I used this guy for his zest and then had good intentions to use the juice for something, but that something never presented itself until today, but when I reached for it, it was blue and fuzzy. *sigh.*

I’m telling you, one of these weeks is going to be zero waste! One of them! Soon, hopefully!

Last week I picked up one of the many “ukeblad”- weekly published ladies magazines- from the store. I picked it up specifically because they were doing a special edition on bread, and this issue had 14 or so nice looking bread recipes.

I got it home, flipped through the pages, and was interested in a particular recipe called “grønn flette” or, “green braid.” It got its green color and different flavor from  frozen spinach added to the dough.

I didn’t have all the required ingredients on hand, so I winged it with what I had.

The result was pretty darn good. The spinach lent the bread an interesting flavor- sort of savory… umami, if you like. However, I felt it lacked a little something- a little more depth, one extra addition… it needed a little something to be truly spectacular.

So, the other day I had a friend over (who happens to also be a chef) and we were sharing a slice (or two) of this bread- when I said, “I sort of think this bread would be good with caramelized onions in it.” After a pause for thought, my friend agreed, and my little brain set to thinking about coming up with a recipe.

Friends, what I came up with is delicious. The only problem I have is that it tastes so damn good its hard to have just one slice.

It is divine with a little bit of thinly sliced ham.

It would be fabulous with a hearty soup or a salad.

This bread just demands to be eaten.

Now I admit, it isn’t easy to just throw this together like you can a simpler bread, but I think the results are worth the effort.

So, if you’re done taking my word for it and you want to try it yourself, click here for the full recipe.

**I have to thank my friend Marianne for making this bread possible today. I could have SWORN I had another bag of flour in my cabinet, but alas, I did not. A quick phone call and a short 5 minute walk later, and Marianne gave me the last of her flour to bake with. :)

I tried. This week is marginally better than last week, but there was still a little food wasted.

Sunday Yngve wanted to bake bread, so he made a bunch of whole wheat dough, we broke it into 4 portions, froze three sections of dough and baked one. We didn’t manage to eat it all before it molded. I knew it was going to go off and I thought about cutting it up and drying it out for bread crumbs, but forgot it.

The only other thing we wasted this week was a potato. Though, not sure if it really counts as waste or not.

I made us a North African inspired tagine for dinner on Wednesday and realized after tasting it that I WAY over salted. oops.

Here’s a trick though, if you accidentally over salt a soup or stew: take a potato, cut it into quarters (or I suppose you could cut it in half, it doesn’t matter, really) and drop it into the soup or stew. The potato will absorb some of the salt, just fish it out once it’s cooked through. So, I sacrificed a potato to save dinner. Does that actually count as food waste? I mean, it served a purpose. Granted, the potato didn’t get eaten, so maybe that counts then.

Either way, food waste this week wasn’t zero, but it wasn’t terribly bad, either.

I do feel a little guilty over wasting such nice bread, though.

If you’re interested in learning more about Food Waste Friday, pop on over to The Frugal Girl and read all about it.

For Christmas this year my lovely husband bought me a cookbook I had been pining over for some time.

It is written by one of my favorite chefs and food writers- who happens also to be Norwegian, named Andreas Viestad. You may have seen him as a host on the television series “New Scandinavian Cooking” which also airs in the US on PBS. It’s a really great show and is where I was first introduced to Viestad. He also writes “The Gastronomer” for the Washington Post, where he sort of goes into detail about the nitty gritty scientific processes that surround food making.

The cookbook I received  is called “Ekte Mat” (Real Food) and is his newest cookbook. It is very much centered around his farm and has a very “DIY” sort of feel about it.

I really love his food philosophy of promoting regional foods, heirloom varieties of fruit and veg, and his support of sustainable agriculture. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that he’s funny and quite adorable, too.

The day I got the book I flipped through the pages, drooling over the beautiful photography which include absolutely delicious looking foods and scenes from his farm. I stopped at the page which said “Lag din egen yogurt” “make your own yogurt” and was interested over how simple he made it sound.

I had wanted to make my own yogurt for some time, but the instructions I had found before seemed a bit complicated and involved buying a yogurt incubator.

Not so, according to Andreas.

Now of course, he admits that his process can yield varying results, but if you don’t mind that, then it’s as simple as heating up some milk, adding a few spoonfuls of plain store bought yogurt and then leaving it on the counter overnight.

