Kitchen Gnomes

 

Once upon a time, this corner shelf used to hang in my grandmother's kitchen, and nowadays in mine. Some of the items on it are there all year round; but around Christmas it also serves as home to some wooden "forest gnomes".

 

These little ones have their place on top of my cooker hood. 

 

Believe it or not, even more tiny ones are still asleep in the bigger of these two little cottages. (The name on the door is S. Claus.) 

This lot used to be kitchen gnomes while they lived in my mother's house. Since they came to live with me, they've been relocated to the bathroom, though. (More room for them to spread out there...)

Outdoors, the weather has turned - the snow and ice is all gone now, rain has been pouring down all day, and the sun never bothered to get out of bed (i.e. it's been very dark all day). I've not set foot outside, and am not quite sure what I've actually been "doing" at all... (Resting, watching Netflix, and listening to Christmas music... Recently took a cheap subscription to Spotify again, and just discovered how easy to cast the music from the phone to my TV/stereo...)

The Kitchen Window

 

Rain pouring down outside today, and not much to do but be grateful that I don't necessarily have to go out. (It may still clear up in the afternoon, though.)

The photo above was taken on a  somewhat sunnier day. It's the view from my favourite place at my kitchen table. From that angle, I don't see the next building, and - this time of year - nothing but green trees and a bit of sky. It's my "breakfast view" every morning, and a good start to the day. (Also in winter, because even with the trees bare, I only see the top of other buildings far off.)

My African Violets

Painted nettles. They grow fast and are easy to propagate: just put cuttings in water. Actually, last winter I put some cuttings in vases and just left them like that (did not get round to planting them)... They lived on for months on nothing but tap water, just sprouting more and more roots - just like that little one is doing now...

PS. It struck me after I'd already published this post that today it's exactly 15 years ago that I moved into this flat. And the view from that window was one of the "selling points" to me the first time I came to look at the flat, about three months before that. (Figuratively speaking, as I wasn't buying it, just renting.)

Time for a Change

 

 

Waiting for the roofers to get to my building, I've been hesitating about when to do my usual seasonal change of curtains/colour scheme in the kitchen. Still not sure if my building will be next in turn or not; but with this weekend offering sunny weather (and the roofers not at work on weekends), I felt inspired to go ahead and "make spring" indoors anyway - just skipping the window cleaning for now (as there does not seem much point in that if they're soon going to put up scaffolding outside). 

 

Every time I turn on the radio or TV, everything is still about the situation in Ukraine, so I decided to go with yellow and blue this spring... Well - besides being the colours of the Ukranian flag, blue and yellow are of course also the colours of the Swedish flag...

 

 

Ukraine

 

Sweden

 

 

Another place in the flat where I also change colours with the seasons (or whenever I'm the mood for it) is this chest in the living room. The large needlework on the wall hangs there all year round, though. It was made for me by my mum back in the mid 1970s when I moved into my first proper flat (not counting my first year away from home in a small student bedsitter).

December 6

The Easy Stuff

It must be Spring. A contageous decluttering mood seems to be spreading among fellow bloggers. I got hit by it too, this past weekend – after reading GB’s post, who said he caught it from Kate, who had shared from someone else, who…

Anyway, from a list of 10 decluttering principles, besides the one-item-a-day idea, it was the following that really hit home with me:

“Declutter the Easy Stuff First. 
There is no need to make things difficult by trying to declutter the hardest things first.”

Still kind of exhausted after the Sisyphus job of dealing with all the inherited stuff from my parents' house over the past few years – and yet feeling a certain need to get on with some of my “own” now – this simple principle struck me as just brilliant.

It’s just so true that whenever I start thinking of getting rid of (more) stuff, my mind tends to jump straight to the hard things – both emotionally and physically – and then it’s so tempting to just put it off again. You know – the heavy stuff that calls for help by someone with strong arms and a car; or the stuff that someone else might actually find useful even if I don’t; or the papers and photos that need to be properly sorted through and read before decisions can be made; or various items that maybe aren’t really important, but still bear memories…

The Easy Stuff approach however took me straight out into the kitchen to get rid of a number of items that without any regret whatsoever could go straight into the ordinary garbage & recycling bins. Like, you know, too many “extra” glass jars and old scratched plastic food containers and bowls and jars and cutting boards; and the useless cracked not-even-antique tea pot…

While I was at it, I also decided to reward myself by replacing a few worn everyday items with new fresh ones – as seen in the photo above. But I did throw away a lot more than the few I replaced! (About a month’s worth at least, counted by the one-item-a-day principle.)

Frosty

Outdoors it’s raining. Meanwhile, indoors – as in inside my new built-in freezer – it’s getting very frosty…

This started after they mounted the wooden cupboard “front” on the freezer door last Monday. I didn’t realize immediately, but towards the end of the week I became aware that unnaturally thick layers of frost had been building up very quickly in the top compartment over the last few days.  Actually it was more like it had been “snowing” in there!

