Friday theme / Show & tell: Find of the month

Strandmamman’s last Friday theme “Månadens fynd” could be translated in two ways from Swedish to English; either as the Bargain or the Find of the month. I choose to interpret it as the find of the month because I want to share the following with you:

My mother and I were looking for some cool 70’s textiles in the cupboards the other day when we came across two old handbags and look what we found inside (too bad we didn’t find any textiles though):

My finds from an old handbag: two restaurant bills from Hotel Lundia in Lund (30th December 1980) and Elysée in Malmö (7th February 1982) and a return train ticket Eslöv – Lund (18 SEK) (30th December 1980) (I guess the person (my aunt?) took the train from Eslöv to Lund to have dinner at Hotel Lundia the day before New Year’s Eve in 1980!)

My maternal grandfather’s 60th birthday was celebrated at Elysée in Malmö – the fondue restaurant! The wine cost 55 SEK, and I think that 5 adults had the fondue which would make it 47,70 per person. The restaurant still exists but nowadays the fondue costs 145 SEK!

Interesting detail from the restaurant bill, the service charge (13%) has been added afterwards, just like in the US! Not the custom anymore when service is always included.

O and I had lunch at my grandmother’s place on Thursday – fried herring (fresh herring, not salty) & mashed potatoes! She thought it was a pity when I told her that we had eaten mashed potatoes yesterday, but we looove that dish and didn’t mind at all to eat it again*! After the apple crumble dessert, she opened the door to one of her linen closets and gave us a few old but beautiful table cloths:

A table runner with my great-grandmother’s embroidery

Two tablecloths marked with the initials of my maternal grandmother and my great-grandmother (my grandmother’s MIL or my mother’s paternal grandmother), Ellna and Ella

Unfortunately I won’t have time to check out the other Friday bloggers today since we are going to the summerhouse in the morning but I will be back on-line after the weekend and hopefully have time to read everybody’s Friday posts and answer your comments on the fish finger-post… Here are the other Friday participants:
Anki, Anna, Anne, Annika, Cecilia, Desiree, Erica, IngaBritt, Jemaya, Jennie, Lena, Leopardia, Lia, Mais-oui, Marianne, Marie, Marina, Mia, Mia D, Millan, Nilla, Petra H, Saltis, Simone, Sparkling, Strandmamman, and Victoria.

*) We will also have eaten fish 6 times this week: first Desiree’s fish soup on Tuesday, then the fish fingers on Wednesday, fried herring for lunch and sushi for dinner on Thursday, warmsmoked salmon tonight and seafood paella on Saturday! Fish is good for you!!

Wednesday recipe: A childhood classic

Yesterday I went with my mother to the supermarket, which is always such a treat for an expat… it is like being a child again in a toyshop – so many things you want to look at, touch, taste and buy! All of a sudden I knew what to make for lunch today for my father (working from home), O (working from home) and I (blogging from home?!) – a childhood classic (that I didn’t actually get to eat that often as a child as it wasn’t deemed very healthy…):

I needed some help from my father with the most basic thing – peeling the potatoes! I just can’t use the old, not very sharp potato-peeler (mental note: buy a new one for my parents), maybe because I am left-handed but I always end up peeling off half the potato in one go.

Peel the potatoes and try to save water by not letting the tap run like my father…

It turned out we didn’t have much frozen spinach left in the freezer

Eight potatoes proved to be perfect for 3 portions

Defrost the spinach in a little bit of oil or butter + salt

Boil the potatoes for 20 minutes

Hm, what do we language fascists say about the name of these fish fingers – särskrivning or not??

I had to take a break of course from the heavy cooking for a few sweets – not many left at the bottom of the bag. My mother and ate most of it already yesterday!

Frying the fish fingers for approximately 6 minutes

Pressing the potatoes for the mash – apparently I got so excited about the meal that I forgot to take a photo of the actual mashed potatoes! Add some butter and milk, salt and pepper to taste

Our Wednesday lunch in all its glory! My father remarked that he probably hadn’t eaten fish fingers in the last 20 years, and I, myself, can’t remember when I did it the last time!

