Back home in the evening one takes a few fresh spices from the own balcony selection. In this case marjoram, thyme, basil and some parsley.

One starts with putting some olive oil into a pan and heats it. Once hot enough that it almost starts sizzling, one adds the chanterelles. Let them fry a bit, sometimes gently stir them till you see they are shrinking. Then towards the end add all spices and some ground black pepper.

When all is looking well enough to be served, take the pan off the fire. Only now add some salt, but not much.

The reason for not adding salt immediately is as you might know that all mushrooms suffer during the frying process. Salt destroys their cells and makes them loose all the water inside. And your pan with all that water becomes a flat pot with boiling mushrooms rather than frying ones.

The salad one already prepared in a bowl or on a large plate. Now one can simply place the chanterelles on top.

There are loads of variations of this one can try. The same recipe works with other types of mushrooms. One can also add some fresh tomatoes, fresh basil leaves and some greek feta. Do not take the one made from cow milk, I am talking proper feta made from sheep milk. Using cow milk feta is like using iceberg salad… .

Be creative and enjoy!

Ah yes. If you think this is not enough for a meal, then add some nice oven fresh garlic baguette.

As you might have figured out, it used to be “Ersättningsbussar” – replacement busses – until a creative person came along and dared to change this .

My much loved Sony Vaio from 2004 with 500 MB RAM and 40 GB hard drive reaches nowadays its performance limit with blogging, emails, picture editing etc. And it is far too heavy to be carried around, plus it has no W-LAN either. However, it has a great screen which makes watching videos on it a real experience. That will be his future, I guess. Unless I find a way to upgrade it, but I am not sure if that works with that model.

So my criteria for buying a successor are:
- getting as much hard drive and RAM space as possible
- a bit smaller format, like 13,3 inch so that I can take it easier with me when traveling
- if possible a good screen (even the brand new Macbook Pro of the boyfriend does not give such a sharp picture)
- Budget? Well, depends – it is the value for money that counts, and if needed I can save up for it for a few months.

These two candidates I really, really like, but I cannot decide between them.

Number 1 - Macbook Pro 13-inch: 2.66GHz

Why?
- because it is a Mac and I like the Macbook Pro of the boyfriend a lot. I could live with one mainly for two reasons: It boots up and closes down fast, no antivirus malaki – and then I love the back-lit keyboard, so you still see letters when typing let’s say in a slightly dark conference room, or you simply don’t fancy switching on the light already on a late summer evening on the sofa at home. You could practically write in the dark.
- I chose this one above the slightly smaller one cos the price difference is not that much, and when I see how much more hard drive space and RAM is required since 2004, then I thought I rather go for the big version, hoping not to have to buy another one again for that reason in a few years. (Or is this reasoning wrong??)

Number 2 – Acer Aspire TimelineX 3820T

Why?
- Hardware capacity and performance comparable with the Macbook Pro above, if not better.
- supposedly a great screen
- Windows 7 allows still access to Office documents with no problem, and writing these
- Half price of the Mac (in that case the price does make me think…)

And being German, I just love this gorgeous video…. Listen to the voice and enjoy the probably best “Denglish” (German/English) product description I ever listened to. It is definitely the fastest (cut) one:

Please – if you do have any experiences, advice on these two or if you know about a third possibility I should consider, then let me know. I would be ever so grateful.

What do you think?

This one was taken during a coffee break at Vadstena Castle.

For us it was simply fun because this type of bird (Eurasian Jackdaw) would just sit there, by the side of your coffee board and patiently wait for anything that might drop to the floor, or, more convenient for them, be thrown their way. If you would leave your table for just a few seconds, you can be sure they’ll thoroughly take care of the rests of your cake.

The other special skill of this bird is that it can learn to imitate noises like mobile ringtones or even the human voice.

So – who’s talking then??

An “About”-page and also the first two posts are online, lots more are being prepared by myself and by my beloved @Swedephotog. He is another motorcycle nerd who is sometimes worse than me in that respect.

Anyway – you have more of a choice now: Wha’ever or Elisatravels!

Hope you enjoy the read either way!

Here are the links to the trailers:
- The Social Network

- YouTube
fun fake movie trailer inspired by the one above, so far at least, with the respective article on TechCrunch. Let’s face it, YouTube is a big movie in itself, innit – a big advantage to have all material ready, you just need an editor with wizzard-like skills, don’t you?

- Twitter the latest addition to the parodies:

What’s your favourite? Personally I love the Twitter one. However, just re-discovered the very old MySpace-movie which is kind of classic and always fun to watch.

The motorcycle enthusiasts amongst you might be curious to know that there soon will be a new blog starting just with motorcycle posts. I will be running that one together with Swedephotog, who is equally crazy (if not worse) about two-wheelers.

Why we want to start a motorcycle blog? Well, somewhere we have to post the stories from this year’s 3-weeks-tour down to Northern Italy, don’t we?