… And it keeps on snowing (in there) …

So over the weekend I’ve had to start every morning by emptying the top compartment in the freezer to scrape/brush/shovel off new snow and ice. (I reorganized, and now keep only bread up there as that’s the easiest to remove.) More often than not I end up having to remove the box below as well though (because when I do my brushing “upstairs” some of it falls through to below).

Today (Monday morning) I called my housing company’s office to report it. The lady whose job it is to listen to complaints all day said she’d pass it on to the area administrator.

Since today is the Day before the Day before Christmas Eve, I have had my doubts about getting any help until next week. (Actually I won’t be too surprised if I’ll have to live with the situation until Next Year. Desperate and upset, maybe. But not surprised.) – Apologies to Santa & helpers. Two guys turned up at 5 p.m. the same day and adjusted the freezer door + even put a handle on it. Remains to be seen if that actually fixed the frosty problem; but at least they made an effort!

Good thing, I guess, that I was planning on  a “quiet” Christmas this year – not involving a lot of cooking. (Not too crazy on traditional Christmas food myself.)

As extra precaution, I decided not to include any new frozen items on my shopping list for tomorrow (leaving some room in the freezer for all the ice…)

By the way – I think I might have forgotten to mention here, that as of last month my Supermarket introduced something that’s been on my wish-list for years: online ordering with home delivery service.

(Extra thanks to Santa or the Christmas Fairy or Whoever, for making this happen before Christmas…)

I’ve given the system a couple of test runs. It seems to work well (if I just remember to tick vs. untick all boxes correctly – like whether I accept replacement for a certain item or not). And it literally means a huge weight off my shoulders. So I’ll continue to make use of it – probably not every week, but when I feel it would be helpful. Anyway, since the day before Christmas Eve is always extra crazy in the shops, I decided already before the weekend to make sure to book another delivery for tomorrow afternoon... Once booked, one can keep making changes on the list until 11 pm the night before the delivery day.

Is Two Enough to Make It a Custom?

Back in October, I got a new fridge and freezer installed. Both have been purring along contendedly enough – if there’s been any roaring, that has been coming from me, still having to do with the doors: The freezer still lacking a handle; and the fridge being hard to open (in spite of what might be assumed to be the largest handle in the fridge world).

As for the fridge, I soon came to the conclusion that I had to use some sort of tool to relieve the pressure first, every time before opening the door, and the best tool for the purpose that I could find in my drawers was a wooden butter knife. By now I’ve got used to that and find it the most natural thing in the world. Doesn’t everyone have a butterknife hanging on the fridge?!

Today, at long last, a couple of guys came along to put a wooden “front” on the freezer door. This makes the freezer look bigger on the outside than on the inside (it is in fact smaller than the previous one) – and serves as protection from dust etc.

My only objection when the guys declared the job “done” was the the same as last time:

Me: – Er … But there’s no handle??
Guy: – No, they haven’t arrived yet, and we don’t know when that will be. You’ll get it later...
Me: – And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?
(The new door fitting so tight now that there’s really not much room to grip around the edge.)
Strong Guy (showing me he can do it): – Or you could just use a dough scraper or something…
Me (calm and together, as if this was a perfectly normal conversation): – Okay. I’m already using a butter knife with the fridge…
Strong Guy: Oh? (testing the fridge door, and of course it opens ever so smoothly for Him…)

Then he starts searching his pockets, muttering “Didn’t I have a….” - the name of which I can’t remember even in Swedish, but I understood it to be some small item of plastic that could smoothly be added to the fridge to serve just about the same pressure-relieving purpose as my butter knife. But in spite of turning his pockets inside-out, he didn’t find one. So he just shrugged his shoulders (with no promises to come back with one), and I was left to my own devices, once again…

Fortunately I’m not short of butter knives, so I found another nice handcarved one, and also a piece of decorative ribbon to hang it from...

I’m just telling you this, in case you should happen to come by for a surprise visit, or (perhaps more likely) these mysterious objects should happen to appear in the background of other photos on this blog. It is not an old Swedish custom (yet!) to have a butter knife hanging next to the fridge or freezer. If, however, the tradition should spread, in years to come… now you know where it all began, and why!

(PS. I’ll try to remember to ask for that Thingy for the fridge again when some time in the Future they come to attach a handle on the freezer…)

Indoors Wednesday

 

Today has been an Indoors Wednesday for me.

The primary reason was not the weather - even if on that account it was actually a rather good day to have a reason or two not to go out. Those reasons can be seen above: A new fridge and a new freezer being installed.