Across the Atlantic – our first days in Sweden

Our second evening in Sweden and O is busy working – by phone with Puerto Rico… He doesn’t have this week off and will be working with the help of the phone (he has a Swedish mobile phone number!) and the computer. Thanks to the time difference he has at least the mornings off!

Leaving San Juan while the sun was rising

The trip across the Atlantic went very smoothly, we took off from San Juan as planned early on Saturday morning – a bit tired since we had only slept two hours, but with everything somehow packed into three suitcases (Space bags are such a great invention, not bringing any unnecessary air with us!); one [small] suitcase was full of shoes, cables (for laptops, phones, cameras) and toiletries… At the airport we had the honour of being selected for an extra security check – in between the two of us we had: 2 cameras, 4 mobile phones and 3 laptops, I wonder what the securiy people thought of us!

The Passaic River in Newark seen from the air

The 7½ hours lay-over in Newark went fairly quickly, but I was just too tired to do any blogging. O bought two shirts at Brooks Brothers so both of us were happy, O because of the bargain, I for the non-iron shirt models… The flight across the Atlantic to Copenhagen was quite nice, I watched a film (The Duchess with Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes), had a lovely but a bit too heavy dinner (Business class…) and then slept for 3-4 hours.

The New Jersey turnpike – it is impressive how many lanes the road has, and how close to the road the houses are built…

We landed 40 minutes ahead of schedule in a dark Copenhagen, the sun hadn’t risen yet and the airport was very calm. We had to wait a bit for the train to Skåne but it was great to stand on the platform and feel the cold! While we were crossing the bridge to Sweden the sun was rising and the sky was really beautiful – too bad that the train windows were dirty…

Sorry about the bad quality but I found this sign at the Copenhagen airport very interesting: in English it says “Swedish menu” – is it because Swedes always ask for two red hot dogs and a beer?? I looove Danish red hot dogs…

At 9 o’clock we were already back at my parents’ house eating breakfast! And as requested there was newly baked rolls (from the bakery), cheese (inte Prästost men Herrgård), paté and cucumber. We unpacked and handed over all the shopping we had done for my parents in the Puerto Rican outlets, and then we had a nap before we headed to Lund and played badminton for one hour! It was lots of fun, even though my parents beat us three times (despite my mother playing with an antique wooden racket) – hopefully we will have time to do it again!

The weather was very foggy and damp, what a difference from the [almost always] sunny Caribbean or just the beautiful sunrise that morning… My sister served fika in her new cosy apartment after our physical exercise – O was delighted to taste her vanilla buns again! In the evening the six of us, including my brother, had fondue at my parents’ place and we handed out the Christmas presents. My brother gave us 5 Swedish dvd films (with English sub-titles) including [for the Swedes]: Jägarna, Lust och fägring stor, Den man älskar and Såsom i himmelen. Both of us are looking forward to watching the films when we are back in Puerto Rico!

My sister’s vanilla twist buns

Today we slept until 12! And then O has been working, I have been reading the newspaper and just taking it easy + organising the lunch and dinner dates for the week. Late in the afternoon we drove to Lund and met a new blogger; Lia! We had a yummy dinner with her and her boyfriend, while admiring their stylish apartment with 3 balconies (I am sooo jealous!) and talking about expat life, blogging and work (hrm, mostly the guys). We had such a nice time together and it was really a pity that we had to rush back to Eslöv for O’s next conference call… Hopefully we will see them soon again, especially as we forgot to bring the Puerto Rican coffee that we were going to give them!

PS I have been struggling to upload some photos but my parents’ internet is just too slow – my father has complained to the internet provider and apparently there is a problem with a cable (he is NOT happy)! Fingers crossed that I will be able to show you some photos soon… Updated: Internet is still slow but at least I have managed to upload some photos now! Promise to take some photos of Sweden in the next few days…

Friday theme: My paternal grandfather (farfar)

Once again it is Friday and I am very impatient for this day to be over because tomorrow morning we are off to Europe! However, I am not looking forward to 1) making it to the airport for the early 6.55 flight to Newark 2) wait 7½ hours in Newark for the Copenhagen flight… But hey, with the help of some free goodies from the Continental business lounge (including free internet) and some good books – I am bringing Moby Dick (apparently Barack Obama’s favourite book and since I have had it in my book collection since 1994*, maybe it is time to read it!?), Shake hands with the devil by Roméo Dallaire (already started it, about the genocide in Rwanda) and a few Spanish books, + the great company of O, I am sure that time will fly!?

