Thanksgiving, pt. 5

Seeing as today is the actual Thanksgiving, I figured I'd best finish writing about our early Thanksgiving.

After resting for an hour once the four casseroles were finished, I had to get back to work. First up was the appetizer, the wild rice salad.

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Wild Rice Salad
3 T sugar (3 msk socker)
1 T orange peel (1 msk apelsinskal)
2 T orange juice (2 msk apelsinjuice)
2 T apple cider vinegar (2 msk äppelcider vinäger)
1/2 t salt (1/2 tsk salt)
1/4 cup olive oil (0,6 dl olivolja)
1 t poppy seeds (1 tsk valmöfrön)
2 apples, peeled and diced (2 äpplen, skalade och tärnade)
Juice from 1 lemon (saft från en citron)
4 cups cooked wild rice, drained and cooled (1 l tillagad vildris, avrunnet och avkylt)
1/2 cup dried cranberries (1,2 dl torkade tranbär)
1/2 slivered almonds (1,2 dl mandelspån)
1 cup sliced mushrooms (2,4 dl skivade champinjoner)
1/2 cup green onions (1,2 dl salladslök)

Dressing: Mix sugar, orange peel, orange juice, vinegar and salt in a blender. While blending, slowly add oil until mixture is smooth and thick. Stir in poppy seeds.

Salad: Pour lemon juice on the apples and toss directly after chopping them up so that they won't turn brown. Then mix all ingredients together. Cover and let stand in the fridge for 2-4 hours so flavors blend.

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The salad was done at about 3:30, so it was time to prepare the turkey. I wanted the turkey done at 6:30, and Butterball claimed it would take 2 to 2 1/2 hours at 325 F in a convection oven, so I wanted it in by 4:15. No problem!

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Herb-rubbed Roast Turkey
1 T dried parsley (1 msk torkad persilja)
1 T dried sage (1 msk torkad salvia)
2 t dried rosemary (2 tsk torkad rosmarin)
1 t dried thyme (1 tsk torkad timjan)
1 t garlic powder (1 tsk vitlökspulver)
1 t salt (1 tsk salt)
1/4 t pepper (1 krm svartpeppar)
1/4 cup melted butter (60g smält smör)
1 10-12 lb turkey, fully thawed (1 avtinnad kalkon, 4-5kg)

If you've never made a turkey before, there are a few things you need to know. First, there's often a plastic bag inside the turkey that contains the giblets. This means the turkey's neck, heart, lungs, liver, and all kinds of lovely stuff. Needless to say, you'll want to remove this. (The giblets are often used to make gravy or stuffing; for gravy, you'll want to at this point throw them into a pot of water for boiling, but more about that later.) You'll also want to nip and tuck the bird properly so that it cooks evenly, but more about that after we slather it up.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (160 degrees C). Mix all the herbs and spices together in a small bowl. If you want you can crush them up in with a mortar and pestle so that they get really fine and well blended -- this is why I prefer dry to fresh herbs. Brush the turkey all over with the melted butter, and then sprinkle the herb blend all over, turning the turkey to get all sides.

When roasting, the turkey should be breat-side up. Tuck the tips of the wings under the turkey so that the tips touch; this prevents them from burning to a crisp. If the neck of the turkey is "open," pull the flap of skin up torward the breast and fasten it with a skewer. The drumsticks should be tied together at the "ankles" so that they keep tight to the body. If you can't picture what I'm talking about, go ahead and have a look at this great Youtube video: How to prepare a turkey.

Typical instructions tell you to baste the bird about once every 30 minutes. This is done with an (aptly-named) turkey baster, a sort of big syringe with a rubber ball at the end that is ripe for sexual innuendo. But I'm telling you, basting is evil. It can actually contribute to a drier turkey (even though the goal of basting is to keep the turkey moist) because you're letting the heat escape from the over every 30 minutes and increasing the cooking time. Since I was using a convection oven, the turkey was done after only 2 hours. In fact, the thermometer claimed it was done after 1 hour, but I wasn't buying it; the juice was still all pink and the thighs didn't come easily away from the body. After two hours the juices were clear, the drumsticks loose, and the skin nice and brown. After eating this turkey, I'm going to declare that convection ovens are teh win (and that basting is not); it was the juiciest and tastiest turkey I've ever eaten.

If using a regular oven, you're going to need more like 3 to 3 1/2 hours, and you'll want to cover the turkey with a foil tent until the last half hour or so so that the skin doesn't get too crispy.

