Dan före dan (The day before The Day)

Today is the day before THE DAY, at least in Sweden.  Swedes don't care much about Santa fitting through the chimney, reindeer sleighs in the sky, and stockings hanging precariously (and fire unsafetedly) at the fireplace.  What Swedes do is very different. 

Santa actually comes to your house on Christmas Eve, knocks on the door, and asks 'Are there any nice children here?'.  And the kids have to answer (and you better say 'yes' or you will be in trouble.  And then he takes out presents out of his big burlap bag, and hands them out to everybody.  After a while he says that he has more houses to visit, so he is just going to leave the bag with presents for all of you, and then he leaves. 

Soon after, Dad/Uncle/Big Brother/Grandpa shows up at the door after getting more firewood/checking on the ham in the basement/trying to find a screwdriver in the barn and all the kids say 'You missed him, he was just here!!!'.  :) 

 

 With this tradition Santa has had the most curious clothes over the years in our family in Sweden.  He always has a Santa hat and a fake beard, but the rest is up to innovation and whatever is at hand.  I have seen him in fleece jackets, big green wool coats and so on.  One year I was Santa and I had a red Margrete bowl on my head for a while. 

Santa's name in Swedish is JULTOMTEN.  Jul means Christmas, same word as Yule, and tomte are the little gnomes that are helpers around the farm.  Before the tradition of jultomten, it was a goat that came to the house and delivered presents, called JULBOCK.  I am not making this up, it is true, and it was the tradition before Santa became common.  We still put up things in our Christmas tree that looks like goats, made out of straw. There are also lots of little 'tomtar' (gnomes) hanging in our tree, supposedly keeping it safe.  Now when the cats are not inside anymore, we don't have to worry too much about the safety of the tree ornaments.

Swedes also have lots of candlelight, angels, stars, birds, and pigs around for Christmas decorations. We have Christmas trees too of course. 

Here are some Swedish Christmas stamps for you all to get the Swedish Christmas feeling.  The illustrators are Ilon Wikland (above) and Björn Berg (below).  God jul!

The amazing world of candy cultures: Sweden

I believe that candy and desserts are one of the few areas were strong cultural differences still live on. Thai, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, and American food have conquered the world and anybody knows what sushi, burgers, and ketchup is now.  But I think candy has a long way to go to become more global, at least candy outside of the chocolate main stream.

So, for your food education, here is some typical Swedish candy that you can't really buy in the US or other countries of the world (the northern parts of EU excepted).

First, Swedes love licorice, and they love salty, sour or very fruity candy.  Generally speaking, American candy of today is either supersweet (sickly sweet), or chocolatey, and that is different from the Swedish candy.  Swedes also like mixes of flavors (salt & sour, etc.).

Turkisk peppar ('Turkish peppar').  Horribly hot-spicy hard licorice candy with a dry powdery inside with ammonium chloride (salmiak) powder.  Great!

Classic Swedish candy called Gott & Blandat (= Good and Mixed).  It includes sweet and salty licorice and wine gum. This is the traditional classic kind and there are also newer kinds around (salty, sour, etc.). 

 Djungelvrål ('Jungle howl') are supersalty little licorice pieces that are very chewy and good.... also with ammonium chloride, which some people of this household call 'diaper candy' - I think ammonium chloride salt is a very acquired taste. You either hate it or love it, kind of like celery and cilantro.

 Salta katten ('The Salty Cat') comes in tiny old-fashioned small paperboxes and are small pieces of licorice, also with ammonium chloride.  Really good stuff!  I love the design - check out the tongue of the cat!

 

Dajm is a long, hard, flat crispy, hard caramel piece that is covered by milk chocolate. You can also buy it as small individual pieces in small wrappers.  No licorice here!

Then there is of course Swedish fish - WHICH DOES NOT EXIST IN SWEDEN.  This is the American version of Swedish fruity, chewy, sugary candy, which in Sweden comes in many shapes and forms, not just red fish.  The most common are 'sega råttor' (= chewy rats), which often are green, yellow, red or maybe even in black (licorice).  Oh, and this custom of calling non-black things licorice as you do in the US, that doesn't exist in Sweden.  Licorice is always black and always has true licorice plant extract in it.

