Lars' blog

Happy new year! And a bit about coffee…

hesel — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 12:54:36 +0000

Happy new year everyone

We’re back from our trip to Spain and I guess I’ll be uploading some pictures to my flickr account soon.

Yesterday I read a tweet about enhancing coffee by mixing eggshell with the coffee grounds. After googling a bit on that topic, making sure it was not a joke of some sort, I of course had to try it out this morning. I’ve always thought that the coffee I make in the espresso maker tastes a bit too sour, which is exactly what the eggshell is supposed to prevent.

I used one third of a (meticulously cleaned) eggshell, ground it in a mortar and mixed it with the coffee grounds and loaded our espresso maker. 6 minutes later we were drinking very good coffee, not too bitter and not sour at all. Very enjoyable. I’ll try out some more experiments, varying the amount of eggshell.

Christmas 2011

hesel — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:23:08 +0000

Today is my last day of work before the holidays, and because Nora and I are later today going with the night-train to Barcelona, I’m working from home. So we had the chance to have an extended Christmas lunch:

And then we opened up all the gifts from Denmark:

Thank you for the great gifts!

And to all a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Ikea

hesel — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:35:27 +0000

Ikea is just great. Went there last Friday, and as I was strolling around the place, I remembered that the chair I had bought there a year ago missed a screw. Back then I had just found some other screw that was a bit too long and added a few washers. Anyway, I thought I’d ask if I could get the real screw for the chair, and indeed, I could. They didn’t have it on stock but they’d be happy to request the screws (the minimum was 2 pieces) be sent directly to me from Sweden.

And today they arrived – and it didn’t cost me a penny. Now that’s what I call service!

Now I’ll check if it’s really the right screw for my chair

Flea-market and danish elections

hesel — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 11:23:28 +0000

The yearly flea-market in Thalwil was held today at the nearby Chilbiplatz (Chilbi means something like a funfair or a tivoli), and had everything a flea market should have:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/larshesel/6154868823/

Lots of junk, lots of people, bratwurst, beer and coffee. Since it’s so close we just went up there for a quick look, to see if there was something interesting to buy. Nora got away with a few books and a new bag.

On another note, congratulations to the people of Denmark for electing a new parliament! The people have spoken and a new government is being formed as I write this. I wish the new parliament and government all the best, and hope that they will try make politics based on agreement across the political spectrum (including the opposition). That way we might have balanced and well founded politics in Denmark. I’m excited to see how it will unfold.

Sour dough rhye bread success

hesel — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:40:28 +0000

And I nailed it:

A new batch of sour dough and I finally made a proper rhye bread. It even turned out pretty good, although, it still needs a bit of work before being signed off as perfect. The problem was that some of the rhye was still hard (maybe it’s just the grains at the edge of the bread), and I suspect that it wasn’t cut properly and therefore couldn’t soften by soaking up water…

I’ll try to do a proper job of cutting the grain next time.

hesel — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:11:45 +0000

Updated my books page:

http://larshesel.wordpress.com/books/

Cheers,
Lars

My new car

hesel — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:13:31 +0000

Last week I picked up my new car:

It’s a Ford Mondeo Ghia 1.8 from 2001. I hope it will be as trustworthy and stable as my old Toyota (may you be happy, wherever you are.)

The sour dough project and a success story

hesel — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:19:31 +0000

So, I went ahead and made my first attempt at making a sour dough rhye bread and the result was bad. I guess the sour dough wasn’t good enough, so the result was a massive, hard bread:

I’m not sure it is totally visible on the picture, but trust me, it was no pleasure to eat.

So, today I discarded my sour dough and will attempt a new one sometime. When, I’m not yet sure.

To the success story!

While I was getting ready to try out the sour dough recipe, I also attempted to bake the best bread in the world (that’s the name of the recipe: ‘The best bread in the world’ – in Dansish: ‘Verdens bedste brød’). It is really simple. Mix some flour, water and a tiny bit of yeast into a liquid mass, and let it rest 10-12 hours, fold it a few times on a flour covered table and let it rest two more hours in a pan or similar. Then it’s ready to be poured gently into a very hot pot, put a lid on it and into the oven for 30 minutes. Then another 30 minutes without the lid. Easy peasy and this was the result:

and:

I used this (in danish) recipe.