22 ára brúðkaupsafmæli okkar

Our 22nd wedding anniversary

Last week we had our 22nd wedding anniversary.

We got married civilly in 2002, and our church wedding followed exactly a year later, together with the baptism of child 2.

We didn't celebrate our wedding anniversary excessively. But there were little gifts (I actually have a serious meat thermometer now!). 

Since we are just finalizing our new cookbook with Icelandic strawberry recipes, we are a bit in strawberry mood and live out our shared passion for strawberries. So for dinner, I picked out new Icelandic strawberry recipes, tried them out and prepared small dishes with strawberries.

You won't find the recipes in our new strawberry book, but I still find them extremely tasty.

The main course was a salad with fresh strawberries, mozzarella pearls, avocado and crispy ham. For the children there was also a herb baguette so that everyone involved was full.

And for dessert there was my current absolute favorite skyr dessert, with pure skyr, whipped cream and white chocolate - and of course with strawberries, in the form of liquid strawberry jam and fresh strawberries.

We had a lovely, cozy evening!

[Translated from here.]

Salat með mozzarella, jarðarberjum og stökkri skinku

Salad with mozzarella, strawberries and crispy ham

Even though our new strawberry cookbook has been written for a while, we are somehow still in strawberry mode - and so for our wedding anniversary last week I picked out and tried out new Icelandic strawberry dishes as a special dinner.

The main course was this salad with strawberries, mozzarella, avocado and crispy ham. For the children there was also a herb baguette with the salad, so that everyone involved was full!

Ingredients for 2 servings

4 - 6 slices of Parma ham

200 g mixed leaf lettuce

250 g strawberries

1 avocado

150 g mozzarella pearls

2 Tbsp sour cream

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp lemon juice

1 Tbsp honey

salt and pepper

Preparation​

Preheat the oven to 350 °F (resp. 180 °C) upper-lower heat.

Place the ham on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake until crispy at 350 °F (resp. 180 °C) upper and lower heat for about 10 to 15 minutes.

Wash and pick the lettuce.

Wash and clean the strawberries and cut them into small pieces.

Carefully cut the avocado in half around the core, remove it from the shell with a spoon, remove the core and chop the flesh into small pieces.

Place the lettuce, strawberries, avocado and mozzarella pearls in a large bowl.

Cut the crispy baked ham into small pieces and add to the other ingredients.

To make the sauce, mix the sour cream with the olive oil, lemon juice and honey in a small bowl and season with salt and pepper.

Then pour the thoroughly mixed sauce over the salad.

Stir the salad again and then serve immediately while the crispy ham is still a little warm.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Skyrmús með kökum og berjasósu

Skyr mousse with cookies and berry sauce

This is currently my absolute favorite skyr dessert recipe - with pure skyr, whipping cream and white chocolate. And add sugar with freshly grated lemon peel - the smell alone is wonderful!

I only recently learned about the recipe and have "cooked it" twice since then because I find it so delicious!

Ingredients for 4 servings

90 g sugar

1 organic lemon

450 g pure Skyr

1 tsp vanilla paste

1 - 2 tsp ground cardamom

350 ml whipping cream

100 g white chocolate

4 - 8 oatmeal cookies

2 Tbsp strawberry jam

2 - 4 fresh strawberries

Preparation

Wash the organic lemon, dry it and carefully rub the peel.

In a large bowl, mix the sugar with the grated lemon peel.

Add the skyr, add the vanilla paste and cardamom and mix the whole thing with a mixer or something similar.

Let the white chocolate slowly melt, let it cool down a little...

... and then stir into the skyr mixture.

Whip the cream until stiff.

Then add the whipped cream in portions to the skyr-chocolate mixture and mix by hand with a spoon.

Then put the mousse mixture in a large bowl or in portions into dessert glasses and chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

Then carefully crumble half of the cookies and spread the cookie crumbs over the skyr mousse.

Heat the strawberry jam so that it becomes liquid again and spread it over the biscuit crumbs.

Stick the remaining cookies into the mousse.

Wash, clean and chop the fresh strawberries and arrange on the dessert.

Serve the skyr mousse well chilled.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Gleðilegt sumar og takk fyrir veturinn

Happy summer and thanks for the winter

The old Icelandic calendar only knows two seasons - winter and summer.

Accordingly, the Icelandic winter begins at the end of October and the first summer month, the month of Harpa, begins on the first Thursday after April 18th.

The first day of summer ("sumardagurinn fyrsti") 2025 is today - Thursday, April 24th.

Sumardagurinn fyrsti = The first day of summer

The first day of summer at the end of April is still a public holiday in Iceland. The joy of summer after the long, dark winter is omnipresent.

The first day of summer is celebrated in Iceland with celebration, with family celebrations and festivals in the towns and communities.

The weather forecast for the first day of summer is also a big topic days in advance. What will the summer be like? Will it be cold and rainy again like last year (when the maximum summer temperature in the capital area was almost 66 °F  resp. 19° C) or is it going to be a good summer?

In any case, the weather is currently sunny and relatively warm, our thermometer is currently reporting 52.5 °F resp. 11.4 °C. And last week we had fantastic weather throughout, sunny and clear, sometimes we were even able to sit on the terrace, even if there was still a cold wind blowing on other days.

In this sense: Gleðilegt sumar og takk fyrir veturinn!

Thank you for the past winter and I wish you all a nice summer.

I'm already looking forward to the coming summer!

