The last few days have been a whirlwind of back to school organization and delegation. Oh, my. I've hardly been able to sit for a moment between 8 in the morning until around 6 in the evening. The unfair part about being a homeschooling mom is that you are still obligated to cook meals for everyone to eat. If our homeschool included a school cafeteria, with a chef and a clean up crew, I think my day would go much easier. As it is, we've sort of been just grabbing a piece of toast, or a couple of fried eggs, or something in that vein to eat during the day. Then sometime during the day, I sort of try to cook dinner. For one thing, it's hard to find the time to cook. In the middle of giving Evie a spelling test, I'll suddenly remember and think, "Seriously? We need to eat dinner again, tonight?"
To add to the difficulty, I have very interesting ingredients to cook with. Danish grocery stores are quite different from American ones. They are much smaller, and yet despite their small size the selection of items they carry is a little amazing, because not only can I buy food there, I can also pick up a swim suit, towels, slippers, sandals, candles, and yarn. Yes, yarn. The little grocery store by us has a yarn aisle. People after my own heart.
I tell people that I love European food, and I mean that- fresh ingredients, lack of artificial flavoring and preservatives, a bakery on every corner with the best tasting baked goods ever, amazing cheese, smoked salmon...I love all those things. But I sort of don't know what to cook my family for dinner. On the other hand, do you ever have that feeling when planning meals, and wonder, what do we ever eat? And the only answer that comes back is, "Well, I guess chicken." So far out here, I have made chicken, and spaghetti. And hamburgers. And now I'm stuck and I don't really know what else to make. Surely I need more than three meals before I go through the cycle again, and repeat? I know what else I make at home, and if you asked my kids, I make it about every other day: tacos. But I think I need to be much more familiar with Danish ingredients before I attempt tacos over here. At home, I make what my husband says is, "Swedish girl attempting Tex-mex tacos" and among the necessary ingredients are King Sooper's brand garden salsa, sour cream, corn tortillas, cilantro, and grated cheddar (the cheese here labeled "cheddar" was what we would call back home, "American cheese slices"). I haven't spied any of those things here yet, so I will have to get creative before I attempt Mexican food. With tacos out of my meal rotation, I'm down to, what did I say? 3 meals. If it were left solely up to me, I'd just eat a slice of the best bread on the planet, spread with amazing butter, for dinner every night. And for a side, a chocolate croissant. Dessert would be an amazing strawberry tart. Okay, I guess that's a little extreme, even for me...
These photos are really unrelated to what I just wrote about. I guess I went off on a tangent. The pictures were taken over the weekend, mostly. We are very close to the North Sea, which you can see in the beach pictures, and we also managed to visit Copenhagen on Sunday. The last photo is a finished Japan Sleeves. Oh, how I love it. I highly recommend the pattern.
