Happy New Year 2009!

I usually write a summary of the year in the form of a top list around New Year’s, but this year it will have to wait until next year (next week hopefully).

We have decided to stay at home tonight and celebrate just the two of us. First of all because it is actually our first New Year’s together! Last year O headed to Spain a few days after Christmas, and the two years before I was in Sweden, and he in Spain. But tonight we will be drinking some bubbly and eating the 12 grapes together at midnight! But first we are making a menu inspired by the Barefoot Contessa (Food Network’s Ina Garten) – marinated salmon, fresh asparagus, pear clafoutis…

The table set for New Year’s celebrations at my sister’s place in 2004

Happy New Year everybody and I hope that 2009 will turn out to be a great year for everyone, with lots of happiness and love!

New Year’s fireworks in San Juan 2008

A belated Feliz Navidad / God Jul: Christmas in the Caribbean

A very belated ¤ Feliz Navidad ¤ God Jul ¤ Merry Christmas ¤ Joyeux Noël ¤

Can you believe that it has almost been a week since Christmas already!? O is working again, but fortunately only for 2½ days before he has another week off from work.

The surfers have been out in the water every day during Xmas – enjoying the strong winds and high waves…

Both O and I wished that we could have been with our families back in Europe, instead of celebrating Christmas on our own in Puerto Rico… But it could have been worse and in a way it was good that it didn’t really feel like Christmas – we could just pretend that it was an ordinary Wednesday (except that O was not working)…

Photo from the Christmas fika we had a few weeks ago.

Nevertheless, we celebrated Christmas the best we could – on the 23rd (Lillejulafton or Little Christmas Eve as we call it in the south of Sweden and in Denmark) we had a traditional Swedish Christmas meal with Swedish B and her Puerto Rican husband N – who was very happy to hear the only Swedish Xmas song he knows; Just D’s Juligen

Our traditional Swedish Christmas meal on the 23rd

On Christmas Eve it was raining the whole day and our plans to spend the day on the beach were cancelled. We spent the day inside, opening presents (in the end we had quite a big pile under the tree), drinking glögg, listening to Christmas music – I actually cried a little when we listened to ABBA-Agnetha and her daughter Linda’s Christmas cd* and watching parts of the Swedish classic Fanny & Alexander while O dashed out to buy my Christmas present…

One of my breakfasts during December… enjoying left-overs from the Christmas fika!

In the evening of the 24th, we were invited to my Spanish teacher’s family’s house for a Puerto Rican Christmas – we brought a basket with Swedish goodies: pepparkakor (ginger snaps), glögg (mulled wine), sill (pickled herring), snaps (flavoured vodka) and some turrón (Spanish almond cake)! The dinner was yummy; arroz con gandules, lechón asado, pasteles (first time that O and I really enjoyed pasteles!) and both tembleque and arroz con leche for dessert. And of course some home-made coquito! Christmas Eve turned out really well in the end… great food and great company (minus the nasty mosquitoes – why always me??)

In the end we had quite a few presents under the tree!

I hope that you had a very merry Christmas wherever you were, and that New Year’s will be as good!

PS I have included quite a few photos from the last month since I finally found the usb-thing for uploading the photos from the camera…

Saffron buns

¤ Feliz Año Nuevo ¤ Gott Nytt År ¤ Happy New Year ¤ Bonne Année ¤

*) I have the album as a LP at home in Sweden but my parents had sent me the cd as a present – that cd IS Christmas for me!

The ugliest gingerbread house ever?

This year we are not baking ginger bread, and definitely not attempting to make a gingerbread house… Maybe last year’s result has something to do with it? O and my sister were the architects (or maybe just builders?) and since melted sugar is not allowed in our family, they tried to attach the parts with frosting, which didn’t want to dry in the tropical heat! I don’t know how long they spent holding the pieces together while waiting for it to dry…

Who got bored of putting M&Ms on the roof? And what are the two Manneken Pis-figures (Belgian bottle openers) doing next to the Lucia?

