Danske mad (Danish food)

I (Carla) tried my hand at cooking a traditional Danish dinner over the weekend. I made a Danish Christmas dinner, which seemed appropriate considering the outside temperatures (low 40s... brrr). The meal consisted of flæskesteg (pork roast with cracklings), brune kartofler (caramelized potatoes), brun sovs (brown sauce, or gravy), and rødkål (pickled red cabbage). It was a hearty meal and we look forward to eating it again in December.

No Danish Christmas is complete without æbleskiver. These pancake-like doughnuts are best eaten fresh, filled with jam (or, in our case, some of the Speculoos spread Bobby received as a birthday present) and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Funnily enough, the recipe I used came from my Grandma Townsend, via Aunt Carolyn. Grandma Townsend used to make these every Christmas morning. I didn't know æbleskivers were Danish until we moved here. I wonder how she came to making them...

To make æbleskivers, you need a special æbleskiver pan, which is on the top left burner (this photo also shows me caramelizing the potatoes). I found my cast-iron pan at a Lion's Club used goods store. The pan worked perfectly, though the first batch of æbleskivers tasted like fish... kind of gross. But the following batches lost all the fishy taste and were just lovely!

Birthday Fotos

My birthday was a great success not least of which because I successfully turned another year older without actually looking older. Carla made sure to give me an extra special 35th; and what's more, Carla's mom Sharon came all the way from LA to help us celebrate!

Sharon brought about 40 pounds of gifts, including an assortment of hot sauces, several packages of macaroni and cheese, Japanese curry cubes, teas, a hat, and some warm sweaters. She also brought two right boots for Carla.

In return we gave her a lovely and authentic troll, the last picture of whom is above. He is guarding Carla's first apple pie --- which turned out to be a big hit with non-trolls.

That is an accordion tie! And chapstick. And Europe's favorite biscuits: speculoos. Thank you Sharon and Carla!

From Carla's dad I got this awesome pull printed with the mascot of his local high school: the Grapepickers. Thanks Dale!

For one dinner we all went to the restaurant Klubben, which serves traditional Danish food including all you can eat fried pork, and wonderful all you can eat roast beef. Accompanying these dishes were gravy, potatoes, pickled pears, beets, and cucumbers, and some little berries. Between the three of us, we could hardly finish the first two platters, let alone ask for more. Next time I will fast before I go. And bring some backup arteries.

We had some lovely hygge at dinner time with a festive centerpiece crafted by Sharon from all local ingredients found on our hike earlier in the day. Carla made duck with citrus sauce, which was delicious, but not so friendly on the oven. A week later we are still finding grease in strange places.

Carla also made an awesome chocolate cake with frosting! This was such a wonderful way to turn 35 that I think I will turn 34 tomorrow.

Tillykke til Bobby!

Happy Birthday, Bobby!

Today is Bobby's 35th birthday! My Mom has flown into help us celebrate Bobby's special day. We are going to Malmö, Sweden for a fun day day of touring. Tonight we dine at Restaurant Klubben, a great restaurant in the Vesterbro neighborhood of Copenhagen that serves traditional Danish food. Frikadeller, here we come!

Tillykke til os!

This week has been very rewarding for both Bobby and me. I passed my big Danish test and will begin the next level on Tuesday. The test was split over two days. Wednesday was devoted to the writing, listening, and reading portion of the test. Today was the spoken portion. Bobby came home with this lovey winter plant to congratulate me. I am very happy I passed and look forward to learning more Danish.



Bobby finished a large revision of a submitted journal article and also wrote a third grant application. He's been working on the journal article for the entire month (and then some). I told him that this past month has been very similar to the last few months of his dissertation writing; in other words, Bobby has been a work zombie. This is a photo of our typical Saturday night during September. We'd eat dinner together, then Bobby would go right back to writing while I entertained myself with TV. The candles made it a romantic working evening!



