A magical recipe for love…

Let me share a secret with you….if you want me to? Well, if you do, read on, if not…wave farewell and à bientôt! So if you are still here, I assume you want to hear it?!! OK then, here goes: I will share my grandma’s pancake recipe with you. It’s not that of a master chef, but to me it makes the best pancakes in the whole wide world and I will tell you why in a little while…

You need one of those old frying pans made of iron, none of that nasty teflon (that I confess to owning, that’s gotta change!) and when you fry them you use either traditional margarine, or a vegan non-hydrogenated version. It should be slightly salty. The combo of the margarine and the frying pan, with the temperature being very high (almost top-notch, but be careful, they quickly burn) create a lot of (lovely) smoke – fire alarms sometimes go off….

So what you do is that you get as many eggs (organic, free-range) as there are people, then you mix them with flour – just keep adding and whisking until it gets so thick you can hardly move it (make sure there are no lumps). Then you add milk until you have quite a thin batter. You only need just enough batter to cover the frying pan, as they aren’t meant to be thick. Fry until golden brown on both sides. Et voilà – crèpes are ready to be served. Super simple. Just serve with fruit conserve (I love the ones that are sweetened with fruit juice), or some form of sugar, or whatever else you like. You can make them savory too and fill them with something nice, like mushrooms, asparagus and cheese – I made ones with shrimp in them when visiting my granddad last.

Nowadays I use either wholemeal spelt flour, or some gluten-free version (not always successful) and rice, or almond milk. If you want them sweet you can pour some maple syrup, or honey into the batter.

The trick with all of this is that you gotta whisk with love, pour with love, bake with love and eat with love. You gotta make them for the people you love, starting with one for yourself – the first one always end up looking funny, but it tastes the best as you can eat it whilst cooking the rest :0)

These pancakes aren’t perfect. They are lovable though, I can attest to that.

We love someone not because they are perfect, but because they resonate with us. For me, today, that was something I needed to remember.

Yesterday I got a bit busy missing my gran for half an hour or so. I realized it was pointless to long to be with her and granddad in Menton and eat coffee bonbons from the market in Italy, or simply sit watching her bake pancakes as we talk. What I do understand though, is that my life is filled with amazing people – the kind that really do stick around. The ones that do call back. The ones that I enjoy being around, who enjoy being around me. I like that. A lot. I think I should focus on them. They are still with me. They will one day be the people I sit crying over. So I think it’s about time I had them over for pancakes.

The apron of stars…given to me by my gran: Les tabliers des stars. Le premier prix d’interprétation de la recette des pâtes à la carbonara a été décerué au chef de famille. La maîtresse de maison a recu la palme d’or pour son hospitalité, et les enfants se sont vus attribuer le prix des jeunes espoirs du festival de la cuicine et de la maison.

Farmer’s Market…one of my fav past times!

A few of our cookbooks…underneath them are tons of food magazines. The bunch of notes, cut outs and recipes I gathered from gran is about the size of a small tower…and the bunch of cookbooks and recipes I have gathered at home in Sweden…let’s not even go there…my poor dad is threatening to toss all my books out of the attic every time I come home!

Love and my gran’s clogs…

Image via Wikipedia

Yeah, I know…the headline doesn’t start with “Let’s do the doggie, do, do, dah-dam tralalala…” or some other sexy thing. Give it a go though. You don’t always have to enter the backdoor to have a good time, or what do you think?

I went to see my gran a few weeks ago, she is in a ward for senile people. I was trying to read a book to her, a book that I once bought her, called “Home, Sweet Home.” In it there are quotes about home and pictures of cute animals to accompany them. It’s hard to have any kind of conversation with her, as her attention span is very, very short. The quotes were usually short enough to get her to listen though. Some she still struggled to understand, but as I said “Home is a place where you can say anything, as no one will listen anyway,” she shone up, laughed and said “That’s kinda true.” To see a reaction was beautiful – to find that a tiny bit of her is still there.

My gran said a few other things – usually relating to things that have nothing to do with her current life, constantly asking about my granddad, talking about the household chores she has done, or is yet to do, long dead relatives, etc. From time to time though, she would get something we said and reply as she would have when she was well. One thing she said was “We get along kinda well, you and I.” That, too, was such a “her” thing to say back in the day – stating the obvious with a dash of irony and a smile. One of her favorite things to tell me and my sister were: “You are like my daughters. Do you know how I know it? I can yell at you.” She had a great sense of humor, amongst other things.