So, why are we not using melted sugar? Well, when I was a child we never made a gingerbread house, but in 1996 my brother, my sister and I decided that it was time to start a new tradition! On Christmas Eve morning we started baking the pieces and melting the sugar to use as glue… Our parents were running some last errands while we were busy in the kitchen (after all we were not that young, I was 21). The assembling of the house went very well but then we couldn’t decide what to do with the left over melted sugar… and somehow, probably when trying to pour it out in the sink, it ended up on my fingers!!

Needless to say that having melted sugar on your fingers is not a very good idea, and while my siblings panicked, I turned on the cold water tap and put my hand under it. I don’t know how long I stood there in the kitchen but at one point my father came home, and immediately came up behind me and I collapsed in his arms – probably fainting from the stress and the pain. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the sofa, in a lot of pain. My mother, who is a nurse, spoke to the burns unit at the hospital and they said that there wasn’t much they could do, so she bandaged my fingers with some wet compresses and told me to try to keep the hand high.

The blisters on four of my left-hand fingers (I am of course left-handed!!) were quite impressive and very painful – and not very practical… I couldn’t cut my own food, wash my hair or write! And I didn’t look very cool with a white glove on my hand, a poor imitation of Michael Jackson However, there was one thing I could do – play badminton since for some reason I always hold the racket in my right hand! After a week I remember trying to sleep while the fingers were hurting more than before – the reason for the pain was that the blisters were actually expanding!

To make a long story a little shorter – a university nurse in Linköping cut the blisters open after 2-3 weeks and somehow I managed to write an exam in January even though I couldn’t bend my fingers for a while (when I had the blisters I couldn’t straighten them). Eventually the fingers healed and nowadays I don’t even have one scar to show! But, I am very scared of getting burnt again and I will not go near any melted sugar ever again!

Friday theme / Show & tell: Christmas traditions

The last Friday before Christmas and today’s Show & tell theme is Christmas traditions, as chosen by Mia.

O and I haven’t had time yet to create our own holiday traditions as this will only be our second Christmas that we will celebrate together. However, I am sure that we will make a nice intercultural mix of Swedish and Spanish traditions, just like last year. We have been invited to celebrate Nochebuena (Christmas Eve / Julafton) with my Spanish teacher’s family and we are very much looking forward to experiencing the local traditions.

My idea for today’s post was to take the opportunity to remind you of some of the local Christmas traditions – I already wrote a post about the Puerto Rican Christmas traditions last year, but here is a short summary of the highlights:

• Parrandas / parandas (I have seen both spellings) are an integral part of celebrating navidad in Puerto Rico. A group of people play and sing Christmas songs while everybody claps their hands and maybe play the maracas (native instruments from Puerto Rico). Traditionally the parranda groups would go from house to house in the countryside and sing and play while being offered food and drinks. We had our first parranda for the season last week at a company Christmas event at the Hotel Normandie – they handed out mini-maracas with the company logo and somehow we came home with 4 A parranda set consists of maracas, güiro (I think we call it gurka (cucumber) in Swedish!?), tambourine and palitos (two wooden sticks) – we already have two sets at home.
• Coquito – Puerto Rican egg nog with coconut milk and rum. Our neighbours brought us a bottle of home-made chocolate coquito for our Christmas fika last Sunday, yummy! We also got two bottles of home-made glögg from one of our Swedish guests… so we are all set for a Puerto Rican / Swedish Christmas!
• Lechón asado – traditionally Puerto Ricans eat a lot of pollo but at Christmas the chicken is replaced by roasted pork. And yes, we have already had lechón twice this season!
• Tembleque is a typical Christmas dessert, a coconut pudding that got its name from the way it “jiggles”, just like a jelly (tembleque = shaking fit).
• El día de reyes or the Three Kings’ day (De 3 vise männen) is celebrated on Epiphany (Trettondagen), traditionally the day of receiving gifts in Spain. The Puerto Rican custom is that children put a box with grass under their beds on la víspera de reyes (12th Night / Trettondagsafton), and during the night the kings with their camels (hence the grass) will bring gifts. I asked the students at the Alliance Francaise Christmas party a few weeks ago about the tradition and some of them said that they only get presents for Christmas, some only for Epiphany and some on both occasions!
• Felicidades is the holiday greeting! Last year I thought that people were congratulating us for some reason, before I realised that it was instead of saying Feliz navidad, ha ha!
• Pascua is the Spanish word for Poin(t)settia (julstjärna) and is a Christmas flower here, just like in many other countries around the world. Pascuas is also another word for Christmas, which confusingly means Easter in singular. So Feliz Navidad / Feliz Pascuas / Felicidades are all valid greetings at this time of the year!

