Appetizer:

* Foie gras terrine served on brioche bread & frisée salad

with red onion marmalade in a glace of balsamic with

fresh winter berries *

Ingredients:
Foie gras terrine (Buy it from deli man, enough for 6 people)
5-6 slices of brioche bread
2 pieces red onion
2 dl of Sugar
2 dl of Water
Balsamic vinegar

Preservatives and jam powder
winterberries

1. Balsamic vinegar is poured into a small saucepan and boil slowly about. 10-15 min. until it begins to thicken. Cool it, and then within a few minutes it gets a creamy consistency.

1. Cut red onions into tiny cubes. Boil water, sugar and 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar until it is thick. Stir the preservatives and jam powder in, so it will have a firmer texture. Placed it in the refrigerator.

Starter:

* Fried scallops with chorizo on a bed of mixed lettuce served

With a salsa of mango, melon and pineapple *

1 pome’granate
1 pcs. organic baby pineapple
1 pcs. honeydew melon
3 pcs. Mangoes

salt

pebber

Dressing:

1. Cut the pineapple, melon and mangoes into cubes and mix them together in a bowl. Put it in the fridge.

2. Cut pomegranates in two and bank this by hand with a heavy kitchen utensils. Set aside.

3. Cut the chorizo into slices lengthwise so you get long slices. Fry it until it gets colour on both sides.

4. Roast scallops in oil in a hot frying pan 1/2 minute on each side. Season it with salt and fresh pepper structure.

 5. Mix the dressing together. Lemon, honey and mustard, salt & pepper. Then mix the dressing into the salad.

 6. Serving:

 Arrange a small handful of juicy lettuce on one side of the plate. Sprinkle with pomegranate. Add 3 fried scallops on 3-fried chorizo slices. Garnish with the fresh salsa!

Dessert

* Orange & Lemon Mousse *

5 pcs. of gelatine
4 eggs
120g sugar
1 rod of good vanilla (Grain)
2 fresh oranges
2 fresh lemons
2.5 dl whipping cream

 Garnish:
1 dl water
0.5 dl sugar
The peel of 1 orange

Put the gelatine in a bowl with plenty of cold water. Put the egg yolks in one bowl and the whites in another. Whisk the yolks fluffy white with half of the sugar. Split the vanilla rod, and scrape the grains out and whip them into the yolks. Wash the oranges and lemons and dry them off. Grate finely the shell gently and turn it into the yolk. Cut the oranges and lemons in half and press the juice out. Drain the juice and put it in a little saucepan. Heat up the juice slightly (not to much!). Press the water out of the gelatine and melt it in the orange/lemon juice. Whip the juice into the yolks.

Gimme white Christmas, but please no questions about New Year's Eve... Ela in the Midnight Rider Coat.

I have this thing for Christmas. I simply love it. And when I say «love», I include any possible emotion this word generally comes along with. It’s painful, joyful and breathtaking at once. I long for it bitterly all year, thinking of it delights my heart and experiencing it brings peace to my mind and the most content smile to my face. Now that it’s over I wish Santa had granted my request for a time machine so I could fast-forward the days to experience the tree staring and gift opening traditions of Christmas Eve again right away. Instead, Santa’s unreliability in gift delivery forces me yet another year to face an «Eve» that I dislike as much as I adore the Christmas one.

I am speaking of New Year’s «Eve», a commonly celebrated and highly esteemed holiday whose right to exist I strongly question. Don’t get me wrong I generally support social get-togethers that come with good food, bottles of champagne and a day off to recover from the firewater’s consequences. But as far as New Year’s Eve is concerned, I simply don’t get the point. I mean how absurd is the idea of choosing one day in an interval of 365 and force each and everyone to turn nuts and party as if there was no tomorrow? Who exactly did choose the date anyways? And why in this world did they think that by pure chance, 6.9 milliards would feel like turning nuts and partying as if there was no tomorrow? You are right. If I dislike New Year’s that much I should just stay home, read a few pages of a dull and cheesy Nicholas Sparks novel and dive into Neverland before the machinery of clocks in the central European time zone make the last two digits of 2009 switch. Well, easier said than done as the requests of social responsibility and communal obligation that come with New Year’s are damn hard to meet stuck all alone in ones room.

It all begins with this one question. And what are your plans for New Year’s Eve? Honestly, how many times have you been asked this recently? Well, to me, people started dropping these words about three weeks ago and they haven’t stopped yet. It might have been acceptable to answer with «I don’t know» three weeks ago, but the closer time proceeded towards the 31^st the reactions on my answer became more and more indigenous at the corner of rolling eyes street and fake compassion road. People made it clear: It is intolerable and pitiable to not have plans for New Years’ and I should better find a way to turn nuts and party as if there was no tomorrow quickly in order to not be considered a socially isolated failure.