My gran keep teaching me about love and life, even when she is in a state of oblivion. To cope with the fact that in front of you sits one of the people that mean the most to you, but she’s no longer fully there…is….well, it’s a journey from complete despair to understanding/acceptance. It’s also an interesting journey into questioning what a human being truly is? I loved my gran for her personality. Who I am today, is probably partly a mirror of whom my grandma once were, which I have never truly thought of that much before. I mean, sure I knew she inspired me and taught me things, but I never quite got how much like her I turned out to become – from my greatest traits to my insecurities. (Nor did I realize how much I became like my adopted TV mom…Dr Michaela Quinn, until I re-watched the series last summer. I was laughing and cringing at her, as she did well…what I would have done in her position.) Yet, whom my grandma is today is…a broken record player and one that can’t add any new tracks at all. It has made me question how much of us are a manifestation of our soul, our true center and how much is icing on the cake. I mentioned it the other day, but it seems to me most of us are record players, playing the tunes we have been taught, and very few of our own original tunes come out. It’s one thing to believe we have a soul when we are alive and well, but when someone’s whole personality falls apart, you wonder what happened to the soul? Is it trapped inside us, not being able to live fully?

I have talked before about how my gran’s disease taught me that what she always gave me and that I forgot to give myself, was unconditional love. Apart from baking pancakes and gingerbread cookies, doing my hair up and conjugating French verbs, cracking witty jokes and wearing mini-skirts, what she really taught me was just to love. She may have made me into a household Goddess with a taste for business and adventure, but above and beyond all she taught me what it means to have someone who always listen and supports you through it all. I believe we need that. When we have good love around us, when we are taught to love and respect ourselves, we won’t go running after all the other crazy things in this life that really don’t matter much.

As I sit here in NYC, I wonder partly if I’m crazy? I have set out on this journey to conquer the world with my businesses and movies, but what matters most to me is people. Of course, my everything is always about people, for people, but I keep traveling the world, being away from people. I don’t have a kitchen that is mine forever. A kitchen that is filled with spices, teas, crooked china, the smell of gingerbread and most importantly: people. As with everything else though: one without the other wouldn’t make me happy. I love America. I love France. I love business. I love movies. I love traveling. I love home life. I am what I am. A funny mix. What matters most to me now is to be all that I am in a way that honors it. That honors me.

The day after visiting my gran I was visiting my granddad. I put on my gran’s clogs and walked to the beach. For the first time I wasn’t sad. I knew I was OK. I knew she had taught me all I needed to know. I was wearing her clogs. It is time to wear them not just when I visit, but all the time. Wear the trust and love she felt for me.

Let’s conquer the world. In a pair of clogs and with gingerbread cookies. In a Chanel suit and with pancakes. In me and with love.

My gran always gathered newspaper clippings of Jöback for me…he has the most beautiful voice! God knows how many times I listened to his songs dreaming about making musicals….dreaming about living life. Dreaming of America…

Paris…

It’s Easter and I don’t know if you have a place where your heart feels at home at Easter, but mine’s Paris. Easter outside of Paris isn’t really Easter. Yesterday I woke up wishing I had wings so I could, at least, be in Europe to feel what spring is like there because to me Easter is the celebration of spring – the reawakening of everything. Then my dad called and said I should come home and visit the family and that was his Easter present to me. I won’t be able to go to Paris though, so instead I will write about her…

I met Paris when I was backpacking through Europe. We said hello to each other and didn’t think much of one another at first. I remember walking around the streets thinking there was nothing special about it. It just was. That was just it though – from then on Paris and I just were. You know, when you have friends that will just let you be? How you can come to them feeling happy or sad, on top of the world or drowning in sorrow, feeling absolutely comfortable? That’s Paris to me. No matter how foul a mood I am in, I will regain strength walking around her streets. I will invariably feel refreshed as I stand by Sacre Couer watching the sun rise or seeing the night lights sparkle across the city. I will get inspired walking around the Louvre getting ideas for movie scenes from all the artwork. I will stand by Da Vinci’s paintings pondering upon what his life was truly like and wondering why I am so obsessed by his persona? I will walk down Rue du Rivoli and take in the splendor and liveliness of the city, making me feel more splendid and alive. I will sit down to watch a movie on the Champs Elysée and pick up a walnut bread at Monoprix as I walk there. I will have lunch by the Seine and walk across the bridge by the Louvre to get to my fav hide away and eat some Haagen Dazs or have crèpes… Naturally, I will go to Le jardins du Luxembourg and sit basking in the sunshine watching the children play. Whilst in the neighborhood I will stop by Shakespeare and co. and once again decide they are way too expensive, but as always, worth the trip just to hang out there.

