LUNCH TIME

This weekend we moved from our hotel down in LIPARI to a small house on top of the island ..to a village called PIANOCONTE. The house has a great view; from our terraces (we have many!) we can see FILICUDI and ALICUDI; the two smallest of the Aeolian islands, VULCANO ...and  ETNA; the big active volcano on SICILY ..but we did not see its eruption the other day because of some fog:( Next to the amazing view it's also very charming up here, real country feel, so this week we are living a sort of VILLAGE life. A part of this is buying our groceries from a small local store further up the street ...and then making food in our very charming kitchen. One of my favorites that we had this day was a locally made PISTACHIO PESTO that we mixed with some pasta.. really good.

FISH OF THE DAY, L'ANFORA, LIPARI

BEAUTIFUL TASTY LEMONS

WALKING THE COLORFUL STREETS OF LIPARI

 

LIPARI

Yesterday my husband took me for a tour of what is kind of his ISLAND. 12 years ago he and two friends spent 4 months on LIPARI. From February through May they lived here, reading their curriculum, having an ITALIAN MAMMA (the italian woman they rented their apartment from, who came down from her flat on the top floor once a week to clean their apartment, wash their LAUNDRY and express her worries about the three BEER BOTTLES on the counter ..but not the five liter JUG of WINE standing next to it) developing a crush on the local BREAD GIRL, eating PASTA, working their way trough all the different sorts of COOCKIES/dry cakes they had at the local grocery store ..and probably much more that I don't know about ..and maybe don't want to know about. Ever since I met E I have heard of this island. His stay here is to me kind of a TESTAMENT to how he has come to live his life ..and how he has influenced my life since I met him; being an expert at finding CREATIVE UNTRADITIONAL SOLUTIONS to where to live his ..and now OUR, life. 

SFOGLIATELLE

I realized that I had forgotten to post these pictures from our BREAKFAST in NAPLES. We were staying at at a Bed and Breakfast called ATMOSFERE CENTRO STORICO. Very charming. The breakfast was classic italian, classic neapolitan; (meaning nothing salty, only sweet things) croissants, yoghurt, fruit, juice, tea, coffee AND the local specialty SFOGLIATELLE; a magical little pastry. The best way I can describe it is like a super crisp pastry mille-feuille ARMADILLO, filled with a tasty cream; in our case, this morning, the cream tasted of ORANGE and CINNAMON, making the quite rich and sweet pastry also a little bit fresh. And of course, it has some sugar on top.  AND It was ..DELICIOUS.  

ABSURD BEAUTIFUL CONTRASTS

After one night in NAPLES, we arrived yesterday evening at LIPARI, one of the seven AEOLIAN islands just north of SICILY. This ISLAND will be our home for the next 10 days. We were originally going to arrive here this morning, but because of some ferry cancellations we arrived late last night ..that after spending 6 hours on a TRAIN .. which included a half hour FERRY RIDE ..while on the train ..something I found new and fascinating (being from the western part of Norway I am quite used to taking ferries ..but have never driven on board a ferry before in a train; exotic) then taking a hydrofoil out to the island, a ride that because of bad weather felt more like a trip on a scary ROLLERCOASTER than anything else, outside the boat the dark sky was shifting between dark blackish blue and light pink due to lightning, inside the boat people were throwing up. I felt a little bit sick, but mostly a little bit scared of DYING, that also being the case when I am in a rollercoaster. The death anxiety let go as the nice and charming men working at the boat started joking and smiling around us, the calmer ocean as we came further out also helped. Right now I am sitting outside our hotel with my mac in my lap looking at PALMS and LEMONS, but until I have had the chance to take some pictures of this beautiful place I will leave you with this beautiful sunset moment from last weekend. The contrasts in my life are kind of absurd these days! 

TROUT FROM HARDANGER

This weekend we spent at our family cabin at LØYNING. ERLEND and I love spending time there just relaxing, making food, reading and hanging out around the cabin. I am one of those Norwegians that was born almost literally with skis on my feet. My parents have, if I may say so myself, a super cute picture of me taken on the day my SISTER was born, it was EASTER and I was 15 months old ..wearing a giant WHITE FUR HAT and RED WOODEN SKIS. I still love big fur hats ..but I have grown up to be not that fond of skiing. I do wish I liked it more, because I really used to enjoy it, but it's kind of like this youth rebellion thing that never ended. To illustrate why, in my family, not skiing is a kind of rebellion;  The first time I told my mom about E was on the phone right before the first time I went to Berlin to visit him. I had not really had the chance to tell her anything about him before she asked; does he ski? The funny thing is that when I talked to my aunt, my mom's little sister, the first question she asked about him was...yes..; does he ski? Its been exactly 19 years since E had skis on his feet, and that is one of the things I love about him.

