It’s done. We have booked our plane tickets to USA, we leave two months from now. It feels great knowing for sure that our trip together really will happen. First stop New York. Five days later we hit San Francisco. And after a while there we will drive south, meeting a couple of fellow bloggers on the way. We are so grateful for all your comments about what to see and where to go, and we will try to look up as many of your tips as possible. After 90 days in California we still don’t have a clue where to go to next. But when we know you know.

With America on our minds we made pancakes. Even if these look a little bit similar to traditional american pancakes with lots of syrup, sugar, butter and flour – they are not anything close to it. Our version is completely flour and sugar free. Instead these pancakes contain Kañiwa, a peruvian grain similar to quinoa – but with a higher protein level. Totally nutritious and gluten free. And what might look like maple syrup is actually natural fruit syrup from cherries and prunes.

We don’t need to write that pancakes are yummy, you all know that already. So let’s eat.

Kañiwa & Coconut Pancakes with Chunky Cherry & Prune Syrup
Serves 4-6 persons

Make the fruit syrup a couple of hours in advance, since it needs some time in the fridge. Kañiwa can easily be substituted with quinoa or amaranth – all these grains are gluten free.

6 eggs, lightly beaten
3 bananas
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup Kañiwa (cooked according to the package)
1 cup coconut flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
a pinch of cardamom

coconut oil

Mash the bananas with a fork and mix in a bowl together with all the other ingredients.
Or, pour eggs, bananas, coconut milk and spices in a blender. Blend for about a minute. Add the kañiwa and the coconut flakes and stir around.
Fry the pancakes on both sides in coconut oil on medium heat. Serve with a spoonful of Chunky Cherry & Prune Syrup.

Chunky Cherry & Prune Syrup
12 cherries
7 prunes
1/2 lemon
1 tbsp agave syrup
a pinch of ground clove

Chop the fruit in quite small pieces and throw them in a bowl. Squeeze the lemon juice over the fruit and add agave syrup and cloves. Stir it all around with a spoon, you can mash it a little bit to help release the fruit juices. Cover the bowl with plastic and put in the fridge for a couple of hours.

I’m in love, yes with David and yes with baby Elsa, I’ve always been in love with avocado, I love that we have this blog, but now I’m also in love with another blog.

It’s called My New Roots and Sarah is the women behind it. David recently showed me her blog with the words: “You will love these recipes, and she has been studying exactly the things that you are always talking about”. So true! Sarah has studied holistic nutrition and the benefits of organic food, and her blog is full of wise words, cool facts, good vegetarian recipes and a sense of humor that I really like. She is the kind of blogger that makes two different soups in one bowl because “they look totally groovy together”. And she also came up this raw chocolate shake.

If you have been cooking a lot of vegan or raw food you’re probably familiar with avocado in desserts. We have heard and read about it, but we never actually took the step of trying it ourselves. Until we tried this recipe. And let me just say, it’s great! This shake has no ice cream, no cream, it hasn’t even got any milk in it. But it’s still super creamy and really delicious!

Since it’s summer we added a couple of strawberries to it, and a couple of raw cacao nibs that made it a little crunchy. If you want to read about all the benefits of cacao I suggest that you stop by My New Roots. Sarah actually claims that this chocolate shake is good for your body. Now how many chocolate ice cream milkshakes can claim that!?

Raw Chocolate Shake (Adapted from My New Roots)
Serves 2-4, depending on how big glasses you use

1 1/2 tbsp hemp seeds (or soaked almonds, cashews, sunflower seeds etc)
3 tbsp raw cacao powder
1 tbsp raw cacao nibs
1 avocado
1 very large frozen banana (not completely frozen if you’re afraid that it will ruin your blender)
5 fresh strawberries
2 tbsp agave, raw honey or maple syrup
a pinch of sea salt
1 cup water
4 ice cubes

Blend all the ingredients until smooth. It’s kind of thick so you can add water if desired. Top it with some chopped strawberries and drink it while it’s cold.

As much as we love to spend time in the kitchen, this time of the year we prefer to stay outside. So when we are inside, preparing a meal, we usually make a short story out of it. Throw some salad in a bowl or blend a few vegetables into a soup.

One of the things that we’ve been quite obsessed about this summer is Gazpacho. We’ve tried different recipes every time; a classic recipe, a mango version, a white gazpacho (we might actually make a post of that too) … But the gazpacho that stayed in our mind was the one where watermelon replaced the tomato juice. It made it a little sweeter and a lot fresher than a classic recipe. And it is super easy to make: chop, blend, freeze, eat.

