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such a good title for a party
Apr. 9th, 2018 06:56 pmThis weekend one of my friends had a birthday party that he called "69+", which I thought was a great name for a 70th birthday. It was scheduled for Saturday evening, and I had promised to help out by baking a vegetarian pie for it. I invited my friend Julia to spend the afternoon with me and then join me at the party.
Therefore I got up on Friday morning, made a big batch of pie crust dough and filled all of my pie plates, and realized that now that Caroline has moved out and taken her big pie plate with her I now no longer have enough in the house to use up an entire batch of pie crust dough (6 cups flour, 2 cups butter, 1 egg, 1 T lemon juice, some salt, and ~3/4 cup water). We have, however acquired an oval Pyrex baking dish with very straight/vertical sides, which was just big enough to use the last of the dough.
So I put most of the pie plates and dough into the freezer for future pie baking convenience, and baked one large pie for the party (filled with grated broccoli and zucchini, alfalfa sprouts, beaten eggs and milk with a bit of grated Parmesan cheese, and sprinkled with sunflower seeds, sesame seeds). While that was baking I thawed some left over cooked reindeer, in a sauce of kale, broccoli and coconut cream, mixed it with ground almonds, milk, a little egg, and some rice flour, and poured that over a layer of grated broccoli and zucchini, alfalfa sprouts, shredded kale. I then sprinkled the top with sunflower seeds and sesame seeds.
While that was baking I chopped some apple, mixed it with red currants, then combined 2 cups of oats with 1 cup chopped pecans, some butter, cinnamon, cardamom, and 1/4 cup of sugar, over which I poured the last of the milk in the container and let the oats absorb it a bit till the second pie was ready to come out. Then I pressed the oat mixture over the fruit and baked that too. When it came out of the oven I put the pie with reindeer in it back into the oven to keep warm and went and picked Julia up. We enjoyed the reindeer pie for lunch, then went out and played on the sledding hill for an hour (we were both surprised when we looked at the clock and realized how much time had elapsed), and then went back in and ate the apple-berry-nut cobbler. After desert and a bit more conversation we took a nap on the couch/recliner, and then got up just on time to head to the party.
The party also had a theme of "Det Glada 20-talet" ("The roaring 20's"), which I had forgotten about (and failed to type into the calendar listing for the party (the problem with paper invites is that one needs to re-type things into the calendar, and it is easy to get lazy and not copy over everything). However, many others remembered, and were dressed appropriately. A surprising number of Göran's friends own Flapper's dresses and/or long stings of pearls and/or headbands that look right for that decade (with or without feathers or sequins). One guy was dressed with the right overalls and hat to be perfect working on a train from that era.
Before dinner they had a quiz posted on the walls with questions from the 1920's, only a few of which I could answer (e.g. Charles Lindberg's plane was called the Spirit of St. Louis), and quite a few I couldn't (e.g. what caused the great stock market crash?). Towards the end of dinner they announced the results from the quiz--about six different people/small groups managed to get 9 of 12 correct and were tied for first place, so they drew one at random to get the prize (a bag of snacks).
Early on during the dinner Göran took the time to introduce everyone one present to us, with nice words about each of us and how we met/know him. Then, after everyone had eaten the meal, and we had done some group singing (while Göran played guitar) his wife, Eva (my folk dance teacher), went around the room and assigned us all a number (from 1 to 8), and then told us that each of the eight groups needed to gather and decide how we will introduce Göran to the assembly, and she invited us to tell a story, give a speech, do a song, or dance, or whatever we liked.
My group was mostly people from Luleå Hembygdsgille (As were most, but not all, groups), and we decided to sing about Göran. One of the ladies suggested that we use a tune from a Swedish Folk Song that Göran is very fond of, which I really liked, indeed the phrase "Han heter Göran" scans perfectly to the first line of that song. However, as soon as two of the others said they didn't know that song she immediately refused to let us use that tune. Instead we used one of the songs in the sing-along book that Göran had made for the occasion, though it felt to me like cheating, since we didn't need to change many words (I did find it annoying that she refused to use the first tune "because not everyone knows it", but didn't care that I had never heard the song we did use. But only because I thought that one time they sung it for me was plenty to be able to sing along, so why couldn't they?)
The original song is called "Fia Jansson", written in 1900 by Emil Norlander to the tune of Cachucha (which, in its turn, had been popular from teh early 1800's). There is a recording of it from 1906 on line here. (It also inspired a 1944 film called "Fia Jansson från Söder") The first verse says:
Känner ni Fia Jansson som bor uppå söder?
Hon har förresten två stycken vindögda bröder.
En av dem heter Hammarlund en heter Schröder.
Här skall ni se ett hjärta som klappar och glöder.
Which means, more or less "Do you (all) know Fia Jannson, who lives in the south? She has, by the way, two cross-eyed brothers. One of them is named Hammarlund, one is named Schröder. Here shall you (all) see a heart which claps and shines." (Followed by several other verses)
The version my group wrote says:
"Vi känner Göran Matteson som bor här i Lule.
Han gillar sång och dans och så allting some kulé.
Dalmanen kom som skattmas hit upp ifrån söder.
Här kan ni se ett hjärta som klappar och glöder"
Which means "We know Goran Matteson, who lives here in Luleå (note: the river is the River Lule, and the town at the mouth of the river, these days, is called Luleå (as the one at the end of the Pite river is called Piteå, and so on), but the older names for these places is without the terminal å, and many locals still use the short form of the name, and it is thus totally appropriate to leave off the å in a song to make it scan and/or rhyme). He likes song and dance and so all things cool. The man from Dalarna came collecting here up from the south. Here you (all) can see a heart that claps and glows".
We then repeated the tune a second time using "Tralla" instead of words, after which Birger explained that we didn't do the second verse with Tralla because we had run out of things to say about Göran, but because of Göran's habit of teaching complicated new tunes to the other musicians by picking up the violin, playing two or three notes, then putting it down and saying that he will just "Tralla" it instead, and then sing the tune so that they can learn it.
Much to my surprise we were the only group to have done a full on song, but one of the other groups did a chanted (rap like) introduction, with finger snapping and vocal back up.
Between the gathering in groups to decide what we would present and the actual presentations they served a ton of very tasty looking desert, but, of course, that late in the evening I was no longer hungry. Then we cleared away the tables and the musicians started playing, and I, of course, danced for the rest of the evening. It was a good chance to keep teaching Julia Swedish Folk dance (she comes from Åland, which is in Finland (though it is totally Swedish speaking), so she had done some Finnish folk dance in school, but no Swedish folk dance), and when she was tired I danced with others, or by myself. The musicians put away their instruments to head home a bit before midnight, so I called it a night, too, and dropped Julia off at home. When I got home I looked at the Frostheim fighter's FB page to determine that yes, there was a practice scheduled for 10:00 on Sunday, so I sent Julia a message asking if she wanted to go, and she did.
She wisely went straight to sleep after that conversation, but I stayed up packing my armour, packing lunch for the next day, and tidying up the house before yoga. Before sleeping I did some math to figure out what time I should leave the next morning to pick her up and still be on time for practice. I woke up a bit after the dawn light was at full bright, and hopped out of bed, put the lunch into a cooler bag, loaded up the car, had breakfast, and started driving. Then looked at the clock, saw that it was only 08:30, which was really early for a 10:00 arrival, so I pulled over in a parking area, sent her a message, and we decided to do the after-practice errands first. So we got petrol, went grocery shopping, and arrived at the practice site at 9:40, just as the one with the key arrived to let us in.
I introduced Julia to the others and explained that while she doesn't know the SCA she has done blunt metal sword fighting with a Viking group in Åland, and could they explain to her the differences. I might have joined them for the unarmoured training, but the first thing they did was a "warm up game" wherin one tries to use a glove held loosely in the hand to hit the other guy behind the knee, and that didn't sound fun to me. so instead I spend 25 minutes practicing hand stands, climbing on the tiny climbing wall in that gym, and other active things, then I took out my gambeson in progress that I haven't worked on or touched at all in many months (years?) and started sewing it again. Now that I have lost my pretty viking coat I need a new one, and this one happens to be cut in a viking coat pattern. It won't be as pretty (it is a gambeson, after all), but why not finish it before I start one in nice fabric?
After practice I dropped her off at home and spent the afternoon reading fiction and napping, and then finally started working on my thesis later in the evening. As it turns out, the several hours I did that night meant that I exceeded my thesis goals for the week. ( time spreadsheet and work details here )
Therefore I got up on Friday morning, made a big batch of pie crust dough and filled all of my pie plates, and realized that now that Caroline has moved out and taken her big pie plate with her I now no longer have enough in the house to use up an entire batch of pie crust dough (6 cups flour, 2 cups butter, 1 egg, 1 T lemon juice, some salt, and ~3/4 cup water). We have, however acquired an oval Pyrex baking dish with very straight/vertical sides, which was just big enough to use the last of the dough.
So I put most of the pie plates and dough into the freezer for future pie baking convenience, and baked one large pie for the party (filled with grated broccoli and zucchini, alfalfa sprouts, beaten eggs and milk with a bit of grated Parmesan cheese, and sprinkled with sunflower seeds, sesame seeds). While that was baking I thawed some left over cooked reindeer, in a sauce of kale, broccoli and coconut cream, mixed it with ground almonds, milk, a little egg, and some rice flour, and poured that over a layer of grated broccoli and zucchini, alfalfa sprouts, shredded kale. I then sprinkled the top with sunflower seeds and sesame seeds.
While that was baking I chopped some apple, mixed it with red currants, then combined 2 cups of oats with 1 cup chopped pecans, some butter, cinnamon, cardamom, and 1/4 cup of sugar, over which I poured the last of the milk in the container and let the oats absorb it a bit till the second pie was ready to come out. Then I pressed the oat mixture over the fruit and baked that too. When it came out of the oven I put the pie with reindeer in it back into the oven to keep warm and went and picked Julia up. We enjoyed the reindeer pie for lunch, then went out and played on the sledding hill for an hour (we were both surprised when we looked at the clock and realized how much time had elapsed), and then went back in and ate the apple-berry-nut cobbler. After desert and a bit more conversation we took a nap on the couch/recliner, and then got up just on time to head to the party.
The party also had a theme of "Det Glada 20-talet" ("The roaring 20's"), which I had forgotten about (and failed to type into the calendar listing for the party (the problem with paper invites is that one needs to re-type things into the calendar, and it is easy to get lazy and not copy over everything). However, many others remembered, and were dressed appropriately. A surprising number of Göran's friends own Flapper's dresses and/or long stings of pearls and/or headbands that look right for that decade (with or without feathers or sequins). One guy was dressed with the right overalls and hat to be perfect working on a train from that era.
Before dinner they had a quiz posted on the walls with questions from the 1920's, only a few of which I could answer (e.g. Charles Lindberg's plane was called the Spirit of St. Louis), and quite a few I couldn't (e.g. what caused the great stock market crash?). Towards the end of dinner they announced the results from the quiz--about six different people/small groups managed to get 9 of 12 correct and were tied for first place, so they drew one at random to get the prize (a bag of snacks).
Early on during the dinner Göran took the time to introduce everyone one present to us, with nice words about each of us and how we met/know him. Then, after everyone had eaten the meal, and we had done some group singing (while Göran played guitar) his wife, Eva (my folk dance teacher), went around the room and assigned us all a number (from 1 to 8), and then told us that each of the eight groups needed to gather and decide how we will introduce Göran to the assembly, and she invited us to tell a story, give a speech, do a song, or dance, or whatever we liked.
My group was mostly people from Luleå Hembygdsgille (As were most, but not all, groups), and we decided to sing about Göran. One of the ladies suggested that we use a tune from a Swedish Folk Song that Göran is very fond of, which I really liked, indeed the phrase "Han heter Göran" scans perfectly to the first line of that song. However, as soon as two of the others said they didn't know that song she immediately refused to let us use that tune. Instead we used one of the songs in the sing-along book that Göran had made for the occasion, though it felt to me like cheating, since we didn't need to change many words (I did find it annoying that she refused to use the first tune "because not everyone knows it", but didn't care that I had never heard the song we did use. But only because I thought that one time they sung it for me was plenty to be able to sing along, so why couldn't they?)
The original song is called "Fia Jansson", written in 1900 by Emil Norlander to the tune of Cachucha (which, in its turn, had been popular from teh early 1800's). There is a recording of it from 1906 on line here. (It also inspired a 1944 film called "Fia Jansson från Söder") The first verse says:
Känner ni Fia Jansson som bor uppå söder?
Hon har förresten två stycken vindögda bröder.
En av dem heter Hammarlund en heter Schröder.
Här skall ni se ett hjärta som klappar och glöder.
Which means, more or less "Do you (all) know Fia Jannson, who lives in the south? She has, by the way, two cross-eyed brothers. One of them is named Hammarlund, one is named Schröder. Here shall you (all) see a heart which claps and shines." (Followed by several other verses)
The version my group wrote says:
"Vi känner Göran Matteson som bor här i Lule.
Han gillar sång och dans och så allting some kulé.
Dalmanen kom som skattmas hit upp ifrån söder.
Här kan ni se ett hjärta som klappar och glöder"
Which means "We know Goran Matteson, who lives here in Luleå (note: the river is the River Lule, and the town at the mouth of the river, these days, is called Luleå (as the one at the end of the Pite river is called Piteå, and so on), but the older names for these places is without the terminal å, and many locals still use the short form of the name, and it is thus totally appropriate to leave off the å in a song to make it scan and/or rhyme). He likes song and dance and so all things cool. The man from Dalarna came collecting here up from the south. Here you (all) can see a heart that claps and glows".
We then repeated the tune a second time using "Tralla" instead of words, after which Birger explained that we didn't do the second verse with Tralla because we had run out of things to say about Göran, but because of Göran's habit of teaching complicated new tunes to the other musicians by picking up the violin, playing two or three notes, then putting it down and saying that he will just "Tralla" it instead, and then sing the tune so that they can learn it.
Much to my surprise we were the only group to have done a full on song, but one of the other groups did a chanted (rap like) introduction, with finger snapping and vocal back up.
Between the gathering in groups to decide what we would present and the actual presentations they served a ton of very tasty looking desert, but, of course, that late in the evening I was no longer hungry. Then we cleared away the tables and the musicians started playing, and I, of course, danced for the rest of the evening. It was a good chance to keep teaching Julia Swedish Folk dance (she comes from Åland, which is in Finland (though it is totally Swedish speaking), so she had done some Finnish folk dance in school, but no Swedish folk dance), and when she was tired I danced with others, or by myself. The musicians put away their instruments to head home a bit before midnight, so I called it a night, too, and dropped Julia off at home. When I got home I looked at the Frostheim fighter's FB page to determine that yes, there was a practice scheduled for 10:00 on Sunday, so I sent Julia a message asking if she wanted to go, and she did.
She wisely went straight to sleep after that conversation, but I stayed up packing my armour, packing lunch for the next day, and tidying up the house before yoga. Before sleeping I did some math to figure out what time I should leave the next morning to pick her up and still be on time for practice. I woke up a bit after the dawn light was at full bright, and hopped out of bed, put the lunch into a cooler bag, loaded up the car, had breakfast, and started driving. Then looked at the clock, saw that it was only 08:30, which was really early for a 10:00 arrival, so I pulled over in a parking area, sent her a message, and we decided to do the after-practice errands first. So we got petrol, went grocery shopping, and arrived at the practice site at 9:40, just as the one with the key arrived to let us in.
I introduced Julia to the others and explained that while she doesn't know the SCA she has done blunt metal sword fighting with a Viking group in Åland, and could they explain to her the differences. I might have joined them for the unarmoured training, but the first thing they did was a "warm up game" wherin one tries to use a glove held loosely in the hand to hit the other guy behind the knee, and that didn't sound fun to me. so instead I spend 25 minutes practicing hand stands, climbing on the tiny climbing wall in that gym, and other active things, then I took out my gambeson in progress that I haven't worked on or touched at all in many months (years?) and started sewing it again. Now that I have lost my pretty viking coat I need a new one, and this one happens to be cut in a viking coat pattern. It won't be as pretty (it is a gambeson, after all), but why not finish it before I start one in nice fabric?
After practice I dropped her off at home and spent the afternoon reading fiction and napping, and then finally started working on my thesis later in the evening. As it turns out, the several hours I did that night meant that I exceeded my thesis goals for the week. ( time spreadsheet and work details here )
