Well, as you may know all of my energy is spent on the Guesthouse currently. It’s been a tough summer, but I like it. What will happen with the Sandbacken blog? Well, Sandbacken will no longer be a company, the products it had before will be incorporated into Leksands Gästhem, more precisely, Recipes for Life AB, which is a huge concept that I am working on. But I like the Sandbacken blog, and have decided to carry on posting here as more of a personal blog, not just from a business point of view.

So, hopefully some of you will keep on reading and hopefully some of you well check out the Leksands Guesthouse blog too. Our ideas and inspiration are still the same, Leksands Guesthouse is basically Sandbacken gone BIG. It’s a way for me to develop my ideas on a much larger scale. It’s an exciting time for me and the family. Iv’e always said it, follow your dreams and your heart and you will be exactly where you need to be, and importantly, it is never too late.

This picture I found on marvelous kiddo was just too cool not to share.

Yay for breastfeeding and yay for yoga!

In the kitchen that is. And not me, but the food. What am I talking about? Our new best friend the PRESSURE COOKER!! Often thought of as something your grandma had in the back of the cupboard, but this is a great tool to have in the kitchen, and all food lovers (well you don’t even have to be a food lover) should have one. We’ve been meaning to get one for ages, but we hadn’t got round to it. So when Mattias parents came back from Sri Lanka with one for Mattias’ birthday we were very happy indeed! Pressure cookers can be a bit pricey here in Sweden, but in Sri Lanka they are a fraction of the price.

So why do we love it so? Well, there are several reasons for this. Firstly, it cooks food in a fraction of the time than a conventional saucepan or oven will. Which means of course you have more time on your hands. Secondly, it is a form of heating food that keeps more of the vitamins and nutrients still in your dinner compared to other forms of heating. This means your food will be better for you and we certainly like that. Thirdly, it makes even the toughest cuts of meat super tender. No more casseroles with chewy bits of meat! This is indeed why pressure cookers often make a comeback in harder times, less expensive cuts of meat can be used and made equally as tender as more expensive ones. And did I say it saves loads of time too!! so no more complaining that you haven’t got enough time to make a lovely casserole. A pressure cooker can achieve in half an hour what you oven does in 2 hours! Think about it, less electricity used = more money saved, less expensive meat = more money saved, less time making dinner = more money saved. And the icing on top; your food will have kept more of it’s vitamins, minerals and nutrients!! Bargain for your health, your pocket and the environment too.

So will I see hoards of people running to buy a pressure cooker? Well we’ll have to see.

Here are some links if you are interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_cooking

http://www.pressurecookerdiaries.com/about-pressure-cooking/pressure-cooker-benefits

http://www.pressurecookerrecipes.net/

Apologies, a couple of these sites are trying to sell you pressure cookers, what is useful is the information on them. If you want to buy one, do your own research locally.

Okay, a little late, but here’s some pictures from our Easter weekend.

Luka planting his sunflowers

Easter dinner next to Farfar

Bottoms Up!

You can’t beat getting a water pistol as an Easter present

Egg hunting time!

I hope you all had an equally lovely time as we did.

This past weekend was Valborg (Walpurgis), and we were extra lucky as we had some lovely people here to stay all the way from Wales with the new little man in their lives.

We have also just brought an ice cream maker, so I predict a lot of ice cream experimenting in the future! Tonight we had coffee ice cream with raw cocoa nibs. Yum. So if anyone has an ice cream request, let us know and come on round to give us your verdict. I’m contemplating selling Sandbackens home-made ice cream at the guesthouse this summer, so we need to practice!

… since I wrote here. I must admit that I have neglected the Sandbacken blog. Most time is spent on the guesthouse at the moment, and I’ve been wondering what to do with this blog. So I have decided to broaden this blog a little, maybe make it more personal and link to things that interest me on the internet a bit more. And leave the work stuff to the guesthouse blog.  I’ll probably end up sharing a lot of information between the two, especially with the gardening stuff.

So what’s been going on here? Well, Spring has well and truly arrived, thank goodness - we sure had a mean winter this year. We’ve been digging in the garden recently, and it feels good. I’m so glad we took the time to prepare the veg patch properly before winter, so it was almost in perfect shape after the snow melted. I have even been brave and planted some things straight out already. Time will tell if they make it. I was lucky enough to find a local gardener who was selling her own seed from pea and bean varieties that have been traditionally grown in this area, and she assured me they were very hardy and could be planted this early. So we’ll see. The rest of the stuff I planted was some carrot, parsnip and beetroot. It was mostly seed left from last year that I had loads of, so it won’t be the end of the world if it doesn’t work out. Luka planted his first row of beetroot, so of course they have a little magic in them. He was really careful and took the seeds one by one and dropped them in the holes in the dirt, then patted the soil down around them, he’ll be a great gardener. I think it is so important that children learn where their food comes from.

