Swedenized

I woke up on Christmas morning with again, no expectations for the day and I was completely blown away. We woke up quite early to go to a friend’s house for some snow mobile fun! I took the “womanly” snow mobile out for a fun run. It sure as hell doesn’t feel like the girly version of a snow mobile!! It was freaking fast! Sorry no photos… I can’t seem to remember where I put them.

After we got back, family members started to arrive. We had around 12 people at the Christmas table.

It was so cute because Hans’ grandpa got so happy when I could have a conversation with him and understand him because he thought that his English wasn’t so good. So with my small knowledge of Swedish and his small knowledge of English, we had a pretty intelligent conversation 😉 He loves the fact that I am a Cherokee. He said that he grew up reading books about cowboys and indians and little did he know that his grandson would marry one.

Julafton was a traditional Swedish celebration. Christmas day, however, was a Swedenized American celebration. Hans’ cousins are half American and half Swedish. So, we had a lot of traditional American dishes on Christmas as well as Swedish dishes.

Swedish Tradition- plenty of schnapps.

Hans’ grandpa prepared an amazingly moist turkey with stuffing to boot! I usually don’t like turkey because it is always too dry but this one was not dry at all. I was impressed.

We had a Swedenized American Christmas menu. Case in point: hasselbackspotatis instead of mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts instead of vegetable casseroles, brown sauce instead of gravy, and black currant jelly instead of cranberry sauce along with turkey, broccoli rice casserole and stuffing. It was a memorable Christmas dinner, indeed.

I took it upon myself to prepare an American dessert for every one.

Chocolate chip pecan pie. It turned out great. I was nervous if the Swedes would like it because sometimes there is a cultural difference in taste preferences but every one seemed to enjoy it. I had several of them ask for the recipe. Score!

Julbord

So, what do the Swedes eat for Christmas? The first year that I lived here was an unusual surprise in terms of Christmas food. All of the food in Sweden is delicious- creamy sauces, fresh vegetables, ecological meat. However, their Christmas food just did not appeal to my taste buds. This Christmas was another surprise because I enjoyed every bite.

On Julafton (Christmas Eve), we prepared a traditional julbord.

The first plate is what I like to call the fish plate.

There is multiple sill (herring) dishes in different sauces.

Various salmon dishes

and havrekex with julskinka (Christmas ham).

Here is my fish plate. I tried all of the herring dishes but I couldn’t finish them. I think it is an acquired taste so perhaps I will learn to love it in the future. (Sorry for the blurry photo)

I am turning into Hans because I love the havrekex with Christmas ham!

The hot dishes include homemade meatballs, small sausages, broccoli cheese casserole *which I made for nostalgic reasons ;), potatoes, Janssons’ frestelse which is like a potato and fish casserole, and a Finnish parsnip dish.

My favorite was the homemade meatballs and the broccoli cheese casserole, naturally.

For dessert, there was a variety of soft cheese and pepparkakor.

I opted away from the dessert because I had been snacking all day on….

grapes, figs, walnuts and knäck.

Knäck is a candy that can be found at almost any Swedes home during Christmas. They have a toffee-type texture to them and are made from sugar, cream, syrup and almonds.

Julafton wasn’t what I expected it to be. It surpassed my expectations tremendously because I had absolutely none. The first Christmas in Sweden, I didn’t like the food. Maybe because I was away from home on Christmas, maybe because I was young, maybe because I wanted the comfort of American casseroles.. who knows. However, the Julbord was the opposite of a let down and was fantastic this year.

Walk in the Wilderness

God Jul!

Swedish Traditions

Tradition #1- Havrekex.

Havrekex is a Christmas bread in the Ekstöm family. It is made mostly of oats but has white flour in the mix as well.

You roll out the dough and cut it with a cookie cutter. Never seen that before.

An odd ingredient in havrekex is hjorthornssalt.. Any one know if we have that in the US? It is a levening agent for the bread and it smells funny.

Hans looks forward to this Christmas bread the entire year!

I decided to be creative with the cookie cutters 😉

Tradition #2- Ice play.

Hans and I decided to test out the lake outside his parents house.

Yep! The ice is thick enough.

Eh.. Hans, are you sure it’s thick enough? haha….

Tradition #3- The Christmas Ham

The Christmas Ham is prepared with a mustard sauce and breadcrumbs and cooked in the oven. Hans and his family eat a few slices of the ham the day before Christmas Eve with havrekex and mustard.

Tradition #3- Glögg, of course!

Can you believe that Christmas Eve is tomorrow?

Epic Fail

I do not like the Swedish pizza, or I guess it is Turkish pizza. Immigrants from Turkey come to Sweden and open up pizzarias.

It is much different from American pizza or Americanized Italian pizza. It has thin crust with a lot of oil, hardly any vegetables and there is the option of the kebab pizza but I don’t like kebab meat. I probably sound like a downer but it was just not good.

Ham, Mushroom & Gorgonzola pizza

It looks like a puddle of grease. Yum.

Kebab pizza.

Not much like a pizza at all. I think that it has kebab meat, lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumbers and kebab sauce.. or should I say mystery sauce, lol.

I opted for leftovers instead of oil and mystery sauce. Haha.. I gave them a try but I just couldn’t eat them. Now I will stop being a prissy girl and say something nice 😉

I love the pizzasalad.