When I was backpacking through Paris I was 19. I knew nothing of the town apart from the fact that my grandma said the women wear the shortest skirts in the world (and so I became a lover of short skirts – between my grandma and Ally McBeal I was brainwashed) and Moulin Rouge was there. In fact, Moulin Rouge was the reason I was there. No, not the place, the movie. I watched it with a friend that fall and I got so inspired I decided it was time I did something with my life. I was having a gap year after high school and I was just working, which didn’t add up to all the interesting plans I had had during high school for my gap year. So after seeing the movie I told friends and family that on the 10th of December I was leaving (God knows where I got the date from) – if someone wanted to come, fine. I didn’t have a clue of where I was going, but I sat down and decided that it was going to be Belgium, France and Italy. Of course no one wanted to come with me because it was December. So I went on my own. I had a dream of throwing snowballs by the Eiffel Tower during Christmas, so why not?

On Christmas Eve I had two things on my itenary – the Eiffel Tower (from which I called friends and family to say Merry Christmas) and the Swedish church. After my visit to the Swedish church I decided to get out of the metro at Pigalle because a friend had told me it was like Soho and I loved Soho. Pigalle is NOT like Soho. And one really should not get out there at night unless you know where you are going. I mean, you should just know Montmartre is what I’m trying to say. I do now. I didn’t then. Of course I ended up by the Moulin Rouge and spent quite some time trying to figure out where the elephant was? (It burnt down way back when…) Then I went by an Irish Pub and decided to go inside. I spent the night playing pool with a Journalist from Le Monde. I didn’t realize that the metro stops going at one hour or another, so I had to spend the night on the Journalist’s couch (I repeat: couch…it might have been a bed, but you get my drift…).

The Journalist told me about his many travels – what it was like seeing the war, i.e. being a war correspondent. Now he was covering politics, but he would never be the same after the wars he had seen. He also told me that if you keep traveling around after a certain point in life, you will never stop. I smiled at it back then – of course I would settle down somewhere some day. I don’t smile so much at it anymore. I have my heart in France, my biz venture in New York, my roots in Sweden, my friends in London and my life in LA…and an urge to travel all over…

The Journalist also asked me if I was looking for work? “Yes,” I said. I didn’t know why. I just said so.

At the youth hostel I then met an American and an Australian and I really enjoyed their company after two lonely weeks in Belgium. So instead of going to Italy I stayed in Paris with my new-found friends and looked for a job. I found one too, so I called my dad to say I was moving to Paris. Any crazy artist gotta spend time in Paris, right? My dad, knowing me, just went “OK.” (I was hoping for a more dramatic reaction, but he is simply too used to me…I get crazy ideas and I am as stubborn as a mule – if something isn’t possible, I have to try…I don’t know if it’s a curse or a blessing.)

My first day back in Paris after gathering some belongings in Sweden was interesting. I broke my credit card. Back then I didn’t realize you could wire money rather quickly so I just had my dad send me a new card and prayed that I would sort this one out. I did. I met a girl at my hostel, she paid my hostel bill and the advance on a flat we found. I think we moved in the same night or the next morning.

My flatmate was brilliant – an Oxford graduate and wannabe writer. She volunteered at Shakespeare and Co. and took writing classes and I did the homework assignments also. Writing this blog reminds me of that – crazy writing projects. Things you never thought to write about, or never thought to write about in this or that way. (If anyone has an idea for a blog post – please contact me…)

I love words, but I don’t know if I can do Paris justice. If you have never walked through a fog swept Ile Saint Louis, or had a crèpes by Pigalle, if you have never watched the sunrise by Notre Dame or had your morning croissant in Montmartre, if you have never bought fresh veg in the market by Ledru Rollin or sat in the sunshine by a statue in Le jardin du Luxembourg, if you have never seen the moon from Sacre Coeur or had mint tea in Le Marais…I’m not sure I can describe it to you… Paris in and of itself is a treasure. As Hemingway said: you may be poor, but you still have Paris.