This weekend is Easter, so I’ll take this opportunity to wish you all a great weekend and happy easter egg hunting!

Original paintings by Marianne Grop. Can be found on the walls of the guesthouse.

Ok, we tried the whole make your own pasta thing at the weekend. And yes it was nice, but we are definitely going to wait until we have a pasta machine for the next try. (It was hard to get the pasta thin enough, and therefore it didn’t really cook to perfection).

We made a lasagne, a bit of a favourite here; nice easy and always good. And then Mattias treated us to lemon meringue pie. Yum. We used one of James Martins recipes from his book - always good. I found it on the internet here if you want to give it a go - it’s well worth it.

Happy Monday peeps, have a great week.

Here at Sandbacken we are looking after the in-laws little chickies whilst they are at ‘Meatball Alley‘ in Sri Lanka for a few months. So everyday we are getting yummy freshly-laid eggs.

Our problem is we need some egg-inspiration! Mattias has been eating many omelets, and of course we love baking, but I have brain freeze when trying to think of what else I can do with them. Any suggestions? My good friend Anna (who has just started blogging) suggested pasta, which is a great idea, though last time we tried making pasta, it wasn’t such a great success. But I guess it’s about time we tried again. If it goes well, maybe I’ll even think about investing in a little pasta making machine.

Here are the boys in the kitchen.

I’ve also decided I must get back into regular blogging again….. both on here, and at the Guesthouse blog.

Anyway, Happy Monday everyone.

Happy New Year to you all!

I trust you all had an enjoyable evening and have had a lovely festive season. We took it easy last night and had a very pleasant evening. First we had a little family dinner, and then played games with friends until the clock struck midnight. Many laughs were had over the game Rappakalja (Balderdash), enough to tempt me to buy the game myself. We can be sure that 2011 will be full of  as many laughs as 2010 ended.

Our Leksands Guesthouse website is nearly completed, and you can read the first blog post here (more New Year thoughts, so I wont repeat myself here).

Have a great 2011 peeps, it is what you make it.

I just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas from the midst of frantic Christmas cooking!

Though here in Sweden everyone celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve, we still have our ‘English Christmas’ on Christmas day. So tomorrow (Christmas Eve) will be spent with some of Mattias’ family, and our proper Christmas will be spent with family and friends at the Guesthouse (more space for everyone) on Christmas Day. There will be around 17 of us during the day and then a few more in the evening, very exciting. Muchos yummy food and muchos fun and games.

If anyone is interested in our menu it will include; a lovely home made ham, roast wild goose, roast lamb, lots of pate, many veggies (roast potatoes, brusselsprouts, cabbage, my special salad, chestnuts) pickled herring and of course lots of dessert! I think that we’ve made everything from scratch pretty much, and of course as organic and local as possible.

Though I say I’m not a lover of Christmas, what I really mean is that I’m not a lover of the commercialism or the stress. I often infuriate my husband as whenever he asks me what I want, I can never think of anything. I have all I need already; a lovely family and home

I hope everyone has a great Christmas. Take it easy and don’t get too stressed out.

I love my bed of nails.

Mattias bought it for me a couple of years ago. In the past I have had a lot of problems with my neck, but this seems to have gotten much better.

Unfortunately I seem to go through phases of forgetting about it, but when I find it again I am always happy. I usually use it when I’ve gone to bed, and more often than not I fall asleep on it, but somehow I always manage to remove it without sleeping on it all night. I actually have a lot of trouble falling asleep, I have done for as long as I can remember, but it seems to help me in this respect too.

I recently received a free small ‘cushion’ type which, though is a different type to my original one (the best in my opinion), is also great. Last night I woke up with an awful headache in the middle of the night, reached for my new handy cushion, and hey presto felt much better after a while.

What I want to say is this really, though this seemed to be a bit of a craze that started a couple of years ago, it is actually a craze that works. And they are well worth investing in if you have slight neck or back problems, or even if you just need help to relax.

There are a few different types, of varying price categories and quality. The best one for me is the one pictured at the top of this post, they are a little more expensive that the ones that you see everywhere, but they work better (for me anyway).

If you live in Leksand, these are available at ‘Josyoga’ (the yoga centre at Brömsgården). A great Christmas present in my opinion.