Baked goods...

Ryan gave me Deceptively Delicous by Jessica Seinfeild for my birthday last week and ever since I've been testing out a few of the recipes. The cookbook is all about incorporating veggie purees into items that usually don't contain them to make them a little more nutritious. It still doesn't really make a pan of brownies healthy just because you add 1/2 cup of veggie puree, but it's still fun to add some in and see if you can tell.

The second recipe I tried were these oatmeal blueberry bars (with spinach!) and I thought they turned out great! You can't taste the pureed spinach at all in the filling, which is 1 cup low-sugar blueberry preserves (I actually used a mix of my homemade raspberry jam and IKEA lingonberries...) and 1/2 cup pureed spinach. Even Ryan couldn't taste it and that means it's a winner.

But....the first recipe I tried definitely had remnants of vegetable taste in the spice bread. It's official name was gingerbread spice cake, but we call it broccoli bread. The 1 cup of broccoli puree with 1/2 cup carrot puree really stand out and overpower the bread so it doesn't taste very gingerbread-y at all. It actually tasted less like broccoli when it was fresh out of the oven, but once cooled....eek.

It looks pretty though!

It's been fun pureeing veggies into baked goods, now I need to try some of the non-baked recipes in the book.

Swedish Christmas Fair: the loot

So let's look at the loot that I picked up from the Swedish Christmas fair. There was an amazing booth of secondhand books in Swedish. And the best part...they were buy one get one free at $1 a book, so 50 cents a book! I got a Swedish cookbook from the 70's, I just love the cover.

And for the free book I got this Jan Guillou novel. I read part of his trilogy on the Knights Templar for my senior seminar class in Swedish and want to brush up since my Swedish is fading, fast.

These homemade little tomte were made by volunteers from the Swedish Church of Los Angeles, so cute!

Ryan and I bought 2 straw ornaments to expand our very small collection so we can decorate our tree!

And this original design Lucia card shouted my mom so I picked it up for her.

This linen calendar was from the same booth as the secondhand books. It was only 50 cents!

I know it's from 1992 but I thought for 50 cents I could make something with the adorable pictures surrounding the calendar part. I love the old Swedish coffee pot picture.

And the pots and pans.

And last, but certainly not least, I bought a yard of this precious fabric. It will make an adorable Christmas runner once I hem the ends.

So, as you can see, the fair was a raging success! I am quite thrilled with my purchases and can't wait to apply for a booth next year. I feel good that I got a few gifts and am feeling almost ready for Christmas! :)

Swedish Christmas Fair: the program and craft fair

Well, it's no surprise that the Swedish Christmas Fair was a smashing success! Ryan and I stocked up on semlor (Ryan's first time having one!) and lussekatter and later had some glogg. There were many a craft booth and I am determined to be one of them next year! So much cute stuff there! I'll share my finds in another post and for now I will share a few pictures of the fair itself.

The booths were tons of fun to browse and see cute Swedish ornaments and other creative Christmas decor. They had booths for linens/textiles, books, jewlery, shirts, and other handmade beauties.

And there were some traditional Swedish dances during some of the fair!

And, the food. Oh my. Ryan had never had semlor before so we made sure to get some.

Ryan clearly loved the marzipan middle, he ate it right out. :)

But he loved the whole thing and finished it all! They were quite scrumptious.

We met up with some fellow Swede fans from my college (North Park University, go Vikings!) and watched the Lucia processional together.

Sorry for the following dark, fuzzy photos. They turn out the lights during the processional and I took a few pictures but they didn't turn out amazing...

They sang a medley of Swedish songs and it was so good!

Ryan and I drank our glogg while we waited for the Lucia processional to begin.

Ryan loves his glogg.

A bird's eye view of the fair.

The front end where they setup tables to eat. And in the corner was the cutest crafting corner for kids! They were making paper Lucia crowns, precious! I not-so-secretly wanted to make one for myself...but the chairs were a bit small. :)

The other side with all of the craft booths.

The happy couple enjoying a fun day shopping, eating and glogg-drinking at the Swedish Christmas fair! Stay tuned for the loot post later, I scored some awesome stuff!