The Further Adventures of Miss Kitten

Another Waffle Day in the Kitten household has come and gone. The actual day isn’t until the 25th, but since that’s my busiest day at work we decided to celebrate a couple days early. Waffle Day is traditionally celebrated on March 25th every year, and by celebrate I mean eat enough waffles so that it’s [...]

A recent discussion topic on The Local forum inspired me to whip up a batch of the popular but somewhat controversial Swedish confection shown above. They were originally called negerbollar (negro balls) but for obvious reasons most people and most cookbooks these days prefer to call them by the decidedly less offensive (although boring) name: [...]

Yesterday was Easter Sunday and I thought it would be fun to make Easter eggs. In fact, even though neither the Swede nor myself are particularly religious, we decided to make a day of it. I made us a dinner of Swedish holiday ham and all the trimmings, and we ate Easter dinner and drank [...]

Ever since my professional writing career ended I just haven’t felt like writing very much of anything, which is bad because I really should be writing all the time. It’s the one creative thing that I feel I’m quite good at. I’m mediocre at other creative things: painting, singing, etc., but writing is different.
I’ve been [...]

There will be no store-bought buns in this house on this day. Mine are just about finished with the second rising and ready to go in the oven….
(time passes)
Update: they are now baked and done. Don’t they look goooood?

It’s all done..the end result of several hours of picking, cleaning, stemming, measuring, sterilizing, stirring, and canning. Here are my beautiful jars!

Some people might think it’s way too much trouble making jam from scratch, but I enjoy it. I find it relaxing to spend an afternoon in the kitchen baking something or doing a special [...]

Yesterday I picked a bunch of red and black currants from the nearly-bursting bushes in the Swede’s mom’s yard. I’ve got two huge containers of red currants that I’m planning making into jam tomorrow…but I got only about a third of a container of the black currants, just enough for a batch of muffins.

The recipe [...]

This was my first attempt at making Swedish-style cinnamon buns or kanelbullar. These look absolutely gorgeous:

Not all of them are that beautiful, though. This one came out rather weird, although I’m sure it will taste just as good as the others:

However, they aren’t as good as the ones from the bakery. I used a bread [...]

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, which makes today Easter Eve, or Påskafton as it’s called here in Sweden. This is not something we celebrate in the US. Easter Eve, I mean. But Swedes are fond of celebrating their three major holidays: Christmas, Easter, and Midsummer, the day before the actual day. I have asked the Swede [...]

My schedule is pretty compact and most days I don’t take the time to eat lunch at work although occasionally I treat myself to some sushi from the little shop right across the street from the school. Today was a sushi day for me. It had been about three weeks since the last time I [...]