Weekend

In the autumn we try to cook more in the weekends, casseroles, pot roasts and such. Today I'm making Hungarian Paprikas with lamb, green, bell peppers, tomatoes and onions (there's an earlier blog post with this dish (made with veal). I'm going to serve with my most guilty pleasure mashed potatoes made with King Edward potatoes from a farm close to my parents' house. I make the mash with milk and real butter and sometimes I put in some chopped parsley and put an extra bit of butter on every serving. It's very white and sweet.
Last week I made a very Swedish dish, kalops, and I had forgotten how much I dislike it. I couldn't eat anything, J made lunches of all of it. Very simple recipe though, any bit of beef, bayleaf, allspice, carrots (but I used parsnips as I can't stand cooked carrots), some stock, lots of onions, just fry the beef and onions, then boil everything together for 1-2 hours. Disgusting. (I must have some very bad repressed memories connected to this dish.)
I had a lovely visist this weekend, my aunts, 2 of my cousins (not Malin unfortunately), one cousin-in-law and my sister came up on Friday, we had a nice dinner and chatted for hours. It was very nice but also sad as some of the things we discussed were about what it was like when my grandfather was an alcoholic and how this affected the family. But it's good to talk about these things I think. I know they had a really bad childhood at times, I've always known and I still miss my grandfather so badly at times. On Saturday my mum and dad came as well and my dad spent the day with J and the kids while the rest of us hit the shops.