After taking the turkey out of the oven, let it sit for 20 minutes or so so that it will be easy to carve. How to carve a turkey probably isn't totally obvious if you haven't done it before, but here's another Youtube video for ya: How to carve a turkey.

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So, my turkey was in the oven, and I had an hour left before folks started coming. I had put the turkey neck in boiling water so I could get a little bit of flavor for the gravy I would make later; I threw away the rest of the giblets because, I'm sorry, I don't have the stomach to cook and eat hearts and lungs. Eeeeeew! So now everything was cooking, there wasn't much more I could do, and it was time for a shower. It felt like it was time for a nap, too, but no rest for the wicked.

When there was a about a half hour left before people started coming, we rearranged the furniture as necessary, set the table, and set out the appetizer and wine. When everyone had arrived -- 10 adults male guests and, including me, 2 adult females -- we explained that we were going to stick religiously to tradition. This meant the men would sit in the living room watching football and drinking beer (the former provided on DVD by Harald, who had recorded Navy-Notre Dame for us; the latter provided by the men themselves, because you can't beat the BYOB out of a Swede's system) and the women would be in the kitchen cooking until the food was done. No one had much of a problem with this, least of all me, because the idea was to give me time to finish the food (since my friends are never on time, I purposely planned for the main course to be done an hour after their intended arrival) with the guys out of my hair and Emma and I sitting and chatting in the kitchen. It also made it work to serve an appetizer while I was actually still cooking.

At 6:30 I took the turkey out of the oven and commenced running around like a maniac. The turkey was put on the table, and the 4 side-dishes -- the stuffing and mashed potatoes with tin foil still on and the green beans and sweet potatoes with foil removed -- were popped into the oven, where I also raised the temp from 325 to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

During the 30 minutes while the turkey was resting and the side dishes were heating, I:

• Cooked the gravy (see below)
  
• Arranged all the cold bits on the food table (in the kitchen), including the cranberry and apple sauces and the bread
  
• Mixed the Boston Iced Tea (see below) and brought it out to the dining room
  
• Cut up big marshmallows to put on the sweet potatoes
  
• Called Fredrik in to carve the turkey (as said, slavish adherence to gender-based tradition!) while I poured the gravy into its bowl
  
• Removed the foil from the stuffing and mashed potatoes, arranged the marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes, and let it all cook for 10 more minutes
  

It worked out really nicely, actually! When everything was done and arranged, I went out to the living room and told the beer drinkers (who were making a good effort of shouting at appropriate points in the football game while also trying to put their heads together to figure out the basic rules, bless them) that it was time to eat. When I added that "I know no one ever wants to be the first to the buffet table, so..." where Boffe helpfully interrupted me and offered to break that particular ice. :)

So, aside from pretty dense un-risen buns and red wine that was far too cold because I forgot to take it out of the fridge before the food was done, it was all awesome! Super tasty, well received, and I'm proud to say there weren't that many leftovers.

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Giblet Gravy

Turkey giblets
4 cups water (1 l water)
2 T butter (2 msk smör)
2 T flour (2 msk mjöl)
1 chicken bullion cube (1/2 tärning hönsbuljong)
1 cup milk (2,4 dl mjölk)
Chopped fresh parsley

When you put the turkey in the oven, put the giblets (minus the liver if there is one; the flavor is too strong) in a pot with the water and simmer gently while the turkey is cooking.

Once the turkey is done, melt the butter in another pot and whisk in the flour until well blended. Add 1 cup (2,4 dl) of liquid from the boiled giblets and the bullion. Bring to a boil; simmer for a couple minutes. Add the milk and heat just until warm; garnish with a bit of chopped fresh parsley for color.

Some people might complain that I haven't chopped up the giblets into the gravy or used pan drippings from the turkey, but I just didn't see how that was going to fit into my perfectly planned last 30 minutes there. Plus, this gravy turned out super tasty.

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Boston Iced Tea

This drink is not something that is "traditional Thanksgiving" fare. In fact, it's a drink on the menu at Red Lobster, a chain of seafood restaurants in the states. In case they're mad at me for stealing and spreading their super complicated recipe, I'll put in a plug here for how truly awesome Red Lobster is and how their crab alfredo is to die for.

This recipe will make 1 1/2 quarts/liters, but for the dinner I made 6 liters. It was a nice alternative to the wine for Emma and I, and the boys found it mixed well with vodka...