 
A Puerto Rican parranda

Read more about last year’s Christmas experiences in Puerto Rico under the category Christmas in the Caribbean. I will report back next week on this year’s Christmas celebrations!

Sometimes the decoration doesn’t look very professional… and in daylight just tacky!

If you are curious about other Christmas traditions, here are the Show & Tell participants:
Anki, Anne, Annika, Cecilia, Desiree, Erica, IngaBritt, Jemaya,  Lena, Leopardia, Lia, Mais-oui, Marianne, Marie, Marina, Mia, Mia D, Millan, Nilla, Petra C, Petra H, Saltis, Simone, Strandmamman, and Victoria.

Our holidays continued: New York State

So, I finally sit down to write about the second part of our holidays last month: We left New York City on the Sunday after a short walk in Central Park with our luggage… took the train from Penn Station to Newark to pick up our rental car and then we were off!

Sunset over Pennsylvania

Via Pennsylvania towards the Finger Lakes in NY – unfortunately we didn’t have time to stop for a coffee in Scranton where the Swedish blogger Anki lives since we didn’t know how the weather would be and didn’t want to stress to our destination – Ithaca. However, we didn’t even have a hotel booked so somewhere on the road we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts and had some coffee and used O’s 3G-card to check for a place to sleep. We found an cosy looking B&B; The Inn on Columbia in Ithaca, called and reserved a room and got alternative driving instructions via Owego.

Dunkin Donuts for coffee and B&B reservations

It started getting dark very early compared to Puerto Rico, and soon we were driving through pretty little towns and snow covered fields. It felt very idyllic, and we even saw a deer at the side of the road (which made me very nervous, don’t want them on the road..). Once in Ithaca, the B&B turned out just as we had imagined it – it was cosy, the owners very friendly and helpful and our room very comfortable. After we had checked in, we walked down to the centre of the town – it was just wonderful to walk in the cold and snow, looking at all the beautiful old wooden houses in the neighbourhood.

Owego a dark November evening

To my delight we had yummy hamburgers for dinner and then headed back to the B&B where we borrowed a film from the dvd collection in the livingroom and snuggled up in bed watching it. What a cosy evening!

The cosy dining room at the Inn on Columbia

The next day, we were served a scrumptious breakfast with homemade bread, fresh fruits and coffee. The B&B is in a beautifully restored house and I completely fell in love with it. That is just the kind of place I dream of us having when we move to Spain!!

The Inn on Columbia

Unfortunately we didn’t have much time to enjoy Ithaca, but we walked around the Cornell campus for an hour or so, and then headed north towards Niagara between two of the [eleven] Finger Lakes. I would definitely like to come back in the warmer season as it is a beautiful area with wineyards, picturesque villages and towns and to explore the lakes of course.

A pretty white church in the Finger Lakes region, NY

The rest of the drive was not as scenic, once we got on the highway again towards Buffalo. And the weather turned bad – first grey and then it started to snow! It wasn’t very enjoyable to be driving in sleet but we arrived to Niagara in one piece. Just like the day before, we had stopped on the way, logged onto internet and found ourselves a B&B, very close to the falls.

If I ever get a tractor, it will definitely be pink!

However, we didn’t look at the falls in the evening as O was in search of something for the camera so we drove back to Buffalo and visited Best Buy and Target! I had never been to Target and O wanted to show me how they sell the most practical travel sized toiletries for only $1 / piece… we stocked up on loads of small bottles, shaving creams, tubes of tooth paste, boxes of cotton etc (great for refilling). Guess what we had for dinner – oh yes, Buffalo wings of course!! I didn’t know that the town was the origin of the name even though, unlike Jessica Simpson, I knew that they were not made from buffalo

Buffalo wings in Buffalo, whatelse!?

