The Engineered Boulderer

This is it… I guess I’m officially grown up now… I’ve turned 30! (Oh, the horror.) Of course I got pretty much nothing but toys: iPod touch, Nintendo Wii, Garmin Forerunner, a Manfrotto Super Clamp, and some board games.

To celebrate we had family and a few friends over for a nice dinner Saturday night. At least it turned out very well, as it should, I had been doing food related stuff (shopping, prepping, cooking) for most of Friday and all of Saturday. The menu was a variation on the traditional danish suppe, steg og is or literally soup, steak, and ice cream.

Update: Now with recipes.

Susan and I were in the super market debating what to make for dinner last night. Eventually we decided on sushi. We both love sushi a lot, but it is a daunting task to attempt it for yourself, especially when you know how much energy people spend on becoming sushi chefs.

We bought a variety of ingredients for the sushi. Of course we got the basic ingredients, but we still needed something to roll into our maki. We ended up getting a little piece of salmon, a piece of tuna, and a can of crab meat (they were on sale in Iso), as well as some avocado and spring onions.

In preparation we cut the greens into slivers, and sliced the fish. The crab meat was already picked apart so we would just use that as it was. Half the tuna was soaked in teriyaki, and half the salmon was rubbed with fresh garlic.

We ended up having rice for four maki rolls (each yielding 8 pieces): Crab meat and avocado, garlic salmon and spring onions, teriyaki tuna with avocado, and salmon and tuna with spring onions. It were simple flavours, but they were so very yummy.

We forgot wasabi on two of the rolls which was a shame, and some fish roe would have been perfect with the crab meat (both for texture and color contrast). However, we had a lot of fun rolling the maki, and they tasted so good.

Just north of Lyngby lies Frilandsmuseet (sorry, link in Danish), an open air museum where old houses from around the country have been rebuilt to preserve our historical heritage. As the only sensible thing he’s ever done, our cultural minister has waived the entrance fee to the national museums in Denmark. Combined with the beautiful weather we decided it was time for a picnic.

We texted pretty much everyone we knew and invited them to a picnic in the spirit of “if noone shows up it’ll be ok, but the more the merrier”. Turned out noone showed, but with the beautiful weather and nice food we couldn’t really care less.

For our picnic lunch Susan baked carrot buns and we made the best grilled sandwiches ever. We got some small steaks, asparagus, tomato, red onion, and chees and fried all the ingredients on the grill pan. The sandwich was assembled with a thin layer of cottage cheese liquified with basil, and the ingredients above. It tasted awesome.

After eating our lunch at Frilandsmuseet, we walked around a bit and looked at the old houses. When we left we went down to Lyngby sø (the local lake) and bought ice cream. Sat in the sun with our feet in the water and ate it. Overall a perfect day.

On Tuesday (when it was my birthday, entry coming) I really didn’t feel like a lot of meat or anything heavy for dinner. What we ended up with was a light green sauce-like substance served with pasta. Very scrumptious and very filling.

The recipe below serves two (with some leftovers, we never seem to be able to get over that). Scale as necessary.

The title is a pun, admittedly a rather contrived one, and therefore one that needs explaining. Some company, I fail to remember which at this point, used life is a party as their slogan. Since party in Danish is fest and the subject of this post is a juice drink called Festis it just seemed to fit. This explanation, however, does not. I hope you’ve bear with me anyway as I quickly change the subject and start talking about Festis and their interesting taste combinations.

Festis is made by the Swedish branch of Carlsberg which is why the site about Festis is only available in Swedish. It is a series of juice drinks that started in 1961 with orange juice in small tetrapak bricks (actually they were weird triangular shapes, but they were Festis).

In 1994, however, after loosing the market lead to MER, Festis was rebranded. In the beginning they had “boring” flavors such as Lemon Lime, Melon Lemon, and Cassis. At the end of the nineties they started experimenting more leading us to the reason I’m writing this. The new flavor Lotus Lychee, a pale blue clear juice drink which tastes flowery with an aftertaste of lychee. When I was in Sweden yesterday we stopped at the Shell station right after Øresundsbron as we usually do. Like a fly to a lit candle I was drawn to the cooler with the Festis bottles. Since they’ve started experimenting I’ve just had to try all the flavors. From the refreshing Guanabana Pineapple to the horrific Cactus Lime (I’m not much into cacti, go figure).

To me, trying some weird Festis flavor has become part of going to Sweden. Next time you visit, you should try one too, you just might discover that Dandelion Apple is the flavor that makes you tastebuds touch heaven.

Thursday Susan and I were feeling lazy. Both having come home late from work, Susan bought some food at the local DSB fast food joint on the way home. Dinner was ok, but not terribly inspiring and we soon went to bed. Around 1 am we both woke up with stomach pains. For more than an hour we were both incapacitated by the pain, shivers, and general discomfort. I still don’t know how I fell asleep again, but I actually ended up sleeping the rest of the night. All of Friday my stomach was acting up and I couldn’t eat anything but Apples and shredded carrots. Today I finally feel alright, albeit a bit hungry, and I think we’ve both learned our lesson: No more DSB burgers.

The previous weekend, me and my family was in Ribe for a weekend stay at Hotel Dagmar. My dad’s aunt wanted to get the family together while my sister was in Denmark to celebrate her birthday.

Hotel Dagmar is on the main square of Ribe, right next to the cathedral. As most of the old town it is from the 1500’s and is protected. A great plus is that you’re allowed to bring dogs to the hotel, and although they officially don’t allow dogs in the restaurant, they will happily bring you a doggy bowl with water and pet him if he is brought.

The subject of this entry, however, is not the hotel. The subject is the food. The weekend stay we were on was a “Gourmet Stay” which includes a 6 course dinner.

New Years eve last year Susan and I had a number of friends over. The meal itself was quite good, but one dish in particular stands out: The Asparagus Velouté soup from Larousse Gastronomique (the World’s Greatest Cookery Encyclopedia). It was so good, in fact, that my brother still talk about it to this day. It isn’t really Konfusion Citchen, but it’s so good I don’t care. I promised over at Sci-Fi Hi-Fi that I would blog the recipe so here you go. (more…)

Today’s installment in the realm of Konfusion Citchen is a recipe for a pasta sauce Susan and I made the other day. I has some very interesting flavours which have to be experienced to fully appreciate. (more…)

Our dinner today was a vegetarian deal almost completely done with root crops. We had three dishes: Raw fried potatoes, carrots, black radish, and sweet potatoes; oven fried beet roots, cabbage root, and mini pumpkin with parmasan; and finally stewed red cabbage which was really cool since the sauce turned completely blue. See for yourself:

Recipes below. (more…)