HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Food for Christmas

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.

Recipe for the cream cake

Creamcake

(from yesterday)

4 eggs

120gr sugar

120gr white flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix eggs and sugar well, add flour and baking powder carefully

Bake for about 30 minutes at 190C

Be carefull not to burn the cake

Cool

Cut the cake in two and add milk, jam and whipped cream between the layers.

Add milk and whipped cream on top.

Roll out marzipan and cover the cake.

Decorate the top using your creativity.

Yesterday I used some fairtrade chocolate hearts I got for Christmas and a branch of holly

A Family Tradition

I grew up in a big family, and my parents always had an open house. In 1971 they realised that there were not enough days during Christmas to invite everybody to our home. My granddad was a school master and for one night every Christmas mum and dad hired the gym at the school where my grandparents lived. The gym was big enough to invite our huge and fast growing circle of friends and family.
8 years in a row my parents hosted their huge Christmas party there. Then my granddad died and no party was held.

20 years ago the next generation took up the tradition again, and now we come together every year during one of the Christmas days.

The annual party has been celebrated several different places, but last night we were back in the same old gym at the school where my grandparents lived. Where I spent so much of my childhood. Some of the buildings were gone, new had come, but the old gym was just the same. And the row of paintings of the old school masters was still there, granddad Johannes the nicest among all the old men.

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Photos: we all bring food to share at the party. The 4 photos show the creamcake I made.

Dirty Sunday traditions.

Alot of my time is spent in the kitchen these days, cooking old traditional meals, creating new traditions. Father in law has come to stay for the holidays, sons have come home for Christmas and they bring friends at all times, family and friends are coming to wish us Merry Christmas, and we love sharing time around the table. Last night we had pizza on the menu, followed by a game of scrabble. I had my camera ready and was going to take photos of the pizza for The Blue Café, but as often happens I was too busy taking care of food and guests to remember my camera. Just like today. I started with very good intentions to take photos of our traditional lutefisk dinner, but ended up with photos only of the unfinished meal.

Not even did I only end up with photos of the unfinished meal, I never even finished this Dirty Sunday blog post. I was going to write about the tradition we have created over the past years when we invite a few family and friends over for lutefisk on "lillejulaften" (little Christmas Eve - ie the night before Christmas Eve). But The Blue Café has been so full and busy the past week, I have had no chance for food blogging. I have kept my main blog alive with a daily entry, but that took all my computer energy. I still struggle to focus on food blooging, but decided to post these photos and words anyway just to keep my food blog alive. I promise to be fully back soon.......

Merry Christmas to all my readers!

I send you my Christmas greetings with this Christmas car filled with gift.
As our tradition is, we decorated our tree yesterday, on "lille julaften" (Little Christmas Eve). We always do this together as a family, using ornaments we have collected through our 28 years of marriage. Most of them are handmade, and the girls find them a bit out of date. This year they had a wish - "Mom, can we decorate the tree with more modern stuff? You are always so old fashioned, sometimes we wonder if you were born before God!"
Now I have been to the Salvation Army's shop and bought 50 shining red baubles, and everyone loves the tree.
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We are preparing for breakfast now. For lunch we will have rice porridge with one almond hidden and a gift for the one who finds the almond. Later comes church and home to the traditional Christmas dinner, opening of gifts and dancing around the tree singing the old carols. The day will end with all of us wrapped up in comfort blankets around the fire with new books and cds.

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I almost live in the kitchen these days, enjoying cooking and baking traditional food. I had plans for alot of posts here, but with the house filled with people who gather around the table at all times I havenever found the time.

I will be back though :-)

Pages from my book

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- the book will be only in Norwegian (though of course if you all write to IKO (my publisher is the second one), they might think otherwise
- it is my first book
- it is hardcover and in full colour print
- it can be ordered from IKOs webshop in a couple of weeks
- the title of the book is "40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse" (40 days - from carneval to the rising )
- yes, I have started my second book......more about that later