2 cups water (1/2 l vatten)
4 bags of plain black tea, like Lipton Yellow Label (4 tepåsar, vanlig svartte)
2 cups cranberry juice (1/2 l tranbärsjuice)
2 cups ice (1/2 l is)
1 orange, sliced (2 apelsiner, skivade)

Bring water to a boil in a large pot; remove from heat. Let tea bags steep in the water for 10 minutes, then remove them and discard them. Let the tea cool off gradually and then pop it in the fridge to chill.

Mix the tea, cranberry juice, and ice and add orange slices.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving, pt. 4

It's a good thing I divided up all the cooking and did as much as I could ahead of time, because I think I spent at least 6 hours in the kitchen on Friday before the guests arrived (and quite some time even after).

I started by preparing the iced tea that would later go into the Boston Iced Tea. I boiled 2 liters of water, let 15 bags of plain black tea (Lipton Yellow Label) steep in the hot water for 10 minutes, and then removed the bag and left the tea to cool while I went to the store to pick up a couple things that were missing. Then I proceeded to make up the 4 side dishes that would go into the oven after the turkey. Making them ahead of time and in casserole form seemed crucial to being able to get everything ready all at the same time. This also required a trip to IKEA last Saturday where I carefully measured one of their oven forms to make sure they were big enough to hold these side dishes but small enough to fit 4 at a time in my oven. This is serious business!

The four side dishes are such classics that they sort of require no recipe in the sense that everyone has their own for them. So the following recipes are mine, but I obviously win no originality prizes for most of them. They are as follows:

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Bread Stuffing
Stuffing is my absolute favorite. There are so many different kinds, some with fruits and vegetables and others with sausages and giblets, but the regular bread stuffing is the kind I go for and the sage is the most important ingredient. Contrary to the name, though, I don't stuff it; stuffing the bird is a bacteria hazard (or, if you cook the turkey long enough for the stuffing to get hot enough to kill the bacteria, you've overcooked and dried out your bird), plus the stuffing get so very fatty and soggy, so I keep it on the outside.

1/2 cup butter (100 g smör)
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped (2 finhackade vitlöksklyftor)
4 celery stalks, chopped (4 hackade seleristjälkar)
1 onion, chopped (1 hackad lök)
1 loaf white bread, cut into small cubes (1 limpa mjuk vit rostbröd, i små kuber)
2 t chopped sage (1 1/2 tsk hackad salvia)
1 t chopped thyme (1 tsk hackad timjan)
1 t chopped rosemary (1 tsk hackad rosmarin)
2 t chopped parsley (1 tsk hackad persilja)
1 t salt (1 tsk salt)
1/4 t peppar (1/4 tsk svartpeppar)
1 cup chicken broth (2 1/2 dl hönsbuljong)

Melt butter in a large pot. Cook garlic, onion and celery for a couple a minutes; they should still be crunchy. Remove from heat. Add all other ingredients except chicken broth and stir until well mixed. Add chicken a bit at a time and mix until the stuffing is not dry but not too wet; you want the stuffing to sort of "stick together" but not be soggy.

The stuffing can be eaten right away at this point, but I poured it into a casserole dish (the ones I used were IKEA's Koncis 26x20 cm, which hold a bit more than 2 liters and 4 of which can fit perfectly into a typical built-in oven) and, after it had cooled, covered it with tin foil. Instructions on how to handle all 4 side dishes once they've been popped in the oven comes later.

Garlic Cheddar Mashed Potatoes
This is a recipe I started making after coming to Sweden, so a key ingredient is a type of cheddar-flavored cream cheese spread that I can't be sure has an equivalent in the states. However, I'm sure there's something that would make an excellent substitute and probably be even more cheddary.

4 pounds mashing potatoes (2 kg mjölig potatis)
8 garlic cloves, peeled but not chopped
1 cup milk (2 1/2 dl mjölk)
6 oz. cheddar cheese spread (1 paket Creme Bonjour med cheddar smak)
1/2 cup butter (100 g smör)
1/2 t salt (1/2 tsk salt)
1/4 t white peppar (1/4 tsk vitpeppar)

Peel and boil the potatoes along with the garlic cloves (about 25 minutes). After draining them well, mash them up. Make sure you have a really big bowl so it'll be easy to stir. Add the other ingredients and stir until smooth.