JEREZ AND ITS WINES

OK, so now that I have covered the ORANGES (and I am back from a weekend in the mountains with no internet) we can get on to other things I LOVED about SPAIN ..and why we chose to stay two weeks in exactly JEREZ DE LA FRONTERA. So, as most of you have noticed; ERLEND I are one food and wine loving couple ..and this love often affects our travel choices. The reason why we chose to stay in JEREZ, instead of for example CADIZ, that in many ways would be a more natural choice for us since it's a bigger city, very beautiful and by the OCEAN (which is another important factor when we travel, (I think years in BERLIN made us realize how important the ocean is to both of us), was because of its WINES; more exactly, as the spanish calls them; the JEREZ WINES ..or as we call them; SHERRY. Most of you, at lest my Norwegian followers, probably associate the drink SHERRY with a sweet heavy afternoon wine mostly consumed by OLD LADIES with BLUISH grey hair ..but the truth is that this wine is so much more, and so differently used in Spain than in our country. So here it goes; a crash course in SHERRY; it's a FORTIFIED wine (meaning high percentage alcohol is added to the wine) made from the WHITE GRAPE palomino. All wine labelled as 'SHERRY' must legally come from the SHERRY TRIANGLE (an area in the province of CADIZ between Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa María, all cities we visited while there). The two predominant types of Sherry are FINO (very dry with a lighter-body, very good with seafood) and OLOROSO (still dry, but much richer in both flavor and body. I especially liked to drink it with jamon iberico and cheese). If the winemaker is going for Fino, alcohol is added until it reaches just over 15%; however, if Oloroso is the goal then alcohol is added to reach an 18% alcohol content. The crappy ones we think of when we hear about sherry are the ones titled CREAM.. and they are very sweet and often heavy. The locals never drink these wines. Hope that made you a little more 'sherry smart' :) So ..the pictures in this post are from a visit we made to FERNANDO DE CASTILLA, a sherry house run by the Norwegian JAN PETTERSEN.  They make many great sherries and we discovered them when Erlend was researching sherry before we left NEW YORK. Fernando De Castilla kept being mentioned as one of the best producers, and only later did we find out that it was run by a Norwegian. It also turns out that it's very difficult to find their wines in Norway, so we brought home A LOT of them.

MAGICAL ORANGES

So why do you travel to the south tip of SPAIN in FEBRUARY? The most obvious answer is of course; because it's almost as far SOUTH as you can come in EUROPE, and therefore it's the safest way to escape the awful, SNOWY, dark, GREY and icy ending of the winter in Northern Europe. It's worth mentioning that in this part of EUROPE they are feeling as shitty about their 12 degrees and rain as we are doing about our snow and MINUS 12..the locals were complaining when we were there about a long and hard winter ..but to a Norwegian this winter felt like our spring. Another big difference between this part of Europe ..and the parts that I'm am used to living in, is something that I had not thought about, but that I found amazing; this area is now on it's way into its GREENEST part of the year, just when our world is at its GREYEST. When we arrived I was struck by beautiful TREES with dark green leaves casting FAIRYTALE like shadows on the bright green and grassy HILLS. Still, the most magical thing for me ..was the ORANGES. The orange season was at its PEAK when we arrived and I could not get used to ..nor tired of, walking through narrow streets with super narrow pavements filled with trees, branches covered in green leaves, heavied by Big Bunches of Bright orange ..ORANGES. It is safe to say; I fell in LOVE. One day I  picked one to have a TASTE but was disappointed by the tart, sour taste ..I don't know, maybe I just picked the wrong one ..from the wrong tree ..maybe the trees growing out of a tiny little whole in the pavement are not giving the best fruits, no matter what, I learned that they do have delicious oranges there ..somewhere .. and this I leaned from the delicious taste of their local specialty; the natural and freshly squeezed ZUMO DE NARANJA.  ..and the sour taste of the orange I did pick did not kill my fascination and love for these beautiful trees and their fruit. MAGICAL.

THERE IS NOTHING LIKE HOME, JELØY, NORWAY

After three COLORFUL, TASTY and beautiful weeks in SPAIN we are back in NORWAY, in VÅLER to be exact, at E's parents house. Their home is kind of our BASE this half year since we have chosen to live without a home of our own. E's parents are super GENEROUS and PATIENT people; storing our things, driving us back and forth to the airport, lending us their car when we need one, the list goes on. We're lucky. Still, I have to admit, no matter how helpful, nice and generous our parent are;  I miss having a home of my own, something stabile that waits for me when I get back, just the way I left it.. I guess no matter what you have, there is always something you miss. BUT, tomorrow I will tell you a little bit more about what I loved about our trip to SPAIN ..and why we chose to travel to this area of Spain in the first place:)

ESTEPA, ANDALUCIA, SPAIN