How to make a snowman

It has been snowing on and off the past few days and it's looking very much like last winter. December was very dreary with lots of grey, windy and rainy days.  It's was more like a very prolonged autumn without any of the beautifully colored leaves on the trees or on the ground.  I was missing the snow especially when last winter was gloriously snowy, even in December. 

But winter is now firmly here, this January.  We didn't get as much snow as last year but at least there's enough to make the whole city look nice and white and lovely. Temperatures have been kinder too.  It hasn't been too cold for me, either indoors or out.  Have I adapted better to the climate since I got here? I don't know.  Maybe. I know that I feel quite comfortable now.  Last year I was always well covered, even indoors with my long pants, long sleeved top and thick socks. Now, I can even sleep in just shorts and a tank top.  

Since closing the kitchen, we have had time to enjoy the weather.  The day we had real, thick snow, we had planned to go to the store to get some milk and butter.  Since it was snowing when we headed out, we decided to go to the store that's a bit further away.  That walk was nice since it wasn't too cold  and the was some light snow falling.  The ground was fully covered in snow and everything looked so beautiful.

On our way back, we decided to stop for awhile and make a snowman.  Would you believe I haven't made a proper snowman since the day I moved here?  Pete said to make a snowman, the snow must be at the right texture and temperature. And he's right. Sometimes the snow would crunch under your feet and that means that the snow will not stick together. You can even make a decent snowball with that type of snow.  In the past, when we had time to play in the snow, it wasn't ideal to make a proper snowman so we would just take a walk instead. Anyway, that day, we put our butter and milk carefully in the snow and spent some time making a snowman and snowballs.  

Now that we are not working or studying, we have time to enjoy the snow.  We have had some fun building small snowmen and snowball fights. It's no easy task, building the snowman.  It takes quite awhile to gather and pack enough snow to build the shapes. All the bending and rolling makes you sweaty under all your layers of warm clothing.  So too, the snowball making and the snowball fights. I guess that's one way of keeping fit in winter.

If we don't go out, I would enjoy the snow from the warmth of the apartment. I love looking out the window while it's snowing outside. Sometimes the snowflakes are big and fluffy. Sometimes they are tiny. When it's windy, you can see the tiny specks flying all over the place.  Sometimes it looks windy and cold and the snow falls in a heavy shower. And when I see people walking their dog or walking while carrying bags of groceries at these times, I do pity them and I would feel grateful for not having to brave the weather. 

Oh but the best part of cold, snowy, wintery days are coming home, shedding the layers of outerwear and changing into nice, warm clothes and having a hot cup of tea. It's even better when you're curled up under the blanket with a cat on your lap and enjoying some freshly baked buns, cookies or cake.  That's how I like my winter.

Korv Stroganoff

One of the best things about living here is that the kitchen is very spacious, cool, and well equipped.  It is in here that I feel comfortable enough to try out new recipes - recipes that I wouldn't have tried when I was back home.  Also, some of the ingredients are cheaper here. Dairy and wheat products, especially, are much cheaper so I usually have my pantry well stocked so that I could whip something up whenever I feel like it or whenever I come across good recipes.  Especially when the recipe comes with drool-inducing pictures.

I have been cooking a lot of different types of food here - Malay, Chinese, Indian, and of course Swedish. It's not too difficult to make the Swedish dishes halal since I can get halal meats easily here. A dish that Pete has been asking for quite often is korv stroganoff. Korv is the Swedish thick sausage that is usually made of pork. Here, there are many types of halal sausages sold so it was easy to just pick one out that is made of chicken, beef or turkey.

Although stroganoff is a Russian dish, it has become popular in Sweden for many years.  Here, the sausage is cut into smaller pieces and cooked in a creamy tomato sauce.  It's usually served with rice and salad.  Pete remembers eating the dish when he was in school.  Before I cooked it, I have never tasted it before since I couldn't find a halal version of it sold elsewhere.  One day, after repeated requests from Pete to cook him that dish, I googled a recipe and found a super simple one.  After trying it out, I didn't know why I didn't cook it earlier.  It really is simple and fast to cook.  I can imagine busy Swedish moms coming home after work and spending less than 30 mins in the kitchen to produce a simple, hearty supper for her family. 

So I will share the recipe here.  It might be difficult to find juicy, thick halal sausages back home, but any decent quality sausage should do the trick.  I found it a bit odd to eat cream-based gravy with rice at first. I'm so used to eating spicy gravy with rice, I guess, but in the end, I got used to eating creamy stroganoff or stews with rice.  But if you don't like that idea, you can also serve this with pasta. This recipe makes a tasty pasta sauce too.

Korv Stroganoff

1 big white onion, sliced

400g sausages, cut into strips (size of thick-cut fries)

2tbsp tomato purée 

400g can of crushed tomatoes

300ml cream

Pepper to taste

Sauté the onions. 

Once they're translucent, add the sausages and cook until they start to brown.

Add the tomato purée and cook for about 2mins.

Add the crushed tomatoes and mix well.

Lastly, add the cream and pepper to taste.   

Voila! It's done!

Where did the snow go?

We have been having such a mild winter this year as compared to last year.  Last winter was nice and snowy and white.  There was snow even until late winter and early spring.  I remember walking on snow a lot and had to often wear warm clothing even inside the apartment. It was really cold.  

This time, we had a few hours of snow early in December, but none after that.  I thought it was going to be another wintery, snowy December but it turned out I was tricked. The temperature rose after that and worse of all, there was a lot of rain. It felt more like fall, but without the beautiful brown, yellow and orange leaves littering the ground.  If only it was colder, we would have snow instead of rain.  