Again, this would be the end of the recipe if you were just making it for a normal dinner (although you'd probably make half as much or less), but for me it was into the casserole dish, and after it cooled, on with the tin foil and into the fridge. This one had to be heaped a bit to fit in the dish, but that was no problem.

Green Bean Casserole
I can only guess that a recipe for this dish was on the back of some Durkee French Fried Onion can like 60 years ago, and it's been a favorite of American housewives ever since. It's just one of those brand-name things. Durkee onions are puffier and softer than the Swedish "rostade lök" that are normally used as a hot dog condiment here, and canned green beans don't seem to come in the "French cut" variety here, but I find the dish tastes and feels just the same after preparation.

3 cans green beans, drained (3 burkar haricots verts, avrunna)
2 cans Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup (2 burkar Campbells champinjonsoppa)
3/4 cup milk (2 dl mjölk)
1 cup Durkee French Fried Onions (2 1/2 dl rostade lök)

Just mix everything together and pour it into a casserole dish. Normally you would want to bake this -- about 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). I poured it into the casserole dish, on with the foil, into the fridge.

Sweet Potato Casserole
This is another one that seems like such a mysterios mix that everyone wonders about its origins and I suspect it was on the back of some marshmallow package somewhere. Mini marshmallows are much easier to deal with, but I could only find big ones so I had to do a little cutting and arranging. I suppose something spiffy could be done with marshmallow fluff (oddly, easily found in a lot of Swedish stores, usually near the peanut butter and Nutella), but I didn't want to experiment just this time.

3 lb sweet potatoes (1 1/2 kg sötpotatis)
1/2 cup milk (1,2 dl mjölk)
2 T butter (2 msk smör)
1/4 cup brown sugar or molasses (1/2 dl muscvado socker eller mörk sirap)
1/2 t salt (1/2 tsk salt)
1/8 t pepper (1 krm svartpeppar)
Mini-marshmallows

Peel sweet potatoes and cut them into pieces (about as big as normal boiling potatoes). Boil for
15-20 minutes or until soft. Mash until no lumps remain, and then stir in remaining ingredients except marshmallows. Pour potatoes into a casserole dish. Normally you'd want to bake this for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C), the last 10 minutes of which you throw on the marshmallows (enough to make one layer over the top; cut up big marshmallows and arrange on top if you can't find minis). The marshmallows should puff up and become a bit brown. But again, I poured the potatoes into my casserole dish and popped them into the fridge with foil on top.

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All of these recipes are about the right size to serve 12 people at a buffet-style dinner. If you want to make them as a main side dish for 4 people, you'll want to cut the recipe in half.

I started preparing these dishes at about 10am and was finished and ready to take a break at 2pm. And I mean very ready for a break.

Thanksgiving, pt. 3: oops!

Well, I figured at least one of the dishes I planned would be a partial or total wash! The subtitle today is "oops, I killed the yeast."

I seem to have been mostly successful in my attempt to make Sweet Country Corn Bread. Since it's really not a tough thing to make, you might wonder how I was mostly successful. Well, first, my mind must have been wandering somewhere when I was cracking the eggs. I was making a double batch, so I needed two, but I stopped myself right as I was about to crack the fourth into the batter. Oh well, I figured, it certainly won't hurt, and will help test my theory that it might be small eggs that make the cooking times longer when making American recipes in Sweden.

This SEEMED to be the case when, after only 20 minutes, I stuck a knife in the center of the corn bread and it came out totally clean. Cool! So I took the pan out and set it on a wire rack to cool.

After it had cooled down for 10-15 minutes or so, I tried to loosen it and flip it out of the pan. What happened when I did this was that a rather large but thin patch stuck to the bottom of the pan, and I saw that the corn bread was really quite wet and mushy inside, but not in the middle; more off to one side like.

I didn't know what else to do but to re-heat the oven and throw the bread back in for the full cooking time and hope for the best. After cooking it for 25 more minutes, it seemed non-liquidy on both the left and the right sides, but we'll have to see how it tastes. I haven't tried it because I wanted to leave the crust intact.

So, by the way, as far as recipe tips go: corn meal can be purchased at most stores here; look for it in the health food section (you know, where you find nuts and lentils and rice and soy flour) under the name "polenta".