Well that’s definitely easy.

However, I do want relatively consistent results, so I set about seeing what I could do to achieve that.

What I found is that while it may indeed require a few extra steps beyond Andreas’ instructions, it’s still incredibly simple to do, doesn’t require any sort of specialized expensive tools, and I’m here to tell you how!

Homemade Yogurt:

For myself and Yngve I only make about 1 liter (about a quart) of yogurt per week. If you’ve got more mouths to feed than us, or if you happen to eat more yogurt, then you might want to make more, but the process is easy so making more isn’t any more difficult.

This is what you need to make yogurt:

• milk, preferably whole milk, but you could use low-fat. I tried once with skim and it didn’t work out at all.
• starter culture. This is a fancy way to say: buy a small container of plain yogurt at the store. Here in Norway, I use TINE. (because that’s pretty much my only choice) but in the US, I’ve heard the best starter cultures come from dannon and stonyfield farm. I don’t know because I haven’t made yogurt from those. You only need to purchase this once. After you have made yogurt, you can use your own yogurt as the starter for subsequent batches.
• jars to keep your yogurt in
• a pot to heat the milk in
• a small cooler
• optional: a kitchen thermometer to check the temp of the milk. This is optional because you can indeed do this without one and I’ll explain that, too.

I start by pouring the milk into the pot and heating it up to about 194 F (90 c). This will: 1. kill any undesirable bacteria that could compete with the friendly bacteria that will be making your yummy yogurt , and 2. denature the milk proteins so that they set together- I read about this somewhere and asked Yngve what all this protein denaturing was for. My biophysicist hubby did a little research and gave me a long winded and complicated scientific explanation which I have promptly forgotten. Basically, heating the milk up that much should result in a slightly firmer yogurt with a nicer texture.  You don’t HAVE to do this, it is not critical to making yogurt, it just makes it a little bit better.

If you do not have a kitchen thermometer, scald the milk- ie, heat it just to before it starts to boil, then remove it from the heat. Don’t freak out if you forget it and it reaches the boiling point, it is not a crisis.

Cool the milk down to around 98-107 (37-42 celcius). You can do this with a thermometer OR, you can do what I do when I’m feeling particularly lazy- just feel the side of the pot with your hand. It should be a bit warmer than body temperature, but not hot. You don’t want to kill the nice bacteria that will be making your yogurt.

Once the milk has cooled, add about 1/4 cup of yogurt starter per liter (quart) of milk. Or, just throw in a few heaping tablespoons. It doesn’t have to be exact. Stir it up to evenly distribute all those bacteria.

Now, you’ll want to pour it into your container of preference.

I use old jam jars that have been thoroughly washed and sterilized. To sterilize, you can either put them through your hottest dishwasher cycle, boil them, or, stick them on a baking sheet in an oven heated to 350 F (180 C) for about 20 minutes.

Pour the inoculated milk into the glass jars, put the lids on and proceed to the next step.

I have to admit, I got the next idea from The Frugal Girl who has an excellent tutorial on yogurt making as well.

Put your jars into a cooler, fill the cooler with water heated to around 120 F (48 C). (this should feel quite warm, but not so hot you can’t have your hand in it- sort of warm bath temperature)

Now, close the cooler, put it in a draft free location where it will go undisturbed and  wait. Incubation can take anywhere from between 4-8 hours. Around the 4 hour mark, open the cooler and remove a jar. Tilt it a bit to see how well its firmed up, if its firm and has a thin layer of a yellowish liquid on top, its done. If its mostly firm with no liquid, its no biggie- you can either put it back in or stick it in the fridge, it will be fine either way and will firm up more in the fridge anyway. I don’t have the best cooler for this job, so my water tends to cool off quicker than if it was a thicker  one. To offset this, I’ll pour boiling water into the cooler and let it sit for a minute before pouring it out and adding the 120 degree water. I also wrap it up in a couple bath towels to help insulate it even more.

