Flour is everywhere

This weekend was mostly about food.
Anyone else feel like this is turning into a food blog?

Saturday:
"Mersmak" food festival in Skien where I got to see and hear Ingrid Espelid Hovig, the personification of Norwegian food culture, talking about the value of knowing your ingredients and food traditions, and what it will mean in the future. There were also a couple of other famous food ladies, as you can see on the picture:

Ingrid is the second from the right hand side

Sunday:
This morning the household had a bagel collaboration. Actually, it started yesterday, since the dough had to sit in the fridge for at least 8-10 hours. When I awoke, the bowl could barely contain all that dough, so we had to get started on the project.

First we rolled the dough into bagel shapes and let them rise for half an hour. The next thing on the program was to cook them in boiling water in a large pan. I dont´t have a very large pan, but figured my medium sized one would do. Two bagels in the pan, boiling for 2 minutes on each side, that is 4 minutes each time and with 24 bagels that sums up to 48 minutes, plus some extra for putting them in the pan and taking them out again (which is easier said than done, cause they stuck to the baking paper like they never wanted to leave). Well, Lyndee is a genius, and suggested we used two pots instead of one. Good thing we have good neighbors! I went downstairs and borrowed one that was bigger than mine. Now we had two pots of simmering water on the stove, and we were getting ready for the scariest part.

I have baked quite a lot, but it is usually limited to plain bread, buns or cinnamon rolls, cookies and the like. Whenever there is more than one cooking step required, it seems like way too much work to care for, and boiling something before putting it in the over seemed unnecessary, but hey, what do I know about bagels? Next to nothing really, so I follow the recipe.

I know, they look a little weird... Thats mostly due to the fact that they were quite sticky and it was impossible to get them off the baking sheets nicely. But the boiling itself wasn´t too hard. We were two on the job, and the hardest time was keeping track of time: "Have we turned these? When did we put those in the other pan? And how long has the first tray been in the oven?" No disasters though, and after a while we could pull out our very first tray of homemade bagels from the oven:

Some with sesame seed, some with flax seeds, some with cinnamon and sugar and some plain ones. 

So what else than a New York brunch could we make? 

A New York Lox and cream cheese bagel (without the capers): Lovely!

So this week I have managed to cook two new things: leek and mushroom quiche and the bagels. I have also finished my passport holder. I have written something in my journal almost every day, but I have not been very good at getting up early, so I need to improve in that area. 

Next on the agenda: Bremen, here we come!