In the morning we went for a short walk to the river to look at the falls from the American side – and say hello to the cutest little seals* outside the Aquarium before heading across the border to Canada.

A Niagara seal

PS When I am on holidays I always try to read books from the country / place where I am going – without thinking I chose a Joyce Carol Oates book during these holidays, and how fitting; The Gravedigger’s daughter takes place all over New York State!! And it is a great read!

*) Seals have always been one of my favourite animals and compared to the huge Elephant seals we saw in California in March, these seals were small!!

Wednesday recipe: Arroz con leche + a missing package & almost no electricity

Some of you might remember my post about the curse of the US Postal Services, which since then has been lifted – my grandmother’s letters are being delivered as well as all the packages my sister has been sending us for Xmas. Well, except for one – I wasn’t at home last week when the mailman called so he left a message that we should go and pick up a package at the post office (strangely enough since he usually leaves the packages downstairs if we are not at home).

On Saturday morning we headed out to find the post office in Santurce, as for some reason the package was not held in the small, local post office in Condado. Of course we didn’t find parking on the busy Avenida Ponce de León so O parked illegally and told me to stay put in the car in case the police came… You know how you shouldn’t leave a small baby or a dog in a hot car, well you shouldn’t leave your wife inside either! Even though I had a book to read, I was very bored and of course very hot before O came back after 45 minutes – without the package!

Not surprisingly they hadn’t been able to find the package and then consequently managed to lose the piece of paper with the references when making a photocopy of it – O was not happy!! This was his first encounter with the USPS (not to be confused with UPS), but after all my troubles with the local postal services I just told him to resign to the situation.

The Snowman and Father Christmas seem a little lonely, but there are actually 5 packages under the tree now!

My postal troubles are starting to seem like a bad joke. Like last week when I went to our post office and was told that they didn’t have any stamps [for Europe] – for the second time! How can the Post Office run out of stamps? Well, they still had the little machine to print out ”stamps” but as I wanted to buy some extra ones for the Xmas cards I hadn’t written yet I was told to come back another day. Actually, the first time it happened to me they had changed the tariffs but the new stamps had not yet been delivered… Then there was the time when I had forgotten my wallet, but I acknowledge that that situation was entirely my own fault!

A friend of mine told me that her local post office tends to be closed every other time she goes there, even though it is supposed to be open – and then they lie about it: What do you mean, we were open the whole day yesterday! Somehow I wonder if Puerto Rico would be better off with their own Postal Service (PRPS?) instead of the US one!?

Our adventures with the Puerto Rican public services continued this morning – O asked me to come with him to the electricity board, so hardly awake I had to throw on some clothes and jump in the car with him. Why did I need to go with him? Well, to guard the car again when parked illegally (and pull the hand brake when O forgot to put the car in P when getting out of it!!)   And yes, the reason for visiting the electricity board was that we were risking getting our power cut off this week!!

Our electricity bills are being sent to our landlady who lives in the US, who then should send them back to Puerto Rico – logic, isn’t it!? Unfortunately we never received the bill for October and when we finally got the November bill yesterday – that bill was already 6 days overdue. I paid it immediately of course and then O called the company to inform that the payment had been made – it wasn’t good enough though that I had paid via the bank and in the end O had to pay again today (however, it will be credited to the electricity account)! He also went back to the post office and they found his package – hoorray! Xmas is saved – we will have both electricity and xmas presents from Amazon (thanks again little sister!)!

Oh well, and at least all my waiting in the car meant that I have almost finished reading my second book in Spanish by Laura Esquivel (called Malinche, the first one was Como Agua para chocolate).

This is what I call a Christmas decoration, maybe something for my parents’ front door next year??

Today’s recipe is fitting the season – only one week to Christmas!! Somehow Arroz con leche sounds more exotic than risgryngröt (as Ulla commented on my last post) but I guess that the recipe could also go under the name Riz au lait / Rice porridge! By the way, I tried to teach O to pronunce risgrynsgröt the other day, quite entertaining actually!:

Arroz con leche

2,5 decilitre medium grain white rice (I am of course using the local Arroz Rico Grano Mediano)
5 decilitre water
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
8-9 decilitre milk (i.e just under one litre)
1 cinnamon stick (our friend M from Cyprus gave us a bunch of long cinnamon sticks that we use for decoration in the kitchen)
1½ tablespoon sugar OR
½ can of condensed milk (for a much sweeter porridge)
Mix the rice, water, butter and salt in a big pot. Boil on low heat for approx. 10 minutes. Add the milk, (condensed milk) and cinnamon stick. Low heat for approx. 45 minutes while stirring (I usually stay very close to the stove, stirring while reading a book). Add the sugar if you haven’t used condensed milk.
Serve with cinnamon sprinkled on top / jam / berries.

Toronto’s Eaton Centre (do the Canadians spell centre like the Brits or like the Americans, i.e center??) This photo reminds me that I still have to write about our travels to Canada last month

I still haven’t found the usb-thingie for the camera memory… Looking for it is on my to-do list for today! Fortunately these photos had already been uploaded to the computer.

Rockefeller Center, NYC

The traditional Christmas fika – this time in Puerto Rico

When living in Brussels I used to organise a traditional Christmas fika* every year before Christmas for all my friends and colleagues. I used to ask people to bring a bottle of cheap red wine for the glögg (mulled wine) or a traditional Christmas cake / sweets from their home country.

It was always nice to see everyone gathered before we headed home for Christmas and we would eat saffron buns, pepparkakor (ginger snaps), turrón (Spanish almond cake), panettone (Italian Christmas cake), cannoli (Sicilian pastry), pain d’épices (French sponge cake made with spices and honey), speculoos (Belgian biscuit very similar to the Swedish pepparkakor – speculaas is the Dutch spelling) etc.

Last year we didn’t organise a Christmas fika since we didn’t know that many people in Puerto Rico but this year I decided that it was time for some julmys (Christmas cosiness) together! This is the invitation I sent out:

———————————————————————————————

JULFIKA*

Merienda de navidad/Christmas Snack/Goûter de noël

Les invitamos a la merienda sueca tradicional por navidad

el domingo 14 de diciembre a las 5 de la tarde

Traigan su espíritu navideño!

Please come to our traditional Swedish Julfika on

Sunday 14^th December at 17.00

Don’t forget your Christmas spirit!

*fika [feeka:] (noun and verb) is a very important concept in Swedish culture. It consists in coming together under relaxed forms for some chit-chat over tea, coffee or lemonade with some biscuits and sweet bread called kaffebröd (meaning coffee bread) or even a sandwich.
The most common coffee bread is bullar (sing. bulle, not to be confused with köttbullar – meatballs) = sweet buns. To go for or take a fika is a great way to get to know and make friends with Swedes.
Common subjects of conversation are the latest news, the weather and what one has been up to lately. Sensitive subjects to avoid with someone you do not know very well are politics, money and love. And of course Jul [Yul] means Christmas…

[I really don't know where I got this definition of "fika" from, I used it for my Christmas fika invitations in Brussels as well but can't find the source anywhere on the internet now]

———————————————————————————————

Christmas fika with a red book (Undantaget / The Exception by Christian Jungersen – very good!)…

As usual half of the people invited didn’t show up (this is just a fact of Puerto Rican life, and it happened quite often in Brussels as well – I don’t take it personally) but those who came seemed to enjoy themselves! The guests were our Puerto Rican neighbours S and J (who taught us to cook Puerto Rican food a few months ago), our very sweet relocation / real estate agent E, my French friend E from l’Alliance Francaise and FOUR** Swedes + 2 half-Swedes (children) and Puerto Rican husbands / wives.

