Personal – Awareness Compassion Pancakes

Recipe Ricotta Pancakes

Try these Italien inspired Ricotta Pancakes with fresh lemon curd. And maybe tell me, what you would suggest to drink with these?

Ingredients

250g ricotta cheese
125g all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 tsp fine salt
175ml milk (not nonfat)
2 large eggs, separated
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Butter, for cooking

Directions

1. If your ricotta contains a lot of liquid, set it in a fine mesh strainer to drain off excess liquid for about 30 minutes. If your ricotta seems fairly dry and compact, you can skip this step.

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a small bowl. Combine ricotta, milk, egg yolks, and vanilla in a separate, larger mixing bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the ricotta and milk mixture, stirring gently until just combined.

3. Beat the egg whites with a handheld electric mixer until stiff. Stir a small scoop of the egg whites into the pancake batter to lighten the batter, then fold in the remaining whites with a spatula.

4. Heat a pan or griddle over medium-high heat. Melt a little butter on the pan, just enough to coat the surface. Pour a little batter onto the hot pan or griddle. Cook the pancakes until the undersides are golden and you see a few bubbles popping through the pancakes. Flip the pancakes and cook until golden. Repeat with the remaining batter. Serve immediately with lemon curd.

Lemon Curd

Ingredients

85g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
200g granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
150ml fresh lemon juice
1 tsp grated lemon zest

Directions

1. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer, about 2 minutes. Slowly add the eggs and yolks. Beat for 1 more minute. Mix in the lemon juice.

2. In a medium, heavy-based saucepan, cook the mixture over low heat until it looks smooth. Increase the heat to medium and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens, and reaches 77°C. Don’t let the mixture boil.

3. Remove the curd from the heat; stir in the lemon zest. Transfer the curd to jars. Press plastic wrap on the surface of the lemon curd to keep a skin from forming and chill the curd in the refrigerator.

New York state of mind

Off the record. I will spend the next five days mixing business with pleasure, the best way I know how, in New York City!

I feel grateful and humble.

This past year I have met a lot of new and amazing people – they have inspired me in many ways, and have changed my perspective on life and the way I relate to other people.

People who know me have sometimes heard me say, that I have slight social phobia. They usually laugh, when I say that – probably because they see me at work, teaching, talking to a lot of people, being passionate about my work and so on. I don´t come across as shy.

But meeting new people has actually always been a challenge for me – especially if I was the one who had to initiate contact.

I have to overcome myself at conferences ans social events, if I don´t know anyone there, and I often get the urge to just go home instead of facing the situation.

But – this last year I have managed to convince myself, that whenever I hesitate – and can not find a rational reason for the hesitation – I need to step forward, not backwards. And doing that, has resulted in me meeting great people, and finding the best of friends.

These next five days I will be meeting with some of the people I have recently met.

I will go to a concert at Carnegie Hall listening to music composed by Georgia Shreve. I had the pleasure of meeting Georgia at a Positive Psychology conference in Amsterdam last year, and she was kind to invite me to her home in New York shortly after. What an amazing woman!

Also I will meet with great friends, that I met at TED Global in Rio 2014 – a conference that I went to ” all alone”, knowing no one there, and facing my fears head on. And what a joy it turned out to be.

I did say business too, right?!

And yes of course, I will also be meeting with 3 dedicated and talented guys working on a new business idea for the US market. I look forward to that with anticipation too.

My New York state of mind is to step forward when I hesitate – all good has come of it so far!

You should try it.

Iceland my love

There is nothing like the forces of nature to force you into the present moment, inspire awareness and make you feel love in every cell of your body. Iceland my love, how you do just that!

For the last three days I have traveled Iceland, and enjoyed the amazing scenery, fresh air and good company.

Visiting a place like Gullfoss makes you feel insignificant in a good way, and it made me feel grateful and humble at the same time.

Water falling, and water rising – the Geysir was absolutely worth a visit. I enjoyed watching people SO present just focusing on the surface of the geysers not knowing, when it would do its magic and spray high in the air.

There is something about perspective! And seeing things from above gives you a whole other impression. We went on a small plane ride for 40 minutes overlooking the Reykjavik area, and it was beautiful.

I you want to hear sweet music that best describes the love of Iceland – take a few minutes, and listen to this:

Iceland my love, you will always have a place in my heart – and I haven´t even tasted your pancakes yet..

Danish Design meets American Buttermilk Pancakes

Afternoon Pancakes #3 combined the great taste of American Buttermilk Pancakes with the aesthetic expression of Royal Danish Porcelain.

As you can see, I had made quite a tall stack of pancakes, trying to follow the good example of Rasmus Klump also known as Rasmus Lump. I grew up with the comic strip of Rasmus Lump, but never got to enjoy a stack of pancakes as tall as his. Yesterday came close.

The pancakes turned out great, and I served them with fresh berries and syrup. The fresh berries gave them a taste of summer.

I found these pancakes to be the best ones yet! But more are still to come.

Wednesday I will travel to Iceland, and maybe find inspiration for another great recipe.

Don´t mention the C-word!

How does Calorie-awareness affect what and how much you eat? Does it have any affect at all?

On my trip to California my travel companions and I had interesting experiences with calories, and the “in your face” listings of calories on menus.

When we arrived in California we all knew, that maintaining our weight would be a challenge. The concept of Vacation-fat is not strange to us, and it is a term widely used I Denmark.

