Swedish Breakfast

Found this on Tjuvtittat. Not sure if I should be offended or just laugh...

P.S. If I don't have time to blog on Wednesday this will double as this week's Recipe!

Tonight's View

Sitting on the balcony, catching up on last week's news (the newspapers tend to pile up in this household) and watching the hot air balloons float by.

Life as It Should Be

22:30, 23'C, evening cuppa on the balcony

Show & Tell: City Lights

Walking home from a bit of clubbing at F12.

I Did It!

Went on the new ride Insane at Gröna Lund, the amusement park in Stockholm!

Some Crazy People Went for A Late Night Swim

(Sorry for the bad mobile photo quality)

Show & Tell: Summer Evening

Midsummer Day, time 00:50

Midsummer Update 2

Trying to barbeque in torrential rain. At least the hail storm didn't last long!

Midsummer Update

After a traditional lunch with herring and dancing around the maypole some of us are sipping wine (this includes me) while the others are playing pool volley. Better do some of the outdoor activities in between the rain showers.

No One Gets the Trophy

The other team was several players short so three of us (including me) played for them. So even if they (or we, as I was playing for them) won 8-1, we still consider it a tie!

It's a Tie

US Road Trip Part 5: New Hampshire and Maine

Time for the fifth and last but one post about our US road trip last July-August!

Plimouth Plantation, the site of the first Thanksgiving between the Wampanoag People and the Colonial English community in the 1600s. This first picture shows how the native Americans used to live.

And this shows what the English looked like at that time

Our B&B in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the Inn at Christian Shore. Not as wonderful as Acworth Inn in Cape Cod, but still very much recommended if you're heading that way.

Famous Red's Eats in Wiscasset, Maine. We didn't stop though as there was such a long queue.


Peter in the cute town of Camden


Camden waterfront


This little puppy was so cute trying to get to the ducks!


Posing in Camden Marina


Belted Galloways at Aldermere Farm in Rockport, Maine - they look pretty cool!


Bar Harbor in the north of Maine


Beautiful bridge in Penobscot Bay (still Maine)


And today's Wednesday Recipe!


Morning fog in Belfast, Maine. We stayed at Penobscot Bay Inn - nothing fancy but good value accommodation.


Peter at Pemaquid Point


Same place


Bird at Pemaquid Point


And lastly, Kennebunks Beach, the town in the south of Maine where the Bush family has their vacation home

Boston coming up next!

Match Ready

Got the gear for the annual football game against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Do not want to end up with badly bruised legs like last year. Fingers crossed that we get to keep the trophy!

Show & Tell: Six-Month Check-Up

Of photos that is. Annika, Désirée and Petra's theme this week is what does your photo archive look like now compared to six months ago?

First, the inventory:

20090111 - Tractor tire tracks at the country house (the crazy neighbour has built a new house and the whole place is a mess, and in addition the workers have cut through parts of Peter's family's lawn - so this is the folder with the evidence!)
20090128 - Anna's birthday dinner (two lonely photos...it was in the middle of the week and just the two of us)
20090214 - Passion fruit soufflé (Peter made a semi-successful attempt at making soufflé. Apparently passion fruit is a tricky sufflé ingredient.)
20090309 - Fuerteventura (our "getting rid of our winter white skin"-trip to the Canaries)
20090327 - Tallinn (my weekend cruise to Estonia with my friend Malin)
20090404 - Kangaroo (our first try of this particular kind of meat, grilled on the Weber on the balcony)
20090409 - Åre (Peter's ski trip to Åre with some friends over Easter)
20090410 - Easter and spring (some photos from Easter and the rest of April, mostly flowers and other nature shots)
20090430 - Walpurgis Eve party (our well-attended and fun - so the guests said - party on Valborg)
20090506 - Tallinn with work (another trip to Tallinn, this time for work)
20091517 - Daniel Hilton (first meeting with my friends' newborn son)
2090521 - Norway and Kalle & Anlaug's wedding (our latest trip and chance to see some friends we had not seen for years!)