It was actually the third Sunday of Advent yesterday but this is a photo from last year…

The glögg and Daim-chocolate (bought in Ikea in New Jersey) were definitely the most popular things on the table, but the arroz con leche / rice pudding / riz au lait / risgrynsgröt was not far behind in popularity. The funny thing about this dish is that most Swedes don’t seem to like it, even though it is the traditional Christmas dessert in Sweden! I love it, and so do most of my foreign friends – in Brussels it was always the only thing that we would run out of! Nowadays I make it a little sweeter due to a certain Spaniard who likes it made with a can of condensed milk… I was told that in Puerto Rico they make the arroz con leche with coconut milk for Christmas – maybe something I should try next year when we hopefully organise another Christmas fika somewhere else…

O and the children performed a very loud parranda, with Carola singing Nu tändas tusen juleljus in the background and the conversation was a confusing mix of Spanish, French, English and Swedish – just the kind of get-together that I like!

I wrote a post about Puerto Rican Christmas traditions last year but I will write more about the traditions on Friday (since the theme is very fittingly Christmas traditions!). Meanwhile, read more about our Christmas experiences last year under the category Christmas in the Caribbean – I will be adding new posts during the month of December.

I wanted to add some photos from yesterday but I can’t find the usb-thingy for the memory card (grrr, think O used it last time!) so you will just have to enjoy some photos from last year!

**) Opps, I counted myself – so actually only three Swedish guests, which is still quite impressive when living in Puerto Rico!

Friday theme / Show & tell: A Dream Trip

Mia D is chosing the Friday themes in December and I already missed the first one, which was “Cookbooks”. Nevertheless, today I am participating – and the subject is a good one; “A dream trip”. The themes for the next weeks are “Christmas traditions” and “New Year resolutions”.

The entrance to Petra through the rocks

So, which is my dream trip? Actually, my dream trip has already come true – when I visited Petra in Jordan two years ago! It had been a dream to visit the city for obvious reasons (the name!) but also because I had been told [by various friends who had already visited it] that it was a beautiful place. I was not disappointed, the visit to Petra was wonderful and it truly is a magical place.

Children with two camels and a donkey in Petra

However, I do dream about making some other journeys – to Egypt, Vietnam, Greenland and Vancouver in Canada. My interest for all of these places have been inspired by people I have met who come from / live there.

There is an additional reason why I want to visit Vietnam – the food! I haven’t actually been to many Vietnamese restaurants but I have been served home-cooked [by Vietnamese friends] food several times and it is so yummy! I still remember the first time I ate Vietnamese food; on Boxing Day in England 1988! My parents and I were invited to my father’s German colleague’s house when his Parisian Vietnamese (and Swedish-speaking) girlfriend was visiting and she had made a lovely meal for us. That was the day I decided that I wanted to visit Vietnam – 20 years ago and I still haven’t made it there!

A man walking in Petra

Check out the other Friday bloggers’ dream journeys:
Anki, Anna, Anne, Annika, Aurorabuddha, Barbamorsan, Cecilia, Desiree, Emma, IngaBritt, Jemaya, Kicki, Lena, Leopardia, Lia, Lullun, Mais-oui, Marianne, Marie, Marina, Mia, Mia D, Millan, Nilla, Nina, Petra C, Petra H, Saltis, Simone, Strandmamman, Tätortstimotej-Anna, Ulrika, and Victoria.

Wednesday thoughts and a recipe: Banana & pear smoothie

The first shop I visited in Puerto Rico in June last year – at 03 in the morning when we arrived to the hotel without our luggage (lost somewhere at JFK) and I needed new underwear and socks… was Walgreens!

It is where I buy all my toiletries and O buys his milk, plus you name it – birthday cards, Puerto Rican souvenirs (magnets, cds, postcards, even coffee), medicine, beach gear (toys, chairs etc), snacks, sunscreen… and for some reason the only place where we can find the Cascade Action pacs (for the dishwasher)! We usually go there in the evening (open 24 hours) and the same woman always attends to us – I actually saw her in the mall the other day and got utterly confused “I know her from somewhere, hm…”

Nowadays, there are even two Walgreens* (and two three Starbucks) within walking distance! In the country where you usually have to drive  everywhere…

On Monday evening O and I filled a basket full of Annas Pepparkakor (Ginger / cinnamon cookies), Royal Dansk cookies (after all, I am almost half Danish, ha ha) and Swedish Red Fish (even though I don’t think it tastes like the Swedish red fish) for our Julfika (Christmas fika) on Sunday! What would we do without Walgreens [as we have no Ikea]?