When its done I think it should cool in the fridge for at least 6 hours before eating it, but I don’t think that step is absolutely crucial- it just makes it firm up that little bit more. Opened jars should last around a week, unopened jars a month. We eat it all in the space of a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. I only make 2 jars at a time because I only HAVE 2 jars. (we need to eat more jam)

The total actual hands on time in this process is really no more than 15-20 minutes. Mostly it’s just waiting. I like to start my yogurt in the morning that way it should be done by the afternoon/evening where it can go in the fridge overnight for breakfast the next day. Anyone can find 20 minutes to throw some milk in a pan, heat it, pour it into jars, stick it in a cooler and forget about it for the next 4-8 hours.

And believe me, its totally worth the 20 minutes. Homemade yogurt just tastes… way better. It has this delicious fresh taste that is incomparable to store bought. It is less tangy, creamier… its just delicious.

Here are some reasons why I think you should make your own yogurt (at least try it, anyway!)

1. It’s easy and tastes better

2. Its cheaper. If I buy 1/2 liter containers of plain yogurt, they are nearly twice the cost of buying the equivalent in whole milk. If I was to buy the smaller cups of yogurt, the cost can go as high as 4 times more.

3. Its better for the environment. You aren’t purchasing lots of little cups of yogurt to clog the landfills.

4. YOU control what you put in it. Commercial yogurt (especially in the US) is loaded with stabilizers and artificial colors and not to mention sugar. LOTS AND LOTS of sugar. You just don’t need as much with homemade yogurt.

5. Its good for you! The probiotics in yogurt have been shown to improve GI health and can even reduce lactose intolerance in some people!

Here is how I have my yogurt almost every day:

I take some thawed, frozen strawberries (I’d use fresh if they were in season!)

Mash them up!

I also add a few drops of vanilla extract, about 1/2 cup of delicious yogurt… then mix… (if you want it sweeter than the berries give, add a couple teaspoons of honey or, in my case, a little sweetener)

Then I top it with my favorite homemade low-cal granola, and enjoy.

The whole thing (including the granola) is only 330 calories and I feel like I’m having desert for breakfast. Its THAT yummy.

I’ve even made it with no sugar added strawberry jam- you could try blueberries or raspberries or blackberries. Anything! You are limited only by your imagination. You can use homemade yogurt in baking bread, as a substitute for sour cream, in smoothies, or homemade frozen yogurt- really, there are so many applications for yogurt! You can make as much or as little as you want!

I hope my instructions were clear (if they weren’t, leave me a comment and I’ll try to fix it so they are) and I hope this inspires at least one other to try making their own yogurt.

Enjoy!

Part of my plan to reduce food waste includes saving pieces of vegetables (like the ends of carrots, celery and onions, the stalks of herbs, carrot peels, etc) to use in the production of homemade stocks.

Making homemade stock is one of those things everyone should know how to do.

Not only is homemade stock tastier than store bought, its way cheaper, too.

Consider this: a 32oz container of vegetable stock can vary in price up to 2.00 USD per container, if you use one a week, you could spend well over 150 dollars per year on stock alone. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a lot, but I can certainly think of a lot of things I’d rather spend that 150 dollars on. Making your own stock costs pennies.

When I cook dinner each night, I save any vegetable pieces leftover from cooking. That usually includes the aforementioned carrot, onion and celery ends, stalks of herbs, etc.

Here is what I had after cooking dinner last night. Carrot peel and trimmed ends, trimmed ends of celery, the “root” end of garlic and the trimmed ends of onion.

I keep a bag in the freezer of said odds and ends, I just throw the pieces in there and wait for the bag to fill up. Depending on what I’m cooking each week and how much, I might have the bag filled up once a week or once a month. It just depends.

In this bag was all of the above, plus some celeriac, parsley, trimmed bottoms from asparagus, pieces of leek, scallion and small pieces of garlic. I wouldn’t use cabbage or broccoli, as they tend to be quite strong in flavor.

When the bag is full, I dump the contents into a big pot, put in enough water to cover, maybe add a bay leaf or two, then let it boil away.

When the veg has given up the ghost so to speak, I turn it off, let it cool, then strain it into plastic containers or ziplock type bags to go in the freezer.

I use a coarse strainer to catch the bigger solids, then a finer one to catch any little pieces.

Isn’t that a lovely, rich color?

For this weeks dinners, I’ll be needing quite a bit of stock, so I’ve put about 4 cups in this container to go in the fridge for the week.