[Translated from here.]

Laxasalat með rjómaosti

Salmon salad with cream cheese

On Easter Sunday we had a very cozy brunch with friends at our house, everyone brought something with them and so we were able to feast practically all day and even sit outside on the terrace in the bright sunshine in the afternoon and celebrate.

Since salmon is part of Easter for me, I contributed a salmon salad with cream cheese to our brunch, a laxasalat með rjómaosti .

I think the salad tasted very good, nice and fresh and crunchy. A friend took the rest of the salad with her because she also found it so delicious, which made me very happy. So today I rushed to post the recipe for the salmon salad here on the blog.

Ingredients

500 g smoked salmon
1 cucumber
1 red onion
1 bunch of parsley

200 g cream cheese with herbs

1 lemon

salt and pepper

Preparation

Squeeze the lemon and mix the cream cheese with the lemon juice in a large bowl.

Peel the cucumber, halve it, remove the seeds and cut the cucumber into small cubes.

Peel and dice the onion.

Also cut the smoked salmon into small cubes.

Wash the parsley and chop it finely.

Add the chopped salmon with the cucumber pieces, the chopped onion and the parsley to the cream cheese and mix everything thoroughly.

Season with salt and pepper to taste and let it sit in the fridge for a bit before serving (approx. 1 to 2 hours).

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Páskamatur

Meal planning for Easter

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing for Easter this year, especially since we have visitors over the holidays, and maybe friends will come over spontaneously, so everything is still changing constantly - but I'm already collecting ideas for Easter dinner.

In fact, unlike Christmas, there are no fixed culinary traditions surrounding Easter food in Iceland.

So you can think to your heart's content what you would like for Easter. Many Icelanders like to eat poultry dishes at Easter, especially turkey, which has been the most popular Easter food in Iceland in recent years, or duck or chicken.

The second best-seller at Easter has recently been the leg of lamb. However, the lambing season in Iceland doesn't actually begin until the end of April; most lambs are usually born in May - by then Easter is already over. Furthermore, the lambs are not slaughtered then, but in autumn. In this respect, lamb is not traditionally a typical Easter meal here.

I'm still undecided, but at the moment I'm thinking about the following dishes for lunch together on Easter Sunday:

Starter - favorite dip

I made this dip for Easter two years ago, as a sort of "starter" for Easter dinner, and it was a real hit with everyone, even my youngest was very enthusiastic about it. I've made the dip several times since then and it's always been a hit. Maybe it'll be available again this year...

Grilled lamb with skyr sauce

I don't know yet what the main course will be. Maybe we'll just grill, I got a (not so small) travel grill from a dear friend for my birthday. If the weather cooperates, it would be nice to be together in a larger group!

Rúgbrauðssúpa með malti og appelsíni

In Iceland, "Malt og Appelsín" is a very popular drink - a mixture of malt beer and Appelsín (= very sweet, very colorful orange lemonade). The mixture is usually available ready-made all year round; at Christmas it is available as "jólaöl" (= non-alcoholic Christmas beer) and at Easter as "páskaöl" (= non-alcoholic Easter beer).

Not only can you drink it, but you can also use it in the kitchen - for example in this delicious rye bread soup, which is less of a thin soup and more of a fairly thick dessert. The soup is still warm and served with whipped cold cream.

In any case, we wish you a happy Easter with these impressions from the last few years, a happy and blessed Easter.

Gleðilega páska!

[Translated from here.]

Brauðterta með reyktum laxi og eggjum

Bread cake with smoked salmon and eggs

What the Swedes have their "smörgåstårta" is to the Icelanders their "brauðterta". In Iceland, you can traditionally find such hearty bread cakes with mayonnaise, lots of mayonnaise and even more mayonnaise between sweet pastries at many buffets, from celebrations with friends and family gatherings to funerals and company events.

The white bread for the typical Icelandic Brauðterta is bought frozen in 650 g packs from the supermarket, left to thaw in the fridge overnight and then prepared the cake the next day. It is similar to bread for toasting, but sliced horizontally instead of vertically.

Ingredients

1/2 Brauðterta bread (approx. 300 g)

400 g smoked salmon

4 hard-boiled eggs

200 g mayonnaise (79% fat)

200 g Miracle Whip

200 g sour cream (18% fat)

1 bunch of fresh dill

1 bunch of fresh chives

1 - 2 tsp caviar

Preparation

Cut the smoked salmon into small cubes.

Peel and dice three hard-boiled eggs.

In a large bowl, stir together the mayonnaise, Miracle Whip and sour cream. Chill half of it in the fridge to cover the Brauðterta and let it solidify a little.

Mix the other half with the chopped salmon and chopped eggs.

Pluck half of the dill and chop it together with half of the chives. Add the herbs to the salmon-egg mixture and stir.

Carefully trim the edges of the bread slices with a sharp knife.

Then place the first slice of bread on a cutting board, spread it with approx. 1 cm of the salmon-egg mixture, place the next slice on top and also spread it with approx. 1 cm of the salmon-egg cream. Continue and finish with a slice of toast.

Then wrap the layered bread cake in aluminum or cling film and let it firm up a little in the fridge.

After about 2 hours, spread the cake with the remaining sour cream and mayonnaise mixture and decorate to your heart's content with the remaining herbs, the fourth hard-boiled egg and the caviar.

Then serve the Brauðterta.

And here's another photo of the "cut" of the bread cake.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]