We served it in small glasses and had as a starter, but you could just as well put it in bowls and have it as a light dinner, maybe together with a slice of our lemon spelt bread?

Before we move on to the recipe I just want to say that I love these pictures! This time my talented sister helped us out and we took them in the evening sun. She works as a photographer, shooting for both glossy travel magazines and cool literary magazines. She has also been my photographic mentor, teaching me about natural light, reflectors and raw format. And when she helps us out she always seems to not only make the food look great but also catch that vibrant feeling.

Watermelon Gazpacho (adapted from simple blueprint)
Serves 8 as a starter or 4 as a dinner

6 cups watermelon, seeded and diced in 1-inch dices
2 stalks celery, chopped
3 medium size tomatoes, roughly chopped
1/2 cucumber, roughly chopped
2 red bell peppers, roughly chopped
fresh ginger, about 1 inch, peeled and minced
1/2 chili pepper
juice from 2 limes
handfull of fresh basil
salt & black pepper

Put 5-6 dices of the watermelon and a couple of celery pieces in each of the 8 glasses. Pour the rest of it in a blender or a food processor together with all the other ingredients. Pulse it until it’s got soup consistency, taste it and add more salt & pepper if needed. Divide it in the glasses and set them in the freezer or fridge (depending on how soon you serve it), it should be cold but not frozen. Serve with a thin slice of watermelon attached to the glass.

Photos by: Johanna Frenkel

Hello. We are home from Italy. It was a great trip! Way too much gelato though, we blame it on the hot weather and the fact that Italy has the best ice cream in the world. Sweden has also been incredibly hot and sunny this summer. And since we have decided to take a short break from ice creams we made ourselves a yellow fruit drink to cool us down with instead.

I am a little bit obsessed with yellow. I use lemons in most of my recipes. I am crazy about easter. I have a beautiful yellow silk dress (a gift from David) and I have bought the cutest summer dress with big yellow flowers to Elsa. I still dream of the yellow Le Cruset pot and I desperately need a bike (yes, yellow). Of course I had to jump out of the car and run through this field of sunflowers as soon as I saw it. And when we were talking about a summer drink, my suggestion was: “Let’s make it yellow.” So we did.

Two summers ago we tried an amazing passion fruit and orange drink with a quite strong taste of mint and ginger on a Vietnamese restaurant in Copenhagen. This is our recollection of that drink.

Passion Fruit Summer Drink
Serves 4

1/2 cup mint leaves
2 limes, cut into 0,5-inch-pieces
3 inches fresh ginger (cut into thin sticks)
8 passion fruits
4 oranges, juice
ice cubes
1 cup sparkling soda

Muddle mint leaves, the lime pieces and half of the ginger sticks in a bowl, then pour it into a pitcher. Cut the passion fruits in half and scoop out the flesh into the pitcher. Add juice from the oranges and ice cubes and stir around. Top it with sparkling soda, a couple of ginger sticks and a mint leaf. Enjoy!

Elsa had her first meal of solid food a couple of days ago! Luise made her potato mash with a splash of oil and water. It was a big day for her and also for us, now we can start to make her our own all-good baby food. Although it seems like everybody have their own opinion on what kind of food is good for babies and children.

– Surely you will give Elsa normal food, a friend recently asked me. And with normal she meant meat, dairy products, gluten and sugar. She is not the only one. Another comment that we heard a lot of lately is that children doesn’t like vegetables but love meatballs and hot-dogs, so we would have a lot of trouble raising her without eating meat. I have just recently realized that most people actually believe that the way they eat is The Right Way. And our way – not eating meat, focusing on whole foods with a low intake on dairy products, gluten and sugar – represent some kind of diet that is good for you for a while, but not in the long run. Well, we believe that the way we eat is all-good for our bodies and that everybody probably would feel better cutting down on meat as the centre piece of the dinner and focus a little bit more on whole foods and vegetables.

With that said, it would make us feel very strange not giving Elsa the kind of food that we believe is best for her. Call me naive but I believe parents who complain that their kids won’t eat whole foods or vegetables have a lot to blame on their own eating habits. But if we fail I promise that I will be the first to admit it. And if Elsa some day decides that she wants to try a hamburger with her friends, we will be totally fine with that.

Maybe this could be mistaken for a convert-to-our-way-of-eating speech, it’s not. We have no problems with other people eating meat or not giving their kids vegetables, everybody must live after their own beliefs. Just as we do.