Till this day Paris owns my heart – I don’t know where I am meant to live, or work, or go next…I am a gypsy at heart, but part of that heart will, forever, be in Paris.

Joyeuses Paques!!!

So I’m starting a blog right now…ugh…face the fear and do it anyway!!

Hi…hello…bonjour, hej…

So here I am in a flat in Hollywood, living the dream as they say…only the dream never quite goes as planned, does it?

As a kid I dreamed of becoming a doctor and going to Africa to save the children. Then I fell in love with a dancer at the age of fourteen. He was damn hot and I was a geek, so I realized I’d never get him unless a miracle happened. Yet, when another girl in my class fell in love with him, I felt the need to confess to her my feelings. I always was honest to a fault. So I ran up to her during PE, made my confession and asked if she wouldn’t like to learn how to dance too? She did. So we started dancing together, fell out of love with the guy, but in love with dancing. We became best friends and decided to become Actors and move to NYC together. A few years later I got into NYU, but the fees were to high, so we went to London instead to study acting and directing there.

In the meantime I also read an article about Richard Branson and fell in love with entrepreneurialism (and Branson). So I decided to do that too. Become an Entrepreneur that is.

Finally, after many ifs, buts and maybes,  we ended up in LA, studying film. Stoked to finally be this side of the pond we have realized that living the dream ain’t that easy. You might wake up in LA, but your purse is still empty and you still ain’t having dinner with Di Caprio. In fact, you aren’t even serving coffee to Di Caprio. Instead you are fighting to get your first ever company up and running, your first ever novel finished, your first ever movie completed and your first ever epiphany that would finally sort your head out. Nonetheless, you can’t help but smile like some sort of maniac as you run down the hills on your morning jog with the wind playing in your hair and the sun painting your cheeks red, because after all, you are in Hollywood.

In this blog I will share with you, the reader, anything and everything that crosses my mind/path that I find thought provoking, or fun.

Why This Blog…Why Now???..

This summer I was living in Sweden – taking time out to arrange to move to LA after having lived in London for six years and during my time in Sweden a few things happened that made me want to talk to the world. Say what I have to say. Maybe someone would listen, understand, share their point of view with me, but more than anything I just wanted to speak, so that I had peace of mind that at least I had tried to express myself. Below is the first “post” I wrote during summer:

So I went to a regular gyn check-up. The ones you do more out of duty than a sense of emergency. So I did it. And forgot about it. They were supposed to send me a letter within a week if I had Chlamydia or HIV. Apparently I didn’t.

Then my sister calls me when I’m on vacation in London. “You got a letter from the doctor’s.” Really?! Maybe I had HIV or Chlamydia after all?! Very unlikely… “Well, open it.” So she read me the letter. I was welcome back for a closer check-up. I had cell changes.

Cell changes happen often. Nothing to freak out about. But it could be cancer. My mom died from cancer when I was six. I’m not my mom. I live a very different lifestyle. I have educated myself about health. I eat well. I exercise. I spend time outside almost every day. I meditate. Yet, I had cell changes. Immediately I started eating even more raw foods and do prayer therapy, as described in “The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind” by Dr Joseph Murphy. I forgave everyone I had ever had any issues with (well, I did my best). I did everything I could to heal myself. I didn’t think it was something to worry about. I didn’t “feel” it. My intuition told me I was fine. Yet, I was scared. I just got into UCLA, I was about to get my visa and move to LA, I was happier and more confident than ever – I had no intention of going dying.

Then I got home from my vacation in London. My grandma had fallen and was walking around all dizzy (like real dizzy, not dizzy like me, lol). And if she was negative about old age and her present life before, now she hit another low. Everything was wrong. And I am living with her over summer. So I ran errands for my grandma, I took her to the doctor’s, I did the shopping, I cleaned the flat and so on. More than anything I tried closing my ears to the negativity and installing something positive.