That’s one of the advantages as well as disadvantages of living in a rented apartment. You don’t have to decide vs don’t get to decide about these things yourself. They either happen or don’t, as the case may be. In this case, I got notice last week that is was going to happen; and further notice on Monday, that it was going to happen today, some time between 8-12 a.m.

Which meant that I was up and about around 7 a.m., just in case. But of course they did not turn up until around 11:30.

On the whole I guess it went smoothly, even if it got a bit more stressful for me than I prefer… Having to hurriedly clean away I-don’t-know-how-many-years worth of grease and grime that had been hiding under and behind the old appliances (while two strong guys carried the old ones out and the new ones in). I’ve lived here six years, but there were things living under the old fridge that I’d never seen before…

Question of conscience: Do you pull out your kitchen appliances every year and clean behind them???

The manuals accompanying the new appliances tell me, of course, that I should.

They also tell me, in visual language, that it’s okay if my new fridge sounds like a cat…

… but not if it sounds like a bear.

Remains to be seen how we’ll get along. So far this afternoon it’s mostly been me roaring like a bear, rather than purring as a cat. This because I’ve not yet got used to the fact that the new fridge only has one, big door; while my old one was a fridge-chiller with two doors that opened separately. (The lower half supposedly keeping a somewhat higher temperature, suitable for vegetables and fruit etc.) What has happened a number of times this afternoon is that I somehow manage to hit my toes with the door when closing it… (being used, I suppose, to being able to stand closer to the cabinet when I only had the upper door open).

I also have a slight grudge going on with the new freezer, which still lacks a proper “front” (which also means it still lacks a handle!). I was given a vague promise this will be added “another day”, apparently by someone else… Until then, I have to open the door by gripping around the edge of it. On top of that, the new freezer also turned out to be a little bit smaller than the old one… And as my old one was more or less full, you may be able to guess some of the initial consequences. No? Okay then: I had to have a bowl of ice-cream for dessert after lunch. And a couple of packets of very icy frozen veggies (with best-before date expired and half-thawed and re-frozen at least once before) had to go…

Minor troubles. Hopefully we’ll learn to get along…

Bringing In Spring

It may be too early yet to start looking for proper signs of spring outside… But as usual around this time of year, I try to bring some spring feeling into my kitchen.

Nothing much going on otherwise – except I’m almost getting dizzy from watching hours of Olympic figure ice skating (going round-and-round-and-round). I really don’t know why I got so mesmerized by it this year. (I guess partly because it happens to have been on at a time of day – late afternoon/early evening – when I’ve been home but too tired to do much else anyway.)

Alexander Majorov did well for Sweden today in the men’s short program (no 10 out of 30 and flawless performance).

1st Advent Sunday

I spent quite a bit of time in the kitchen this weekend.
With varied results:

 

I put this collapsed cake on my Facebook status yesterday – wondering at the same time (in my head): why does one? However, one friend commented that it cheered her up to see it, as it made her feel less alone… So who am I to deny the rest of the world the same comfort?! ;)

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal:
it is the courage to continue that counts.”
~Winston Churchill~

My second Christmas card came from England, too – as did the first one. The funny thing is that this Christmas Tree Fairy looks just like the one in that other card (where a fairy is the top decoration on a Christmas tree).

In Sweden I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Christmas fairies. Angels are quite common as decorations, but not fairies. (Not that I’m all that sure that I can tell the difference. But I think our angels usually wear long garments… No bare legs in this climate!) However, I think a star is the most common decoration to have at the top of the Christmas tree here.

Now I’m curious… What is (or will be, or used to be) on the top of your tree?

Bring on the Spring

There’s still winter outside (we’ve had a couple of sunny days, but the nights are still very cold). Indoors however, it is MY decision when spring begins… So in my kitchen, spring began yesterday. This means putting up my yellow curtains, spreading my lemon-and-oranges tablecloth, and buying a bouqet of tulips to celebrate.

The pattern on the tablecloth is designed by a Swedish artist whose work I like very much, Lena Linderholm.

You’ll probably be seeing a lot of these tulips… They were so expensive I have to make the most of them!

Melon Cutter–Just Had To Try…

Well. I guess it worked as well as any other method I’ve tried… I’ll have to work on the last part, though (making nice little cubes…)!

Two Jars and a Jug (ABC Wednesday–J)

I really must try and get myself “out and about” again soon. 
Desperately searching the kitchen cabinets for J’s…

These were either my grandmother’s or her sister’s. The labels say “sugar” and “potato flour”. Not keeping anything in them now; they’re in a top cabinet which I can’t reach without a ladder.

There’s not much room in my kitchen to have things like these “on display” since the cabinets go all the way up to the ceiling. In my previous kitchen I had a free space on top of the cabinets below the ceiling where I kept some things like these. Not good from cleaning point of view, though…

My compromise in my present kitchen is to have one “show” cabinet and sometimes leave that open.

ABC Wednesday - J