This soup is not for Elsa, not yet anyway. We were inspired by the Tuscan bean and bread soup Ribollita, and wanted to make our own version of it, replacing the bread with barley and the cannellini beans with these beautiful borlotti beans. When the soup was done we had changed so much that we decided not to call it Ribollita. But it is just as good, and more nutritious. Scroll down for the recipe.

Barley & Bean Soup
Serves 4

3 tbsp olive oil
2 spring onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
3 small carrots, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped
2 bay leaves (can be replaced with sage)
juice from 1/2 lemon
1/2 glass white wine
8 cups vegetable stock
1 cup pearled barley
1 zucchini, cut in quarters
10 cherry tomatoes, divided in half
2 cups fresh green beans
1 cup fresh borlotti beans, removed from pods and preboiled for 20 min.

Heat olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pot and add onion and garlic. Saute for about 5 minutes. Add carrots, celery, rosemary, bay leaves, lemon juice and white wine and cook, stirring often, for 2 minutes. Add vegetable stock and let it cook for 30 minutes. Add barley, zucchini, tomatoes and let it cook for another 25 min. Then add green beans and borlotti beans and let it simmer for 10 more min. Remove the bay leaves and add salt and pepper. The soup is done when the barley and the beans are done. Serve with olive oil, lemon juice and fresh herbs.

Photos by: Johanna Frenkel

Ciao, we are writing this post under the Tuscan sun. We have olive trees on the left side of our house, grape plants on the right, and rosemary, sage and lavender fields in our garden. And after one week here I think even Elsa’s got a scent of lavender coming from her skin.

We promised that we would blog from here, and even though the Italian P’s (Pasta, Patate, Pizza & Pane) have made our trip a little less wholesome than we are used to, we try to keep most of our dinners simple, with fresh vegetables on the bbq and different dressings and sauces.

Last night we finished our dinner with this classic Italian dessert, a macerated fruit salad with our own version of a honey zabaglione. The Italians vary the fruits according to season, we used different stone fruits and Cantaloupe melon. What makes the Italian fruit salad special is that it’s tossed with lemon juice and sugar (we used honey) and left it in the fridge for a couple of hours to let the juices and flavors come out.

Macedonia di Frutta
Serves 4

25 cherries, pitted and divided
6 apricots, cut in quarters
3 peaches, cut in thin boats
1/2 cantaloupe melon, cut in thin boats
juice and zest from 1 large lemon
2 tbsp honey

Honey Zabaglione
5 egg yolks
3 tbsp honey
1/3 cup dry white wine
3/4 cup yogurt
fresh lavender flowers

Making the fruit salad: Combine the fruit in a large bowl. Pour lemon juice, zest and honey in a small bowl, stir around with a spoon and pour over the fruits. Toss gently, taste, and add more honey and lemon if desired. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Making the honey zabaglione: Whisk egg yolks with honey until blended in a large stainless-steel bowl. Set the bowl over simmering water and whisk until the mixture lightens in color and thickens, about 3-4 minutes. Add the wine and a couple of lavender flowers and continue whisking constantly until the mixture is pale, thick, and has expanded in volume, about 10 minutes. If the mixture curdles it’s too hot, remove it from the heat whisk it off for a few seconds.
When the zabaglione is light and fluffy, move the bowl to a larger bowl filled with ice water to cool the zabaglione quickly. When cool, fold in the yogurt. Use immediately or cover and refrigerate for up to 2 days.

To serve, divide the fruit in 4 glasses or small bowls. Put a spoonful of zabaglione alongside. Sprinkle a couple of lavender flowers on top of it.

Potato pizza has a special place in my heart. This simple rustic pizza made with just a few basic ingredients (no tomato sauce) is pretty impossible to find in Swedish restaurants. So the only time we eat it is when we make it ourselves, and it always makes me think of Rome. Their you can get it in almost every restaurant but they taste best bought from any of the many hole-in-the-wall ovens. They bake them incredibly looong and you buy a slice of it by showing with your hands how big piece you want. Normally they are baked with lots of olive oil, wheat flour and parmesan cheese, we have made a little healthier version of this recipe from the lovely blog The Italian Dish, by using less olive oil, rye flour and goat cheese. The rye flour makes it a little bit trickier to knead, but you end up with a very crunchy and tasty crust.

We have a special reason for posting this right now. By the end of next week we are going on a family vacation to Tuscany (I know, we are traveling a lot at the moment), and we have decided to bring camera and computer. So if we can just find an internet connection we will give you a couple more Italian favorites.