Stamp of the Day: Waffle Day in Sweden

 Today is Vårfrudagen ("Vår Fru" means our lady, and also Spring Lady, so this is an old Catholic remnant), in Sweden, and this has been changed int he public's eye and ear into Waffle Day (Våffeldagen, sounds similar). Swedes love waffles!  So, we had almond waffles for breakfast.  Homemade, served with yoghurt, locally boiled maple syrup, fresh strawberries from California, blackberries from Chile (I think), and homemade rhubarb and strawberry jam.  Very good, and thank you spring lady!

This day celebrates the day when archangel Gabriel told Maria that she was pregnant with Jesus so it happens every year 9 months before Christmas Day, = March 25, each year. In English this seems to be called "The Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary".

Stamp from Sweden showing a piece of a waffle served with cloudberries ('hjortron', Rubus chamaemorus).

Stamp of the Day: Happy midsummer!

In Sweden midsummer is celebrated today with traditional food and customs.  Pickled herring (sill), new potatoes (färskpotatis), sour creme (gräddfil) and chives (gräslök) is typical, served with Swedish akvavit (herb-flavored vodka, snaps).  Mmmm, good! Other traditional food is salmon of course.  But these days, I think anything good goes.

Here in New Jersey it is foggy and raining and no summer weather at all.  Except, this is kind of Swedish weather, it if wasn't so humid and hot later during the day. I hope the weather is better in Sweden, especially for our hikers in the Swedish mountains.

The real midsummer is of course on June 21, but since midsummer is a holiday in Sweden, the Swedish government decided it should be on a Friday each year, so everybody gets a 3-day weekend.  Stamp of the Day are four Swedish stamps celebrating Sweden, with the midsummer one in the top left corner.

Old midsummer traditions are to dance around a pole covered in green tree leaves (birch usually) and wild-picked flowers. Then late at night, which doesn't get very dark in Sweden, young women should go out and pick 7 flowers and jump over 7 fences and then they put the flowers under their pillows and go to sleep, all without talking to anybody (if you do, it doesn't work).  If you did this you will dream about who you would get married to.  Believe me, it doesn't work! :) But it is fun.

Stamp of the day: Soon it is Christmas (Snart är det jul!)

And in Sweden this means Lucia buns ('lussebullar') on December 13 (today), a new advent candle lit for each of the 4 Sundays before Christmas, gingerbread cookies ('pepparkakor'), stars, presents, food, and decorations and ornaments, and so on.  All featured here on official Swedish stamps as letters spelling JULPOST 2010, which means "Christmas mail" and used as stamps for holiday greetings and any other letters.  Enjoy!

Fibers of the Earth (Tierra Wools)

In Northern New Mexico, not far from the Rockies and the Colorado border, is a small town that has seen more prosperous days, Los Ojos (it means 'the eyes').  The village is surrounded by the high-altitude plains and deserts of northern New Mexico, and is just a bit north of the area where Georgia O'Keefe used to spend a lot of her time (Abiquiu).  There isn't much to live on here, mostly cattle ranching, and it is old Indian country.

 

In this little village that now mostly consist of some older houses of varying upkeep and a strikingly white Catholic church is the cooperative Tierra Wools, a gorgeous place with gorgeous people.  

We found it by following little signs from the highway for the weaving shop, and since I have a soft spot for hand spun, natural yarn, it was a natural detour. Tierra Wools is a women-owned cooperative that keeps ancient Indian traditions alive by making handmade wool rugs from local and hand dyed yarns.  We spent maybe an hour in there, looking in the weaving room, hearing stories about when Robert Redford came by, and I bought yarn of course.  

 

It reminded me of my grandmother's, aunts' and mom's weaving, and I was thinking it is sad nobody in my generation in our family is weaving anymore.  At least we knit and embroider and sew and keep some of the handbased traditions alive.

The fantastic rugs were too expensive for us, but I walked out with two skeins of hand dyed New Mexico sheep wool dyed with the plant mullein ('kungsljus') and iron.  Recently I started to make a scarf for PP with this yarn in a pattern called kelp forest and after a while realized I wouldn't have enough for a whole scarf... so I called up Tierra Wools hoping they would have at least one skein left of that particular batch (hand dyed wool varies between batches so you need to get the same days batch if you want exactly the same color).  

 

And they did!  Incredible. See this photo?  The yarn is the gray-green yarn next to the yellow. This photo was taken before I bought what I wanted, so in August there was only one skein left, and it was still left now.  Boy, I am a lucky person.  That much-needed skein of yarn is now on its way across the United States, from one old store in New Mexico to a small house in New Jersey.  See the bottom left red skein?  That is made from cochineal-bugs that live on cacti.  All these yarns are dyed from natural dyes and are therefore more subdued in their colors than synthetic dyed ones.

