While the Easter Witches were out…

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro-Nilsson, long weekend, Sweden.

A much appreciated long weekend in Sweden!
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

With a caffè latte in hand, I couldn’t help but sit back, enjoy the weather today and observe with delight, plenty of Swedish children decked in their cutest Easter gear, as little Easter Witches. Several were daring enough to come trick or treating at the door with basket in hand, to which they were rewarded with some Italian made Easter chocolate eggs!
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Things I love about Philly!

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The Philadelphia Museum of Art at Fairmount

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the largest museums in the USA. Still, when asking for directions in Philadelphia people might not immediately recognize what the huge building at the small hill near the river is, but if you ask about the “Rocky” stairs … aha!

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An ongoing exhibition here that is not to be missed is on Italian fashion designer Roberto Capucci: Art into Fashion that goes on until June 2011.
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

Far from being a cliché, running up and down the “Rocky Stairs” is exactly what people do up until today in Philadelphia. That, and posing in front of the Rocky statue for pictures.
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Pizza Rustica

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A traditional Italian dish also known as Pizza Ripiena, usually eaten on Ash Wednesday and then again on Easter.
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

It was an article in the New York Times that I came across Pizza Rustica. I’ve always been a fan of quiche, so I could not stop myself from trying my hands at creating a version of this typical Italian Easter dish. There are so many things that seem more fun when the sun finally arrives back after a long cold winter up here in the North of Europe. Cooking is one of them.
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A Red Dot meet-up at Penn

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LOVE at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

On University of Pennsylvania campus ground, a replica of American artist Robert Indiana’s iconic Love sculpture whose original is on display in the ‘Love Park’, near City Hall here in Philadelphia. The girls to the left? Haven’t a clue.
They were just there. Beautifully draped all over the thing.
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

Founded by Benjamin Franklin, the University of Pennsylvania has consistently ranked one of the world’s top universities, with its business school, Wharton, being legendary. Even now as my work brings me side by side with faculty drawn from this ivy league university, I was happy to visit the actual campus, especially during Cherry Blossom season!

University of Pennsylvania, campus.

The Upper Quad Gate, the number one popular “dorm” or college house, among most Freshmen at Penn, scenic in the Spring sunlight.

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro Nilsson and Jan-Erik Nilsson at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

JE and I at Penn, directly across the Upper Quad Gate.

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Campus life – just brilliant!

I completely enjoyed walking down some of its numerous pathways that bathed in the early spring sunlight, exploring buildings, the libraries, the bookshop and slightly beyond the campus grounds, a cozy shop that sold all things chocolate. Fictional Hogwarts excluded, I could never dream up a more vibrant campus life than what I met with at Penn walking down Locust Walk.
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Postcards from Philadelphia, USA

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro-Nilsson, Philadelphia, March 2011.

In Chinatown, just outside the restaurant Penang in Philadelphia, USA. It was colder than usual for this time of year in Philly with temperatures hovering around 0C. In this picture on me, a beige wool coat from Patrizia Pepe, a mole coloured wool knitted scarf by Isabel Benenato, both Italian designers. Brown denim jeans from Warehouse, a deep pink wool sweater by Karen Millen. Boots are from Clarks.
J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

Cherry blossoms were supposed to be in full bloom during this time of year that is end of March in Philadelphia, USA. In fact, Washington DC is right now celebrating its Cherry Blossom Festival, but where I was in Philadelphia, it was chillier than usual with temperatures hovering between -3C and 3C.

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro-Nilsson, University of Pennsylvania, UPenn, USA.

The University of Pennsylvania or UPenn has got remarkably beautiful grounds. In fact, their school’s Quad is featured in the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, 2009.

I was in Philadelphia on conference as one of several invited speakers, to be part of a panel discussion on Singaporeans living and working abroad. The conference was held at Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, where I thought the univeristy grounds were breathtakingly beautiful, despite the chill.

Philadelphia warms my heart. And I’ll be back in short, with why.

Chocolate peanut spread

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Chocolate peanut spread and brownie cupcake topped with strawberry jam.

A homemade peanut butter chocolate spread atop a cupcake chocolate brownie.
J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2010

So I ran out of Nutella. Complete devastation on my part, me being almost addicted to the stuff. But on the upside of this small set-back for breakfast this morning was the fact that I could now raid my kitchen cupboards to make my own chocolate spread.