Potato Pizza with Goat Cheese (Adapted from The Italian Dish)
Makes 1 large pizza, 16 small slices

Dough:
1 cup lukewarm water
2 tsp instant dry yeast
2 tsp sea salt
2 1/2 cup rye flour (we used half light, half dark wholegrain)
2 tbsp olive oil

Filling:
3 medium size firm potatoes
2 tbsp salt
4 tbsp olive oil
2 small spring onions
2 tbsp fresh rosemary, roughly chopped
100 g goat cheese
salt & black pepper

Pour warm water in a medium size bowl. Add salt and yeast and stir around. Mix in 2 cups of flour. Gradually add more flour until the dough comes together enough for you to start kneading it. Knead for a couple of minutes, add additional flour if it sticks to your hands. Put the dough back in the bowl and drizzle it with olive oil. Work the dough until it’s completely covered in the oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it in a warm place for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, you prepare the potatoes. Slice them thin with a mandoline or with a knife. Place the slices in a deep plate, drizzle them with salt and cover with cold water for about an hour. Drain the water, rinse the potatoes and pat them dry on a towel.

Preheat the oven to the highest possible temperature (450-500°F). Remove the plastic cover from the dough and start working it with your hands on a slightly floured work surface. Stretch and flatten the dough until you get the desired size and thickness that you prefer and move it to a baking pan covered with parchment paper. Rye flour doesn’t stretch as good as wheat flour but if you work carefully and flatten it with the palm of your hand you will get it right. Another trick is to roll it out directly on the parchment paper with a slightly floured rolling pin and then just move the parchment paper to the baking pan.

Brush the dough with a thin layer of olive oil. Cover it with potato slices, onion, rosemary, 3/4 of the goat cheese, salt and freshly grounded black pepper. Drizzle the rest of the olive oil over the pizza and bake for about 15-18 min until the potatoes are golden and the edges are slightly burnt. Sprinkle the rest of the goat cheese over it and serve immediately.

These last weekends we have been having not only one Welcome-To-The-World Picnic for Elsa, but two! The first in Copenhagen and the second in Stockholm. Both days were beautiful with sunny weather, food, cakes, songs, friends and family. All the things we love!

We made a couple of our favorite sugar free cakes; Blueberry Muffins, Raspberry Cupcakes, a heart shaped Raw Peanut & Date Cake, Rhubarb Pie, Strawberry Almond Cake and Rhubarb & Strawberry Lemonade. We also made this fantastic Summer Salad with fresh blueberries and a raspberry mint dressing to go along with it, scroll down for the recipe.

In Stockholm we held the picnic under a tree on the beautiful island Djurgården.

Since Elsa couldn’t open the gifts herself I did it for her. These cute crocheted toys are from the Danish brand Sebra.

We actually mixed the leftover solids from our Rhubarb Lemonade with whipped cream to make the filling in this Rhubarb pie, and we made the sugar-free crust from our Lemon Tart recipe.

Me and a biiiig box of strawberries. We used them on this Almond Meringue Cake with a cream of Turkish yogurt, orange juice and maple syrup. Yes, the flowers are edible.

Proud grandparents!

Diva, the Danish family dog. Me, Elsa, my twin brother and his 1 1/2 year old son.

Blueberry & Apricot Super Salad
Serves 4

This is truly a super salad. Not only does it taste super delicious, but the spinach, blueberries, beans and radishes also makes it super nutritious.

400 g spinach leaves (or baby spinach)
15 radishes
15 cherry tomatoes
3 small spring onion, cut in thin slices and marinated in apple vinegar and olive oil
1 can cannellini beans, rinsed
10 apricots
200 g blueberries

Rinse the spinach and place on a towel to dry. Cut the radishes in slices, tomatoes in halves and apricots in quarters. Place all ingredients in a bowl and drizzle over the blueberries. Serve with a Raspberry Mint Dressing

Raspberry Mint Dressing
100 g raspberries (fresh or frozen)
1 tsp honey
1 tbsp mint leaves (chopped)
a pinch of sea salt
1/2 dl olive oil

Mash the raspberries with a fork and mix it with honey, mint leaves and salt. Stir in the olive oil with a spoon.

Alright, let’s make this official. We have been dreaming, talking, tweeting and planning this. But let us once and for all put it in writing.