Pretty fast we agreed on not mentioning the C-word. There should be no talk of calories! Not in the way that we would just eat without any thought to the consequences, but almost…

Staying unaware of the (huge) amount of calories in the (big) servings of food we where offered in restaurants and diners turned out to be a challenge we had not seen coming.

A lot of the menus we where handed had listings of calories on them. And even though we are all pretty well educated, and all work with health related issues and therefore have a lot of knowledge about nutrition – we where still surprised!

We where surprised at how many calories was actually in some of the servings! A breakfast containing 1200 – 1500 calories was not that uncommon. And knowing, that a woman of my size only needs about 2000 calories per day, that was a bit frightening.

But mostly I think we where surprised, at how these listings actually affected what we ate, and how much.

Needless to say, that calories are usually not something you find on Danish menus.

I personally chose the “Healthy alternative” when possible, and I usually did not eat everything on the plate. I also cut down on the in between meals, so that I would have enough calories to spend on the main meals.

I think, that my rationale was, that with the amount of calories being brought to my attention in this way, deciding to not mention the C-word, and dwelling on the calorie–unawareness, made no sense! There was a limit to how much denial I could get away with – even when visiting California.

As a result I made it through the week without gaining any weight. And I still had a good time, and ate a lot of good food. Including pancakes of course.

The opinions of my travel companions differed a little. One found that the listings of calories gave us an unhealthy focus on how much, and what, we ate. But all in all I think that we all used the information in a good way.

I should add, that in Denmark we are not used to serving sizes as big as the ones we saw in California! And also meals usually don´t contain such huge amounts of sugar, as Pancakes with syrup for instance. So should we have had to guess the amounts of calories in a serving, I think we would have underestimated quite a lot. Who would ever be able to guess the amount of calories tucked away in this nice serving of pancakes..

Do you have any comments or experiences in this area? Please share.

Afternoon Pancakes #2 – I confess to an egg.

Actually I confess to two eggs! Afternoon Pancakes was once again a pleasure – friends and pancakes are a combination that just can´t go wrong.

I do however confess to “pimping” the recipe with two eggs…

When I did a trial run on Friday, I found that the pancakes needed a little extra, when served “plain”, which means without anything cooked into them. So I simply added 2 eggs. It did the trick!

Baking these Dutch pancakes was a bit different, because of the fresh yeast that goes into them. It was fun to try, and worked great. Amazing to watch the yeast bubble in less than 10 minutes. Just look at this;

I made 2,5 times the recipe for 7 people. There was 2 pancakes left over (no one held back), and Katrine got those to take home to her boyfriend, so that she wouldn´t have to bake her self.

None of my guests had ever tried Dutch Pancakes before. They all liked them, and the syrup (stroop) and powdered sugar where a hit.

If you haven´t tried the recipe yet, I recommend you invite good friends and try them soon. With or without the eggs..

Upside down in California

I love to travel! Meeting new people, seeing new places, getting inspired and having my world view challenged.

And of course; awareness, compassion and pancakes – makes every journey a joy.

This last week in California offered all that, and at more times than one, I felt like my world was turned upside down.

You know the feeling, when reality hits?

I experienced that, mentally, emotionally and physically – and it was a pleasure.

Anthony De Mello wrote (something like this) in one of his books: “We see the world as we are and not as it is.”

We get caught up in our own view of everything, and run on autopilot!

But when we travel – we usually don´t get away with that. At least I don´t let myself get away with that.

For instance I had a nice little wakeup call, when we where looking at the stars one night, and I said out loud; “Something is wrong with the stars, the Big Dipper Constellation is turned upside down!”

Obviously nothing was wrong with the stars! I was just looking at them from a different angle on the other side of the world.

So there Camilla! Stop thinking that you are the center of the Universe.

I have nice little tales to tell about my week in California, and I will do so in the week to come.

For now some pictures to inspire:

San Juan Capistrano

San Diego

Manhattan beach

Santa Monica Pier

And did we have pancakes? Almost every day!

I will give you just one shot to make your mouth water – it os strawberry season in California;

More to come. Love to share.

California Dreamin’ with Pancake Friendly Friends

Arrived in LA last night and I am looking forward to spending a week in California.

I am traveling with 3 good friends from Denmark – Pancake Friendly of course – and we can’t wait to explore.

We didn’t know that it was Spring Break but I am sure that will only make the State even more alive.

So a week of Pancake Spring Break for us. I will keep you posted.

Kids and compassion in the kitchen

Some of my favorite childhood memories involve cooking with my grandparents and eating pancakes. How about yours?

My childhood was far from picture perfect, but I do have some very clear and happy memories, and a lot of them involve my grandparents, cooking, and pancakes.

In many ways I find, that cooking with kids, and cooking for kids, is an act of compassion.

I remember feeling challenged and valued at the same time, when I was allowed in the kitchen, and allowed to take part in the cooking.

I was very focused – especially when knifes where involved – and very eager to learn. And most important I think, I experienced cooking as something we did together! We cooked with each other, and for each other.

And the pancakes….

I remember my sister and I sitting in the living room, reading, drawing or maybe watching TV (one channel black and white) – and then suddenly we would smell the pancakes. “Mom is baking pancakes!”

The surprise because she had said noting about it, the joy because we loved pancakes – but primarily the feeling of love and compassion.

Don´t get me wrong, I am in no way saying, that cooking is the primary way of showing kids love and compassion – you can do that in so many ways – but for me, those are the memories that stick. And probably why I love eating and baking pancakes so much.