Fløibanen, Mt Fløyen* choc cake*chix tortilla stew (add pics)

http://www.floibanen.com/

2 hours study this morning (reading, listening, repeating, grammar, vocabulary). Walked to ICA for groceries. T drove us all to the bottom of Mt Fløyen, so we catch the fløibanen (see link) up to the Fløyen Troll park. We had planned on walking back down through the winding mountain paths, and dressed well for the windy, chilly, sunny, almost warm, cold, hailing down rainy changing weather! But after a few hours, kids were tired and cold anyway, from stomping the puddles, taking off their jackets, changing clothes, going to the toilets (yes, 4 separate times, as FSM forbid siblings actually need/use the toilet at the same time. Five minutes apart, "JEG MÅ PÅ DO MAMMMA!!! MAMMMMA jegMÅpådu!!!!" haha Norwegian for I must use the toilet now mamma!)

Out of all the climbing and sliding down, jumping over, running under, hopping off and on and around and down under and over various wet slippery carved log and rock playground equipment, n only got a huge bump on her head when she decided to, gasp, only skip along the gravel. Her wet boots slid in the wet gravel, she fell onto one of the numerous log steps. The bump didn´t´show til later, as we were going down the fløibanen--when suddenly her forehead was swollen, red, black,green, red! She was well ready for a nap, having sat herself into her stroller, with her tutt (Norwegian baby talk, short for Smokk, the actual Norwegian word for paci, pacifier, dummy). "Tutt MIN MAMMA"! (My pacifier mommy!)

They usually love spending the day out walking round the city, or the country, in any and all weathers, but today were very tired, and cold in spite of being dressed for the weather. So, we played at the Troll park, which is at the top of the mountain near the overlook (which does not have railing for the most part. Though more than Ulriken which has none, but our kids have grown up with this terrrain and knowing the safety rules, so they are careful and do not try to run off the edge of mountains here!), then had to buy a ticket down. I´d only gotten a Tur (one way, as opposed to Tur-Retur which is a two-way ticket), as we had planned our usual walk down.



The machine wouldn´t work, and there are no people to take tickets up at the top. The gates wouldn´t open. So I had to yell politely to be heard by the people walking down, if they could get the fløibanen staff to help us! They were all very helpful. Tickets sorted a few minutes later for me and several other riders, we go back down in the fløibanen--such a gorgeous ride, even in wet weather. Trees, cityscapes, mountain panormas, sea. Beautiful!

It was just a block twice over and a half, for us to wait for T to drive round to pick us up.

Having lunch now, of Southwestern Chicken tortilla soup (recipe below9, fruit, salad, and kanelknuter (recipe in other post).

4 more study hours left for today! The kids are great helping me with my rolling letters---the way the local Bergen dialect rolls letters such as the R, which is not done in other parts of Norway, certainly not generally in Oslo, which imho has an easier dialect to understand:)

E especially, tries tutoring me with slowly saying the Rs and entire words for me to pronounce, and is great telling me when I am not doing it correctly!,) Not in a mean way, in a concerned for Mamma that she teaches me the correct way so I understand the language, as they understand not understanding a language. They spent most of their life going back and forth from here to the US, so spoke and understood mostly American English, which is different from British English and more different from Norwegian and various dialects here which they then had to also learn. They both had free tutoring in Norwegian at barnehage, when they started, as they were the only ones who were not fluent in Norwegian at the time. Now they are fluent, and help me:) They are not mean about it, and I appreciate how much effort they go to!:)


* Cashier charged 80NOK for me, 3 kids. That´s about 20 bucks I think. WOW. that´s the first time I actually converted the ticket price! That´s 40 bucks plus for the tur-retur, plus gas. Well, we still had a fun family day out, even if it did end up cut short and we had to unusually also take the fløibanen back down due to weather. The last time that happened was winter, when once we got up there and about an hour into our hike down, even the main paved railed paths were so icy we couldn´t easily walk down safely even with our ice spikes on our winter boots! We trudged backtracking up again to the top of the mountain to get the fløibanen down, as by that time the kids and I were all exhausted from slipping and sliding and trying not to slip and slide on the ice! Everywhere was snow, and it was oh so pretty! Most of the barnehages up there were out with their kids skiing and sledding, which we had not brought as I hadn´t thought there would be enough snow along our hike for it. We still had fun, just not exactly what had been planned. Plans change, go with the flow. I just hadn´t realized til now how expensive it was to tur-retur for our free hike!,)




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Wanted something sweet, warm from the oven. Pumpkin pie, which I don´t have time to make (filling plus pie crust) and bake. hmmm so looked around what else I had and what I could make with what I had. Lots of cocoa powder, some flour, sour milk, a little whole milk, sugar, eggs. Hmmm warm chocolate pudding or hot cocoa sounds good (not enough whole milk or time for either), sooooo a superquick chocolate cake! mmm

Directions: put all the ingredients together in a bowl, mix, pour into 2 Victoria sandwich tins, bake til done on a high temperature---176C. Eat warm from the oven with some canned peaches (yep, cuz I had some in the cupboards). yum! Very chilly tonight, snuggled up on the couch studying, and soon will be having a break for some warm chocolate cake and hot blueberry juice (sounds naff, but is very good!)

Enjoy your weekend. With love from Norway:)

oops! nearly forgot the ingredients!

This is an old fashioned way to quickly make a chocolate cake, with boiled water.



about 2 cups of flour, dash of salt, 1 c of sugar (as I like it to be less sweet and more chocolately--add more sugar if you want it sweeter), 2 tsp baking powder, 2 tsp baking soda, 1 cup cocoa. Mix all this.

Add 3 eggs, 1 cup any milk (soured, buttermilk, whole milk or any combination of), half cup oil or same amount of melted butter (or any combination you´ve got), vanilla. Mix all this into the bowl.

Carefully now add 1 cup or so of boiling water (water just off the boil is fine). Mix into a thin batter. Pour into pans, bake. See above. This is really good with cherries, or cherry pie filling, and whipped cream like quick a black forest cake.

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Quick Chicken tortilla stew from whatevers left in the fridge needing to be cooked:

Into a large soup pot, I threw in:

- 4 large tomatoes cut  into fourths skin on
-coriander seeds, black pepper, salt, fresh oregano leaves
-onions, yellow and purple, roughly sliced
-garlic cloves (4, whole small)
-3-4 celery stalks, cut into large pieces
-one tiny carrot, minced
-a dash pepper sauce (tabasco)
- one small green bell pepper, chopped
-water to cover twice
-3 handfuls of  uncooked black beans not soaked first
-8 whole black olives, remove the pits first

Bring all this to a rolling boil, turn down heat leave covered, simmer for a few hours whilst studying. It´s done when the black beans are soft to eat. Add  seasoning, cilantro etc to taste.

-about an hour before done, add some cooked roast chicken leftover from day before. Add a squeeze of fresh lime.

Serve with romme (sour cream), fresh cilantro, warm tortilla broken up into the stew, or whatever else you have/like. This was very good! The black olives added a good flavour also, would add a few again.