (time for a trim) and possession of a hat. I'd like to think that my Glaswegian commenter regards me as a potential friend, a welcome addition to West End culture, rather than a macabre pastoral oddity.

P.S. Here are some clips from the show, if you like to scare yourself:

• The introduction
  
• A frightening song after which Worzel Gummidge verbally abuses children. Observe their terrified expressions.
  
• Part of a distressing episode involving a seesaw and free tobbacco

Which is the real Worzel Gummidge?

I can be political too...

I really liked the BBC 4 'Thought for the Day' today by Rhidian Brook.
link
I don't think it's too unrealistic to look for candidates who aren't afraid to express their thoughts, even if they're not the life of the 'party'.

Since it's almost summer again

It must be almost time to post some pictures from Tighe's visit this winter! We hired a car (Tighe drove), and went on a monumental road trip through the highlands, visiting Tighe's ancestral home of Tomintoul, and a castle or two.

Did I ever tell you about last summer?

There are a bunch of things that happened last summer, and I never told you guys about all of them. First, my cousin Erik came over. He came to Glasgow and didn't know where I lived, so went to talk to the University. The University gave me a call, and then he came over and stayed with us for a while. While he was here, our friends Robb and Andrew came too, so we all went some places and saw some cows and a ruined castle and a river and a dam with a fish ladder (in Pitlochry). We also spent a day in Edinburgh hanging out and looking tough. After everyone left and Heather's family came, and then they left, and September came, we realized that things were getting colder, darker, and wetter, so Heather and I went camping (near a town called Kilmahogg). In Scotland you can camp where ever you feel like camping as long as you're polite and don't scare the cows or chickens, so we camped in a ruined building of some kind up on a hill. There were sheep all around us and we could hear them all night. I think I have a recording somewhere of all the sheep, so I could post that later. Anyway, here are some pictures. As always, there are more on Heather's Photobucket site. I learned in my yearbook class that it's bad to leave too much white space in between pictures and text, so I have to write something here.

My Muse is a dud

There is among poets a time-honored tradition of writing one's best work in dreams; the most famous example is Xanadu, which came to Coleridge in (what we will call, for argument's sake) a dream. Apparently, the very plan for Kubla Khan's pleasure dome was itself inspired by a dream (this from the all-knowing Wiki).

Upon waking this morning, I realized that my muse had struck in the night, and I immediately called Heather to pen down the lines I had been given in my sleep. The poem that appeared on the page suggests to me that the muse enjoys a greater synergy with subjects who, like Coleridge and John Lennon, are willing to invest the extra capital in chemical aids. It is possible that the historical pattern will hold true, and that this will be my greatest-ever work of poetry. Fortunately, my career depends solely upon my prose skills.

I'd like to add that my muse seems to have been consulting the works of Isaac Watts, which collaboration I fear I may have brought upon myself: his hymns are the subject of a large portion of my thesis.

It is with mixed feelings that I submit, for your edification and for posterity, my dream-poem, which I wrote upon a phantom chalk-board below my friend Tim Petersen's composition in Icelandic, a work of incomparable genius which is lost forever in the mists of slumber:

I am the earth.
The earth was a tree.
Its people were happy
'Til I sat on a bee.

They cried out with one voice
To object to the thing,
And I found that their noise
Was as bad as the sting.

Monteverdi, fer cryin' out loud!

Here's a really nice song from Monteverdi, from before Italian opera got annoying! (link) The soprano is Olga Pasiecznik from the Ukraine, and the group is a Polish chamber ensemble called Altri Stromenti. You can buy their CD here if you want, on Magnatune. That would be cool...

P.S. I got the album image from the Magnatune website.

Here are the words:

Confitebor tibi Domine in toto corde meo, in consilio justorum et congregatione. Magna opera Domini: exquisita in omnes voluntates ejus. Confessio et magnificentia opus ejus, et justitia ejus manet in sæculum sæculi. Memoriam fecit mirabilium suorum, misericors et miserator Dominus, escam dedit timentibus se. Memor erit in sæculum testamenti sui; virtutem operum suorum annuntiabit populo suo, ut det illis hereditatem Gentium; opera manuum ejus veritas et judicium. Fidelia omnia mandata ejus; confirmata in sæculum sæculi, facta in veritate et æquitate. Redemptionem misit Dominus populo suo; mandavit in æternum testamentum suum. Sanctum, et terribile nomen ejus; initium sapientiæ timor Domini. Intellectus bonus omnibus facientibus eum; laudatio ejus manet in sæculum sæculi. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.

