12 days of Christmas

Inspired by the season

my husband wants to tell the real story

about his Christmas:

Julebord and coconut cake

Last night we had our annual Julebord (Christmas party) at work

This year we chose to do it far out in the woods

Viking style!

The place was rustic, wooden and rough

the floor was of hard soil

and there was massive logs og the fire.

Even if it was kind of outside-ish, it was warm .

The tables was of thick wood, the chairs was of thick stumps of wood

with skins of reindeer to sit on.

The menue was grilled lamb and salmon

Outside there was kerosene lamps and torches to show us the way.

There was stars and moon above, and it was magical!

This afternoon back from the wilderness

I made a coconut cake

soft and cruncy coconut meringue on top.

Lovely

Half way to a thousand and some chicken nuggets

Advent

Today it's the first Sunday of Advent

The color of Advent is purple

Home made chicken nuggets are as easy as they are tasty

(and slightly messy when you make them)

Pieces of chicken breasts, first in flour, then in egg

and finally in crushed Pringles

Frying in my skillet

No fancy order,

just served with oven chips and broccoli

Some sweet and sour chili sauce to dip the good pieces in! Yum!

And do you know what?

This is post number 500!

I don't mess about!

Crackling and ashes

When I was going to post something about this piece of pork meat with it's crackling

I thought

have I written about this before?

I've been doing this blog since 2007, so I probably had.

I searched my blog

(feel free to do the same)

and found one post:

Almost exactly 3 years back in time

(give or take one day)

This is a common Christmas dinner in Norway

only not in our house,

it's kind of frowned to eat this in November

Many people take their Christmas food tradition very seriously!

We enjoyed in November anyway, as we did 3 years ago

according to my blog.

It's a bit nippy outside

so we keep a fire going when we are home.

Every now and then, the fireplace needs to be emptied

It is full of ashes!

Dinkie is waiting impatiently because she just loves the warming fire!

The ashes must be cold, the bucket shouldn't be flammable

(like mine is)

and you should never leave it on the steps outside your front door for later.

A few houses has burnt down over the years because of that!

Embers can keep warm inside of ashes for a long time!

My house is still standing, I emptied the bucket far from my house straight away!

The calendar project

My daughter Pink Princesse goes to school

far up north if Norway.

In a couple of days, the sun will disapper for quite a while

She is wondering how she will cope with it!

Where we live, further south, the days are short in the winter

but the sun never disappear completely so it will be her first time!

To cheer her up

I'm preparing a Christmas calendar

for the days in December until she comes home for her Christmas holiday!

One little present for each day.

A little break after the wrapping

Burger and chips, Little Chefs favourite!

He wants a calendar too!

I'll send them off, one package at a time

You can't beat getting mail!

That'll put a smile on her face

and make her feel special

my sweet girl!

Every now and then, a fresh start if you want

We are in January now

And we're supposed to swap these

with theseThats allright

We can't be celebrating and eat Christmas grub for ever

It's time to embrace the simple life again

and maybe get back to hole number two in the belt again

(instead of number three and four)

Anyway

There's still one more

rich dinner to go:

Pinnekjøtt

Lovely!

Well then, all set and "vel bekomme" as we say in Norwegian

Pudding and dogs

Red is an important color at Christmas time!

I seem to have written about almost every thing I've cooked

during the 3 years I've been blogging.

But this is strangely enough

somenthing I haven't mentioned:

Trifle

From the bottom, yello, sponge, fruit coctail, custard, sponge, whipped cream.

Our family's all time favourite

Like an upside down cream cake!

Dinkie is watching the pile of presents shrinking

resting her head on Blåmann, her big blue boyfriend

The day after she tries something she has never done before:
Chewing on the lamb bone!
(she had an easily upset stomach when she was younger
hopefully she has outgrown it, and will not be sick tonight!)

Another popular pudding in our family
The yorkshire pudding
After a few years of practicing

A Norwegian girl has learned how to master

the art of making a fluffy yorkshire pudding!

Little Chef eats his with strawberry jam,

and the rest of us eats it with all the trimmings

of our Christmas dinner!

Merry Christmas!

My friends

I want to wish you all

A Merry Christmas!

We're following our tradition
making the same Christmas dinner as the years before
Leg of lamb on Christmas eve
and Turkey on Christmas day.

It's Merry times

Remember the fish tank?

The fishes have moved out,

the angels have moved in

For Christmas I got a macro lens for my camera!

So from now on

Here comes the close ups!

This is my Christmas tree:

(close up, that is)

This is a yorkshire pudding

(still on a 5 cm distance)

And then to a wider perspective:

We are having a

Good Christmas!

We are greatful that we have each other
We have had a year full of

challenges, clarification and reorganization.

We have come out on the other side

More wise, more whole
and happier.

For all this we are greatful!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Grøtfest!

Advent traditions in Norway

and in our house contains (among other things) this:

Risgrøt

(rice porridge or pudding)

Before Christmas the two teenagers in our house

invited some friends

for a Advent party.

Mommie dearest made

loads of rice pudding!

Rice
And milk

This was after the first round

and there was hardly any left at all!

The rice pudding is served warm

with sugar, cinnamon and butter in the middle

(you dip every spoonful in the melting butter )

At Christmas we hide a peeled almond or three

in the rice pudding.

The lucky one who finds it is not to tell

but hide it in his mouth or hand until every one has finished eating

then he reveals the almond,

and gets a price!

Usually the price is a pig made of marzipan.

It was a loud and happy party

with laughter and warmth.

and it went surprisingly well to mix

6 sixteen year olds

and 6 thirteen year olds!

(As it did last year and the year before)

December thoughts

I love candles

they burn so quietly

So peacefully

giving warmth and light

Every morning, afternoon and night

we burn several candles

This time of the year we only have daylight

a couple of hours in the middle of the day

if it's a clear day.

We stay inside and burn our candles

hibernating in the dark season.

The most eaten fruit of the season in Norway

is clementines

Not from here of course,

This one is a sweet treasure from Spain.

The smell of clementines

is the smell of Christmas!

In Norway it was common to clean your entire house

before Christmas.

This is not such a common tradition amongst my generation
Why should we do that, when no one can see a thing?

One trick is to burn Christmas incense

To make your house smell nice

And if you really want it to smell like you've actually cleaned ceiling and walls, then you can fill a little saucer with pine-sol and hide it behind a curtain in your living room, I'm just saying...

Getting hungry

I've kicked Christmas out now

Traditionally the tree should be taken out on the 13th day after Christmas

or even the 21th day after Christmas

but these days most people clear it out earlier.

The tree is now thrown out in the garden

except all the green needles that landed on my floors

Its' still cold outside

we need warming food

Chili from Le Chien will warm us again

It want's some alone time in the frying pan to get all its charm out
vegetables and red beans
While it was getting ready
I was visiting Buffalodick's baked potatoes
and it made me so hungry
I blame him for me not taking a photo of my plate
until it looked like this: