A lovely weekend off

 We arrived in Luleå around 16:00. David was already home when I got there, so we had time to catch up a bit before Caroline got home from work. Shortly before she arrived, I took my stuff downstairs to the guestroom, so the entry area would be open and welcoming for her.

 

While she did her after work quiet time settling into the evening stuff, I organised my stuff and talked with Keldor briefly on the phone (he was already pn the road to Nordmark Coronet). I enjoyed a quiet evening at the house, chatting occasionally with D and/or C, but after a busy work week and a five hour drive (includingstops), I was content to go to sleep at 21:30, so I didn't see the news of Elsa's being sent to vigil for a Pelican till the next morning.

 

But I really enjoyed the story of it that Keldor shared ...

 

During the Gotvik Baronial Court Duchess Vanna requested leave to conduct some business, and was granted leave to do so. So she sat herself in a throne and her personal herald called someone forward, who was admitted into Vanna's Order of Excellence, after which her court was closed.

 

During the Nordmark Principality Court Duchess Vanna requested leave to conduct some business, and was granted leave to do so. So she sat herself in a throne and her personal herald called someone forward, who was admitted into Vanna's Order of Excellence, after which her court was closed.

 

During the Drachenwald Kingdom Court Duchess Vanna requested leave to conduct some business, and was granted leave to do so. So she sat herself in a throne and her personal herald called four people forward. As soon as they came forward and knelt, three of them hopped back up, and took away Vanna and her throne etc, leaving Elsa kneealing there, slightly confused, as Drachenwald's herald announced that their Majesties summon forth the order of the Pelican. 

 

Such a brilliant bit of theater. Set up a pattern and audience expectations, then change things up to both give some humourous undertones, but also help underscore the transition from the light-hearted court schick to a serious ceremony. I love Vanna, I truly do, and I wish I could have been there to see it myself.

 

However, with my first job as an archaeologist, and it only being four weeks long, it wouldn't have been smart to try to get there. Keldor and Þórólfr left Reengarda att 11:00, the same time we stopped working for the day and started driving towards Luleå. Five hours later we had reached Luleå, and Keldor and Þórólfr were already south of Sundsvall somewhere. They managed to make it to the event before evening court. But even if my car hadn't been in the shop for issues that preclude road trips till the repairs are done, I couldn't have arrived till at least four hours after evening court, and, with only one driver, probably much later.

 

I suppose I could have flown from Kiruna, in which case I may have managed to get to site faster than he did, depending on when the flights go, and if there were any seats left, but I didn't think of that possibility until today, and the car repairs are going to cost most of what I earn this month, so it is good that I didn't. 

 

Saturday I got up around 05:15, having gone to sleep so early, so I did a short workout, and then went out to the blackcurrant area. 1.5 hours later I had about 3/4 of a bucket, and I needed to pee, so I went back up to the house.

 

By then David and Caroline were up, so I put the bucket in the downstairs fridge, chatted with them a bit, and then borrowed the car to go buy a salad spinner, as they don't have one, and it is an essential tool in my berry-drying process.

 

Since I was out I also bought a packet of mascarpone, one of ricotta, and half a dozen eggs so I could make a pie later.

 

But that first batch all went into the dehydrator. They have a new food dehydrator, with metal screen trays. Unlike mine, which is a cheap all-plastic model, with a mostly solid bottom, and a raised covered bit in the middle, with air coming out the sides of the raised bit, theirs has a metal bottom plate with lots of holes in it to let the air from the fan circulate.

 

I learned years ago that if one takes blackcurrants straight from the bush and puts them in the dehydrator without doing something to pierce the skins of the berries, it takes a couple of days to dry them. Therefore the approach I use is to first was them as usual, by putting them in the salad spinner and filling it with cold water, plucking out the berries which float (which are the bad ones) and leaves, and running my hands through the berries to find the occasional long stem that accidentally wound up in the bucket and remove them. Usually three repeats of tjis process is enough to have the water remain mostly clear and take away everything that isn't tasty berry.

 

Half a bucket of berries is enough to need to do the washing in 5 or so batches so they fit in the salad spinner. Once they are all clean I wasjmh the picking bucket, and pour them from the metal mixing bowl back into the bucket.

 

Then I set water boiling, and then put a couple of ladel fulls of berries into a metal strainer, lower it into the boiling water, and remove it a short time later, after the berries are scalded, and the skins start to break open.

 

I let the strainer drip a very short time onto the metal mixing bowl, then dump the berries into the salad spinner, and spin them to remove more water, and some of the juice. Then the berries get put onto one of the drying trays, which sits on a tray to catch any drips. 

 

Repeat till all the berries have been scalded, usually spinning one batch while the next drips into the mixing bowl after having bern scalded. Now and then pour off the juice/water collecting in the spinner, or the water/juice from the metal drip-catching bowl back into the pot of boiling water. Once the berries are all scalded, pour even the juice from the tray under the drying rack back into the now quite pink boiling water, and turn off the heat.

 

I found that the berries in the trays had quit dripping enough in the time it took to transfer the berry water to a glass jar, to save for putting on my museli for breakfast, and wash the dishes that I could dry the underside of each tray with a paper towel, and then put the trays in the dehydrator and set it going, without it dripping onto the bottom of the dehydrator at all. This is good, as it means it isn't collecting juice in the fan or on the heating element either.

