Happy (early) Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving meal on Saturday. Gen (in the polka dot top) and Tor were there with their daughter, Milena, as were Merel (with the blond hair) and her husband Denis. Julian and Milena are classmates and have a special relationship that involves a lot of kissing and hugging, which they were happy to demonstrate for us.

The turkey turned out great, thanks to brining and lots of butter squirted under the skin before roasting. The pumpkin pie was also a hit, which sort of surprised me, as Adrian is pretty adamant that it's gross and I've begun to think of it like peanut butter and root beer, i.e. only something you like if you're American and you've grown up with it. So I was happy that our non-American guests liked it (or at least humored me and pretended to).

Of course the best thing was the lovely company and lots of chatting about nothing in particular (my favorite topic). I loved Merel and Denis' description of Dutch Christmas, which involves black men from Spain on boats, wooden shoes, big ginger cookies, and no presents on Christmas itself.

I don't know if we did much to convince Merel and Denis to have kids because Milena had an allergic reaction to something, poor thing, and got red and puffy, Julian was up until midnight because of his recent "I hate my bed" attitude, and Ava insisted on sprinting everywhere the entire night.

Julian "I hate my bed so get me out now" Johnson

Look how cute he is. It's so deceiving. Julian, my sweet, good sleeper, has turned into a mad man who thinks bed is for crazy sadists since turning 18 months a week ago. Every night for the past week we do the same thing we've been doing with success for 10 months (say night night, read books, tuck in and kiss). Except that now, instead of rolling over and peacefully drifting off to sleep, he cries for up to two hours in a really pissed off sort of way. Tonight we tucked him in at 8pm. It is now 9:43pm and he is still wailing. Of course Adrian and I are totally stressed out because we really have no idea if we are doing the right thing by letting him cry (we're going in to "reassure" him every 15 minutes or so as the books suggest). He is teething, but he sleeps fine at school, so I don't think that's the problem. I think he's become aware that there is life going on on the other side of the door after he's in bed and that is N-O-T OK with him. Sigh. We spend the first part of evening dreading putting him to bed and the second part stressed out because he's crying. We've been putting Ava to bed in our bed because Julian's screaming and that's not super conducive to getting a 3-year-old to sleep.

Turkey Day

Thanksgiving is technically next Thursday, November 27, but we are celebrating a little early this year. We'll be hosting friends this Saturday for a semi-traditional meal. Semi-traditional because Adrian is not a fan of:

• Turkey
• Cranberries
• Pumpkin
• Sweet potatoes
• Stuffing

In short, he dislikes all the crucial ingredients of a traditional Thanksgiving feast. He is, however, the only person I know who actually likes brussel sprouts. We are compromising and having turkey and pumpkin pie, but regular potatoes and a chocolate dessert in addition to the pie. Brussel sprouts are permanently outlawed.

Finding the ingredients has been less of a goose chase than expected. I bought a nice Swedish turkey from Saluhallen. He must have been nice because he cost 470SEK (about $60). And all the other key items are available at the ICA store around the corner (see picture of $7 canned cranberry sauce above), just way more expensive than they'd be at home.

I had to post a picture of the "American" aisle at the ICA. I can understand not being able to live without molasses, Pam, or Karo syrup, but are the following truly necessary to have when you're abroad??:

• Fluff
• Baco-bits
• Jell-o
• Pop-tarts
• Stove top stuffing

I think not. Except maybe the Stove top ... or the Jell-o. But definitely not Fluff.

Swedish dance bands

Our friends Eli and Claudia sent us pictures of some Swedish dance bands from the 70's and I just had to share. The pictures are sooo good that the fact the bands have names like "Schytts" and "Simsalabim" is just icing on the cake. You can see the whole, sordid selection here. To any Swedes reading, please explain yourselves.

Paj and pie

Paj, pronounced "pie" is a staple of the Swedish cafe menu. Somewhat confusingly, paj can be either the savory thing we'd call quiche or the sweet thing we'd call crumble or cobbler. Sometimes the savory variety is called "matpaj" (food pie) to distinguish itself from it's sweeter sister. I am guessing the term "food pie" only sounds unappetizing in English because people eat a ton of the stuff here. I haven't seen what we'd call a pie (getting confused?) filled with fruit or pumpkin or, drool, pecans, around, so I suppose cobbler is a reasonable, if less visually appealing, substitute. It is slightly intriguing to think what they might call our type of pie. American paj? (Sorry, I just couldn't help that one). Luckily I like pie, paj, quiche, cobbler, AND crumble, so any paj is pretty much welcome at my table.

Roma here we come!