However, first today’s theme which was chosen by Strandmamman and it is quite short and concise: “my paternal grandfather” or farfar in Swedish. One of the best things (??) about the Swedish language is that we always know which grandparent (+ aunt & uncle) we are talking about! You see the words are constructed around father or mother: paternal grandparents are called farfar (father’s father) and farmor (father’s mother), maternal grandparents are morfar (mother’s father) and mormor (mother’s mother). My foreign friends have learnt this and always refer to my grandparents as farfar and mormor (the only two still alive).

My paternal grandfather just turned 89 two weeks ago and I am really looking forward to seeing him in two days’ time. Unfortunately he will have to wait a little for his favourite [Belgian] Godiva chocolate (I will buy when we go to Brussels in February) but I am sure that he will be quite happy just to see O again! Fortunately my grandfather speaks English so he and O can communicate without my help. And he always makes a joke about O’s name – asking if he is O the First or the Second, making a reference to the fact that two Swedish kings had the same name as O…

I will never forget my grandfather at my 30th birthday party a few years ago – he was standing with a beer can in his hand (what would my grandmother have said if she had still been alive??) by the dance floor and with fascination noting that people don’t seem to be touching anymore when dancing…

My farfar worked as a journalist for over 60 years (17 years of those after his retirement) and has published three youth books (in the 1950’s and 60’s) and one novel. He switched from an old-fashioned type-writer directly to a computer more than 10 years ago and sends me emails every now and then. I still remember when he told me that it was time he got connected to the internet!

I have of course read all his books; I recall really enjoying the 3 youth books. They were full of mystery and adventure, almost like Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books. His novel Frank was published in 2003 and is written like an “on-the-road” tale of a man who suffers from amnesia and travels through Sweden in search of his identity. I was impressed that my grandfather could write a novel set in the 21st century and in such various locations throughout the country.

My grandfather hiding under my brother’s cap last summer

Just the other day O and I were looking through another book by my grandfather – he and his youngest sister wrote the family chronicles a few years ago. They had gathered information, photos and extracts from their father’s old diaries and prepared a very interesting book that starts by telling the life story of their grandparents (or is it the grandparents’ of their parents, I am not sure) and ends with a short summary of everybody in our family with names, photos, professions, hobbies etc. It is such an interesting book for the whole extended family to have, and I know that I am not the only one who checks it every now and then, out of curiosity or because somebody refers to a second cousin or another… For example, apparently I have an American second cousin in the US Navy whom I have never met.

I actually wish that there was such a family historybook also for my mother’s family – I should definitely try to write down all the stories that my grandmother (mormor) tells…

An interesting fact about my grandfather’s family is that even though my grandfather had 5 siblings, the family name will only be carried forward to the next generation by my brother (if he has children)! The reason is that my grandfather only had one brother and all his grandchildren were girls – so in the traditional Swedish way where women take the name of their husbands, the family name will be lost. What a responsibility for my brother! Fortunately he has an older sister who is married to a Spaniard and you know that Spanish children get the family names of both their parents… Oh well, I guess that it is not that important, we are not royalty after all

And now I am going to check out what the other Friday theme bloggers have written about their grandfathers: Anki, Anna, Anne, Annika, Cecilia, Desiree, Erica, IngaBritt, Jemaya, Jennie, Lena, Leopardia, Lia, Mais-oui, Marianne, Marie, Marina, Mia, Mia D, Millan, Nilla, Petra H, Saltis, Simone, Sparkling, Strandmamman, and Victoria.

