About bloody time

Snow has finally arrived and it's started to feel more like winter than spring. Although we do have our first snowdrop out....

we're looking to playing with our snow shoes (hopefully tomorrow), or at least be able to make some snow angels.

2007

Happy New Year!

Instead of relating what we did for Christmas and New Year, we thought we'd write a list of Christmas and New Year firsts for us:

• Had our first Christmas and New Year in Norway (obviously)
• Cooked and ate Ribbe (thanks to one of the list coming up)
• Looked after Pusur the cat
• Moved my first project from the ikke ferdig to the ferdig list - I guess Lille Bamsa is better at finishing things than me!
• Tried aquivit
• Had a goat on the Christmas Tree - which remains unburnt
• Suspected twitching siting of a White Tailed Sea Eagle
• Paid 66kr to cross a bridge
• Went to a Norwegian farm shop
• Played canasta
• Saw first dragon movin in Norwegian
• Visited skydsstation in Baklandet and had fiske suppe
• Made and ate Norwegian waffes (twice as they were so good)
• Acquired our first cookbook på norsk

And here's a piccy of Pusur now that she's calmed down and completely chilled out.

Christmas

It's nearly Christmas. We have our fingers crossed for snow but I'm not going to hold my breath. I was hoping I was going to be able to add a photo of a nice snowy view of the fjord, but instead here's a photo of our first Christmas decoration - I should probably have used a tripod, but I kind of like the fuzzy lights.

We're busy trying to figure out what we're going to eat and also where we're going to visit while David's parents are visiting us from Spain. We'll obviously be eating brown cheese, and we were hoping to take them to Røros as it's meant to be pretty and have sleigh rides etc, but with no snow we're not sure it's worth going.

Had our final Norwegian test of the current class yesterday, so last class on Thursday with pub afterwards.

Sunday evening curry fest

The nights are definitely getting darker and longer - we're nearly up to the shortest day, or as they call it here the mørkester dag. We've spent this afternoon making chocolate brownies, curry and sitting in front of the fire. David is writing songs, but I don't think he's going to south America just yet to preview his new material like coldplay - hopefully he'll get the studio up and running soon and he will start recording - maybe we can preview some of his songs in the brown cheese chronicles? So the curry is nearly ready, we're having hot and sour pork curry from Madhur Jaffrey's Illustrated Indian Cookery, which sounds nice and smells fantastic. We've informally invited our neighbour round for some food at some point and have promised them "English food" - so we're thinking we're going to have to make them a curry.

It's about the Jam stupid

Tonight has been a bit of a Norwegian first...sausage making and more jam labels. We've only been here just under 3 months but our matrom (sorry no direct translation into English...) resembles a warehouse of a bona fide jam emporium.
This jam isn't available to buy in shops, we only do it for fun (like living in Norway).

Hopefully next week we'll be able to open up the Monkey House Studios part of the blog.

Cheese, jam and studios...what can it all mean?

The metaphysics of cheese

Philosophically speaking, Norway and cheese is oxymoronic. Or in plain English they're not very good at it..... but, with casual Norwegian impertinence they lead the world in Brown Cheese. Brown cheese and jam on bread is the best thing.

Under Construction

We've just started this blog - so it's under construction.

We're going to go and eat some more brown cheese and then will be back......