I walked past this Xmas decoration today, wondering if they have fixed the figure that was not lit last year (photo from December 2007) – I couldn’t tell as it was still day-light and it hadn’t been switched on yet (last year my mother, sister and I had to go to Starbucks for a coffee while waiting for the sun to set before we could take the photo!)

I brought a package of pepparkakor to l’Alliance Francaise this afternoon and they were a huge success among the Europeans! “Not too sweet, the American cookies are just too sweet”, “Did you receive them by mail from Sweden?”, “You have to hold a Swedish cooking course here in the Alliance!”, “Sweden – that’s Europe [which is almost France??]“ were some of the comments… So now I am going to plan a cooking session for January to teach the Puerto Ricans of the Alliance Francaise to cook Swedish cuisine in French, why not!?

Anyway, here is a Wednesday recipe for a vitamin injection for those of you with colds and low energy, I think that I will make it tomorrow for breakfast:

Banana & pear smoothie
- ½ litre milk
- 2 bananas
- 1 pear
- ½ decilitre oats
- 1 tablespoon honey
- ice cubes
Mix the ingredients together in a blender and pour into high glasses. Enjoy!

*) I acknowledge that it is not just positive that Walgreens is ever-present in Puerto Rico, pushing out the smaller, local and independent pharmacies but coming from a country (in this case Belgium, not Sweden) where all shops close really early in the evening and remain closed on Sundays I love being able to shop the essentials at any time and within walking distance from home!!

A winter weekend in New York City

I can’t believe that it is already two weeks ago that we were in New York City! Time flies when you are having fun and last week was a combination of fun and not so fun – preparations for the Alliance Francaise Fête de noël (Christmas party) and having a cold. The French Christmas party was a success and I had my first “teaching” experience in French; as the responsible for a so-called atelier where school children had to write a letter to père noël (whom I still insist on calling Father Christmas and not Santa Claus ). It was fun as I had to practise both my French and my Spanish, and it was interesting to see how the students’ level of French had nothing to do with their age – obviously depending more on how long they had studied French…

Anyway, back to our weekend in NYC – it was cold but sunny, and involved a lot of walking and meeting with friends. It was the first time I actually spent the night in the city, however not in Manhattan but in Queens or rather Long Island City where we had found a relatively cheap Quality Inn. The hotel was basic but perfect, the only drawback was that the subway didn’t work during that particular weekend in the direction of Manhattan due to repairs on the line. It did mean that we spent a little more than expected on taxi rides, but at least the hotel room was cheap.

The view from our hotel window – yellow cabs!

We had quite a busy Friday with visiting Princeton, meetings (O) in the HQ of his company in NJ and dropping off the rental car in Newark (O had been in NJ since Tuesday) before we could take the train into NYC and change to the subway towards Queens. It was actually my first time on the subway in NYC! After we had checked in at the hotel, we headed back to Manhattan and checked out the home department of Bloomingdale’s! O headed towards the KitchenAid food processors as usual (he really wants one but can’t make up his mind if he wants to spend the money or not…) and I loved the beautiful decorations in the Christmas part of the shop. We had fika in the department store, in the middle of the kitchen section before I was allowed to buy two Christmas ornaments (the cheapest ones..)!

The evening was spent together with my fellow blogger Saltis and her husband M plus their beautiful daughter Ella and the cool cat Lipton. They live just next to the Queensboro bridge on the 18th floor with an amazing view over Manhattan – another first time for me; I have never been up in one of the city’s skyscrapers so it was great to see NYC by night from above (for free, ha ha)! We had such a cosy dinner with Saltis and M, and it was great to see that the guys (M and O) enjoyed it as well. It has been said before but it is really wonderful how you can meet such great people through the blogs and connecting also when meeting IRL.