 

After the berries were drying I had lunch and chatted a bit with Caroline (David had gone to his parent's house to pick lingon and help his mom with some IT issues for her business), before I went back out and spent a couple of hours picking. Around the time my bucket was approaching the 3/4 full level my friend Elinor arrived, with one of her friends to pick berries, soI stopped and chatted with them a bit. It had bern long enough since I had been in contact with Elinor that I hadn't heard that she and her partner had a child, which they did enough months ago that she's started feeling recovered from the process, so we had a bit to catch up on, and her friend, who is a microbiology researcher at LTU was interesting to talk with. But, after a while of chatting I went back up the hill and first washed enough berries to make a pie:

 

Blackcurrant pie

 

Crust:

 

4 dl wheat flour

0.3 dl sugar

75 g of butter

0.5 t baking powder

1 egg

1 T yogurt

 

Filling:

 

250 g mascarpone

250 g of ricotta

1 t gelatine powder 

3 eggs

0.3 dl sugar

12 dl blackcurrants (fill the mascarpone container three times with berries)

 

Cut the butter into the flour, sugar, and baking powder. Stir in the egg and yoghurt and press the dough into the bottom and sides of a large ceramic pie plate. 

 

Put the filling ingredients into the mixing bowl and use an immersion blender to turn it into a uniformly pink smooth batter, and pour it into the pie crust. Bake 10 minutes at 180 C and then reduce heat to 150 C and let bake till the mixing dishes are licked clean, washed properly, dired, and put away, and rest of the berries have been wahsed, spun dry, and put into yoghurt buckets ready for the freezer (possibily another 25 or 40 minutes, I didn't look at the clock). When the top looks done, but the filling still jiggles turn off the oven and leave it for a half an hour or so to finish setting, take it out to cool, and then cover and refrigerate. 

 

Enjoy the first piece for breakfast.It has an amazing smooth, soft texture that holds together well, and is really yummy, without being too sweet, but just enough sugar that it isn't too tart. I bet this would work with other berries, too. Let me know if you try it, and if so, what kind of berries.

 

After the pie was done enough to leave unattended I took my electric scooter over to Barbara's to put my berries in their freezer till I pass through on my way home in a few weeks. They have room in their freezer now that they won't need till later in autumn, when they will buy half a lamb from a local farmer, by which time my berries should be back in Lövånger with me.

 

I sat and visited with them a couple of hours, which was really nice. But by 20:30 I was feeling pretty tired, having gotten up early, so I said goodnight and scooted back to the house, did my yoga, took a showe and crawled into bed by 22:00. Just before I slept Keldor called. He'd seen my goodnight message, and figured that I hadn't had time to sleep yet, and he was right. He filled me in on some of the event highlights, which made me wish more than ever that I could have been there. 

 

However, I enjoyed my weekend, and I will be very happy to have those berries. I really miss living at this wonderful location, with such a huge black currant patch, and being able to freeze and dry many liters of them every autumn. I love the dried berries in my museli, and the frozen berries are amazing in foods like spagetti sauce and stews, as well as in deserts. I have had to seriously cut back on my blackcurrant use since moving to Lövånger, and even so I had completely run out by July this year. 

 

I suspect that I will run out again by next summer, but at least I should have enough to get me through the winter. Perhaps by this summer my blackcurrant bushes will have had enough time to establish their roots as to begin actually producing berries, and I won't be entirely dependent on having time to get to David's.

 

Before I had slept on Saturday I rotated the trays in the dehydrator, and stabbed a few of the berries that had swelled up to let their juice out so they would start drying. I was really hoping that by Sunday morning enough would be dry to free up a few trays so that I could pick a few more to dry Sunday morning.

 

But when I checked, directly after my morning workout, there were still quite a few wet berries left. I was able to pull out almost three cups of dried berries and consolidated the wet ones to only four trays (from six to start with), but it was clear I wouldn't be able to get any new berries to dry before it was time to head to work.

 

So instead I started a load of laundry, set a timer, and went back to bed. When the alarm rang I was dreaming, and didn't want to leave the dream, so I pressed snooze. I wound up snoozing three times before I decided that I really should get up and deal with the laundry. At which point Caroline put her head into the roo. To say she'd hung upmy clothes as she needed the machine, which was really sweet of her.

 

I considered sleeping more, but decided thst breakfast sounded like a good idea, so I got up. After breakfast and a short visit with David and Caroline I packed my sewing and a couple of pieces of pie to go, and took the scooter in to Porsön to meet Villiam, first at his neighbour's apartment, as Villiam is cat sitting, so I got cuddles from a couple of sweet short haired cats, as well as a nice visit with Villiam, who liked the pie we shared.

 

Then we went back to his place and he introduced me to the game Citadels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadels_(card_game) which is quite fun. While normally the players choose which character card they will use each turn, which adds a huge strategic component to the game, as each has different strengths, we decided to make it random, since I didn't yet know which characters can do what.

 

The first couple of games were fairly fairly close, and each of us won one, but on the third game I got lucky with my cards and had learned enough to be able to take advantage of it, so I won 34 to 12.

 

After that we went back to his friend's house to give the cats their food and evening medicine, then I took the scooter back to David's, packed and organised my stuff while talking on the phone with Keldor, who was finally home from the event, did my yoga and got some sleep.

 

My colleagues collected me at 08:00 on Monday, and we returned to Kiruna, arriving at the jobsite at 12:00, so we had a quick lunch and started the work week.