*) I have already mentioned this book in a previous blog post…

Wednesday recipe: Paella

Last weekend we had our “farewell-but-we-are-coming-back-dinner” for some of our friends; 5 Puerto Ricans, a Swede and a French. It was an experiment since it was the first time we invited some Puerto Ricans for a sit-down dinner - usually people here, just like in the US, have very informal gatherings with buffet-style dinners. While we lived in Europe I would never have thought that a sit-down dinner was very formal but it is just easier to sit around a table and eat with fork and knife… The group was not just a mix of different nationalities, but also of different people who didn’t know each other which is always interesting. I always enjoy seeing how a group will interact and whether it will work mixing friends.

The shrimp is pre-fried for the paella. Of course we [almost] always use Spanish olive oil

I would say that the dinner was a success; even phone numbers were exchanged! It was very enjoyable to actually sit around a table and talk, the conversation flows in a different way when all the guests sit together. O had made sangria and paella with shrimp, chicken and chorizo, and I was responsible for the dessert – a cheesecake with a ginger snap (pepparkaks) base. Both the cheesecake and the paella were very popular, and we even got a request for a doggy bag of paella to bring home to my Spanish teacher’s father (who was very curious about the dish – I hope he liked it!).

Pre-frying of the chicken and shrimp / seafood

The recipe below is very basic since O doesn’t really use a recipe and just improvises with the ingredients. So, do the same – add a little lemon, skip the chicken or the chorizo (the paella on the photos didn’t have chorizo) etc. Or if you don’t feel confident enough, use this recipe in Swedish or maybe this in English.

N.B. The paella photos are from a previous paella dinner just before Christmas when O cooked outside on a barbeque for all his colleagues!

Paella
rice (approximately 100 grams per person)
chicken
chorizo
shrimp and / or various seafood (mussels, calamari etc)
parsley
fish broth (O makes his own) – twice the amount of rice
1-2 tomatoes – grated on a cheese grater to a pulp
2-3 cloves garlic (depending on size and taste)
1-1½ teaspoon paprika
saffron (or it can be already added to the broth)
a handful of peas or green beans
olive oil
salt

It is not necessary to use a traditional paella pan, just use a big, deep and wide frying pan, that’s what we did on Saturday (the paellera was left back in Brussels).

Pour a generous amount of olive oil in the pan (3/4 of the bottom should be covered), once heated add a teaspoon of paprika and let it become golden but not burnt by stirring. Fry the shrimp slightly and remove. Add the chicken and chorizo, cook well and remove.

Add the tomato and fry while stirring. Peas or green beans go in next, keep stirring and then add the rice. Fry the rice slightly before adding the broth and the garlic mixture (garlic, saffron and maybe some more paprika). Spread the rice and the meat / fish evenly and let it boil on high heat for 10 minutes. Lower the heat and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Remember, the rice should not be fully cooked (almost al dente like pasta)!

Turn off the heat and let the rice finish cooking by covering the pan with a lid / aluminium foil for approximately 6 minutes. Serve the paella with some fresh parsley and maybe some slices of lemon, other decorations could be boiled eggs cut in halves or strips of red pepper.

Tip: O says that the secret is to cook the rice spread in a thin layer. If the rice is getting too dry while cooking at low heat, spread some drops of water with your finger tips and then cover the pan with aluminium foil. Repeat the process until the rice is almost cooked.
Some people like the paella to be slightly burnt… In Spain a paella is considered well made when the rice at the bottom is a bit “toasted”!

(recipe written with the instructions from O)

O makes tomato sauce by just grating tomatoes to a pulp on an ordinary cheese grater – throw away the left-over skin

Add the tomato sauce to the pan

A handful of peas…

And the rice…

Mix it all together

Stir in the broth and maybe add some water

Let it simmer

Add the garlic, saffron & paprika mix

Simmer some more

Add the shrimp / seafood, let the paella rest under a lid / aluminium foil for around 6 minutes and then serve!

¡Buen provecho!

The European Winter Tour 2009

As a couple coming from two different countries, having lived in a third country and at the moment located in a fourth country you become a little blasé about travelling… which I realised on Saturday when I was casually “country dropping” while explaining our travel plans to our Puerto Rican guests. I didn’t mean to be bragging about our extensive travels, and like I said to a friend on Friday – it is not like we are made of money (to quote my father ). Nevertheless, we could not go to Europe and not go to both Spain and Sweden, and preferably also Belgium.