And it really rained a lot.  My sisters came to visit in the middle of December and I was really hoping we would get snow but no.  Rain came down instead.  And it was cold and grey most of the time.  Not really great weather to show off to our visitors. Needless to say, my sister didn't really enjoy the stay.  She felt it was too cold and I don't blame her.  It's no fun walking around in the rain in temperatures of 4 or 5C and in wet clothes.

Anyway, after giving up on the idea of a snowy winter, it snowed yesterday afternoon.  Pete and I had to go to town and I was lucky to have checked the weather forecast before heading out. Since it hadn't been too cold ( I have pretty much adapted to the lower temperatures ) I haven't been wearing too many layers when I head out.  But when I checked the weather forecast yesterday, I saw that the temperature could go lower than 0C.  

When I stepped out of the door, the wind blew into my face and the biting cold jolted me awake.  It hasn't been so cold this winter.  I was so glad for the extra layers and scarf that I put on.  Even Pete felt that it was cold, and for that snowman to say it's cold, you know that it's cold.  But it didn't snow when we were out.

Some time after we got home, I looked out the window and saw big flakes of snow falling down and coating everything in white. Beautiful! The balcony was full of stuff we brought home from our kitchen but there was space to stand and look out at the wintery scene.  But I couldn't stay there too long.  It got really cold in the balcony. I didn't realize one of the cats snuck into the balcony too and closed the door.  When I heard the familiar scratching noise, I opened the door and sure enough, Nymeria, the ever-curious girl was there. I picked her up and he whole body was cold.  She also couldn't stay long there.

The snow continued to fall for a couple more hours. As the sun started to set, I could see some kids playing in the snow.  I guess I wasn't the only one who missed the snow.  I guess they decided to play in the snow since who knows it would snow again.  And the kids made the best decision.  When we got to bed, there was snow everywhere. But when I woke up this morning, there wasn't a trace of snow at all.  It rained during the night and melted all the snow.  I wonder when I'll see snow again.

And so that's how 2013 ended

It's been a long time since I've written here. Life got in the way, I guess.  In that few months, lots of things have happened that took up lots of my mental and emotional energies. And now, I'm back here again.

This is the first post of the year and sadly, I have to begin with disappointing news.  A couple of posts back, we were brimming with excitement while working on our new venture - a catering/take away business.  We met with a lot of setbacks. While on the paperwork stage, we've had to wait longer for approvals and such since it coincided with the summer holidays. Somehow, everyone we needed to seek approval from and have contact with went on long vacations and so we had wait much longer than we expected.

Those delays meant that we couldn't do anything else until all the paperwork and approvals were given.  Then, when we started to equip the kitchen, we were met with more delays.  Delays in the deliveries and the installation of equipment meant that we had to push back our opening.  And not only that, we discovered we had to install more equipment so that our small kitchen could meet the standard set by the health department of the the city. That meant more expenses that we didn't budget for.

We were already working with a small budget so that made things more difficult for us.  We had to forgo putting up signs outside the building and printed menus.  We had to be creative and made our own signs and put together own own menu displays for the walls outside our kitchen. In the end, we were quite satisfied with our efforts. The displayed menus and signs looked just the way I wanted - simple and welcoming.

When we finally opened, we got some customers - friends who read our Facebook post and some who worked around the area.  But the number of sales were much fewer than we thought.  That first week was dismal.  We had some more customers, mainly people working around the area, but still very far off our initial target.  

The worse part is the delays cost us at least 30 lunch orders a day.  We managed to find a company that wanted to change catering companies. Their workers were tired of the poor quality of their usual caterers and were very interested in our menu. But because we started late, they couldn't wait any longer and stuck to their usual caters.

We also visited a lot of companies to market ourselves and met a lot of people who seemed very interested in our menus. But we took too long to get started and they lost interest or forgot about us.  We even emailed our menus weekly but either the menus don't reach them or reached the wrong people. We kept on visiting other companies sometimes even with some samples, but the samples don't reach everyone in the company and the people we met didn't really spread the word about us.

We have regular customers, mainly those who work near our kitchen. They like our food, even the traditional Malay dishes, and some nice ones helped to spread word about us.  But it's too slow and too late.  Although we tried to find new customers, make changes to the menus, lower the prices and put up more signs, we didn't manage to turn things around.

After a lot of discussions, we have come to the painful decision to close the kitchen.  Before we lose too much, it's better to cut our losses.  This is really not something that we want to do.  We really love our kitchen. It's well equipped and well planned, if I do say so myself.  Every morning, we both are so excited and happy as we prepare the food.  The wait for customers deflated us a bit but we both simply enjoy working together and I truly love cooking and serving customers. I still can't speak Swedish well, but I'll speak English with some of them.

This whole journey has been tough, with much more downs than ups. We've even shed tears and a couple of times, we even lost hope.  The feeling of helplessness was the worst of all.  We sometimes feel like crawling and curling up in bed and not wake up till all the problems are over.  But we are each other's rock.  When one of us fall apart, the other is there to be a pillar of support.  And truly, that is the best thing that came out of this.  Our relationship is as strong as ever and that is something we both treasure and not take for granted.

So on this first day of the year, with heavy hearts we have to admit defeat and close our business. But at the same time, we count our blessings and regain hope.  "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope," said Martin Luther King.  And that is exactly what we will do.  We are going to keep our heads clear and think carefully about our future. Things might continue to be difficult, we most like will face more hard times, but with each other's support, and hope in our hearts we will get through everything. 

And here, I would like to wish you all a happy new year and may all 2014 be good to you all.