Sourdough bread - part four

Ooooh, slowly getting there. The breads look beautiful and the smell is delicious! Soon and very soon I will taste this bread!

The metal thing in one of the loaves is a food thermometer that I use in addition to a timer to know when the bread is ready. 95 C is the goal.

Sourdough bread - part three

Time to shovel the breads into the oven. They have almost doubled their size in the last 30 minutes and will probably grow a bit more in the oven... After 45 minutes of baking I will have two gigantic loaves of bread to nibble on.

Sourdough bread - part two

So, after one hour, the dough almost escaped from the bowl - in other words, time to form two loaves of bread. These now must rest and rise for another 30 minutes before it is time for them to hit the oven. Oh, I cannot wait - I'm getting hungry now!

Sourdough bread - part one

The last few days something has been bubbling in our kitchen: my very first sourdough! Today it was time to make it into a real dough and here it is, ready to rise for an hour or so before it is time to make some bread out of it. The bread is called a Farmer bread and according to the recipe it is associated with the Swiss or German breads. We'll see about that around lunch time today - I am not convinced it will be anything like any bread I ate in Switzerland. :-)

Soft weekend

Yet another Monday. I hope it will be a good week. :-)

This weekend was a very soft one. On Saturday we walked downtown to check out a new lamp store with special opening offers. But we forgot the check the address before we left so we had no clue where to find it. Too bad considering this is Sweden, and even if it's the south of Sweden the evenings (afternoons) will quickly get darker. But we'll do another try another day. The rest of the day we spent indoors watching the rain and wind have a party of their own outside our windows. This truly is a windy place we have come to. Skåne is very flat and the sea is not even 10km away from here. I can't wait to find out how the winter is here...

Yesterday I went to church and then did pretty much nothing. Around 6pm we took a walk to our local supermarket (open 8am-9pm every day, Sundays included) to buy matches. Candles are quite a good substitute for lamps and our lighter ran out of gas on Saturday so we needed something reliable to have at hand. Tea lights and candles are a really big thing in Sweden, especially when it gets darker outside, so we'll see how long our 100-pack of lights from Ikea will last.

Our place

In the beginning of July we arrived to Lund just in time to collect the keys to our new apartment before office closing time (well, tecnically we came after closing time, but the guy there was kind enough to wait for us). All we brought with us then was our suitcases... Two months later, this is what our place looks like:

If your internet connection is slow you can try to let the page load "on its own" for a while and then come back to have a look.

September

When I grew up, September 1st always was kind of a turning point. The air always felt clearer and cooler on this particular day and for me it always was the day when I felt that the fall was coming. This, of course, was in the north of Sweden, but I pretty much had the same experience in Uppsala, south of the middle of Sweden. Now, however, we live in the south and September 1st offered blue skies and summer temperatures. I took a long walk and before I went back home I had a cone of delicious ice cream downtown. In the parks, people were hanging out on the green grass, playing football or just working on their tan. The playgrounds were full of children and the line to the ice cream place was long... It was a really nice summer day with no signs of fall at all.

Weekend again

Yesterday we once again went to Ikea. This time to buy boxes and stuff for our storage room in the apartment. Now it will probably take a long time before we have to go there again. Yes, I am getting tired of Ikea. :-)

Today I went for my second church visit here in Lund. Last week I went to Ad Fontes. This time I "tried" the pentecostal church, Pingstkyrkan. They are a bit different and I really don't know which one I like best, so I will attend more services in both before I make my decision. Ad Fontes is quite small, Pingstkyrkan is big. The services are a bit different, but God is the same. There is, however, no rush for me to decide. I will take the time I need.

August is coming to an end and we have soon been back in Sweden for two months. In this time we have furnished our apartment, we have met our families and some friends and we have gotten acquainted to Lund and how to get around here. Not bad I have to say. Hopefully the coming months will be full of adventures and new impressions, and this I will of course write about here. And yes, I will eventually post some pictures of our place. I only have a few small things to do first... :-)

Welcome guests!

We now have an air mattress. In other words, somewhere for two people to sleep. In addition, our couch offers one space for someone not too tall. Accommodation for three guests that is! Now we just have to get someone to come visiting.

Today we woke up to gray skies, but what a beautiful day it turned into. Sun from a clear blue sky (just like our mattress) and over 25 C. Too bad I didn't realize it until this afternoon, otherwise I might have taken a bike ride to the beach... Instead, I took a walk downtown to return a bunch of library books and borrow some new one as well as a pile of DVD movies. Not too bad that either. I also restrained myself and did NOT buy one of the delicious cones of home made ice cream they sell in Lund, instead I ate the apple I brought in my bag... But next time, I'll definitely have ice cream. :-)

Great expectations

On the way to Gerdahallen yesterday, I biked through parts of the university area as usual. This morning was different though. The air was filled with expectations and everywhere there were more or less confused students trying to find their way to a building next to the university library. It wasn't Swedish students though, but exchange students from all over the world. Some of them were dragging big suitcases with them, containing everything they brought from home and hopefully enough to make it through the first time here. What an adventure!

We are also newcomers here, but even if it has been exciting for us as well, it's nothing compared to what it is for these exchange students. We already know Sweden, we understand all the signs and instructions and we know where to find what. So even if Lund is totally new for us, it's very familiar. Therefore it is very interesting to see all these exchange students coming to Sweden for the very first time and to feel the expectations in the air.