Well, if I mostly salvaged the corn bread, I only semi-salvaged the herb dinner rolls. For this I used a dinner roll recipe in a (gasp!) hard-copy cook book, so I can't really give you anything to go off of. You've got something like this, of course: Bread Machine Dinner Rolls, but I didn't use a bread machine. The idea was to make a regular dinner roll recipe, but to add some herbs to the warm liquid. I chose 2 teaspoons of caraway seeds and some dried parsley for color. Well, they turned out hard and doughy, and I still haven't decided if I'm too ashamed to serve them or not, but at least I'm pretty sure I know what I did wrong. The liquid (in the case of my recipe, milk) was supposed to be heated up in a suacepan along with sugar, butter and salt until the butter melted, and then added to the flour and yeast mixture. But I'm pretty sure you have to cool it down some first, because after melting the butter you certainly don't have liquid that is only 120-130 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, my liquid was too hot, and I probably killed the yeast. The dough barely rose at all during either the first or second risings, and after double the suggested baking time my buns were still dense and doughy in the middle. The yeast was, I'm also prepared to admit, god know how old and from an opened package.

Sigh. I'm not fabulous with yeast breads.

Anyway, I guess I can serve them anyway and claim that that's exactly the way we yanks like our bread -- no one will know the wiser! Moohaha!

Also on Thursday evening, I pre-cooked the wild rice that will be in the appetizer salad. This frees up a pot and some stove space for Friday and allows the rice to dry off and cool down nicely before going into the salad.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a million potatoes to peel.

Thanksgiving, pt. 2

Since I'm experiencing yet another night of insomnia, I figured I might as well post part 2.

Wednesday night it was time to make the pies. I picked two custardy types, pumpking and pecan, not only because they're the most traditional and "exotic" by Swedish standards but also because they probably only get better after a couple days in the fridge, whereas fruit pies sort of scream to be served warm.

Almost all my attempts to bake with American recipes result in a cake or bread or whatever it is that is still liquidy in the middle after the suggested baking time. I thought this could be because the flour here isn't quite the same (different amounts of protein), but it occurs even in recipes with very little flour, so I'm really at a loss as to why it happens. It's not my oven, by the way, because I had the same problem in our apartment. A few years ago, my attempts at making a pumpkin pie according to my grandmother's recipe resulted in a pie that still hadn't solidified after 3 times the suggested baking time. So experimenting with different recipes was a must. The BettyCrocker.com recipe for Pumpkin-Cream Cheese Pie worked out super for me, so I'm sticking to it.

It seems to have worked out once again -- though, of course, I can't say for sure until I taste it tomorrow night! I actually make a graham cracker crust instead of the shortbread -- use graham crackers (digestivekex) instead of the shortbread and 3 T of sugar instead of flour, and bake for about 10 minutes. Plus, I make the pie in a spring-form pan with the crust only on the bottom, which works out just fine. American-style pie plates are not common items here. I had to leave the pie in the oven for 50 minutes before the center was set, so there's still something mystical in the air, but it seems to have turned out just fine.

I made the pecan pie according this this other BettyCrocker.com recipe, Maple Pecan Pie, though I didn't add the chocolate drizzle to the top. Shortening is not a product readily available in Sweden, but butter works just as well. The maple extract or maple flavoring also isn't something I think you could find. Maple syrup is really quite expensive -- 79 kronor is what I paid for a bottle that contained 2 dl, and this recipe calls for 2.5 dl. But regular syrup can be used as well -- in fact, then you'd just have a regular pecan pie. You'll want to cover the edges with tin foil until the last 15 minutes or so so that the crust doesn't get burned. Again, I had to bake this one longer than suggested -- 60 minutes -- before the middle was no longer liquidy. It seems nice and solid now. The risk of cooking this one for two long is that the pecan top gets sort of black and charred.

Since one of my guests has a severe allergy to tree nuts, I was careful about not touching the pecans with too many things and washing up all the utensils afterwards before doing anything else with them. Luckily though for my wild rice salad, she can eat almonds.

Thanksgiving, pt. 1

On Friday night, we're having friends over for a Thanksgiving dinner. This appeals both to my love of cooking and my love of obsessive planning and list-making.

It's also a pretty fun challenge to make American recipes in Sweden, although in the case of Thanksgiving food, fairly impossible if you haven't planned way ahead and either had your mom send you bottles of vanilla and maple extract or carted back a few cans of pumpkin and packages of wild rice on a return flight.