Subway above ground in Long Island City, Queens, NY

Taking a cab back to Queens proved to be quite an adventure, not because the taxi driver refused to drive us there, which apparently is quite common (it is not popular among the cab drivers to have to leave Manhattan!) but because it turned out that the driver was new at the job and completely lost!! It reminded me so of my favourite film Night on Earth where the German taxi driver Helmut gets lost in the Bronx!! The funny thing is that the New York taxis have GPS, but apparently only in the backseats – there are tv screens which show you exactly where you are going, so we had to help the driver find his way to our hotel…

The next morning we crossed the Queensboro bridge again by taxi for the big surprise – Saltis and M were meeting with bloggers Annika (+ her daughter and husband) and Petra (i.e Sporty Spice) for brunch and we had decided to not tell the other girls that O and I were crashing their brunch date. We arrived late to Ritz Diner, which made the surprise even better – Annika and Petra just stared at me when I walked up to their table and said hello! I actually felt a little silly, since they just kept staring and not saying anything, and I started to wonder if the surprise had been such a good thing, but finally they recognised me, phew! It was great to see the girls (including Annika’s daughter Karolina) again and to meet Annika’s husband. As usual time flew too quickly and when Petra suggested that we should go to the traditional Christmas bazaar at the Swedish church* we jumped at the chance (except Annika who had to join her family who had already headed to a big toy shop).

One of the best things about our holidays was to experience the cold weather and get into a Christmas mode – and thanks to Petra’s suggestion to feel even a Swedish Christmas atmosphere! The julmys (Christmas cosiness) at the Swedish church involved some [very strong] glögg (Swedish mulled wine), saffronbuns and pepparkakor (ginger snaps).

The rest of the day was spent walking – we probably visited every Borders and Barnes & Noble shop in Manhattan in search of the Lonely Planet guide book for New York State… As you know I am a huge LP fan but to my disappointment we didn’t find it so we had to buy Fodor’s New York State even though I hated their Virginia guide While searching for the book, we visited the Strand bookstore, bought some apples at the farmers’ market and winter hats at Filene’s Basement on Union Square, found a great little shop selling vintage hotel and restaurant china (as well as new stuff) called Fishs Eddy, admired the Christmas decorations at the ice skating rink by Rockefeller Centre and bought some more ornaments for our Christmas tree in Crate and Barrel on Madison Avenue before we finally sat down for an extremely late lunch at a Europa Café and had an amazingly tasty roastbeef sandwich (maybe because I was sooo hungry and cold??).

Our day ended in the East village together with O’s colleagues – American couple C & S who used to live in Brussels, and Belgian B who happened to be over in NJ for work. It was great to catch up with them, and to hear of the Americans’ experience in Europe. The evening started in McSorley’s Old Ale House – a chaotic Irish pub where the decor hasn’t been changed since 1910 (and apparently not cleaned either!!), followed by dinner in The Holy Basil Thai restaurant and after-dinner drinks in Jimmy’s No 43 where they serve Belgian beer to O’s and C’s delight (Belgian B was less excited, as he was returning to Belgium a few days later). Even though I had enjoyed the cold weather all day, the change in temperature from Puerto Rico kind of got to me when we were on our way back to the hotel and O insisted on walking to the subway and travelling by public transport part of the way (to save money) instead of taking a cab all the way from the Village to Queens. I agreed with him in principle but it was freezing cold and I was tired so I did sulk for a while…

You always get two beers when ordering at McSorley’s!

We finished off our stay in NYC by a walk in Central Park with our luggage on Sunday morning! Fortunately we travelled quite light… Central Park is such an oasis in the city and it is difficult to imagine that you are so close to the bustling streets when walking along the paths where people stroll slowly and relaxed (except for the joggers). I love reading the plaques on the benches from people who have donated a resting place, very often in honour of a loved one.

Our trip continued via New Jersey and Pennsylvania to upstate New York and Canada, but I will write about that another day.

*) I have also been to the the Christmas bazaar in the Swedish church in Brussels – a great way to show foreign friends how Christmas is celebrated in Sweden.