The rest, I’ve put into labeled plastic bags in 2 cup amounts. (a 14.5 oz can of stock is around about 2 cups)

Here’s a trick I use to easily fill those bags- if you have a wide mouthed container like this large measuring cup, open the bag and place it inside. It will sit open allowing you to fill it easily without tipping over.

Chicken stock can be made just as easily. When you roast a chicken (or heck, if you buy one of those rotisserie chickens at the grocery store) don’t throw out the bones! Save them in the freezer like the vegetables (or, if you happen to have enough veggies at the same time as chicken bones there’s no need to freeze) and make it the same way. Throw the bones and the saved veg in the pot, fill with water to cover and let it simmer away. I’ve even saved shrimp peel and crab shell and made my own fish stock as well. Just make sure you don’t forget to label the container!

You can use your stock as a base for soups and stews or to add flavor to rice, cous-cous, quinoa, bulgar, or even potatoes.

The nice thing about freezing them in the plastic bags is that they are easier to defrost in a hurry if you’ve forgotten to take it out. Just pop the plastic bag into a container of warm water and it shouldn’t take long to melt.

I like making stock this way. Not only do I reduce my food waste, I save money AND time, as you’re just dumping frozen veggies into a pot, boiling for a while (during which time you can do other things), cooling it some (during which time you can still do other things) then putting in bags or plastic containers to go in the freezer. Hands on time is really no more than 20 minutes.

If you’ve never made your own stock before, I urge you to try it. Its pretty impossible to screw up, and its well worth it.

]]> http://nutsvilleinnorway.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/homemade-vegetable-stock-easy-and-economical/feed/ 3 jwise9ej DSC02474 DSC02475 DSC02478 DSC02485 DSC02486 DSC02487 DSC02488 DSC02489 DSC02490 http://nutsvilleinnorway.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/food-waste-friday/ http://nutsvilleinnorway.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/food-waste-friday/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:35:48 +0000 Jess in Norway http://nutsvilleinnorway.wordpress.com/?p=1202 Continue reading »

Short and sweet post today, ashamedly showing off this weeks food waste, as promised. Visit http://www.thefrugalgirl.com/ to learn more.

It isn’t as bad as I expected it might be. The only food waste we’ve had this week was after tonights dinner.

I present the evidence:

Romaine lettuce salad, a piece of salmon and a potato. Not pictured: two cherry tomatoes that molded, even though I just bought them a couple days ago.

I haven’t been feeling all that well the past couple days (I think I’m coming down with something) and tonight I just couldn’t finish dinner. Yngve is usually pretty good about cleaning my plate if I don’t, but he had eaten all of his plus most of the salad and most of the potatoes and he said he was full. I know it wouldn’t get eaten otherwise, so it went in the trash. *sigh*

So, had it not been for that, the only food waste I would have had would have been those two cherry tomatoes, which would have been bad enough!

Hopefully next week wont be bad, either.

]]> http://nutsvilleinnorway.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/food-waste-friday/feed/ 6 jwise9ej Fri 1.14.2012 http://nutsvilleinnorway.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/waste-not-want-not-new-years-resolutions/ http://nutsvilleinnorway.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/waste-not-want-not-new-years-resolutions/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:18:10 +0000 Jess in Norway http://nutsvilleinnorway.wordpress.com/?p=1191 Continue reading »

]]> It’s that time of year again.

People jot down their “New Years Resolutions,” usually along the lines of lose weight, get organized, exercise more- and so on and so forth.

These things are great resolutions to have, but how often do we not just focus on them for a few weeks or months and then eventually stop trying for whatever reason?

This year, I wanted my New Years Resolutions to be a little different. I’ve already been working on losing weight and being healthier since last year, and trying to get organized is an ongoing struggle, I don’t really need a New Years Resolution in those respects to give me the “inspiration” to do better in those areas.

I have several resolutions I’d like to share with you, but I’ll only elaborate on one.

In 2012 I want to…

• Waste less
• Save more
• Create more
• Learn more

I’d like to elaborate a bit on the first on my little list of things I want to accomplish in 2012.

World War I poster. "Waste not, want not. Prepare for winter. Save perishable foods by preserving now." Courtesy of Wikimedia commons

Yngve and I are already quite good about not wasting food, but there is always room for improvement.

This year, I’d like to generate as little food waste as possible.

