Hanastél með jarðarberjum

Strawberry cocktail

In Icelandic, a cocktail is usually a "kokkteil" or a "kokteil", but the term "hanastél" is also sometimes still used.

It is simply the literal translation. "Hani" is the Icelandic word for "cock" and "stél" means "tail. So "hanastél" means literally "a cock's tail".

Ingredients per jar

3 - 5 large strawberries

1 Tbsp honey

50 ml gin

150 ml tonic water

3 - 5 ice cubes

Preparation

Wash and clean the strawberries and puree them with the honey.

Then strain through a sieve into a tall glass.

Pour in gin and tonic and add ice cubes.

Decorate to taste with fresh strawberries, a lemon slice or similar.

PS: The cocktail also tastes good without alcohol, i.e. without gin and just with tonic water.

[Translated from here.]

Skinkusalat

Ham salad

Here I quickly made a salad with ham and eggs for dinner.

This is a traditional, simple recipe, simply made with ham, boiled eggs, sour cream and a little ketchup - all ingredients that you often have on hand at home.

If you like, you can spice up the recipe a little, season the salad with salt and pepper to taste or add fresh herbs.

Ingredients

200g ham

4 hard-boiled eggs

200 g sour cream

2 Tbsp ketchup

Preparation

Peel the hard-boiled eggs and cut them into cubes with the egg cutter.

Dice the ham with the kitchen knife.

Place the chopped ingredients in a bowl.

To make the dressing, mix the sour cream with the ketchup and then add the mixture to the bowl.

Mix everything thoroughly.

If necessary, season with salt and pepper or add fresh herbs to taste.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Epla Skyr Boost

Apple Skyr Booster

Sometimes I don't really have time to cook on the weekend, so all I have during the day is a fresh Skyr booster.

This is a particularly uncomplicated, quick recipe, with vanilla skyr, an apple, some ground cinnamon and a few ice cubes.

Peel the apple, throw all the ingredients into the blender and puree them - you're done!

Ingredients for 2 servings

400 g vanilla skyr

1 apple

300 ml apple juice

1 tsp cinnamon

6 - 8 ice cubes

Preparation

Wash, peel and core the apple and then cut it into pieces.

Place all ingredients in a blender and puree thoroughly.

Pour the mixture into the glasses and serve immediately.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Skyr með súkkulaði og appelsínu

Chocolate Orange Skyr

Today in Iceland we celebrate bóndadagur, i.e. Men's Day.

The Old Icelandic calendar only knew two seasons, winter and summer. The winter month of Þorri #, the "drought month", begins on Friday between January 18th and 24th, i.e. on January 24th in this year 2025. On the first day of this month, the traditional feast Þorrablót was celebrated, which also paid special tribute to the master of the house. From this tradition came the bóndadagur, i.e. the “day of the landlord”.

Today bóndadagur has become “Husbands Day”; you give your husband flowers, treat him to delicious food or in other ways.

As a surprise for my husband today, I have this delicious chocolate skyr with dark chocolate and fresh orange. And afterwards we have a barbecue with the family present...

In this sense:

Gleðilegan bóndadag! Happy Men's Day!

Ingredients for 2 servings

400 g pure Skyr

2 oranges

1 - 2 Tbsp baking cocoa

2 Tbsp honey

40 g dark chocolate

Preparation

Peel one orange, fillet it and cut it into small pieces.

Halve the other orange and squeeze it.

Crush the chocolate.

Mix the skyr thoroughly with the orange juice, baking cocoa and honey. Finally, stir in half (!) of the chopped chocolate.

Divide the Skyr mixture between two bowls, glasses or similar.

Garnish the chocolate skyr with the orange pieces and the remaining chopped chocolate and then enjoy.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Lífið er litríkt

Life is colorful

“Colorful” means “litríkur” in Icelandic. Sounds good, right?

I think it's nice when life is colorful, happy and varied - and I also like to bring more color into my everyday life, especially on gray days. So I also like to knit beautifully colorful things!

Somehow it spontaneously happened after New Year's Eve that I knitted a leftover sweater from the Léttlopi wool leftovers that have accumulated in our Iceland house over the last few years. At first I thought I would just knit another hat, but after I started I changed my mind.

My leftover sweater is of course with a round yoke, like typical Icelandic sweaters, but without a pattern and completely ribbed. I think it feels particularly soft and fluffy and is really warm!

As a precaution, I jotted down how I knitted the sweater in bullet points in case I wanted to do something similar again. Maybe next time as a cardigan...? I just hope I'll still know what I meant with my embroidery points here..!

I used up all the Léttlopi wool that I had left somewhere in the house, only some white wool was left...

When the sweater was finished, we did a “photo shoot” in the snow. We were driving around Selfoss anyway and then I stood in front of a big pile of snow on the side of the road with my colorful sweater and my colorful self-knitted bobble hat. My husband took a photo of me.

I thought, against a background like this, the color stands out even more and clearly shows exactly what I'm about - more cheerful, colorful color even for gray days! In the photo here I brightened the colors a bit so you can see better how colorful my sweater actually is.

We definitely had fun taking photos!

My next knitting project will be a classic lopapeysa, a typical Icelandic sweater with a round yoke... My youngest offspring has outgrown his lopapeysa, he clearly needs a new one! We bought the wool in Reykjavík and my youngest picked out the colors himself. So I'm taken care of again and can relax and relax in front of the TV in the evenings and wind down...

[Translated from here.]

Græn skyrskál

Green Skyr Bowl

My husband wanted the healthiest possible start to the year, so I try to include a lot of fruit and vegetables in our diet.