I will thank the Lord with all my heart in the council of justice and the assembly. Great [are] the works of the Lord: [they are] sought out in all his goodwill. his work [is] confession and grandeur, and his justice remains forever. His miracles were made into legends, the merciful and gracious Lord, he gave food to those who fear him. The memory of his promise will be forever; the goodness of his works he will announce to his people, thus let him give that heritage of the Gentiles; the works of his hands [are] truth and justice. All faith [is] entrusted to him; and established forever, made in truth and equity. The Lord sent redemption to his people. he commanded his covenant forever. Holy and frightful [is] his name; fear of the Lord [is] the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding to all of them who act; the praise of him endures forever. Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, and [is] now and always, and [will be] forever. Amen.

Praha (ask for the horká medovina!)

Hi! It's December! I believe we last met in October, when I was telling you a story about Norway. I'm skipping several chapters (again) in order to update you on more recent happenings, specifically our pre-Christmas trip to Prague (the ancient city of). Prague is a dang old town - it started in the 11th century or so, and even the "New Town" goes back to the 1400s. As our guidebook said, when in Prague, never trust the word "new." Highlight: best hot mead ever!
The Praguers have a pretty high opinion of their city, too - they've been calling it Mater Urbium, the Mother of Cities for several centuries. The picture here is of the famous Astronomical clock from the 1400s, the Old Town Square, and the Týn cathedral.
The main reason I'm being so prompt about all this, however, is what we saw outside of Prague in the town of Kutná Hora. Absolutely the best part of our trip was seeing the ossuary there. This "bone church" is decorated with the bones of roughly 40,000 people, most of whom died in
a plague in the 14th century. The collection includes four free-standing bone pyramids, huge bone vases, a bone coat of arms (note the bone raven in the lower right-hand corner, pecking at the eye of a skull), and a bone chandelier containing every kind of bone in the human body.


There are a couple more pictures from Prague that I think are worth posting: One from the TV tower with giant babies, and the other from a cool baroque cemetery. As usual, more pictures are available from Heather's Photobucket page here.

The Ehli Family in Norway

ollowing a tearful parting with brother Jeff, gone to pursue his fortune in America, the Ehlis make their way north, accompanied by their trusty and strikingly handsome son-in-law, Joel. The voyage across the North Sea is long and perilous, but at last our craft makes landfall at the village of Sandefjord, where we manage to hire a worthy vehicle to convey us for the rest of our journey. Late in the night, the dauntless Ehlis are joyfully re-united with their intrepid and tireless Norwegian kinswoman, Sigrun, who is to accompany and direct us. Sigrun plies us with food and wine, and we rest for the night.

Arising with the dawn, our party ventures forth. The eerie light of the northern sun casts mysterious shadows, wherein may lurk any manner of trolls, nisse, tusse, huldre, or other wights of the Norse wilderness. After endless hours of driving through mountains, valleys, and woodlands, a ferry is found to take us across the fjord to Volda, near the ancestral home. There we meet more of Randi's gracious kin, who give us wonderful food, comfortable lodging, and pleasant conversation.

The next day begins with a visit to the churchyard where many of Randi's predecessors are buried. Paying our respects, we continue to the ancestral farmland itself, the fabled Velsvik. As we walk the familial grounds, we became aware of a bond reaching through the ages, linking us to this place. This bond is only strengthened by the seemingly endless supply of cakes, berries, and iced delicacies which we are subsequently served by our hospitable relations.

The following two days of our journey include a harrowing journey to Oslo over icy mountain passes, through the fjord of Geiranger, whose sheer slopes rise directly from the waterline to the knife-like peaks of ice, towering far above. It is here that the heroic Justin narrowly defeats a frost giant in single combat. Once safely in Oslo, after meeting more of the kinfolk and examining relics of the Viking age, we spend one last night with Sigrun and cast off once again for the shores of merry Scotland.

Further visual aids may be accessed here.

The new digs

We moved to a new flat 3 weeks ago, but we haven't put up pictures of the new place yet. There are three reasons for this:

But, hey, it's warm, bright, and comfortable, and the view's not bad.

Ehlis Invade Scotland!

Heather hijacks the Transport Museum

I'm way behind. Two months ago, my cousin Erik and our friends Robb and Andrew all came to visit at the same time! This post isn't about them: I'm going to go backwards. Last month, Heather's family (now my family) came to stay with us for a week, exploring pretty much the whole country. The kids all slept in the lounge-basically the coolest slumber party ever. Then we all (sans Jeff) got in our longboat and headed for Norway. Here are some pictures from the Scotland week. Oh and here's the link to where most of the pictures are, though you might have to sift through Norway.

Chillin' at Glasgow University

Ehli Kids @ Linlithgow

Ma and Pa Ehli guard Edinburgh

Heather decorates Linlithgow

Family picnic!

The gang in Luss

Gratuitous Glencoe Scenery