In the couple years since I last did this, the availability of certain items in Sweden has improved -- wild rice seems readily available at ICA (though it doesn't quite look the same as native Minnesota wild rice) and pumpkins are usually easy to find in October (though my previous attempts to cook and mash pumpkin for pie purposes have ended in watery disaster). Other things are a bit tougher to find, given that Gray's American Foods in Stockholm seems to be in a strange state of flux, maple syrup seems to be less common than before, and the stores that used to have American foods shelves seem to have replaced them with middle-eastern foods (only fair of course). But this is why a good little yankee girl has backups.

The first steps in the mission were of course making a menu and, as I mentioned before, finding a turkey. The turkey, by the way, is on the list of things that now seem more easily available. All three stores where I buy groceries -- ICA Maxi in Tornby, Coop Konsum in Lambohov, and Hemköp in Ryd all had a good supply. They ranged between 3.5 and 5 kg, though I had to look at all three stores before finding the 5 kg bird at Coop. This was also the first thing that needed to be bought, since it needed to thaw out.

So it takes about a week to at least do a half-assed job of this thing. It started on Saturday with me inviting the guests. This is not easy, as we don't have the kind of dining room that allows for huge dinner parties where cats, dogs and babies are involved. This did not, however, stop me from inviting dogs and babies (and about 5 more people than we have butt space for). It's too bad Thanksgiving isn't in the summer, so that yard space could be utilized. I envy my friend Pat, who lives in the desert and surely has nice warm weather around this time so that he's not cooped up in a small space with 12 people on Thanksgiving. Then again, I hear his family deep-fries their turkey, and that's just so many levels of sick.

On Monday I had the menu worked out, and a shopping list. Since I only had a 5 kg bird and suddenly 15 invitees, that list included a couple pounds of extra turkey breast, as that seemed like a smarter solution than buying two turkeys. (In case you're wondering, the traditional guideline is 1 lb = 450 g of turkey per person; if that sounds like a lot, remember that we've got bone and carcass involved here.)

At the risk of this coming back to bite me in the ass (for instance, if I for some reason end up failing on one or two of these dishes), the menu I settled on is as follows:

Menu

Appetizer/mingle/keep people busy while I'm cooking:

• Wild rice and dried cranberry salad
  
• White wine (a dry fruity wine that's just called California White that happens to come in a cardboard carton -- classy! Only the best from my homeland!)
  
• Mineral water for the ladies (I say this because we're all pregnant or nursing; go figure!)
  

Main dish/buffet/hope they realize dessert is coming later:

• Herb-rubbed roasted turkey
  
• Sage bread (non-stuffed) stuffing
  
• Garlic cheddar mashed potatoes
  
• Green bean hotdish (that's casserole to you non-Minnesotans)
  
• That candied sweet potato thing with the marshmallows that everyone's grandmother makes but that apparently doesn't have a name
  
• Sweet country corn bread
  
• Herb dinner rolls
  
• Creamy turkey gravy
  
• Cranberry-orange sauce
  
• Applesauce
  
• California Red, a "soft and berry-y" red wine, also in a classy TetraPak
  
• For aforementioned fertile ladies, Boston Iced Tea
  

Dessert/Yes, dammit, I do expect you to eat more

• Pumpkin cream cheese pie
  
• Maple pecan pie
  
• Coffee and Good Earth Original Tea

This menu ended up containing only one comprimise. I would have rather liked to have mulled apple cider with dessert. This is, however, not something that I've found a way to get my hands on in Sweden. "Cider" here means a kind of booze, of course, and not an all-natural tart apple juice as it does back home. Unlike canned pumpkin or vanilla extract, apple cider is not exactly an item easily smuggled back in a suitcase and stored for several months. Given that we have our own juicer, I certainly could have made my own by combining some, oh, I'd guess Granny Smiths and Royal Galas, but I've never done this before and this amount of work seemed like the bit that would send me over the edge. I decided therefore to instead save the apple cider for some sort of future American Christmas Tea, where I envision serving eggnog and cider along with... with... uh. Okay, we seem to be short on traditional Christmas coffee and cakes type things. Any suggestions as to what our equivalent to lussekatter and pepparkakor is would be greatly appreciated. Anyway, as an alternative to coffee, Good Earth Tea fits very well. I am so in love with this tea (which comes from my favorite restaurant back home, but is also sold in stores like Cub and Rainbow and such, plug plug plug!) that I never come back from the states without a couple packages and you know I like my friends a lot if I'm using it on them. It's sort of like... cinnamon citrus sex in a bag. Just add hot water.

Anyway, that's step one, the menu, which along with a long grocery list was done Monday.