We are going to Rome right after Christmas for five nights. Wahoooo! I've never been and I'm so excited. A great chance to practice my Esperanto. Ska vi andare a die Spanischen Treppen? If anyone has any great tips for visiting Rome with kids please let us know! And if anyone can do anything about the exchange rate in the next six weeks, please get busy. Mama needs some new clothes.

Sweden loves Obama

The happy ladies in the picture above are Pascale (Canada), Sandra (Hawaii), Vivian (Texas) and Deidre (NY) at Pascale's house for a celebratory Obama breakfast. Breakfast made the most sense since the election wasn't called until around 6am here (although it was looking pretty good by 4am when I got up). That's why the newspaper headlines refer to Barack winning "this morning" or "over night." I have to say I would have killed to be in Chicago, or even back in SF for the victory. When I saw Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton crying as Obama made his wonderful and appropriate victory speech, well, let's just say I was feeling very proud to be an American after a looooooooooong spell of embarrassment.

I've had all sorts of people want to talk about Obama's win with me the last couple of days. Even the lady at the bank who kept apologizing because her colleague didn't show up for an appointment (what is UP with Swedish banks anyway -- you have to hound them to give them your money?) said how happy she was that Obama won and wasn't I pleased. (Well, yes, but I'd be more pleased if your bank actually functioned.) The other day the paper said that 85%+ of Europeans in 13 or so countries supported Obama over McCain. It's a funny thing to be surrounded almost entirely by politically liberal, um, I mean progressive, people after leaving the same type of environment in SF. I was telling Adrian that I'm not sure I know a single Republican. While that's comfortable, it's not exactly great in terms of having to defend and debate your beliefs. But for today... who cares! Gobama!

Yes We Did!

Swedish pizza

I've been meaning to write about this for awhile. There are a ton of pizzerias in Gothenburg -- some horrible, some delicious, just as you'd expect. Our favorites are a Frenchie place called Cyrano and a take-away place called Il Gambero. The vast majority of pizza here is of the Euro variety i.e. individually sized with super thin crust and a light basic tomato sauce under the toppings.

The beauty of Swedish pizza is that the pizzerias are often combined with kebab shops. Because of this, kebab meat tends to sneak over onto the pizza menu, along with some other fascinating ingredients that were probably best left on the tree, on the animal, etc. Here are some of my favorite pizza topping combinations to ponder (not eat) from the place around the corner:

Verona: tomato, cheese, mushrooms, beef, banana, curry, peanuts
Reale: tomato, cheese, beef, egg, bearnaise sauce
Rhodos: tomato, cheese, pineapple, banana, ground beef, curry sauce
Tzatzikipizza: tomato, cheese, kebab meat, fresh tomatoes, onion, pepperoni, tzatziki sauce

Pineapple AND banana AND curry sauce, really?? Why not just throw some plum sauce and shredded coconut on there and make it really special?

Halloween

The Halloween season is my favorite time of year. I love fall colors, fall foods and fall weather (no jokes about San Francisco not having any seasons please -- we have seasons, they're just sort of casual, like Californians). And I love a good 'ol American harvest fair, complete with pumpkin patches, scarecrows, hay rides, pumpkin pie and little craft booths filled with stuff you'd never actually buy. And then of course there's Halloween itself, which when you're a kid is the best night of the year except for the night before Christmas morning because of the ridiculous amounts of candy you get to collect and consume in a single night.

Anyway, long story short, there's no Halloween in Sweden and I'm confused. I'm not ready for the stores to have all their Christmas Crap on display yet. In the U.S. we have the Halloween Crap and the Thanksgiving Crap to prime the pump for Santa. I'm like: "You want me to think about Christmas? Hello! I'm still mourning summer! Give me a little candy corn and pumpkin pie and then we'll talk." The American Women's Club of Gothenburg did a nice job of putting on a fun kiddie event at a local school (complete with crafts, mini trick or treating, games and a "cake walk," which I'd never heard of before coming to Sweden) the Sunday before Halloween. Here's Ava and Julian peacefully enjoying the decorate-a-skull craft table. This lasted all of 2.32 minutes by the way:And here's a shot of the main hall:
Ava's school, ABC, also had a little Halloween party on the 31st (see pic below), so the kids weren't totally Halloweenless this year, but I think Ava and I were feeling a little down about the whole thing.
It was probably NOT the best idea then to show Ava online pictures of her buddies Everett and Miles celebrating Halloween (in, I must say, very excellent home-made tiger and bat costumes). The slideshow went over like a tone of bricks and you could just see her face droop and her eyes start to tear up. She was fine 20 minutes later, but that was definitely a bad-mama move.

Now what could possibly cheer us up after missing our Halloween traditions? Hmmm. I'm thinking, just maybe, the one thing that could do it would be... GOOOBAMA!!!!!!!!!!! TWO MORE DAYS! TWO MORE DAYS!