helylle

fresh news: a gym in malmö offered a special deal for couples, without defining the term "couple". when someone asked about gay couples and the gym representative wouldn't accept that as a "couple", they reported the case to homoombudsmannen, call it a ombud for the rights of the homosexual. sweden, a country where everything's ought to be right and follow the rule, whatever the rule might be. so very unspanish. so very helylle. so very lagom....

btw. i am in this very instant listening to sahara hotnights and consuming mandel spekulatius from aldi - german gingerbreads - they didn't have any glühwein, but it feels a bit Christmassy anyway, reminding me of the of December in Innsbruck....

More Pepparkakor

Following are some pictures from this years Christmas, my first outside of (good old) Europe.

Typical Minnesota home at Christmas time. Comfortably sized, decorated with Christmas lights, Santas and Christmasy forest-animals, in debt because of the big electricity bill and, this year, snowless. Beautiful!

Don't know about typical here. This is mine. And I like it, right!

Cutting-edge gingerbread technique! Yo! I think I got the moves proven now, thus you can call me any time when you are baking!

My desk offered gingerbreads this year :) Food is very well-perceived in this country. Cookies even more. Making friends with your colleagues is always sweet. Some of you should recognize the items in this picture! Any guesses?

The biggest gingerbread heart in the whole of Eden Prairie - on my door. If I find a bite on it, I will know whom to suspect :)

Pepparkakor

This year, I will celebrate Christmas together with a couple of my colleagues. To make it as close to being North-European as possible, I am preparing some Polish and Swedish dishes. To make it more funny, and because I apparently also represent the Kingdom of Denmark, I have been forced to do something Danish as well. I went shopping for the ingredients, and was looked upon as an alien while in the grocery store - my cart contained foods all but American, hahahaha! Tonight I have prepared the gingerbread dough, as one of the Swedish elements, and prepared some other things for tomorrow. I will not make bigos, but certainly pierogi z kapusta. It took some time to find the Sauerkraut, but once I found the proper shelf, there were quite many to choose from, but for some reason, it is classified as meat....... don't want to know why. I picked the Bavarian style Sauerkraut, to include one more of my favourite lands. After putting my raisins in the whiskey, it is officially time to get some sleep. And you can see for yourself, how fun the baking business is!