Food waste at the post-process level (that is, after a particular food product, be it fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, etc has been picked, processed, gathered, etc) is an all too common problem in developed nations. Each year we waste billions of tons of food, much of it by us the consumer.

According to nofima.no, about 335000 tons or 25 % of all food being produced in Norway ends as food waste.  According to nextgenerationfood.com, 40 % (sheesh!!!) of food produced in America goes to waste.

Even with Norway being significantly lower than the US (I’d guess that’s due to higher food cost in Norway) even 25% waste is quite bad, but 40% waste is downright sickening.

If you look at the infographic linked to on the next generation food website, they show a breakdown of what else is lost when food is wasted. Not only do we lose the food itself, but American food waste alone counts for 300 million barrels of oil a year, gone. Fruits, vegetables and bakery products produce lots of methane gas when decomposing, and methane gas is 25% stronger as a greenhouse gas than C02! Ack.

How often haven’t you gone to the grocery store, piled lots of things in your cart with good intentions to eat it all, and several weeks later have thrown out moldy bread or bagels never eaten, fruits or vegetables that have gotten shoved to the back of the fridge and forgotten about and are now harboring some sort of mold infestation… or have you cooked too much for dinner and put it into a plastic container, forgotten it and months later opened it up to discover you were growing a science experiment in your fridge? I know I have, and I’m sure you have to.

As I said before, Yngve and I have been really good about not wasting, but we can always improve.

The first year I moved here I had NO CLUE that my habits were wasteful, and it took me a little time and practice to get the hang of wasting less.

First of all, I cooked way too much. This was a force of habit I learned from my mom who always cooked huge meals growing up, and despite there being just Yngve and I at home, for a long time I cooked meals big enough for probably 6. We obviously couldn’t eat them all at one time, so they went into the fridge as leftovers. Sometimes they would get eaten, sometimes they’d get forgotten.

Also, for the longest time I just went to the grocery store with no clue as to what I was cooking for dinner. I’d think of something along the way, or I’d wait for something to inspire me when I got there. This made for lots of things getting piled into the basket without thought, much of which ended up getting wasted when they were quickly (and easily) forgotten, lost in the depths of the fridge or forgotten in a cabinet. It’s easy to forget exactly what you have when you have too much of it.

The things I have been doing the past couple years to cut down on our food waste has been simple. Make a weekly menu. Write a list according to said menu, shop according to the list, cook what you have, learning to cook less.

So far, this has really helped us with food waste, but as I said, there is so much we can do to improve.

Places I need improvement are in not wasting vegetables like lettuce and celery. I seem to buy a lot of lettuce and intend on making a salad for lunch one day, but then I don’t and I find a bunch of brown and wilted leaves in my fridge a couple weeks later. Same with celery. I buy it for a soup or some particular dish, then I don’t use it all and it ends up going bad before I need it again.

I’d also like to be better about saving the ends of carrots and onions (and celery) and other veg that are usually the waste part of cooking dinner and making them into vegetable or chicken stocks. I do that already, but not as often as I should.

I have completely cleaned out the fridge yesterday so I have a fresh start. I’ll be participating in “food waste Friday” over at TheFrugalGirl.com which is intended to give people incentive to waste less by vowing to (embarrassingly) show off their food waste. I’m sure more things will come to light that I am terrible about wasting as I participate.

I must admit, though, that saving the environment is only a secondary reason for why I want to make a point to practice cutting food waste this year.

Saving money is the main reason I want to be even better at not wasting food. Each bit of molded bread, every wilted, brown piece of lettuce, every single portion of fuzzy leftovers that gets tossed into the garbage costs my husband and I money. I wouldn’t just toss real money into the trash, but when we waste food, that is what we may as well be doing.

Since my second resolution is to save more money, this ties together perfectly. I can save money by wasting less. I can save money by doing more things myself instead of buying them ready made. I can save money by doing without, and that is what I plan on doing this year.

I would love it if I could take this even further by having a big fabulous vegetable garden, composting, and raising a few of my own animals, but unfortunately, I live in a very small apartment, in a city, in a country where the growing season is quite short which makes what I can and cannot grow or do a very short list indeed. Eventually I will be able to do that, but for now, I will have to try saving money and resources the best way I can.

So there’s  my resolutions for the year. I think they’ll help me grow into a better person, with the added bonus of being pretty nice for the environment and the world as well.