Fortunately our expat status within O’s company gives us the right to one trip back to Europe per year, so our tickets to cross the Atlantic are paid for, and we are hoping to travel with air miles within Europe.

Part of the always extensive dairy section of a Swedish supermarket

So what are our travels plans? Well, we are flying out on Saturday morning to Copenhagen (I wonder if we are getting any travel advisory for Denmark this time?), crossing the bridge to Sweden and spending two weeks in Skåne with my family. We are hoping to do the following:

• Eat fried herring for lunch at my grandmother’s
• Go to the summerhouse and spend the weekend there with the whole family
• Long walks on the beach
• Eat warm smoked salmon (varmrökt lax) fresh from the smokery (rökeri) close to the summerhouse
• Get a new passport (P)
• Donate blood (P)
• Fika at my sister’s new place that we haven’t seen yet and to eat those cinnamon buns that O has been talking about ever since February 2006!?
• Eat Lingongrova (bread with lingonberries, both O’s and my favourite)
• Eat pizza at my brother’s place – Swedish pizza is the best!
• Have a traditional lunch at a Gästis (gästgivaregård or a traditional inn) with my grandfather, we haven’t decided on location yet – either Dalby or Sjöbo.
• Play badminton with the family – maybe already on Sunday since I have read that physical activity is a good way to shake off any jetlag!
• Get my father and / or brother to fix my computer battery that is not connecting properly and a general back-up / update of the laptop
• Meet various friends – of course!

I sent an email to the family the other day with our so-called dietary requirements: Prästost (or Priest Cheese as we have translated it for O) and paté (leverpastej) with cucumber on freshly baked rolls for breakfast, oxrullader (beef roulades!?), O’s favourite lavender biscuits, fondue… you might think that we are obsessed by food, and maybe we are

Swedish pizza – al tonno

In February we might go via Stockholm to Brussels (Brussels is for sure, Sthlm not yet)  - maybe not the shortest way but our Flemish friends S & I live there and as another friend will be visiting from Belgium, we (or rather I, as I am the travel planner in this household) thought that it would be perfect to join them for the weekend!

We will stay in Brussels for around two weeks* before we head to Spain for another two weeks with O’s family… and then we will see if O has received his visa or not!? I will then return to Scandinavia for a girls’ weekend in Copenhagen first week of March with my Swedish, Danish, Irish and French girlfriends, and then go to Stockholm to apply for my visa at the American embassy and see all my 08-friends (people from the capital are known as 08s in the south of Sweden, it is the regional code when calling).

And don’t worry, I will keep the blog updated with stories and photos during the 6-8 weeks we plan to stay in Europe (or rather that the immigration lawyers have told us it will take for us to get new visas!!)…

*) I actually have a long list with what I / we want to do in Brussels & Spain as well but that’s for another day.

Friday theme / Show & tell: Underneath it all – USOs in Puerto Rico?

Today’s Last week’s Friday theme was really tricky – “underneath it all” is my translation of Strandmamman’s Längst Under and I really had no idea how to interpret this… Until I found this old blog draft on a programme O and I happened to see on the History Channel a few months ago: the UFO files, which mentioned USO activity in Puerto Rico (the title was Deep Sea USOs)!

USOs are like UFOs but submerged under water (hence the reference to today’s theme of “underneath it all”)! So an UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object, and an USO is an Unidentified Submerged Object… I have to say that I am not particularly interested in UFOs or USOs; I only watched the film Contact with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey because we had just visited the Arecibo Observatory (read more about our visit by clicking on the link), and I don’t give much thought to whether there is life on Mars or not (even if it was in the news last week) but I still thought that it was a little interesting that so many people claim to have seen USOs in the Laguna Cartagena, close to Lajas in Puerto Rico.

The world’s largest radio telescope – the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico

Unfortunately I don’t have any photos to show of any USOs, nor have I even been to Lajas – a town in the south-west of the island. However, it is on the list for excursions in 2009 and I will let you know if I spot any unidentified objects, submerged or flying!