Tuesday brought the shopping (I'm willing to divulge that the total was close to 2000 kronor, not including the stuff that's been imported from the U.S.), the moving of the bird from the freezer to the fridge, and the start of the cooking.

Cranberry-Orange Sauce

I'll share the recipes with you in the order in which I'm making them. Tuesday night I made the cranberry sauce, as it needs time to solidfy and I've had the experience of failing and making a very watery cranberry sauce before. Not this time, though; it looks and tastes great! The recipe I used was from Betty Crocker, as are most of these -- for you Swedes, think of Betty Crocker as Den Rutiga Kokboken and Findus all rolled into one. Anyway, here's the link: Cranberry-orange sauce. I'm sure it would be copyright infringement if I posted the full recipe here or translated it, but I can't imagine it's bad for me to link it and give tips or say what I changed. In this case I used frozen cranberries, as I was unable to find fresh ones (add that to the less-available-than-2-years-ago list). Where it says in the recipe to boil until the cranberries "pop," it gives a much more violent impression of the process than what actually happens... after 10 minutes of boiling I had to sort of squish the cranberries myself in order to get them to open up so the pectin would get out. This is probably what made the difference between a watery cranberry sauce last time I attempted it and a good solid one this time.

Another super-traditional recipe for cranberry sauce can be found here. You can add some grated orange peel to it to give it a citrusy taste.

For those of you who have never eaten it before, cranberry sauce should be about the same look and consistency as lingonberry jam (lingonsylt). Like lingonsylt, we use cranberry sauce as a condiment for meats, almost exclusively for turkey on Thanksgiving (I have personally never seen it in any other context). Lingonsylt is a perfectly acceptable substitute for cranberry sauce, and the difference in taste is quite small -- cranberries are more bitter.

Now I have to run downstairs and make some pies. If any of my guests are reading this, and have also heard that I've been home sick from work, I want you to know that I'm washing my hands scrupulously and, though I'm heavily medicated, I am doing my best to keep strange objects and substances out of the food.

Raining Cats and Dogs

There are some people who shouldn't own a dog or a cat because their lifestyles don't really mesh with what is required to take care of an animal, perhaps especially apartment-dwellers who buy big hunting dogs or folks who get their animals' voice boxes clipped so they don't have to put up with (or train away) barking. The people who left their animals on the steps at the Humane Society where I volunteered as a teenager with reasons like "I'm allergic" (you didn't know you were allergic before adopting this cat... three years ago?) or "doesn't get along with new kitten/new girlfriend/new sofa" (which at least is just the honest version of "I'm allergic") are pretty low on my totem pole as well.

Then there are people who really shouldn't own an animal. As in, I hope there is a register somewhere in which their names can be jotted down and then sent out to all kinds of pet adoption black lists. One of those people is this Swedish hunter who dragged his dog to death behind his car.

For those of you who don't read Swedish, here's the short translation: when the group of hunters were done bagging and tagging for the day, one guy forgot that he'd tied his dog to his trailer hitch and just drove away, dragging the dog 20 km. A witness saw him drive by and tried to stop him, but by the time the guy figured it out the dog had, of course, passed on. The police are hoping the man has conscience enough to turn himself in for the crime of animal cruelty, and they urge people to tie dogs to trees or a stake in the ground rather than a car -- apparently this type of accident isn't totally unheard of in the case of hunters and their dogs.

So, I'm sure this incident wasn't malicious or pre-meditated. It was certainly a mistake. But a mistake that is so unforgiveable that it's both criminal and a more than good reason for this person to never own a dog again. If I have a brain fart serious enough to cause my son or daughter to suffer unimaginable torture and then die, then I'd certainly expect to be rejected if I asked to adopt a new kid.

Then there are people who not only should never own an animal, but would have a special place in hell if I were its architect. Included in this group is a guy named Charles C. Benoit and his grilling buddies. I remember reading this story when I was in grad school. It is definitely in my top 5 "What the hell is wrong with people!" mental scrapbook.

Aside from the hunting dog, another new entry was added to that scrapbook yesterday. Here you have video proof that there are far too many people in the world who are a waste of oxygen.



The veterinarian in the video wonders, if a group of teenagers can kick around a tiny little kitten until one of his legs is almost ripped off, then how do these young men treat other people? While I wonder that as well, I also actually think that it takes a lot more gooey, poisonous ooze in one's soul to treat an animal this way than it does to be cruel to another human being. Some level of dislike for other people is something we can all understand, even if it doesn't lead most of us to act out violently. But the part where someone thinks it's fun to kick a little kitten around like a football, that I cannot fathom.