Roasted peanuts

Roasted peanuts.

I found myself staring at a bag of roasted peanuts and immediately recalled the last time I attempted to make my own peanut butter. Disastrous. I turned out overly chunky and non-spreadable peanut butter. So appalled at what I could possibly churn out with something as simple as a little oil, ground peanuts and sugar that I haven’t brought myself to try again since then.

But I took a deep breath, with my conviction that nothing could possibly go that wrong with nuts in chocolate made spreadable, and decided to see if I could combine the two to get … peanutella?
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Letter from the Kameda Medical Center, Japan

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I got this email from John Wocher this morning and thought I’d like to share it. John is long time family friend. In times of great catastrophies such as these, I can’t help but reflect how the decisions we make, define who we are.

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Update from Kameda Medica Center. 80km south of Tokyo directly on the Pacific coast, in a town called Kamogawa.
Photo © John Wocher, March 14, 2011

From John
Good Morning – May be sporadically on the forum, maybe not…

Everyone knows that on Friday at 3:29 Japan suffered a massive earthquake which now has been revised as a magnitude 9.0 quake. Here on Monday morning, the full devastation has been the subject of major news worldwide and it is horrific. An hour ago, another nuclear reactor explosion.
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Blueberry Muffins Knowledge Conceptualization and the Knowledge Spiral

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Icing sugar on blueberry muffins.

Blueberry muffins, A Sunday’s afternoons delight.
Photo © JE Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2011

Sunday afternoon, I’m leafing through at least two cookbooks and several leaflets of muffin recipes that my mother had handed over to me over the years, in search of consistencies between the recipes. I could of course try the Internet too, but that would most likely compound the problem of coming up with a trustworthy recipe for something as simple as a muffin, since depending on culture and beliefs about information sharing, authentic recipes over the Internet are rare finds.

Blueberries into the batter.

I used 300 grams of deep frozen blue berries softly stirred with white sugar. Whole fresh berries might have been better.

In this day of social media where technology lends overwhelming support to the creation and sustenance of the knowledge economy, it leads to the fact that a lot of people are managing their expert know-how to their cooking by just not wanting to tell how they do it, thus leading to any number of nonsense recipes on the Internet, being just plain wrong.

It’s frustrating, time consuming and infuriating to not be able to get all details to the cooking or baking, from the ingredients and their quantities, to more precise information such as when eggs are best used, to if they should be cold or room temperature before whisking them them together with some butter to get the right consistency.
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A crisp Potato Salad

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plate-dry

A homemade potato salad with fresh, crisp green apples that goes splendid with barbecued chicken.
J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

A while back I asked a friend, Torbjörn Eliasson, about his thoughts on a potato salad that would go nicely with a barbecued Chicken, and after a quick raid in the grocery store, he came up with more or less this suggestion. He refuses though to take credit for this recipe since I am not using “the right yogurt”, which neither of us remember the name of anyway, but it is a thick, French made yoghurt with a stiff consistency, which is important for the salad’s ability to stay firm.

Presented in this post is a pretty close version of this day’s original potato salad anyway.

Choose the juiciest and most wholesome barbecued chicken you can find, straight from the store, and you’ll have a gorgeous lunch.

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Only cold ingredients go into this salad, even the boiled potatoes.

Ingredients for 4-6 persons

Base:
5 or more cold boiled potatoes of a firm cooking type (Asterix)
1 peeled green apple, all cut to dices
2 chopped up shallots or/and maybe half a red onion, in small dices

Sauce:
300 ml crème fraîche
300 ml thick yoghurt
(If this becomes too thick or fatty depending on brands, add up to 300 ml of whipped cream to taste)

Flavour
1-2 tbs capers
Some spring onion strands to taste
The seeds from 1 pomegranate, stir in some or add all on top of the finished salad together with the spring onion
Add salt and black pepper, and taste! This is very important since your local ingredients can be so different from what we used.

For the potatoes use firm potatoes, already boiled or boil a new set and set them aside to cool before mixing. Carefully fold the ingredients together, and the salad is done! The pomegranate seeds comes the very last since they will color the whole thing pink otherwise, or you can skip them entirely if you want.
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