So how does this year compare to the same time last year? Well, 12 albums so far this year compared to 19 last year. So we have evidently not been as busy with the camera this year, or perhaps travelled less?

But let me show you some favourites from (a selection of) the above listed albums !

The soufflé, before it collapsed... (February)

Walking in the desert in the northern part of Fuerteventura (March)

Table decoration at Restaurant Aed ("garden") in Tallinn (March)

Bumblebee at the country house - click on the photo to see an enlarged version. Then you will see the wings better! (April)


I like this photo because I really like my outfit with the red skirt and the black top, and because my friend M. was able to come to the party despite being ill for so long (which she still is, but hopefully she will get well soon!) (April)

Having a beer with my colleague N. in the Old Town of Tallinn on a work trip (May)

My friends C & J's little son Daniel. Poor J. went and broke her foot and had to have surgery and a Ceasarian at the same time! (May)

Not sure what the camera was doing when Peter took this photo but it actually turned out very cool! Sometimes there's no need for Photoshop! (May)

This was a fun theme! We should do it every six months!

Wednesday Recipe: Salmon & Crayfish Quiche

Image from Tasteline

Salmon & Crayfish Quiche
4-6 servings

Crust
2½ dl flour
75 g butter or margarin
3/4 dl Kesella (kvarg, curd) (or another 50 g butter if you can't find curd)

Filling
100-150 g smoked salmon
200 gr crayfish tails
2 dl Västerbotten cheese (or other mature and tasty hard cheese)
3 eggs
2 dl milk
salt and pepper

What to do
1. Turn the oven to 225'C. Make the dough for the crust and "dress" a 28 cm quiche pan.
2. Pre-bake the crust for 10-12 minutes until it gets some colour. Lower the heat to 200'C.
3. Slice up the salmon and rinse the crayfish. Grate the cheese.
4. Whip eggs and milk and add some salt and pepper.
5. Fill the crust with salmon, crayfish and cheese. Save some for decoration if you want. Finish with the egg and milk mix.
6. Bake for 20-25 minutes
7. Serve with a fresh salad.

Smaklig måltid! I had the leftovers for lunch today and it tasted even better, which is often the case with quiche!

Longing

My summer holidays feel far away on a day like this when my accessories are umbrella and gloves...

When Do They Work?

Feeling extra European this past weekend (will report on the elections soon - but probably not on this blog; will keep you posted), I thought of an article on European habits that I read a few weeks ago.

Apparently French people spend the most time sleeping and eating, and because of it (?) they live longer. The French gets an average of 9 hours of beauty sleep per day while the Japanese and Korean (okay, I guess this study was wider than just Europe...) sleep only seven hours and 50 minutes per day. One hour difference may not sound that much but if you think about the difference in a given week (63 compared to 56) or in a given month (252 vs 224), you will feel pretty sorry for the Asians in questions!

According to the study the French also spend more time on cooking and eating that anyone else and nearly double that of Americans (no surprise there; it's the fast-food nation after all) and Canadians. The Japanese may not sleep but they spend almost as much time on eating as the French - two hours daily at the table. Italians and Belgians are also pretty good at taking their time at the table. The Swedes are in the middle of the league table with an hour and half a day eating.

The French and the Japanese live as long though - 84.4 and 86 respectively for women - so life expectancy must be about more than just sleeping and eating since they scored quite different results, at least when it comes to sleep. And apparently the Spaniards live long too - 84.4 for wome - even though they didn't come out on top on any of the indicators.

The survey also revealed some not so surprising gender differences. In Italy men have around 80 minutes more a day of leisure time than women. Sad. 80 minutes is quite a lot! Stark contrast to Norway where men and women have the same amount of spare time.

But I wonder, with all that sleeping and eating, when to the French work??

