A new morning

Good morning! It might be time for this blog to wake up, at least a little bit.

As readers of my personal blog in swedish might have noticed I am still alive and I am also soon to be a parent. Any week now. This chilepepper blog went to sleep almost at the same time as we found out that we were having a baby. One reason was that we suddenly got a lot of other things to think about, and another reason was that I didn't feel very well in the first weeks of pregnancy, so there was no interesting cooking, no hot food at all and basically no energy at all.

Last year's harvest though was really good. We had a lot of jalapeños and habaneros, and a fair amount of other species. We have had a lot of spicy dinners during fall and winter, but we haven't really tried so many new interesting things.

During this time Matli has been doing a lot of work for the swedish chilepepper society, Svenska Chilepeppar Föreningen [sic!]. Their website and also their internal databases for managing members, emails and stuff were really bad, but now the situation is much better. Matli is now also a board member of SCF. If you are swedish and you like hot food I think you should join the club! Give it a try!

Yesterday we finally got our seeds for this year into the dirt, so now we're hoping for another great harvest. We've figured out that this year is the last year we can put our plants just about anywhere. Next year we'll have a one year old kid running around putting fun colored fruits into the mouth...

We'll see if we can keep up any blogging when our baby arrives, but at least we will probably stay at home more than usual this year, and from today and for the rest of the year I am a full time at home parent, even though the baby isn't actually born yet. So we could sum up this by saying that we have some different things growing here, and we'll see what results that might bring!

Growing babies

Finally we've got some small chile babies in our bushes. There are loads and loads of flowers and hopefully we have enough bugs to pollinate them alright. This summer has been nice for the chile, hot and dry, but since we had a lousy start this spring everything is really late. If the weather will continue with a warm autumn I guess we still can have a large harvest this year. And the three year old jalapeño-plant above, I almost killed it this winter. It was looking dreadful, all covered up with lice. But now, its wonderful! Overall we have had very little problems this year with lice.

Now look at these new babies. Jalapeño, Hungarian and I believe it's a Choclate Scotch Bonnet. Or is it a Habanero Red Savina? It's hard to tell this early and those bushes just keep wrapping around each other. We'll see which color it'll turn out to have later on!

Chile babies on parade

Lazy times for this blog, yeah I know. Sure, we've eaten lots of hot food, but haven't really had the camera there or tried anything new. And the chile plants are such a dissapointment. They are small and tiny, and they are few. Not many seeds worked at all and we only got three species from this years seed. Really lousy! But the ones we've kept over the winter are doing well, at least most of them, and are already giving fruit! That's great!

Today I replanted the tiny ones in larger pots, because it is finally summer in Sweden, and I hope they'll like it outdoors. I'll put them behind glass soon, but the temperature out is said to be really warm this upcoming week, so they can start their outdoor life actually outdoor. It's easier to keep them wet when I can use the hose.

And yeah, some weeks ago we were back in the US. This time we were in Washington, DC and a shortie in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Great, we now have Velveeta again and can do nice summer quesadilla lunches!

Weekend Cat Blogging #46 - Orange neighbour cat

Spring is finally here and most of the spare time goes to gardening. Today was warm and sunny, and as so often we got a visitor in the garden. Our neighbour's cat joined the work, but in it's own way. It sure seemed nice to rest in the sun, but someone had to dig and rake and... well...

So because of this cat we can for once join the weekend cat blogging at EatStuff, although we don't have any cat of our own, partially thanks to allergy in the family.

Spring is here!

What a lovely day of spring! All day working in the garden made me hungry. While I was doing the garden ready for spring and summer Matli was under the car, doing it a bit more silent, hopefully. Well, I got hungry but he was just muttering from under the car. I decided that it was time to cook. Yeah, me, Nikka, did the cooking today. A miracle.

Unfortunately we were so tired and hungry that we forgot to take a picture before we grabbed in! What a shame! Anyway, the food looked kind of beige, but the taste was better than we expected of me! I did someting like this, serves two hungry workers...

Nikka's lime and chile chicken with tagliatelle
Chicken:
2 chicken filets, sliced
some butter
salt & pepper

Sauce:
2 dl crème fraiche
1 dl water
1 lime fruit, juice and peel
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp soy sauce
1 clove of garlic, crushed
2 red chilefruits, piripiri or similar (small but strong) sliced
some cayenne pepper

Pasta:
tagliatelle

Fry the chicken in butter. Add salt and pepper. Cook the pasta.

Mix everything for the sauce except the cayenne pepper in a bowl. Pour it over the chicken and let it simmer for some minutes so it gets a bit thicker. Add some more honey if it's too sour. Add some cayenne pepper for taste and color.

Serve the chicken with the pasta.

