Category: Bread.

I guess it’s ok during Christmas :-)

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They said the chance/ risk, depending on how one look at it, that we in southern Sweden would get a white christmas was slim to none, so I wasn’t especially surprised when I let the dogs out this morning that we had snow on the ground  🙂 🙂 🙂 Also it continued to snow for quite some time and the temperature has dropped so we will have a white Christmas here this year.

I had a parcel waiting for me at the grocery store in Gudhem so I decided that it was best to pick it up before we went out on our morning walk. I had ordered an aquarium book from 1942 so that I would have something to read this christmas plus the fact it is so old that I would be able to read about cold water fish people since long has forgotten about 🙂 I had hoped to find shredded coconut as well because I had forgotten to buy some when I went to the store yesterday. There’s nothing mice seems to like more than shredded coconut. Unfortunately they didn’t have any but it did remind me of potatoes when I saw the last two bags they had 🙂

A sort of a second flowering 🙂
It is actually quite hard to see these huge animals as long as they stand totally still.

This morning the box had trapped three mice! This time a definitely recognised one of them. Some time in its life it had lost a part of its tail so it was easily recognisable. I went out with them before I drove to the store. We went out on our morning walk as soon as I came home and walked much the same way as when I released the mice. We passed the last little field before entering the forest and something caught my attention. I didn’t see them at first but then I saw them, three moose! One big cow, one calf and the third too small to be an adult moose but still too big to be a calf. I’ve seen them before a couple of times and felt happy that they’ve survived the hunting season so far.

The dogs didn’t see them but they understood they were somewhere near 🙂 I must say that Alma has come a long way, just a few months earlier and she would have gone berserk 🙂 🙂 For once she actually started to follow the scents on the ground instead of screaming like obsessed and whining like she has gone crazy 🙂 🙂 We didn’t see any more big animals but both Alma and Malkolm kept their noses to the ground for the entire walk 🙂

I have actually been rather active today because when we came home again the first thing I saw when I went down in the cool cellar was that the trap had another prisoner. Well if that mouse with the short tail come here again I just as well get a cage and have it as a pet 🙂 🙂 🙂 It wasn’t the least stressed to see me, rather the opposite to be honest 🙂 🙂 It had taken it slightly more than two hours to find its way home again 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I just took the trap and walked even further away before I released it again 🙂 🙂 🙂 I was worried for a while that I for some reason had all forest mice and yellow necked mice in the entire area but I think I’ve just caught the same ones all the time 🙂 🙂 🙂

After that I made the gingerbread dough. The recipe said that I should have agave syrup and coconut fat but since I’m not a millionaire I used normal syrup and butter. The dough will rest until tomorrow morning before I make the cookies. I will however not be without anything nice to eat today because my neighbours daughters (six and three years old I think) wanted me to have something as a christmas gift, so they made me some fudge and butterscotch to have during christmas, well it won’t last that long because it was delicious 🙂

After that I baked two loafs of Vörtbröd, they came out rather nice, I and the dogs have already tried a couple of slices with a christmas cheese 🙂 So tomorrow I’ll bake the gingerbreads and also grill the christmas ham. I bought a small already cooked one because now days we really don’t use the water it was cooked in as they did back in the days when every calorie one could get was important. They used to heat it up and dip stale bread in it the get up all the fat still in the rather salty water. It has never been a favourite of mine so I buy ready cooked instead.

It is time to have that last cup of tea for the day and of course some of the christmas candy my neighbours gave me 🙂 Tomorrow is our big day of christmas and if I get some time over I’ll write something here 🙂

Have a great day!

A new morning routine :-)

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We’ve had two really grey and dark days but today the sun suddenly appeared again (of course not while we were out walking) and it felt really strange 🙂 It didn’t give any heat away though so I guess it appeared just for show 🙂 Still we were in the garden enjoying it as much as we could. It is and has been very windy as well but no wind could reach us here in the garden.

Well I guess it’s a bit wrong to call it logs, they’ll grind it down and make pellets of them. So this is the place I let the mice free.

It was so dark for a while yesterday so I switched to black and white for a short while.

I’ve sort of started a new routine. Wake up and let the dogs out to the garden and when they’ve come in I go down to the cool cellar and check what the box trap has caught during the night. When it gets brighter outside I take the mouse/mice out to the forest in the travel box and let them out just beside a big pile of logs they haven’t removed yet and walk hone.

The clouds thinned out so I turned back to cooler again 🙂

When I come home I leash the dogs and out we go on our morning walk. They are really interested in the smells at that pile of logs 🙂 Alma seems to have understood that if she is quiet we will see bigger animals and two days ago we saw a big moose. Unfortunately just as it vanished in to the forest so I didn’t get a chance to take a photo. Lately I’ve driven to the different places where I can pick up parcels so we might have our walk after that instead, it’s usually brighter outside if we do it that way.

Thankfully I don’t have any more parcels waiting to be picked up so I hope I don’t have to go anywhere until Monday when I’ll visit my old work friends again and also do that last christmas food shopping. I need a small ham and mustard and I’ll also check what I need for making gingerbreads. It’s always nice to have some gingerbreads at christmas but the gluten free we can but are an abomination to the world but I’ve made this kind before and they are delicious but perhaps a bit strong spice-wise 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea and most likely a slice or two of the just a few hours old Vörtbröd I baked today 🙂

Have a great day!

Mice and Christmas bread.Mice.

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Sorry about the quality on the photos. None of them came out especially well.

 

Nothing much have happened here today. I noticed the other day that the monsterkitten has been a bit sloppy when it comes to hunting mice because I found mouse poop in the cool cellar. So I put up a box trap and filled it with coconut flakes. Our mice love coconut and I think it’s the best thing to load traps with, at least when it comes to box traps. It took a bit longer than I thought but today when I went down to the cellar I found two mice in it! Last time I had to use the box trap I only caught house mice but this time it was two Yellow-necked wood mice. I waited until we had daylight and then I carried the box to the forest. I always leave them at the same place, at a piece of tree trunk which is hollow. I poured down a handful of peanuts so they have a full stomach before finding a new home.

They were so fast when running out of the trap that I didn’t have a chance to take any photo of them, the house mice I’ve caught are always a bit slower so I have photos of them in an old computer. I have also baked a traditional christmas bread today. We call it Vörtbröd and the only English name I found for it is a Swedish word, Limpa which means loaf 🙂 🙂 It is normally a rye bread but since I can’t eat that I used my normal mix of Sorghum flour, rice flour and normally corn starch but I forgot to buy that so I used corn flour. There are a lot of spices in it as well, malt extract, salt, cloves, bitter orange peel, anise, fennel and cardamom plus one should use a dark beer like Porter or why not a Guinness. For us who can’t have that a Swedish Julmust (it isn’t far from beer tasting)  works good as well 🙂 The two loafs I made taste just yummy 🙂

 

Vörtbröd. The colours are a bit off here, it’s much more dark brown and not at all towards the orangey brown as it looks here.

Also one can have raisins in the bread (half of us love it half hate it 🙂 ) and I did of course forget to buy any so instead I cut down dried apricots instead, not the same but surprisingly well working. I’ll make more loafs closer to christmas. I’ve had a couple of slices while they were warm so when warm it’s cheese on but as cold why not have christmas ham and beetroot salad (not the American kind but our mayo and pickled beetroot based one) and of course meatballs or perhaps wiener sausages as well 🙂 Pickled cucumber is almost a must 🙂 It is time for that last cup of tea and also I’ve just realised that I have forgotten to give the animals something to eat. I will of course have a couple of sandwiches with christmas ham and pickled cucumbers 🙂

Have a great day!