Show & Tell: Blue and Yellow

New month and new Show & Tell hosts - Annika, Désirée and Petra. Today's theme blågult - blue yellow (though yellow blue sounds better in English) are the Swedish national colours and I assume the girls picked it because it's the Swedish national day tomorrow. But I'm going to make a very free interpretation and write about what I came to think of when I thought of the colours blue and yellow.

Blue and yellow - and purple, green and red - are the colours of an abused woman.

Before I continue I should point out that I'm not myself a beaten woman (if I were I would probably not write about it to start with) but fighting domestic violence, or violence against women in general, is a cause I support. I have a friend who's been working with women's rights and domestic violence for a long time - she's now heading a project called Centre for Relationship Violence in Stockholm - and I have followed some of the developments in terms of policy and legislation for work.

According to the UN definition (1993 declaration), violence against women is:

• - Violence targeted at women on the basis of sex/gender
• - Violence that cause or can cause physical or mental suffering or bodily harm
• - Violence that mean threat, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of freedom
• - Violence against women refers to abuse, rape or sexual exploitation
• - Mental violence refers to sexual harassment or sexual humiliation at workplaces or in schools, in media, press and advertising
• - Violence against women is a breach of human rights

Violence against women occurs everywhere around us. Amnesty illustrates this by shrinking the world to a village with 1,000 inhabitants and providing some frightening and sad statistics:

• - 500 are women; it would be 510 but 10 were never born due to sex-related abortion or died as infants due to neglect
• - 300 are Asian women
• - 105 are illiterate
• - 145 live on less than a dollar a day
• - 167 are being beaten or in some other way exposed to violence during their lifetime
• - 100 will be raped or experience an attempted rape during their lifetime

More about domestic violence (source: Amnesty):

• - At least one out of three women or as many as a billion women in total have been abused or forced to have sex during their lifetime. Often the perpetrator is a family member or someone she knows.
• - Approx. 70% of female murder victims are killed by their male partner
• - It is estimated that in Kenya more than one woman a week is killed by their male partner; in Zambia it is five women a week by a male partner or family member.
• - 35% of Egyptian women are abused by their husband at least once during the marriage
• - In Bolivia 17% of women over 20 have been subject to physical violence in the last year
• - In Bangladesh all murdered women have been killed by their partner
• - In Pakistan 42% of women are said to accept violence as part of their fate and 33% feel too helpless to put up any resistance. 19% say that they have protested and 4% that they have acted in some way.
• - In Canada the costs for violence against women have been estimated to be 1.6 billion dollar per year including medical care and decline in production
• - In the USA a woman is abused every 15th second, often by her partner
• - In New Zealand 20% of women are beaten or mentally abused
• - In Russia 36,000 women are abused on a daily basis by their men or partners
• - In Spain one woman is killed every five days by her male partner
• - In the UK two women a week die at the hands of their male partners.

There is also specific sexual violence (still Amnesty figures):

• - One of five women in the world will be subject to rape or attempted rape during their lifetime
• - In South Africa on average 147 women are raped day
• - Rape occurs every 90th second in the USA
• - In France 25,000 women are raped every year
• - In Turkey 35.6% of women have been subject to violence within marriage, 16.3% say that it has happened on several occasions

More statistics, e.g. for violence against women in wartime and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation, are available on Amnesty's page.

So what do states do about it?
In many countries it is not even considered a crime; cases of violence are often not even investigated or punished. Some facts:

• - In 2003 at least 54 countries had laws that discriminated against women in some way (based on a report from the UN rapporteur on violence against women).
• - 79 countries have no or unknown legislation against violence in the home
• - Rape within marriage is recognised as a specific crime in only 52 countries (read for example about new, depressing legislation allowing this in Afghanistan here)
• - Only 16 countries have legislation that include specific references to sexual assault
• - Only three countries have legislation that specifically headline violence against women as a criminal category in itself (Bangladesh, Sweden and the USA)
• - In Bolivia, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Peru, Romania, Uruguay and Venezuela a rapist will not be punished if he asks the victim to marry him and she accepts
• - The concept "honour" as extenuating circumstances (partly or fully) exists in penalty codes in Peru, Bangladesh, Argentina, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, the West Bank and Venezuela.