Getting it all together again

The Internet seems to be back, at least most of the time. The husband is back, but mostly asleep since he brought home the flu. Hopefully it is the flu, since I have had a vaccination. I can't feel anything yet, so maybe, maybe I'll make it this time without getting ill.

Nothing really new to write about, but something really old. Now what is this?

It's something we had about a month ago that yet hasn't been blogged about. It's pasta and banana and pork and jalapeños... and all I remember was that it was great, especially the bananas. But what was the trick? Maybe the husband is feeling a bit better and can fill in...

(Don't miss out my other kind of new blog! You'll find it at http://pofthed.blogspot.com )

So, Matli, can you fill in some here or will we just keep it a forgotten secret?

[Ehrm. I don't remember much about that dish... /Matli]

Offline, a sad story

Our Internet connection has been a real problem lately. From Friday to Monday we had no connecion at all, and before that it has been really shaky with more downtime than uptime. So, we're alive but a bit offline :-)

Matli will come home again this Friday, and hopefully that will also mean that we will start eating dinners again! I can't say I have had much cooked meals at home while he has been away. Stay tuned.

Chile and pepper bitter choclate

I could give the chile plants some care, or I could try to fix something to eat for myself. I could also clean up all the mess in our house, or I could take care of some important stuff like the tax form, the choice of how to save for my pension, or just take care of the bills. I could email old friends or do some maintenance of this blog and our other web pages. There is so much to do when your husband is out of town for weeks, you could even take a walk in the lovely sun, or at least go grocery shopping. But all I do is sewing and knitting and eating these choclates we bought at the recent choclate festival here in Linköping. The chile one is great. The pepper one is also fine, but I wouldn't buy that one again. I'm not too fond of the black pepper taste.

Now I'm gonna make myself some waffles since it's the waffle day today. But I don't want to go out, so no jam and cream for me (we're actually out of jam, and we don't normaly keep cream at home) so I'll go for the butter and maple syrup, and dream about my next visit to Ihop. Just two months now until we are in DC!

Some kind of salmon

Excuses, excuses. So, what have we been up to lately? Work I guess. Matli has been working a lot lately, evenings and everything, and now he's away for three weeks on business, skiing and more business. I have also been caught up by my work, and even more by my sewing and knitting. I wonder why I can't control my hobbies? It's always one of them that takes all the time.

I can't blog at all from my new work, and I can't even read other blogs during the days, so when I get home I try to catch up quickly - and then I try to stay away from the computer. I have a really bad neck and arm right now, so I shouldn't be doing this at all...

Anyway, we have had some nice dinners in the weekends, and I'll try to post some of them here, they are all in the camera, but with the chef gone (somewhere near Prague right now I think?) there will be no recipes. But still, maybe inspiration to someone. This is some kind of salmon with I think a hoisin sauce. I remember it was yummy!

Time for bed, work is calling early tomorrow morning!

As new

Don't they look like new? Almost no lice left, much fresher bowls, new soil (totally new or partially new, depending on the shape of the old one). They sure look fresh and eager to produce new fruit. I did save a branch vith flowers on the Habañero Red Savina. I don't know if this was a good idea, but I'll give it a go. Maybe we can get some early fruit if it works.

There is already much lighter out, and that gives the chile more daylight hours, so probably they will start to awake from their winter sleep. I'll have to give them nutrition now. And really watch out for lice... I hate lice! Somehow it seems like it's impossible to grow chile without it. There is one way though, and that is to buy some lice eating insects. But I don't want insects in my house! So, that's not happening :-)

Chile takes time

If you'd count the time spent on chile growing it would probably be less expensive to drive to the nearest well equipped grocery store and buy it. The problem is that we don't have any grocery stores with a reliable supply of different chile species. Today I have replanted four out of eight chile plants which we are trying to keep alive all winter. I started with the smaller ones, so tomorrow, or whenever, I have four lager pots to replant. Basically I just cut them short and change the dirt. It would be better to give them new and bigger pots, but we just don't have room for that, so new dirt with some nutrition added will do. There seems to be a problem with lice now again, so I'm trying to get rid of as much of the old soil as possible if the lice live in it.

Still no sign of any activity in the new plants I planted last weekend. It takes more than a week normally, so I'm not worried. Yet.

Seeds

This week we recieved our chile seeds from Örtagården and today I have planted them along with some tomatillos, basil and cilantro. Now I'll will have to check them every day and give them love and water. I also have some fuchsias planted, which I never have done before, so I have to look out carefully this year. Oh, I also planted some seeds we bought in Australia. Peppermint eucalyptys tree and some wildflower. We'll see if that will work. To be honest I have too much other stuff on ny mind right now to really feel up to growing anything, but that might have something to do with the fact that there is still 30-40 centimeters of snow outside...

I thought I would have also replanted the chile plants we've kept over winter, along with some other plants, but I didn't have the time today. The seeds took forever to plant. So I guess I know what I'll be doing next weekend.