My other grandma, let’s call her gran to avoid confusion, was still hospitalized since a few weeks back and will be for the rest of her life. As my mom died young, gran became my “mom”. She has taught me everything from French to how to bake cakes. I used to call her for advice on just about anything. Now she walks around in fantasy land. Thankfully she still remembers me, but she can’t give me advice. Right now she thinks she’s teaching the cat French and that she has lived in Paris. When  I got back from London she seemed to be getting happier in her fantasy world because she was no longer all that aware that there was a real world that she could no longer access, but I was still mourning. To lose her is one of the biggest losses of my life.

I also work for “hemtjänsten” which means I go around to peoples’ homes helping them with everything from dressing their wounds to doing their shopping. I’m a nurse and a maid. One minute I feel like “Florence Nightingale to the rescue,” the next I’m having an argument with a senile man about whether he is supposed to eat his lunch or not. It’s an interesting job to have for a summer. In either case, at work they told us one of our patients has MRSA. The bacteria you shouldn’t have. If I had it they wouldn’t let me into the States. We all got tested. The result would take about a week. Around the same time as my next gyn examination.

As all this was going on I was also filling in three hundred papers for the US Embassy and the Swedish governmental student aid organization. If there is one thing I hate it’s paperwork. I’m dizzy remember?! It all seems to be flying around in my head, I get scared I will fill it in the wrong way and a seemingly simple task totally freaks me out. I don’t know how I survived working as a PA to a CEO. I need a PA myself. It would save me doing the things I’m seemingly incapable of remembering anyway. Like checking bank statements and that kind of thing.

All the while I kept envisioning myself in LA, outside LAX, having survived this whole application process and, quite literally, still being alive and well. WELL. Super charged, healthy, happy and stoked to be back in LA – this time not for a visit, but to study there. Study film. I had dreamt of that moment for almost ten years.

Suddenly it dawned on me how much I loved life. I’ve always said it, but now I GOT it. I wanted to keep eating sun-ripened pears. I wanted to keep my lovely body. I wanted to re-experience he feeling of sitting in a steam, of throwing myself into big waves by the beach, of sunbathing… I wanted to jump through leaves in fall, go snowboarding in winter, watch the first flowers in spring and jump through waves in summer. I wanted to bite into another delicious raw meal. Eat another home cooked chicken. I wanted to find my soul mate and have a family. Do the things career wise that I want to do. Suddenly nothing mattered but living. Of really doing whatever I felt like 24/7. And I felt like talking to the world. I’ve always felt like talking to the world. I’ve just been too damn scared to do so.

That’s why this blog now. Because I’m alive and I’m living. And I want to share that life – share what I know, what I think about, how I overcome hurdles and how much wonderful things there are in this life.

The gyn exam told me I looked fine, but further tests were taken and in worst case scenario a small operation. No full blown cancer. I’m still alive. I can still have babies.

The papers all got filled out.

My grandma is still negative and I’m learning to deal with it. I’m learning to accept her for who she is. She raised us. She was lovely. She has gone bitter and I can’t change it. I can’t remodel her. Not now. But I can love her the best I can and that is all there is to it. It’s my only duty to her. I might not make her happy, but I can make her loved.

My other grandma is still in hospital. And I miss her, I always will, but I can’t truly miss her. Because she’s in my heart. She taught me sooooo much. And there will be that support in my life forever. Because the learnings and the love are still there. Will always be there. If anything I shouldn’t be sad I’m losing her – I should be happy she was always there for me. Even if she can’t make a witty comment when a guy has just dumped me – I can at least, in my heart, know what that comment would have been.

The tests all came back negative from work.

If all goes well I’m still going to the States in August. I am going to live my dream in LA. But that’s in another tomorrow. Right now, right here at my dad’s country house I can hang out with my family. Eat dad’s homemade food. Watch the latest Harry Potter. Laugh with my sister. Delight in the smell of garlic.
I never really thought I wouldn’t make it through, yet, I was scared. I was overwhelmed. I thought I might faint from stress at times. At others I sat meditating in peace. I learnt, if you like, how important it is to have that mental switch, but more than anything I learnt to live and that is a gift. Gifts come in strange shapes and forms and the greatest gift of all is life and the love that comes with it if you choose to embrace it.