What about Sweden then?
According to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, reported case of abuse against women are increasing (up 34% in the last decade) - both because more and more women go to the police and because there is more violence. Some facts and figures:

• - In 73% of the cases the woman knew the culprit (2007)
• - The share of attacks (where the victim does not know the perpretator and it happens outdoors for example) has decreased with 12% (2006) and in 17% of cases of rape there is no close relationship
• - In 2006 the prosecutor gave a restraining order in 4,294 cases
• - There were 2,500 reports of abuse in 2007
• - In 2007 5,850 persons were suspects in connection to abuse against women. In the majority of the cases (around 4,750) the woman and the man knew each other. In 85% of those cases the suspect was a man (compared to 64% men where they don't know each other).
• - 21% of all cases were settled (solved) (23% for known perpretator and 15% for unknown)
• - According to estimates only 20-25% of violence against women in close relationship are ever reported to the police

We should also remember that not just women are victims of domestic violence, also children, both directly and indirectly. Save the Children/Rädda Barnen has done several excellent commercials about this:

I also believe that prostitution is a form of violence against women. I don't agree with those who say that "it is the world's oldest trade bla bla..." or that "they have chosen to do this bla bla...". I recently read a disturbing article about the "business prospects" for prostitutes in Copenhagen in connection with the climate conferences taking place there this year (one climate and business conference a couple of weeks ago and of course the big international climate conference in December). At the recent conference one prostitute said she had "a crazy rush" for business; "the politicians also need to relax after a long day"... Denmark has not criminalised sex-buyers (NB! not selling but buying, based on the assumptions that the prostitutes themselves are victims rather than criminals) like Sweden (1999), Norway (2008), Finland (pending) and Iceland (2009) and does not seem to be heading that way anytime soon.

Finally I just want to say that I'm not saying that all men are like this! I happen to have a wonderful man in my life and I know most of you out there do too. Violence against women in something that men and women have to fight together! It's a cause we should all support. I also want to say that I'm aware of the fact that there are women who abuse men, and violence in same-sex couples - this is for example why my friend's project talks about violence in relationships rather than just violence against women. That said, most of their clients are women who have been abused by men.

Questions for Europe

Learn more about the EU and European politics on this site. You can no longer submit your own video questions but you can read up on a variety of topics! And don't forget to vote this weekend!

Too Much Glass!

I like this ad from the Indian Bureau of Energy Efficiency encouraging people to save energy.

Time for a List

Too tired to blog about anything substantial...

1. How many suitcases do you own?
Five, one of which is cabin size

2. Would you rather take the picture than being in the picture?
No, I like taking pictures but I'm also very photogenic, or so they say!

3. Has anyone ever called you lazy?
Peter, all the time. He thinks I just sit there with my computer when I should be cleaning the flat or something :)

4. When did someone last come onto you?
It must be a few weeks ago when the guy who works at my local 7Eleven was trying to weave in "gift" (married) into the conversation, evidently trying to find out if I were married or whether I was up for tying the know with him or something (I was just bying a tea so it was not a straight-forward conversation).

5. What did you eat for dinner?
Some Thai food with chicken, potatoes, pineapple and peanuts

6. Do you use hooded sweaters?
Not very often but I have two I think

7. Who called you last?
Helena, just before we left work, to ask when we were leaving for the cinema (we saw "Duplicity")

8.What is your favourite ride at an amusement park?
The octopus at Gröna Lund or a rollercoaster, but an old-fashioned one, not these crazy "almost-kill-you" rides they have in the US or the UK

9. How big is your nearest shopping centre?
Fältöversten probably has about 40 shops plus supermarket, shoe repairer, etc.