Apart from enjoying a great summer tour on two wheels, there was a lot of jamming involved over the last week. Or making jam, to be precise. Redcurrant, blackcurrant, gooseberry, strawberries and all that sh..e . Very sticky, I tell you, but also very sweet – like a few other things in life. Just very different.

This year’s jam edition consists of:

- Redcurrant with Gooseberry and Whisky
- Redcurrant with Madeira
- Redcurrant with Cranberry Juice and vintage Vana Tallinn 45%
- Redcurrant with Cranberry Juice and Cognac
- Blackcurrant with Grappa (last years consumer’s favourite)
- Strawberry, raspberry, rhubarb, cranberry juice and vintage Vana Tallinn 45%

Raw ingredients in terms of fruits were:

4 kilos redcurrant
1 kilos blackcurrant
0.5 kilos gooseberry
0.5 kilos strawberries, raspberries
0.5 kilos rhubarb

resulting in in total over 30 glasses of jam.

“Sylt” (a lighter Swedish jam to have with i.e. pancakes) has to be added to this list with:

2 kilos redcurrant
0.2 kilos blackcurrant

All in all almost 9 kilos of fruit. Good that I did not think about all this while dealing with it . But the results are just heavenly – especially when you can enjoy them later on a dark winter night, bringing back memories from that summer… Or so.

Some samples of this year’s range:

Thought on the side – next year I might start selling some of it. Too much otherwise for our family.

Collected my “letter” today at the post office. Knew that it is an xdcard and that it was being shipped separately to the rest of my order. Still, when seeing this parcel I was utterly surprised. So much packing for a chip barely measuring 2×2 centimeters… Dear CDon, I hope the reason for this is you running out of suitable packaging and not the regular way of shipping. Thanks for getting the order here in very decent time, though.

And this is how it can enhance a great video feeling – or kill, depending what you think .

Metallica in Moscow in autumn 1991 – to get the full 2010 summer feeling, watch the video on youtube, wait until the second minute of the video, and then press the little footie-button to the right underneath the video.

Happy vuvuzelising!

As usual so much better than just watching it on TV! Apart from that we were spoiled with gorgeous warm sunshine until late in the evening. It was the first proper summer night with still 19 Celsius at 9pm.

The best of it: Vargarna won! With 56 : 40, which is quite an achievement, even though the match took place on home ground, which usually means a stronger position for the team.

Lejonen had hardly any fans on the set, and the commentator even felt the need to encourage the ones that were there not to be afraid to cheer when their team won a heat.

See here the second heat I filmed – a completely different sound to Vuvuzelas, isn’t it? And much more beautiful, I’d say.

Obviously I have to bear them tonight again since Germany meets Ghana in the World Cup…

It will be an exciting match, since Norrköping’s Vargarna and Gislaved’s Lejonen met each other in the final of the Swedish Championship (“Elitserien”) last year.

This is what it looked like during the final last year:

(picture courtesy to Norrköpings Tidningar)

Vargarna were quite unexpectedly having a great season last year, but they did not start off very well at all in 2010. So it will be a bit nerve-wrecking to see Lejonen with Leigh Adams & team fighting Vargarna, where there is no Tai Woffinden tonight, but at least people like Adam Shields and Adam Skornicki, the latter being one of my personal favourites.

All in all Vargarna can actually be quite glad that neither Chris Holder nor Nicki Pedersen will be riding tonight. Nicki holds position 8 in the Speedway GP right now, and Chris is on position 9. Both are two of the international top riders during the past years in Speedway, with Nicki leading Lejonen to two wins of the Swedish Championship since he joined the club in 2008. However, even Lejonar seem to have to work harder this year, although they are in 3rd position while Vargarna positioned 8th right now.

Well, I keep my fingers crossed for Vargarna, despite deepest respect for Lejonen!

The Football World Championship in South Africa starts in less than an hour, Linköping is taken over by students who took their A-levels this year (see video evidence below), and it is Friday!

Only – it is pissing down with rain. But one cannot have everything, right?

So let the sun in our hearts shine and enjoy a massive weekend

Beware – Students on the loose

Google put up  as usual a great doodle. Oh, do I look forward to tonight’s match with France against Uruguay!

A great footie-calendar you find here, and if that is not enough and you happen to be or understand German and you are on Twitter, then don’t miss out on Twittkickers!!

I was actually searching for another one, but thought this ad is kind of gorgeous, too

This is what the opening of the motorcycle season looked like for us yesterday – about 10 centigrades plus, a stiff breeze as one could see, which required double jackets. Us, that are members of the Swedish Ducati Club who live in Norrköping. My Guzzi is appreciated, too, of course – Italian sisterhood, ya know…

After a traditional Fika (Swedish for Coffee-break)  at “Fräcka Fröken” in Norrköping all of us set off northbound direction Jönåker via the old E4, then across to the East and down again. We took a ferry across Bråviken, like one can see in the picture above. All in all it was a trip of approximately 115 kilometres in total, just about right for not getting too cold on the bike in these temperatures.

We look forward to slightly warmer weather, though…

This is the route we took.


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