Christmas - Swedish/San Jose style (56k beware)

[Paul Adams]

My girlfriend is Swedish, and Swedes celebrate Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day.
My parents are English but live in California, this year we are visiting them for Christmas.

This means we get to celebrate both days, have different dishes and get horribly and embarassingly drunk 2 days on the trot.
It's slightly surreal as we left Sweden when it was -8C and snowing, but today in San Jose it's beautifully sunny and we've been lounging around in the hot tub, outside next to the pool.

The food today will be a traditional Swedish Ham (salted ham, baked for ~90 minutes, then left to cool, smothered in honey mustard and cooked for ~10 minutes more, then taken out to cool again), "Janssons Frestelse" (a potato & anchovy dish, really tasty), smoked salmon with a dill sauce, meatballs and a variety of side salads.
And there is a tendency for Swedes to drink vodka/aquavit/brännvin during their meals on special occasions (such as if the day of the week has an 'a' in it) and have a little sing-song.
Present-opening will preceded this meal and drinking will be before, during and after.

Tomorrow is the English-style Christmas Day - some friends of my parents are coming over and there will be more opening of gifts.
The food will be a beef dinner (Thanksgiving rules out a turkey dinner on Christmas Day), but as one of the guests is also Swedish, there will be more drinking and singing during meal time (hurrah!).

Here is a quick tour of my parents' place on this cold, wintery Christmas Eve morning...

Why have 1 Christmas tree, when you can have 2?


The requisite Christmas table, for tomorrow...


Taking a wander outside we can see the masses of snow which are conspicuous in their absence... (the hot tub can be seen in the pic on the right)


And a couple of shots from the garden to capture the essence of a Christmas Eve in San Jose, after taking a quick dip in the hot tub and drinking a few Coronas...


Merry Christmas one and all, and I hope Santa's sack contains something to put a smile on all your faces

[chojin]

Nice pictures


Have a beer on me. Merry Xmas


.

[Rave]

Bastard.

[Funkstar]

that ham sounds amazing btw

have a good couple of days, we'll hear from you in a week when you recover

[Paul Adams]

that ham sounds amazing btw

Swedish food in general is soooo tasty, and the Christmas ham is one of the best.

Also, there is a significant difference between Swedish anchovies and Italian ones - they aren't gross for starters The Jansson's Frestelse is a classic dish and also amazingly tasty.

Today we plan to teach my parents a simple Swedish song and try to impress the guests later ("Hej tomtegubbar slå i glasen o' låt oss lustiga vara" or something).

[XA04]

Good Luck, especially if you - yourself, can't remember it.