 

I hope more people find this oasis of artisan work and fantastic women that carry traditional knowledge into the future.  If you can't get there, check out their website and call them. They have gorgeous hats, scarves, and mittens too. 

(There just is something special about New Mexico skies, something that just makes me melt inside...)

OK snapshot: Fettisdagen (Fat Tuesday)

If you wonder what this mountain of Swedish pastries are, I can tell you. These are SEMLOR (sing. semla), an amazingly good concoction served on Tuesdays starting on Fat Tuesday (=today) and then eaten on Tuesdays every spring from Lent until Easter. It is a very old, and tasty tradition. Of course, nowadays they start selling them in December and heretic people eat them on Wednesdays and even Saturdays, etc..

But we did it right this year. I baked sweet cardamom yeast buns on Saturday, and then filled them with almond paste and whipped cream, and served them floating in warm milk. Ahhh, heaven. Photos of our own will come later, for now you have to look at this snapshot by OK of a store window in Stockholm from today.

Some semla trivia: On February 12, 1771, the Fat Tuesday of that year, the Swedish king Adolf Frederick died after eating 14 semlor at dinner. Other things he had that night was sauerkraut, turnips, lobster, caviar, smoked herring (kippers), and champagne. What a mix, that is what I call overload. He ruled Sweden in the mid to late 1700s and is known as the 'king that ate himself to death', a weak ruler, and for making snuff boxes as a hobby.

More semla trivia: The word semla is related to semolina. Today, 2 million Swedes are having a semla. Considering that there are only 9 million of us, that is a rather large quota. 40 million semlor are sold in Sweden each year.

"most perfect processed forcemeat stuffed inside of an animal intestine"

For those of you with little or no experience with the Swedish cuisine, I would like to explain the classic 'Falukorv', the main ingredient of a recent post here on the blog. Falukorv is like bologna sausage, but smaller and one of the least expensive meat products (at least when I grew up). It comes as a long straight sausage or tied into a ring, and always in plastic red casing (no intestines here!).

Swedish parents have come up with many ways to enliven this rather-unknown-content meat product. We often cut slits in the ring so the pieces held together at the bottom or sides and then in each slit we stuffed apples or cheese, squirted it all with ketchup and mustard, put it into the oven, baked it, and then ate it. At desperate times when camping I am pretty sure I have seen people eat it raw, but usually it is fried and served with cramy macaroni or mashed potatoes. It is even used in 'korv Stroganoff' - a dish that has nothing to do with the original Stroganoff since this version has tomato sauce, onions, and lots of ketchup in it. Yes, Sweden is a ketchupy nation, but no more than the USA.

The reputation of Falukorv is mixed, to say the least. When I grew up, we had a lot of falukorv, and I remember it fondly, even if the origin of the extremely finely ground meat (etc.) is a bit suspicious at times. You can't buy Falukorv here in the US, not even at IKEA. Falukorv has "Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG)" status in EU, but I am not sure what that really means. That Falukorv can't be made by a German butcher in the US?

Hat tip to Mr. Lebo for the title of this post.

Go a posts below below to see OK's innovative use of Falukorv as a bedding for mozzarella and basil (how was it?).

Stamp of the day: an Icelandic "jolasveinar"

In Iceland they have no less than 13 Santa claus, and the story is quite different from todays "Santa". I once heard a long radio tale about these jolasveinar, that is why I know about them. I think the tale is fascinating.

Read more here. Their names are, according to this site

December 12th Stekkjarstaur - Gimpy
December 13th Giljagaur - Gully Imp
December 14th Stúfur - Itty Bitty
December 15th Þvörusleikir - Pot Scraper Licker
December 16th Pottasleikir - Pot Licker
December 17th Askasleikir - Bowl Licker
December 18th Hurðaskellir - Door Slammer
December 19th Skyrgámur - Skyr Gobbler (Skyr, an Icelandic yoghurt-type)
December 20th Bjúgnakrækir - Sausage Snatcher
December 21st Gluggagægir - Window Peeper
December 22nd Gáttaþefur - Doorway Sniffer
December 23rd Ketkrókur - Meat Hooker
December 24th Kertasníkir - Candle Beggar