10. How many siblings do you have?
One brother

11. How many chairs do you have at your kitchen table?
Six. The kitchen table doubles as dining room table.

12. Do you have a desktop or laptop?
Laptop(s)

13. Do you want to get a tatoo or piercing right now?
No, I hate tatoos! And I have pierced all body parts I want to pierce, i.e. my ears!

14. What do you bring when you go to the cinema?
Company, popcorn and a drink, or sweets

15. Do you like to fly?
Prefer afterwards, when I have arrived, but I'm not that scared. But I liked flying more when I was younger.

16. Do you care about the calory count in what you buy?
Not to the extent that I read on each package but I try to avoid some things I know have a lot of calories.

17. How old will you be next time?
34, but that's not until next year fortunately!

18. Do you like to hug people?
Of course!

19. Do you have any allergies?
Maybe some slight allergy in the spring, but hardly. Grass sometimes gives me a rash.

20. Do you like your living quarters?
Yes, a lot! But I'm still dreaming about a new place; something new to decorate, a garden and a walk-in closet à la the Heineken commercial - both for clothes and beer!

P.S. Can't remember where I found the list so can't give credit where it's due!

Show & Tell: Inspiration from US Road Trip Part 4 - Cape Cod

Last Friday was Musikanta's last Show & Tell theme. As usual I'm fashionably late with my interpretation of the topic inspiration, but better late than never, right! I thought I'd use this opportunity to give YOU some inspiration. Travel inspiration in particular. I remembered that I never finished my suite of travel diaries about last summer's US road trip. So here comes some photos from New England!

We continued our journey from Washington D.C. at 6.30 in the morning, aiming to arrive in New England and Cape Cod in the early afternoon. In New York City we crossed over the river on the very appropriately named Washington Bridge.

Our first stop was Newport, Rhode Island, where they have a Tennis Hall of Fame but we didn't go inside so we don't know if it's good or not.

The sea around Newport was a bit rough on this particular day, and the rocks make it look even more rough, and cold.


Posing in Newport


One of many Newport mansions



Our B&B Acworth Inn in Cummaquid, Mass. on the Old King's Highway - Highly recommended! Beautiful house, super friendly innkeeper and delicious breakfasts!


Our romance style room at the B&B. It was actually cuter and less flowery than it looks like in the picture. Not all four walls had the floral wallpaper.


Cute fire station in Yarmouth along the Old King's Highway


Boats in Nauset Beach


We saw all kinds of creatures as it was low tide


One of my favourite shots from New England!


Peter posing in the beachgoers' part of the beach (the parts shown above are more for fishing) but it was quite early still so people hadn't started arriving (the weather wasn't the best either).


Another favourite


Mussel picker


More Nauset Beach views


When in New England you have to eat a lobster roll with chips* (or fries as they are called in the States)! This is at Moby Dick's in Wellfleet.


Provincetown at the very top of the Cape. Provincetown is sometimes called P-town and is known for its beaches, harbour, artists, tourist industry, and its reputation as a gay village.


This is the very spot the pilgrims arrived to. The first English settlers founded the town in 1727 but they first arrived already in 1620 (you know, on the Mayflower) when they settled down across the bay in Plymouth (we visited there later on our journey).



Provincetown main street


Cape Cod style house but with some colour added. Its characteristics are wooden shutters and clapboard or shingle exterior.


Provincetown beach


Peter posing in P-town


I liked this little overgrown boat


Time for a pre-dinner walk in Chatham Beach. In Chatham we had dinner at the Impudent Oyster where we had some of the best fish we have ever had - I had tuna and Peter swordfish I think. Delicious!


Sandwich beach - our last stop in Cape Cod



Peter on Sandwich Beach

* This will have to do as today's Wednesday recipe. Learn about lobster rolls here and here.