In just a couple of months – from 1 October to be specific – we are leaving Sweden for 6 months to travel the world, spend time with our daughter (and each other), get sunburned, blog a lot, eat well, read books and just relaaaax.

I’ll go on six months paid(!) paternity leave and Luise will be on leave of absence. We’ve actually been talking about doing something like this since the first day we met, and when we found out that we were becoming parents we started saving up for it. We are unbelievably happy and grateful that we get the chance to go through with it.

Our travel plans are still very loose, what we know for sure is that we want to spend a couple of months in California. Maybe we’ll start out in San Francisco and then move down to San Diego. After that we might go to South America or Vietnam or maybe we’ll take to Australia… we’ll see how it goes and how Elsa feels about it, and how far we can come before we’ll run out of money. We would love to hear about your traveling tips and do’s and don’ts when traveling with small children.

To celebrate this decision we made ourselves a summer cake.

This is our own very simple version of a cheesecake. No sugar, butter or flour added. And you don’t need an oven to make it (but you do need a freezer). We made the crust sweet and crunchy by using almonds, coconut oil and dates. And kept the filling quite fresh with mascarpone cheese, curd, honey and fresh strawberries and raspberries. I can easily go on and on about how good this cake tasted, but instead I just encourage you to try it for yourselves. Make it on a hot summer day and eat it outside before it melts away.

Frozen Pink Cheesecake

Crust:
300 g (2 cups) almonds
10-12 fresh dates, pitted
2 tbsp coconut oil
a pinch of salt

Filling:
2 cups fresh (or frozen) raspberries & strawberries
juice from 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup honey
1 cup mascarpone cheese
1 cup quark or curd (you could probably also replace it with a fat Greek or Turkish yogurt)

Topping:
1 cup fresh summer fruit and a couple of edible flowers

Grind almonds in a blender or a food processor for about a minute. Add dates, coconut oil and salt and run the processor until it all comes together. Flatten it out on the bottom of an 8-inch non-stick spring form. Store in the fridge while you make the filling.

Blend berries, lemon juice and honey. Stir together mascarpone, curd and the blended berries in a large bowl. Pour it on top of the crust in the spring pan and put it in the freezer for 1-2 hours (you can keep it in the freezer for days but then you have to let it soften a bit before you serve it) .

Top the cake with fresh fruit and a couple of flowers. Serve immediately.

These weeks in May happen to be our absolute favorite weeks of the year. Not only because of sunshine, picnics, barbecues and the first ice creams, but also because of all the fresh spring/summer vegetables that find their way to our local farmers market, into our box with delivered vegetables, and even to our giant supermarket around the corner. In fact wherever we go to buy our groceries these days we find fresh asparagus, giant rhubarbs, small potatoes, sweet strawberries and enormous cabbages. And they aren’t even expensive!

So with all these fresh vegetables in our home we have started to make a list of early summer vegetable recipes that we intend to try. Here are a few:

Potato Salad with Sugar Snaps & Creamy Tarragon Vinaigrette, from Dana Treat.
Warm Asparagus Salad with Basil, from Sprouted Kitchen.
Rhubarb Hand Pies with Orange and Cardamom, from So Good & Tasty
Baked Stuffed Artichokes with Leeks, from The Italian Dish.
Heirloom Tomato and Quinoa Galette, from Cannelle et Vanille.
Totally Wild Leek Pesto, from My New Roots

But since it’s monday – and we are always kind of tired and lazy on mondays – we decided to go for a wok that you can make in just about 10 minutes. It’s delicious, fresh, a little bit spicy and totally uncomplicated.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have more links for good spring/summer vegetable recipes.

Early Summer Vegetable Wok (adapted from Årstiderna)
Serves 4

1/2 cabbage (can be substituted with 1 pak choy or chard), cut in thin strips
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and cleaned and divided in half
1 zucchini, cut into sticks
1 fennel bulb, trimmed and cleaned and cut in thin strips
4 tbsp canola oil
2 cloves garlic, cut in thin layers
1/2 chili (or chili flakes)
4 tbsp water
3 tbsp black bean sauce (can be substituted with oyster sauce)
1-2 tbsp soya sauce
1 bunch bear’s garlic/ramsons (tastes a little bit similar to chives), roughly chopped
1 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped

Warm a large wok with oil. Fry vegetables, garlic and chili for 1-2 minutes on high heat. Add water, black bean sauce and soya sauce. Let it boil for another minute. Remove from heat. Stir down bear’s garlic and cilantro. Serve as it is or together with rice or noodles.