After my exercising I cooked some food for tomorrow’s lunchbreak. Minced chicken à la Curry was on the menu!
But! I thought that squeezed garlic was less hot than chopped, so I squeezed three, or was it even four garlic wedges (normally I chop two) into the pot. Sure, I did smell the lovely garlic smell, but I never thought it would taste as much garlic as it smelled. Oh, was I wrong?
Hottttttt!
I really found out the hard way that squeezed garlic is hotter than chopped.
Time to sleep!
I wish you all a good night, or a good day, for those of you who still have daylight!
This is the first time since 1995 that we have this much snow. It started to melt a couple of days ago, but now it’s snowing again. When I got back from work an hour ago, I found that I couldn’t even get my car back up on our yard, so I had to start shove all the snow away. PHEW! It took me 30 minutes just to get HALF the driveway done! Then I went inside to take a break. It’s so exhausting to shove snow. You guys who never tried have no idea! Haha!
However, this snow chaos creates some problem in Sweden. Roofs can break, so some people get up on theirs to shove the snow off. And when all the snow, it’s about 60cm (2ft) melt, where will all the water go? I wonder the same! But I’m soon to find out, hopefully. I’m sick and tired of this snow now. Ever since I got back from Kenya it’s been lots of snow. Actually they’ve had snow since Christmas in December!
Posted by Theswede on februari 28th, 2010 | 0 comments
Oh my, I’ve dreamt so weird things tonight. I dreamt that I was changing nappies on a baby, and first of all, they were cloth diaper, which I think is gross! And second of all, THE BABY ROLLED OF THE BENCH AND HIT THE FLOOR! Was I scared to tell the parents?! Yes! So I didn’t. The baby seemed fine. But what a nightmare!
Then I dreamt that I was on a boat. I had brought some bread and butter, but then I dropped both of it in the water, so this other girl who swam really well dove into the water to pick it up. But who would eat bread and butter that fell into the water?!?!
Posted by Theswede on februari 27th, 2010 | 0 comments
Hi, hi, hi!
Every good thing comes in three, right?!
Picture this, two birds flying over the sky while the sun is setting, or! Three birds flying over the sky while the sun is setting! What would you pick?
Posted by Theswede on februari 16th, 2010 | 0 comments
I just got back from exercising! The first exercise in maybe… Four months! Or maybe even five!!! And it felt goooood! I went to something we call Friskis & Svettis (it almost means Healthy & Sweaty, really silly name). We jumped around and got sweaty! It’s mostly older people there, like 40+ (which isn’t that old, I know). Anyway, I’ll do this at least 3 times a week, that’s my plan!
Posted by Theswede on februari 15th, 2010 | 0 comments
What is it they say about Mondays? That it’s a horrible day, something like that?
But I must say I kind of like Mondays. You’re alert and rested after the weekend, if you haven’t partied too hard of course… And Mondays always pass very quickly. I’m always in a good mood at work on Mondays.
Posted by Theswede on februari 14th, 2010 | 0 comments
One thing that Sweden is known for is Midsummer. This is a popular Swedish feast where we dance around a midsummer-pole, eat meatballs and herring with early potatoes and dill. And for dessert: a lovely strawberry cake. Family and friends get together, hoping for sun and good weather, just to have a good time. At night a bonfire is often lightened and it’s BBQ time.
The origin of this feast is to celebrate the June solstice (summer solstice), but the church also celebrates a church person (John the Baptist) at the same time.
Midsummer is celebrated on the day we call Midsummer Eve, on a Friday between the 19h-25th of June every year and it is a flagday in Sweden.
It’s not a real midsummer eve without good weather, meatballs, fresh potatoes, strawberries and a midsummer pole.
The midsummer pole is a hallmark of the Swedish Midsummer. It’s a birch leaved pole shaped like a cross with two garlands of flowers hanging on it. We form a circle around this pole and sing and dance stupid dances around it. The songs are very random, about frogs, musicians and about walking around a juniper berry bush, for example. Each and every song with a different dance to it. If someone from above saw us singing these songs and dancing these dances they would think we were nuts. But it’s great fun!
Some people claim that from the very beginning the midsummer pole symbolised a penis. They say it’s a fertility symbol, and that dancing around it should give a good harvest. This makes it even funnier…
I asked my little sister what she thought about when she heard Midsummer. Her answer was that she thought about the midsummer pole, birch leaves, ox-eye daisies, kids in white dresses and flowers in their hair. In my family my grandma uses to make garlands of flowers for the kids to put in the hair.
On Midsummer Eve, you’re supposed to pick seven different flowers to put under your pillow at night. That night you will dream about the person you’re going to marry. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. The right way to do this is:
Pick seven different flowers from seven different meadows. Once you’ve picked one, you’re supposed to cross the fence to the next meadow, pick a new flower, cross another fence, and so on.
Where my family use to celebrate Midsummer Eve there is no meadow at all. Actually there aren’t many places around these days where you can find seven meadows in a row. So we just picked seven different flowers. If we picked any flowers at all. Sometimes we forgot to pick any. And most of the time we also forgot to put them under the pillow. Our family won’t ever marry it seems like…
This tradition was actually more common some decades back. And mostly the girls picked flowers. Boys felt too cool to pick flowers. But it’s a nice tradition for a child, and it gives the parents some break, when all the kids run around looking for flowers.
There is a dark side of the Midsummer celebration too. The consumption of alcohol is very high, which results in a lot of arguments and fights. And this is also one of the holidays with most accidents on the road. The drunk drivers kill a lot of people this weekend every year. It’s very sad to read the newspaper the next day.
But apart from this, Midsummer is one of the best holidays in Sweden. Everyone is in a good mood and we’re just having a great time!
Posted by Theswede on februari 14th, 2010 | 0 comments
Good morning people!
How are you?
I had a great night last night. A very good friend and I went out for dinner at La Gusto, this Italian restaurant in my town. It just opened a dance floor too, so now they have pub nights as well. They played horrible music from the 90’s and there were only people from my town there, obviously, but I had forgotten why I don’t like people from here. But now I know! They’re such bummers!
Anyway, we had a great evening, until they played Boten Anna, that was it! I said ”NO, this is enough! Let’s GO!” And we went! Haha, horrible song, I absolutely hate it! It should be forbidden! EWWW!
Posted by Theswede on februari 11th, 2010 | 0 comments
Hi everyone!!
It was a long long time, no see, I must say. I’m back from Kenya. Lovely Kenya.
I’ve met some wonderful people. I’ve seen the Big Five and I’ve eaten rice out of a poop bag. I’ve had a monkey sleeping on my lap, and I’ve seen the sunrise over the Indian Ocean.
Kenya is such a wonderful country in many ways.
It’s such a poor country but also very rich. Everything is so brightly-coloured. The trees, red sand, fruits. And talking about fruit: OH MY! There’s so much fruit there! They have all kind of weird fruits that I’ve never even heard of. Who knew that there are more than one kind of mango?!
At least not us Swedes. We have one kind, and it’s 1 euro (100Ksh), and you can buy a mango for 0,1 euro (10Ksh) in Kenya. And there’s fruit everywhere. You can drive on a road in the middle of nowhere and within 10 minutes you will find someone selling fruit on the side of the road. A mango? Or a slice of fresh, sweet pineapple? I LOVE their pinapples!
They have everything, they have many different cultures, lots of animals, lots of fruit, tea, coffee, sugar…
I’ve had a great time! I will tell you more another time. Just wanted to say:
