kareina

My dear friend Khevron, and his wife Lareena, are busy travelling around Europe just now. They started in Ireland, where they have family, and have worked their way north and west (with a little back and forth in southern Scandinavia as there is just the one train track to Bergen and they chose not to take the boat from there) to Luleå. They were on the night train Thursday evening, which meant arriving in Luelå at noon. So I worked in the morning and finished up in the lab (where we changed out the tubing connecting the laser to the ICP-MS for the first time since getting the machine) just on time to head to town. I have been putting off going to town to ask the optometrist’s office to tighten up my glasses, which had gotten loose where one side attaches to the nose. Therefore after they arrived we put their bags in the car and walked over. Khevron was looking for some clip-on sun glasses, since he left his prescription sunglasses at home. He also asked them if they could adjust his glasses, one arm of which was pointing out in a weird direction after having been stepped on. My optometrist’s office didn’t have clip ons, and didn’t dare try to fix his for fear of breaking the arm right off, but they fixed mine and suggested that he try the one next door.

The shop next door was out of the clip ons, and suggested we try the one two doors down. Both of the first two shops really busy, and we had to wait before it was our turn. The third shop, on the other hand, had no one but the lady on duty, who chatted happily with us about a variety of topics while showing us several different choices on clip ons—some that just clip on, others that both clip on, and then can be raised up out of the way when one goes inside. Some were as is, and others were big and meant to be cut down to better match the size/shape of the underlying glasses, and there were several colours to choose from. Khevron is normally the sort of shopper who prefers to look at all of the options (in many stores if possible), think about it, and then go back and get the one he likes best, and he suggested going away and thinking about it. Laurena and I pointed out that it is a bright sunny day, and that we aren’t going back into town, and that he could just buy them now. While we were chatting the lady insisted that Khevron give her his classes so that she could adjust the arm back where it was meant to be, and after it was fixed he finally agreed to pick a pair of clip ons, and she cut them down to the right size for his classes, and we went on our way. The errands took way longer than I anticipated, but it was fun hanging out and chatting, so I didn’t mind.

Then it was home, eat lunch with David (who had the day off of work, and so had finally made the time to go buy the lists to frame the opening to the office that we made bigger a year or three ago, it looks much better—now it is only replacing the wallpaper, adding a cover over the seam between the hall floor and office floor, and putting up the new chin-up bar and that remodelling project will be complete) and Caroline (somewhat late according to my tummy), get them settled, and then I baked a big loaf of bread with roasted garlic and made a black currant pie for the choir party.

I got the kitchen cleaned back up from that on time to head to the Uni to pick up people for the party. We had about 25 or 30 people who showed up, many of whom took bicycles to the house, so that we needed only Johan’s car (seats four passengers), and mine (seats six, but one of my seats was empty) to get the rest here. We started with making tacos for everyone, and while they were eating I mixed up some yummy ice cream and put it in the ice cream maker to chill while they finished eating dinner.

After they ate the ice cream (except for the serving I set in the freezer to eat today, since I wasn’t hungry at that hour; slight pause in typing while I go get that serving to eat now, having just thought of it) we played a name-memory game: the first person introduces them self and also sys the name of an animal that starts with the same letter. Then the second person repeats the first one’s name and animal, and gives their own name and animal. Each subsequent person repeats the names and animals of all of the preceding (in order) before adding their own. Our choir has many exchange students this year, from countries as diverse as Korea, Poland, France and Germany, so most names were ones that at least some of us had never heard before, adding even more challenge to the game, and most of us were able to remember the animal, but not the name, for some of the people, which meant we had to keep asking. Much to my surprise, some people remembered the names but not the animals. Our list included (and I am forgetting more than half of them, but I could remember more last night):

Dragon
Leprechaun
Panda
Tiger
Jaguar
Ant
Fox
Raccoon
Guppy
Albatross
Antelope
Komodo Dragon
Lemur

Then we spent a nice long time singing along with karaoke videos on youtube, taking care to include songs in every language spoken by someone in the group. While we were singing a couple of wonderful people (at least Gustaf (guppy) and Tanja (Tiger), as I saw those two working as I returned to the living room from the loo) put leftover food in the fridge and washed the things that didn’t fit in the dishwasher. Then we switched to a game—divide into three teams and the first to start singing a song that start with (or the verse or the chorus starts with) a specified letter gets a point. After a bit we ran out of letters and switched to “includes a specific word”, and Gustaf opened a book from the shelf and chose words at random for us to use.

