four days in Piteå

[kareina]

Last Sunday lord_kjar, L and I started driving down to Piteå (about 45 minutes south of here). However, soon after we started the car suddenly switched over to a setting called "safe mode", which means that the engine operates differently than normal, many features like the anti-skid stuff, are unavailable, and the top speed, if you are lucky, is 50 km/hr. It also consumes way, way more fuel than usual. This is not really acceptable for highway driving, since it increases the odds of someone running into us from behind. The car had actually done this a couple of times in the week before, but on those occasions pulling it over, turning it off, and re-starting it got it back to normal mode.

Since the first thing it announces in the dashboard screen is the absence of the anti-skid stuff we wondered if the problem had to do with snow and ice in the tires blocking some sort of sensors there. He tried taking it to the shop the day after it first happened, but, of course, it wasn't acting up while there. They did plug the car into a computer and read the log, and seconded the guess about snow and ice in the tires being the culprit. Therefore we shoveled the access to the workshop (which could also be called a garage, if we actually wanted to park the car there instead of using the space to build stuff) and brought the car in to warm up. It sat there for almost two days before we set off for Piteå, and we hoped that it was done having issues.

Nope--on that drive simply pulling over and turning off the engine didn't reset it on the first three tries, and when it did go back to normal mode after the fourth re-start, it switched back to safe mode straight away. While we could have driven on in safe mode, and gotten there in two hours instead of 45 minutes, we would have had to drive home in the same manner at the end of the visit, and we were still quite close to home. So instead we turned back home, called his dad, who came and fetched us, arriving soon after we got there.

After than minor delay in arriving the rest of the visit was very nice. lord_kjar's family are very delightful people. This year there were 15 of us--his three brothers, their parents, partners, and children, and us. His sister didn't make it this year (spent it with her husband's family down south, I think), or there would have been another two adults and two more kids. The visit was a near perfect mix of being sociable with the others, curling up alone with a book, playing in the snow, and eating too much good food. I am grateful that I am such a fussy eater--once one eliminates the meat and fish dishes and the things containing anything in the vinegar family the amount of food remaining was reasonable, so I ate only slightly more than on a normal day, rather than hugely more.

Well, ok, save for the traditional desert, risalamata, which is made by first cooking short grained porridge rice in way more milk than you think it can absorb, till it is completely absorbed (they do this in an oven set to a fairly low heat). In that form it is a traditional holiday breakfast, served with a little milk and cinnamon on it. I like it that way, but I truly love the transformation into risalamalta: chill the rice cooked in milk till it is cold. Whip more cream than you think it needs, blend them together. Serve with berries. This year the choices were hjortron (cloudberry), black berries, and strawberries. They are all good, but, honestly, I would happily eat the risalamalta all by itself without berries, too.

Normally I find it easy to eat only a reasonable amount of things. Not where this desert is concerned--I had thirds! I am quite certain that I ate more risalmalta than I did dinner that evening. The only thing that stopped me from having fourths is the fact that my stomach was already on the uncomfortable side of full--I still wanted more! (note: some recipes for this on line suggest adding sugar to it--don't. It is perfect as is, and you can sweeten the berries if you want sweet.)

We stayed at his parent's place through to Wednesday, and then the two of his brothers and their wives who live down south and so hadn't seen our house yet drove us home and stayed for home made pizza. I must admit that as nice as it was to be there it was even nicer to come home and to do my own cooking again.

Sadly, one of the little girls was a bit sick while we were there--complaining of a tummy ache. We have no idea if it was something contagious, or something she ate, but when we got home both L and lord_kjar came down with the same problem--tummy ache and digestion tract issues. I skipped the tummy ache, and had only slight modifications to my normal digestion processing, so whever the cause either I got a milder case or have a better immune system or something. Luckily, it was only a bit more than 24 hours that they were really bothered, and we are all back to normal now.

Up until late last night the weather has been perfect--nice and cold, the snow has been soft and fluffy, and I have been enjoying having a small sledding hill in my yard. Last night I started getting grumpy, and we assumed that it was just because I was tired, and sent me to bed. This morning I woke up still easily pushed into grumpy, and I noticed that the temp has risen to just above freezing, which meant rain on top of my snow. Now I suspect that the change in pressure with the change in weather was probably a factor in my grumpiness, and, of course, I am not happy to see rain--one of the main reasons I want to live this far north is that I love snow and never, ever want to see rain in the winter. If the weather makes a habit of this every year I do not know how long I will be willing to live on the Swedish coast--it will be time to move further north, further inland, and higher in elevation. So this had better be a rare fluke and not repeat again for another decade or three...