Fredrik and I reacted differently to these two stories, which both showed up in the news yesterday. By that I don't mean that he wasn't upset; I knew he would think it was just as horrid as I did. I sent him links to the stories over chat. He saw the URL of the video ("cat.used.as.football"...) and watched 3 seconds before replying to me in all caps to never, ever send him something like that again. I, on the other hand, have watched the video at least 10 times. I guess it's a sick form of catharsis; if there are morons in the world that can do this to an animal, then I'd rather ruthlessly confront myself with that fact. This blog is, after all, the Pessimist's Cookbook, not the Sheltered Happy Girl Chronicles. It makes me feel a little more human to poke the evoked sore spot inside me with a sharp stick and confirm that it hurts (how's that for arguing that pessimism brings about self-actualization?). And, of course, the video didn't show me the actual violence or the image of Polly's little body lying broken and bloody on the ground; rather, it was a video of an adorable little furball who was purring away like crazy and stumbling around just like any other kitten, even if he was doing so with only three legs to stand on.

I hope Polly ends up in a good home where someone can feed him lots of tuna and snuggle him 20 times a day. I also hope that cats don't have nightmares and vivid memories of nasty things. I hope all of you that have 4-legged-type-creatures at home give them an extra hug today, because that will just make me feel better.

Thanksgiving Dinner

For the first time in a couple or more years, I'm planning a Thanksgiving dinner. It's tough to decide who to invite, since it's obviously* not a family occassion here and therefore I invite friends, but I can't invite everyone that I'd like to, especially since turkeys here are really on the small side (as is my oven).

So now that I've decided to do it and have invited some people, I started the planning by trying to find a turkey. ICA Maxi had a whole freezer full of 'em, but they we all around or below 4 kg (9 lb). Just now I found a full 5 kg bird at Coop Konsum in Lambohov, but we had walked there to buy milk and weren't really in the mood for walking back home with an 11 lb frozen boulder.

But just for those of you in the states who might be planning your own turkey fest, a comparison:

Price for a whole frozen turkey in America: about 79 cents a pound, or about $9.50 for a 12 lb turkey.

Price for a whole frozen turkey in Sweden: 63 Swedish kronor per kilo, or about $44 for a 12 lb turkey. Youch.

Sweden is many things, but not the place to go for a cheap turkey.

*This was apparently not so obvious to some of my mom's friends. They seemed surprised that Thanksgiving wasn't celebrated in Sweden. The entire combined force of America's past and present second grade teachers sighed/cried/rolled in their graves.

Dumb Things Swedes Think about Americans: Part 1 of Many

The word "dumb" in the title of this post could easily be replaced by "hypocritical" and I'd still have enough for a many-parts series.

I'll start off with a superficial, easily explained one.

Swedes can often be heard to say that Americans are insincere. This is one of many conversations that start with "I was an au pair in the U.S. for a year and I noticed that EVERYONE..." or something similar. They reference the fact that service personel are overly nice, for instance saying "Have a nice day" when you leave Wal-Mart or some such. They mention the fact that, when we greet someone, we usually ask "How are you?" but, they complain, we're not genuinely interested in the answer.

I'll skip over the inside-the-box cultural bias that seems to lead them to believe all courtesy must be insincere. Just because it's a commodity severely lacking among service people (or people in general?) in this country doesn't make it insincere when found elsewhere.

Rather, I'll just let the whole argument be made by this "How are you?" business. This particular falacy is brought up in a commercial that's been playing on TV lately. It's for a telecommunications company that has a series of commercials in which they give tips for doing business in other countries. The tips are tongue-in-cheek, of course, but still based on what Swedes think is reality. They mock the Swedish man doing business in America by showing an America asking him "How are you?" and showing the Swede answering "Well, not so great, actually; I had a fight with my wife this morning."

Now, I'm a certified English teacher. I have learned both Swedish and French in a classroom. And I'm certain that I was assured in every language-type classroom setting that -- at the very least in Britain, France and Sweden -- you're never supposed to respond to a typical greeting asking you how you are by actually telling the person how you are.

If you're not convinced, my Nordic friends, imagine someone telling you about the sudden itchy rash they've developed on their anus when you ask them "Hur är läget?"