As midnight neared the driver of the other car announced that he was going to he heading home and anyone who wanted a ride with him should come now, and everyone else stood up too, and we all left at once. Since we only had five in my car who needed a ride Khevron came along for company on the return trip (not that it was very long—Porsön is only 4 minutes from here). Then I took time to tidy up a bit more and play dulcimer before yoga and finally going to sleep a bit after 01:00. We have not made any specific plans for the weekend. Khevron and Lareena are here for a full week, so they have time to relax and do laundry and check messages, etc. I have lots that needs doing (like progress on the next grant proposal, packing for the SCA event next weekend and the subsequent trip to Durham, preparing my entry for the bardic competition next weekend, doing an English language check on a phd thesis of one of our students, and getting the fitting done on my new self-supporting undertunic (which has been ready for that step for a couple of weeks now, but if I want it next weekend I had best get to it). But it would also be nice to join K & L on adventures…

Two of the people asked for the pie recipe, so I will share it here too.

Svartvinbärspaj

Crust:

150 g butter
1.5 dl sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used homemade: split open vanilla beans, put into a bottle with brännvin and leave it till needed. Add more brännvin as needed till it quits tasting of vanilla)
1 egg
4.5 dl flour
3 tsp baking powder

Cream together the butter and sugar, beat in the egg and vanilla, add the flour and baking powder and press into a large pie-plate (if the dough is sticky add flour to your hands as needed when pressing it).

Filling:

4 dl Turkish yoghurt
1 dl sugar
1 T vanilla extract
2 eggs
6 dl frozen black currents, lightly chopped (while still frozen) in a food processor

Stir together the yoghurt, sugar, vanilla, and eggs, blend in the berries, pour into the crust and bake at 200 C (or 150 with forced air) for 20 to 30 minutes or until the filling is mostly set.

I just checked, and while I have posted may of the ice cream recipes I have done in the seven years since we bought the ice cream maker, I never posted this one:

Vanilla Ice Cream #3.2
(first made 27 June 2015)

300 ml cream
300 ml milk
4 egg yolks
0.5 dl sugar
2 T home made vanilla extract

Whip the cream. Blend the egg yolks, sugar, vanilla extract, add the milk, stir in the cream, put into the ice cream maker till done.

Not only was it a temporal weekend, I also wound up acting like it was a weekend, in that I did no uni work whatsoever. (well, I did read my 1000 words a day, but that doesn't really count) On Friday clovis_t and I went into town, where we met up with mushroom_maiden. She and I abandoned him in town and came out here, where I introduced her to my hammer dulcimer and then she wrote down the two-note sequence of cords I could play while she played a song she knows on the guitar (she'd brought one with her). This is my first experiance at "making music" with someone, and I very much enjoyed it. It is so easy to do this sort of thing (but would sound silly, I think, without the other musician supplying more than what I was doing). She stayed the night, and we girls talked till late--it was fun, it has been ages since I've had a slumber party.

On Saturday morning I took her home and picked up clovis_t and we stopped by a store on our way home to obtain supplies. We then spent the rest of the day cleaning up the kitchen and making food for his party that night. The occasion is a good one--he picked up the final, bound, version of his Honour's Thesis _The Development of Military Technologies in World War Two Britain_. We had four car-fulls of people turn up for the party, including one friend of his from school who has been working in the US for a few years. Not a bad turn out, considering that the only form the invitations took was setting up an "event" on Facebook and having that notify some of his friends.

One of the most amusing bits of the party was deciding that mushroom_maiden, who had come back out for the party, and I really have so much in common that we must be reincarnations of one another. We aren't exactly the same--there are differences accountable by the fact that, this time, we've lived different lives and have been shaped by different experiences. Time, not being linear, it doesn't matter that we happen to be alive at the same time--indeed, we figure that we lived her life first, then sometime later lived mine, which makes her older, never mind that in this life she is less than half my age. ;-)

This morning I'd planned on heading in with him to fighter practice because one of the local knights had been going to do a training session for beginning level fighters, no armour required. My thought was do that class, then head to uni and do some work there while clovis_t enjoyed the rest of practice, then he could get a ride to uni and we could head home from there. However, A) the class didn't happen after all and B) one of our friends was stressed about uni work, so I hung out with her for a bit and stitched, and then he and I left earlier than he normally does, we stopped by uni so I could put some files on the department shared drive for my advisor--hey, wait--that counts as uni work. I did do something--took about two minutes, but it is something. Then we came home, where I twiddled my thumbs, checked e-mail and caught up on LJ (for the first time this weekend), played a game with clovis_t and then did some more e-mail.