What were your New Years Resolutions??

 

 

 

 

 

]]> http://nutsvilleinnorway.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/waste-not-want-not-new-years-resolutions/feed/ 2 jwise9ej Waste_not_want_not_WWI_poster.jpg WWII Poster

Sorry things have been a bit quiet on this front for the last few weeks- Christmas got pretty stressful there towards the end, and stayed that way until New Year. Seems like every time I wanted to sit down and write a post, something else has reared it’s head and made it difficult for me to find the time.

Let me catch you up photographically with the Christmas-now happenings.

First, I had to frantically finish up the Christmas gifts for Yngve and his dad. I sewed   Yngve a shirt and his dad a new bathrobe in red wool.

Yngve's dad jauntily models his new warm wool bathrobe.

It was hard for me to get them both done in time since I had to work on Yngve’s when he wasn’t home and try to put away all the evidence before he got back from work, and then try to work on his dads in the evenings.

I haven’t taken a picture of Yngve’s shirt yet, but I will!

On Christmas Eve, which is the day Norwegians celebrate Christmas, Yngve and I had a special breakfast together with some traditional foods:

We had pickled herring of two varieties, one “plain” and one in a tomato sauce

We also had salami, smoked trout, boiled eggs (to be eaten with the pickled herring) and something called Sylte, which is extremely similar to (but not quite) what is known where I come from as “Souse,” in other places it’s called “Head Cheese.“

We also had some “Leverpostei,” which is just a pork liver Pâté, and a selection of breads, including a hearty pumpernickel I had made a couple days before.

Needless to say, it was a lot of breakfast for two people and we ended up having Christmas breakfast for several days afterwards. :P

After breakfast, I made my last Norwegian cookie (talk about last minute!) and then packaged up several of each to take to Yngve’s dads for Christmas dinner that night.

The last cookies were Rosettebakkels, which are incredibly delicious and fun to make.

You make a thin batter into which you then dip a special iron, then you submerge the iron into hot oil, which fries the “cookie” and it takes on the shape of the iron. They are very lacy and crispy, beautiful to look at, and, they are dusted with powdered sugar which to me makes them awesome.

And a few days before Christmas Yngve and I made pepperkaker (sort of like Norwegian gingerbread, only better) together and had lots of fun cutting out all the shapes. I had some of my own cookie cutters, but also had some from Yngve’s childhood as well. It was really nice to make them together, I really enjoyed it, and I look forward to pepperkaker fun next year!

Oh AND I managed to make Macaroons again. Turns out that my mixture was a little too “loose.” I needed to add a bit more coconut until it was sort of “dry.” They turned out awesome.

Here are all the 7 sorts packaged up to go to Christmas dinner:

Yngve’s dad cooked dinner, and we enjoyed traditional “ribbe” (pork ribs) sourkraut, potatoes, julepølse (Christmas sausage), brusselsprouts and lots and lots and lots of beer and aquavit. (Norwegian anise flavored liquor)

I snapped a picture of the table as dinner was being served.

After dinner, we all sat around and had cognac, coffee, (more beer) and cookies. We talked and laughed and opened gifts and had a nice time.

Yngve thought it was funny to snap a photo of me in a slightly inebriated state:

but did not appreciate my returning the favor

Actual Christmas day, we got up late and waited for my family in the US to wake up so that we could all get on skype and open gifts together on video chat.

It wasn’t as good as being at home, but it wasn’t horribly bad, either.

I was still pretty sad on Christmas day and had to fight back the tears more than once.

For New Years, Yngve and I stayed home, watched a movie, then walked to Kristiansten Fortress to see the fireworks. The fortress overlooks practically the entire city, it was really awesome to see fireworks going off in every direction, and then the fireworks directly overhead. It was a really amazing experience, and was probably the best New Years I’ve ever had, even it was pretty boring by some standards.

Since then, we’ve been busy cleaning up the post-Christmas mess and finally finishing up the craft room. The floors are done, the shelving bought and assembled, and (almost) everything put away. I still have a bit to go yet, but I’ll get there.

I’ve got a lot to share with you this coming year, and I feel its going to be an especially exciting one!

I really hope that this year brings the best to each and every one of you.

Happy New Year!

Sunrise, 9:30 am Trondheim, Norway. Getting big fat heavy snowflakes this morning!