Here I tried a recipe for a nice green skyr bowl, with avocado, orange and spinach as well as some mint.

Finally, sliced ​​almonds and coconut flakes are added to the skyr bowl, on the one hand for the look - but above all for the feel, the crunchy almond flakes and the dried coconut flakes form an interesting contrast to the thick, soft skyr mixture when eating.

Ingredients per serving

200 g vanilla skyr

1 avocado

1 orange

1 handful of spinach

4 - 5 ice cubes

about 8 leaves of mint

1 tsp sliced ​​almonds and coconut flakes

Preparation

Peel and roughly chop the avocado and orange.

Wash the spinach leaves.

Put the pulp in a blender with the vanilla skyr, the spinach and the ice cubes as well as about half of the mint leaves...

... and puree everything thoroughly.

Place the mixture in a bowl, decorate with the sliced ​​almonds, coconut flakes and the remaining mint leaves and serve immediately.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Endurlit 2024

Looking back at my Iceland year 2024

Now January is already half over and I'm just now getting to my annual review of last year! Somehow there's too much going on again...

Beginning of 2024

Our year 2024 began in Iceland, in our little house here, cozy with husband and child.

Shortly after New Year's Day, child no. 3 and his girlfriend came to visit for an "Iceland in Winter" impression. Unfortunately, child no. 3 had already been sick in Germany before New Year's Eve, with fever and a cold. He was feeling much better again, so they flew to Iceland to visit us as planned at the beginning of January. Unfortunately, he felt really dirty after the flight. He spent the next day in bed but got progressively worse and after he coughed up more and more blood we took him to the emergency room at the hospital in Selfoss. Diagnosis: pneumonia. Well, that's how we met an Icelandic bráðamóttaka (= emergency room)...

When we returned in February there was another volcanic eruption on Reykjanes, and this time the lava hit the infrastructure. The hot water pipe was destroyed. So no heating in the houses - and that in the middle of winter. All public facilities were closed. People were asked to save electricity by only having one electric oven per household so that the network was not overloaded. There was then a defect in the cold water pipe, and due to the pressure drop there was sometimes no cold water.

Because we flew with Play, departing at 6 a.m., we had booked a room in a guesthouse in Keflavík the night before the flight. Luckily, that worked, even though there was no hot water and the electric ovens couldn't be used for hours in the evening, because otherwise - if everyone was cooking more or less at the same time - there would have been another power outage. But everything went well and what I remember most is how we snuggled up comfortably in our beds in the evening...

During the Easter holidays we visited our grandchild in Iceland for the first time - we particularly enjoyed that!

Iceland summer

Our summer in Iceland was again full of very different experiences - both culturally (from the church concert in Sólheimar with Páll Óskar to the mud tractor event in Flúðir to a visit to the house of Nobel Prize winner Halldór Laxness and the Pride Parade in Reykjavík)...

... as well as culinary. The very special highlights for me were the food tour with Sabrina from Bitesized Iceland at the Old Port of Reykjavík and of course the invitation to eat with Fröken Selfoss for an Icelandic menu that really contains almost everything that one associates with Icelandic cuisine. It was just an absolutely amazing culinary experience!

Northern lights in autumn

Autumn surprised us with wonderful northern lights, the likes of which we had never seen before.

We were also able to experience the increased geothermal activity in the high-temperature area of ​​Haukadalur, around the geyser, and a very atmospheric Halloween evening with lots of happy, singing children roaming the streets in Reykjavík.

Also, on October 22nd, the second day Grindavík reopened to the public, we were in the city for a short, very impressive and oppressive stay.

In November, Linava's Minnisspil about Ísland was published, a language learning memo game about Iceland, with 36 typically Icelandic terms and the Icelandic vocabulary. It was originally released in 2022 as a Sweden memo game and now in November 2024 Anne von Linava has released further versions (after Swedish now Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Scandinavian with all 5 languages). I was able to be the inspiration for the Island version, which was a lot of fun and I just love the game so much!

End of the year

The year 2024 ended for us where it began - in winter in our Iceland house. Here we are in the hot pot, wonderfully relaxing in the hot water, there was snow everywhere and the sun was setting, bathing everything in a very special, golden light... A nice end to the year with my loved ones!

And another annual review of some of my knitting projects from last year:

For Christmas there were bobble hats, first one for child no. 2's girlfriend, then - because the knitting went so surprisingly quickly - another one in pink for child no. 1 and finally one in black for myself.

In the spring I knitted the gray cat slá ("axlarslá") as a shoulder warmer as a birthday present for a friend. For Easter I knitted the yellow Slá with the purple bunnies.

In the summer, even more slár as a shoulder warmer on cool Icelandic summer evenings - here I have photos of the dachshund Slá for a very special colleague of mine, of two petrol-colored shoulder warmers with plant motifs on the edge and of my sheep Slá from the thin Plötulopi -Wool.

In the fall I started knitting a few Christmas presents - the thick red and white Lopapeysa as Álafosslopi, i.e. the thick Icelandic wool, in the colors of his football club for child no. 2, a Christmas Slá in Christmas colors with green and red for my sister and Lopapeysa in petrol green with a light green and pink pattern for a friend who has lived here in Iceland for years, but still had no lopapeysa! There was also a bobble hat with pink bobbles in the same colors...

With this in mind - I'm looking forward to many new knitting projects in the new year! I've already finished the first sweater of the new year and I bought the wool for the next Lopapeysa in Reykjavík this week... after child no. 4 has successfully grown out his Lopapeysa, I think he needs a new one!

[Translated from here.]