It is now midnight, and my weekend off is over. Time to do yoga, get some sleep, and in the morning do some serious uni work. Now that all of the figures for chapter three are on the uni hard drive I need to double check to be certain I'm done with the text for that chapter, and get a copy of it to my advisor and point out where he will find the figures. Then I can go onto the next task towards finishing that thesis I've neglected all weekend.

One of the many Canadians in the geology department hosted a Christmas Eve dinner today, and invited everyone in the department. Quite a few of us attended, bringing along our partners (or more rarely, children). Knowing that they'd planned a BBQ involving fish here at the house for Christmas day, when I got an invite to a proper Turkey Dinner, I leapt at the chance. You see, my all time favourite meal to cook is the turkey dinner we had for both Thanksgiving and Christmas every year growing up. But I haven't roasted a turkey since moving to Australia nearly four years ago. Not much point when I'm not really eating meat, the oven at the rental houses we've had is too small to take the turkey roaster, and clovis_t isn't overly interested in leftover turkey or turkey soup. The one thing I was *really* hoping for is proper mashed potatoes, with plenty of butter and milk in them. Being as our host is from Canada, where food customs are similar to the parts of the US in which I've lived, I figured the odds were really good, and indeed, they did have *exactly* the sort of potatoes I'd been craving. For reasons I don't understand Australian families don't do mashed potatoes they "roast them"--this is actually an insidious torture technique wherein they pour some oil in the bottom of a pan (between 1/2 and 1 cm deep!) then place peeled, cut into quarters bits of potato into the pan, widely spaced, then put them in the oven, where they draw up the oil slowly as they cook, becoming both very, very oily, and crispy at the same time. I can generally manage about one bite before I have to stop. I'd rather have french fries--they take much less time to cook, and adsorb less oil in the process! However, even better than getting my mashed potatoes was having *proper* gravy to put on them! I timed it perfectly, putting down my sewing as they were carving the turkey and asking if they needed any more hands in the kitchen, to which they replied "are you any good at making gravy"? and pointed to a large roasting pan as full of drippings as mine normally is. I replied that I love making gravy, and went to work. She handed me the flour bin, and pointed out a box of gravy mix that was available if I wanted it. I rejected the box as unneeded, turned on the burner under the roasting pan and commenced mixing up flour and milk and asked after herbs & spices. Someone fetched me a handful of fresh herbs from the garden, and I found a whisk and soon had a huge pan full of yummy gravy. Not quite as dark as I normally make it, but for reasons we don't understand turkeys don't come with giblets here, so there wasn't any water from cooking the giblets to add, nor were there giblets to run through the food processed and add to the gravy. After I'd had my fill of yummy food I then went back and picked off the last of the meat off of the bones and put the bones into the (now empty) roasting pan to boil up for soup. It was so much fun to be permitted to play in the kitchen, and they assured me they'd be able to finish up the soup. So I got to do some of my favourite tasks for the holiday dinner, and I didn't have to deal with the clean up afterwards (though, of course, I did clean up my gravy & turkey mess as I went), and I won't have the left overs that I won't eat. Yes, I did have a few bites of turkey, but, hopefully, not enough to trigger the digestion issues which caused me to quit eating meat in the first place. And I've got left over rolls too! I made two plates of Christmas wreath rolls (make your favourite refrigerator bread roll dough, roll out, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, roll up and cut rounds which get stacked in a circle, each just overlapping the next, bake, and frost them with a butter-powdered sugar-cream icing and decorate (this time with fresh raspberries and cake-decorating sprinkles) to make it look like a holiday wreath. I baked the remaining roll dough as plain knots (it is important to use only the middle slices of the roll, so that the wreaths are the same size all the way around) and took the lot. However, despite the large turnout, there was *tons* of left over food, and we brought home one full wreath and a couple of knots. This makes both clovis_t and I happy, as we adore both the plain rolls, and that particular frosting.

I managed only about 25 minutes of uni work this morning before heading to the party, but there is a good hour or more left available tonight before I need to do yoga and head to bed, so I'm hopeful of some progress yet to come...

(or was hopeful before I wasted ages and ages trying to deal with my unreliable internet connection--it will open some web pages, some time, but for reasons I don't understand, it doesn't seem to like LiveJournal today)