The other Friday theme participants probably published their interpretations on time last Friday…: Anki, Anna, Anne, Annika, Cecilia, Desiree, Erica, IngaBritt, Jemaya, Jennie, Lena, Leopardia, Lia, Mais-oui, Marianne, Marie, Marina, Mia, Mia D, Millan, Nilla, Petra H, Saltis, Simone, Strandmamman, and Victoria.

Wedneday recipe: Klenätter or Swedish deep-fried Christmas cakes

Time for Wedneday recipes again and I wanted to share some great photos I took of O’s baking skills on Christmas Day, which by the way had been one of those “lost” days for me if it hadn’t been for the photos! The lost days are the ones that I can’t remember, I don’t know if it only happens to me but sometimes I just can’t remember what I have done on a particular day – just one or two days afterwards…

Very often the reason is because I haven’t done anything special but I find it really scary when my memory is failing me and I try to keep a brief journal to not lose days! Anyway, Christmas Day was one of those lost days until I found the photos and realised that O did some baking and we went for a walk + coffee in Starbucks… Nothing very exciting and I think we actually wore our PJs until we took that afternoon walk but I guess that is part of having holidays

.

First photo is unfortunately a little blurry…

Anyway, back to the recipe – first of all, I know that most people spell the name of the cakes in Swedish klenäter but I just think it looks strange with only one -t and my grandmother has spelt it with double-t in the recipebook she prepared for me. She also sometimes calls the cakes klenor instead of klenätter.

However, O didn’t use my grandmother’s recipe but a recipe from a cookbook in English. The same day I bought the Julie / Julia book in Borders I also found a book called The Food and Cooking of Sweden – how could I not buy it!!? (espcially as it only cost $4,99… I even bought two as I thought that they would be great as presents!) So, O got one of them for Christmas as he enjoys cooking and is very interested in Swedish food and traditions. The book has an initial chapter explaining the different traditions, geography, products etc of Sweden.

All in all it is a great book, but what really annoys me, as I am a bit of a spelling fascist* (heard of spell check, hello!?) is that there are numerous spelling mistakes in the Swedish names of the recipes and särskrivningar (words spelt apart that should be together – an English example is cook book instead of cookbook).

O chose to start with the recipe for klenätter because they reminded him of some Spanish deep-fried cakes – the Spaniards loooove deep-fried cakes such as churros. And he didn’t even know that it was one of the Swedish things I really missed the most at Christmas!!

The cakes turned out well but next time I will make him try my grandmother’s recipe – she puts lemon peel in the dough which gives that little extra flavour and deep fries them in coconut “fat / grease” … She also makes the cakes thinner and longer but O’s cakes looked very much like the ones in his cookbook so I was very impressed!

My grandmother’s klenätter / deep-fried Christmas cakes
3 egg yolks
1 egg white
1½ decilitre sugar
1½ decilitre cream
75 grams butter / margarine – melted
7-8 decilitres flour
Peel of one lemon – grated
cooking oil

Mix all the ingredients together and leave to rest for at least 2 hours (my grandmother wrote over night). Thinly roll out the dough and cut into 1 cm x 5 cm rectangles, cut a slit in the middle and fold each piece in half and then put one end though the hole and press down to flatten the cake (quote from the English book, I have never understood actually how my grandmother made the cakes into the shapes they have).
Heat the cooking oil on a frying pan to 180 degrees centigrade / 350 degrees Fahrenheit and drop the cakes into the oil. Fry them until golden brown and then turn them in some sugar. Let the cakes cool or eat them hot.