To be honest, I still haven’t figured out the details for the big night. As much as I would like to claim that I don’t care the idea of ending up in bed with dull and cheesy Nicholas Sparks scares me. And this awfully frequent asked question shows me that I might not be the only one with mixed feelings towards this oh so happy Holiday. There is something that makes us terribly worrying about it, and I for my case have to admit that it is the fear of having to spend it all alone… Bang! There you go with my confession, world!

So in case you do feel the same, I suggest we exclude this devil of a question from our end of year small talk repertoire and start approaching these New Year’s Eves as we approach any given weekday. And now tell me, why in this world should we have plans for a given weekday’s Eve three goddamn weeks in advance?

Happy New Year to all of you!

Ela

A little extra inspiration has popped up this time of year. It is most likely playing on TV night in and night out.. it is the classic and much-loved movie “A Christmas Story”. Who can forget the tongue and pole incident, the “leg lamp” or the line “you’ll shoot your eye out”?

It’s great for a night in sipping hot cocoa, but why not take some inspiration from the film’s 9 year old hero, Ralphie. Mix together plaids, snow boots, layers upon layers and throw it all together with nerdy chic glasses. It is the perfect colder-than-cold look that will keep things hot!

Last week, besides going to college and doing various interviews, our gorgeous and talented Quiksilver Woman Leddra Chapman also shot the video for her next single, ” A Little Easier” in Brighton. All went very well, despite the fact she had to lip sync to a version of the song that is ten times the original speed for a slo-mo effect! Check it out:

OK.. it’s Thursday.. hump day.. your work week is getting old and you are looking for a diversion. So here it is!

The Diversion Dress.

This dress is the perfect way to approach the trail blazing trends of fall. Perfect in plaid with a lace trim slip peeking out to give it that pretty tough mix.

Now that you have been diverted from you work week, it is time to create a diversion wearing this dress paired with woolly socks scrunched down to your booties, a grandpa cardigan and your go-to trench.

Hollywood is loving the QSW line…Selena Gomez is seen wearing a dress from the Spring 2009 collection

Ela clear-sighted in the Yesterday Jacket and the Encore Dress... (photo: Timo Jarvinen)

.

There is this one thing running particularly wrong in my life. Or to be more exact, it runs wrong about every other day. One could even claim that the only thing right and reliable about it is that it practically does run wrong every other day. It’s not a lot, but it is something, and probably what we have to be satisfied with in time of financial crisis and swine flu…

.

Well, this thing is also known as a public clock at which I bike by every day to University. A public clock running wrong might be a low-key affair in other countries, but it is kind of a big deal in Switzerland. I mean, it’s Switzerland, the country that pretty much invented the tick and the tack that make clocks all around the world go. Time and punctuality is technically paragraphed in the Swiss constitution. Swiss mums feed their babies with it. And Swiss teachers, bosses or any other person in authority have a legal right to put a headlock on anyone that doesn’t fully meet the requirements of time and punctuality… In short, Swiss clocks do simply not just run wrong. And if they still do, they mess up Swiss people’s life like this particular one messed up mine.

.

As there was a time in this clock’s life when the hands were according to their big boss in Greenwich, England, I almost fell off my bike the first time they weren’t. The clock ran about 30 minutes fast, which would have meant a 30 minutes delay for class for me, which again made me almost experience a minor heart attack. Such a reaction on being late might sound rather ‘petit bourgeois’ in your ears, but considering the Swiss breakfast and punishing standards it should no longer be surprising… So blame it on my education, but I knew no other option than to declare war on this piece of public nuisance.

.

Up from then, I punished the clock with my cold shoulder, and I was almost overconfident of my victory a few days later (the clock slowly but surely began to be on time more often), when the clock’s final attack eventually forced me to my knees. It happened to run wrong on a day on which things in my life weren’t running quite right either, and that was what made the scales suddenly fell from my eyes… What if this clock ran wrong to teach me something? What if it had a message for me? Yes, what if this ugly and wrong running piece was nothing but the faster ticking reflection of my life and only ran wrong to teach me that things in my life did just as its fingers? Maybe run wrong on some days but still run right the next?

.

Well, not that things were really all that simple in life, but how much easier are wrong running times to stand when we know that we just have to be patient for a day or two until they would be right again? So even if this clock is nothing more than what it really is (namely a simple, ugly and wrong running piece) it at least had the power to remind me illustratively that declaring war on wrong running things is a simple waste of time (especially in a clock’s case…). Sometimes things obviously have to go wrong to teach us right.

.

Now go find your own wrong running clock and appreciate it!

.

Ela

...after the scales fell from her eyes. (photo: Timo Jarvinen)