Two years ago I wrote in The House in the Woods about a traditional Christmas Eve in Norway. Very little has changed:
At 1.30pm we will eat rice porridge for traditional Christmas Eve lunch. There will be one single almond hidden in the porridge, and the one who finds it will be given a gift, a marzipan pig :-) At 4pm we'll go to the local church for a Christmas Carol, and then home to eat the huge, traditional Christmas dinner - salted and dried rib of mutton. The best meal of the year :-) The mutton is damped on birch sticks which Terje finds in the garden, and eated with potatoes, carrots and swede. For dessert we have tradidionally had a cloudberry cream, but as the kids don't fancy that, we will this year make a rice porride cream (another trad. Norwegian dessert) with strawberries. After dinner it is time for the opening of gifts, which always takes a long time of course, and then the night goes on with phonecalls to all our close family, walking around the Christmas tree singing all the traditional Christmas carols, coffee and ALL the different Christmas cookies which have been baked the last weeks, a board game or two, starting to read the newest books, listening to the newest tapes and so on.
We are now back to normal, everyday life.A bread dough is set to rise, we have had breakfast, Terje has been out skiing, I've done my excercise on the exercise bike down in the basement, some leftover sweet foccasia is put in oven to get soft and warm and I am brewing a cup of coffee. Ski jumping from Germany starts in the TV, and I have a pile of books to enjoy.
And I am making plans for how I want The Blue Café to
develop in the coming year.
Next week-end The Blue Café is celebrating its first anniversary.
2 comments:
It's funny, as an American of Norwegian ancestry I had never had pinnekjøtt till I went to Norway. And you are right, it is soooo good! It's hard to describe to anybody how they're going to love it, they just have to taste it for themselves and see.
What wonderful traditional meals. I can see how it add to the celebration of the Christmas season even more special. Thanks for sharing this with us. I've enjoyed reading about it and seeing the photos.
Paz
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