*) I am aware that I might not always spell correctly but I try to avoid spelling mistakes as much as possible, and at least I am not publishing a book!! And despite the fact that I insist on mis-spelling the name for these cakes in Swedish…

Fler onsdagsreceptbloggare: Marianne i Kairo, Anna in Stockholm…

The Top List of 2008

For several years now I have, at the end of the year, written a list of my favourite events / things that have happened during the year as a way of summarising the experiences and thinking back of what I have done. Initially I wrote this list in my private diary but last year I published the top list of 2007 on the blog, and here are my favourites from 2008:

Trip of the year: Our holidays in California and Baja California (Mexico) were just the most wonderful 10 days! We met up with both long-lost friends of mine and O’s, some new blog friends and experienced so much. My favourite part was probably the Big Sur and the big colony of seals we saw…

The Point Sur Light Station

Party of the year: Not really a party but the evening in Brussels last summer when O and I met up with all our friends on Place Luxembourg before heading to one of my favourite restaurants in town – Le IIème element. It was a chaotic situation as usual; trying to fit everybody around a small table on the terrace, grabbing chairs from other tables and catching up with different friends in different languages all at the same time. Can’t wait for drinks at Place Lux in February (slightly colder I guess)!

The feet of my old colleagues from the Europan Commission – French, Spanish and Swedish

Fika of the year: The Sunday fikas in Borders, Plaza las Américas with Swedish B – O is usually reading the Spanish gossip magazines (Hola etc) while B and I chat in Swedish or ask O to explain who all the famous people are… We always get lots of stares from people who are trying to figure out where we are from and getting all confused with our mix of Swedish, English and Spanish.

New country of the year: Mexico where we visited one of O’s Mexican friends – we are hoping to get a Mexican visit to Puerto Rico in May… and hopefully we will get the opportunity to see more of Mexico soon.

Weekend of the year: Our long Labour-day-weekend in Virginia and Washington DC – we managed to see so much in just 4 days, and thanks to Annika in Virginia and our Finnish friend P in Norfolk we had a really great time.

Film of the year: The Puerto Rican film Maldeamores – funny and sad, it is a great film! We sent it to Sweden as a Christmas present and my parents loved it as well!

Book of the year: Probably Kristin Lavransdotter by Sigrid Undset because I have had the book for so many years on my bookshelf and it was really nice to finally get to read it.

Restaurant experience of the year: Los Pepes in Vieques and our dinner there with three Americans and a Croat + Finnish P, Spanish O and Swedish me; very random and such a great evening (except O’s fish that had a dog smile – scary!)

Recipe of the year: The cold sauce I improvised in July – I can’t remember how many times we made it, and how many times we ate warm smoked salmon with it during the summer but it was just so tasty!

Cooking session of the year: Our Puerto Rican cooking lesson with our neighbours in Isabela – it was so much fun to learn to cook a few local dishes, and the whole day was just perfect.

Arroz con gandules – a typical Puerto Rican dish

Phenomenon of the year: all those blog meetings – I am so grateful that O has indulged me and not minded meeting up with my various blog friends during our holidays!

Island of the year: La isla del encanto – Puerto Rico of course!

Baby of the year: The long-awaited little N, the son of our Swedish friends M and A in Brussels. He was born way too early but fought through those first few months and is now thriving back in Stockholm. I am really looking forward to seeing him again in February!

Girls’ weekend of the year: The July-weekend in the summerhouse that became more than a girls’ event when my old neighbour and flatmate O showed up with his pregnant Norwegian wife H, and my parents decided to invite his parents (their neighbours)… We had a huge barbeque and sat up until late in the night listening to the neighbours having a more loud party than us!

Scariest experience of the year: driving in the mountains after the landslides with our Irish friends… The four of us were very relieved when we finally got down from the mountains in one piece!

Busiest month of the year: Probably February when we had visitors twice (Swedish P and Cypriot M + Finnish P), spent a long weekend in Vieques, O had job interviews in New Jersey and we started our East Coast – West coast holidays.

Family time of the year: All those weeks spent in the new summerhouse with my family last summer – 5½ weeks in total! The summer started with a big cold and wet midsummer’s eve party and ended with a paint project.

Most complicated travel arrangements of the year: trying to buy tickets for my Malmö – Barcelona – Zaragoza – Charleroi – Brussels – Copenhagen trip in July… I was a little stressed before I had managed to buy the separate plane tickets!

New friend of the year: my first Spanish teacher L who became a good friend and even invited us to celebrate Christmas with his family + all those blog friends that I met up with during the year in New York, California, Virginia and Copenhagen.