It is cabbage, vinegar, oil, salt and pepper. It’s quite good! It balanced the icky pizza.

Have you ever tried kebab pizza? Hans loves kebab and gyros pizza or something or other.. He used to eat it a lot when we lived in Norrköping.

Glögg

…glühwein or perhaps you prefer mulled wine?

One thing is evident. The cold countries love their glögg. In Germany, you can find glühwein at the weihnachtsmärkten. Here in Sweden, it is often seen at a julbord or on any given day around Christmas time.

The classic ingredients of glögg are red wine, sugar and spices. It is served warm and with almonds, raisins and pepparkakor along side.

Although glögg is often made with red wine, it can be made in other ways too. In Sweden, they have a new edition of glögg every Christmas. This year it was made from clementines, and in 2005, it was made from cloudberries.

Another treat that is just as traditional as glögg in Sweden is pepparkakor and bleu cheese.

They are similar to ginger snaps but pepparkakor have more of a kick to them.

The Swedes say that several hundred years ago, when wine would be transported from France and Italy, it would often go bad because it was transported so far up North. They had to mask the taste of old wine somehow, so then came along glögg. Who knows if the story is true or not but it makes for a fun story 😉

Have you ever tried glögg?

Edited to add: Hans just told me that glögg is different than mulled and glühwein. Glühwein is like heated red wine and glögg is sweeter with more spices.

Eh..

How is every one’s weekend going?

I apologize for being nonexistent in the blog world these past few days but I have had a small bout of writer’s block. It’s unbelievable. As soon as I open the web browser to my blog and try to write, nothing comes out. This is the first time that I have experienced this so please bare with me.

Anyway, onto dinner from Friday night. It was lovely, as all other dinner’s that I have enjoyed in Sweden, when I lived here and when I come to visit.

To start, we had baked goat cheese and a glass of cabernet. The appetizer was fantastic! I prefer chèvre over brie, simply because it has much more taste. Helena baked the chèvre in the oven then topped the goat cheese on a bed of ruccola with roasted pine nuts and a drizzle of honey.

Ruccola has a spicy taste to it, much different than that of spinach. It tastes well paired with the chèvre and the sweet hint of honey.

For the main entree, Helena (Hans’ mom) said that she just threw together something at the last minute but it didn’t taste that way. She sauteed the chicken with salt, pepper and garlic and then baked in the oven with feta cheese and I have no clue what the sauce was. It was probably made out of butter which is why it tastes so damn good 😉 On the side, roasted potatoes and carrots.

2 more days until I am reunited with Hans!! I am so excited. I miss him so much, it has been 2 months! Can you believe that?

Did anything happen over the weekend that is of interest in the states? Fill me in on the news in the comments section!

Perfectly White

Do you remember this photo from the other day?

Well, the same lake now looks like this.

After 2 days, it has almost completely frozen over… which hopefully means ice skating soon!

I have been having an amazing time in Sweden so far. I used to hate the cold weather. I need to rephrase that. I do not like the cold weather in Oklahoma. Simply because it is very windy, and there is never any snow.

In Sweden, it feels like a different kind of cold. The trees are peaceful and the air is dry. It feels fresh and it’s completely white everywhere that you look. The trees look like they have crystals hanging off of them, it’s just beautiful.

The high today was -15 celsius or 3 fahrenheit.

And there is a hell of a lot more snow than there was 2 days ago when I arrived.

I look pretty normal, right? Take a closer look.

Haha.. it’s really not as cold as you think. If you have the right clothing on, then it’s quite nice to be outside.

Breakfast this morning was similar to yesterday except I used pear and rhubarb marmalade instead of orange marmalade.

I know I keep going on and on about the bread in Sweden. But, really.. it is so good! This bread is similar to a bun but it has seeds on the outside. It is dense and flavorful without being too heavy.

Any one want to take a guess at what the green key hole symbol means? I will write a post about it later but kudos to any one who wants to take a guess!

Never got old

Yeah, my afternoon walk didn’t happen. It is windy and has been snowing on and off all day so I opted for a yoga session instead. Thank goodness for yogadownload!

I had leftover salmon soup for lunch today.

This soup is about the only leftovers that I actually enjoy. The flavors haven’t gotten old yet and I have eaten it 3 days in a row. That is a first for this girl.

From what I recall, it is a simple soup to make. It has a base of broth and a splash of cream with cooked salmon, potatoes, carrots and a green onion with dill, salt and pepper to taste.

Easy and it tasted even better on Wednesday after I came in from my winter walk. Surprisingly enough it tasted fantastic today too. I think I am turning into a leftovers lover. Who am I?

What is your favorite dish as leftovers? Mine is soup and chili. It always tastes better the next day.

It’s a blizzard

Well, not exactly but I can barely see out the window because it is snowing so hard!

I took this photo about an hour ago and now it looks like it’s snowing horizontally 🙂 So, needless to say.. my daily walk will be put off until this afternoon, when I am hoping that it will calm down a little bit.

Breakfast this morning was lovely. I wanted something light since I woke up late from the time change.

Two pieces of bread with orange marmalade and a thin slice of cheese.

I am going to curl up with my new book about now.