Romantic dinner of the year: Our first wedding anniversary in the Ritz-Carlton.

Spanish course of the year: The very intense 10-day visit of my MIL, SIL and NIL (mother-, sister- & niece-in-law) – my Spanish improved drastically!

Flea market of the year: We tried to find some interesting pulgeros in Puerto Rico but in the end the best flea market experience was last summer in Sweden with my mother in a small village outside of Kristianstad (Lyby I think it was called). We bought some old Penguin classics for the summerhouse, two brand new Klippan bowls (traditional pottery from my region Skåne) and I had a fried herring sandwich. I also went to a market with my Flemish friends S and I in Degeberga but that one is more of a collectors’ / antiques market.

Is it just me or is there something freaky about naked dolls?

Most difficult experience of the year: Realising that some friends don’t seem to have the time to send me a line or two once in a while to check how I am feeling – if I don’t email them, we don’t seem to have any contact. And I find it strange how some of my friends are not willing to get Skype (it takes maximum 15 minutes and is free to sign up) in order for us to be able to communicate easier. More and more people in Europe don’t have landlines and calling to mobile phones across the Atlantic is just very expensive (we don’t have a landline either but we have Skype!). I have shed many tears and have felt very abandoned over the course of this year but I think that I am starting to accept the situation…

Beach of the year: Our favourite Puerto Rican beach is in Cabo Rojo, and the first time we went there was exactly a year ago today with Swedish B and my French friend C.

Most Puerto Rican experience: My Puerto Rican toe nails!

And that’s it – my favourite things and experiences from 2008!

Post No 300: The Julie / Julia project

I just discovered that this will be my 300th blog post – according to the categories on the left* right-hand side of the blog I have written 68 posts about Life in Puerto Rico, 49 about Sweden and 41 on Food and recipes.
The following post will be added to the Food and recipes category, and it will also be filed under Recommendations…

Almost every Sunday O and I go to Borders in Plaza las Américas (the big mall in San Juan) to have fika with Swedish B. I never miss the opportunity to go through the bargain section in the bookstore even though O has now officially banned me from buying more cookbooks, and preferably no other books either… However, there was this book that I kept looking at, it cost only $3,99 and looked really interesting – and finally I bought it just before Christmas (when O was not around to supervise my book shopping!).

Yesterday I was looking for a new book to read, knowing that I should be reading a book in Spanish but not really feeling like it… I mean, I just finished reading a book in Norwegian (De beste blant oss by Helene Uri) and felt that it was time for something less linguistically challenging…

So I decided to read that book from Borders – it is called Julie and Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen by Julie Powell. The story seems very promising, the author has chronicled how she got the crazy (?) idea to work through one of her mother’s old recipe books; Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking during one year. Apparently the MtAoFC (as it is abbreviated in the book) is a real classic, and I had actually heard of Julia Child before – she was one of the first TV cook stars in the US.

After just a few pages I have a sneaking feeling about that old French cookbook and put down my book, and go into the kitchen where I look through our recipe book shelf and what do I find; the MtAoFC but in Swedish (Det goda franska köket)!! I have to admit that I haven’t tried any of the recipes even though I have been tempted a few times to make my favourite French dessert Tarte au citron and I looked up the recipe for Blanquette de veau after we had eaten that dish in Normandie in 2007. However, I have owned the book since the summer of 1999 when I found it for sale (of course, notice a certain book buying habit here…) in Stockholm – my parents have the same book and I guess that I thought that it would be good to have a basic French cookbook in my quite extensive (too extensive according to O) book collection.

Even more intrigued by the book in my hand, I continue reading and discover that Julie Powell started a blog at the same time as her cooking project – so once again I take a break to look up the blog and read in Julie’s new blog that there is a film called Julie & Julia coming out in 2009 starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams…

Anyway, I just wanted to share all this information with you, and tell you that I am really enjoying reading the book Julie and Julia, plus I am already inspired to try some of those recipes…

*) I guess that I have proved once again to my mother that I can’t tell left from right… my excuse is as always that it is proven that left-handed [women] have more difficulties with this than right-handed people!!