We attended a Connecting Friends dinner on Tuesday. You may remember that Connecting Friends is a program hosted by the Copenhagen language school which brings foreigners together with some Danes. As luck would have it, the hosts of the dinner wanted to show the guests a traditional Danish birthday celebrating. Bobby was randomly chosen to be the birthday boy, which was perfectly timed since his birthday is coming up soon! He was sung to, toasted (repeatedly, and by complete strangers), and even got to blow out birthday candles on a cake. It was a really fun evening made all the more special by Bobby's 'birthday'.


Bobby is test-riding this bike, which was once ridden by Bjarne Riis, the Danish bicyclist who won the 1996 Tour de France (he admitted to using steroids so the winning title has been retracted, but we don't need to talk about that). The bike is very fast and light, but Bobby has to nearly bend all the way over when riding. He's yet to determine whether or not he'll purchase it.



Bobby came home one day with this giant squash in his bag. One of the houses on his bike ride home often has a table set up with squash for sale. For 5 kroner (about $1), we ate from this squash all week! I made zucchini bread, zucchini cookies, sauteed squash, and gnocchi and vegetable stir-fry (below photo). All this cooking talk bring me to the final accomplishment of the week...

Since moving to Denmark, Bobby and I have kept a pretty tight budget. At the end of each month, we total up all of our receipts for the entire month (every receipt, weather it's for food, a coffee, or train tickets) and monitor our spending. The month of August turned out to be a pricey month for groceries. We spent an average of $11.00 per person per day for food. Mind you, we eat all three meals at home, drink alcohol (no more than 2 bottle of wine a week), eat some meat (about 1 1/2 pounds of protein per week, total), and eat a lot of fresh produce. $11.00 isn't bad, but we were spending more than we needed to. So I set a goal for myself at the beginning of September. I wanted to spend no more that 2000 kroner ($365.00) total for the month for food. I did it! I spent 1941 kroner, which means we spent an average of $5.90 per person per day on food. We didn't go hungry, we still got to eat some meat, we ate plenty of fruit and vegetables, and we drank 1 bottle of wine per week. The quality and quantity of the wine decreased, but so did our bill.

Tilbage til skole

September has brought new things for Bobby and me. We are both back in school! And we both have new haircuts! Well, Bobby got a proper haircut for a barber shop. I, on the other hand, am a cheapskate and can't imagine paying to have my bangs trimmed. So I either do it myself or I make Bobby do it. This time I had Bobby do it. He took a bit too much off but it's starting to grow back. Oh well, it's only hair.

My Danish classes are resumed, though I now at a different language school than the one I was attending when we lived in downtown Copenhagen. My new school is a 15 minute bike ride from our new apartment. The school has very nice facilities and is set in a beautiful location in Hellerup. I have class three days a week from 9am until noon. I am also expected to spend an additional 5 hour each week studying at school. I really like my new classes. The two teachers are fantastic and I am learning a lot. I can already talk and read in the past, present perfect, present, and future tenses! My big test for passing out of lever 2 is already scheduled for the end of this month. It is exciting to be learning so much Danish.


Bobby's university has also resumed. He is teaching a class in addition to supervising students. This photo shows him on his first day of class. Doesn't he look sophisticated and professorly?

Aside from school, we haven't done much that's worth writing about. I continue to cook and learn new recipes and techniques with all my fun kitchen gadgets. We had a nice American man over for dinner this past Saturday. He is a climate researcher and has just moved to Copenhagen. His grandparents are neighbors with Bobby's Aunt and Uncle back in the States, so our contacts were exchanged by said relations. He is a very nice guy and we look forward to sharing more meals together. For the dinner I prepared (fresh garlic bread, Provençal tomato spread, Wowatouille with pasta, salad with a spicy creamy cilantro dressing, and chocolate cake with whipped cream), I got to use every paddle attachment on Anchor Baby, my cherished stand mixer. Flat paddle for the cake, whisk for the whipped cream, and dough hook for the garlic bread. You know it's a good day when you use all of the attachments!

Aalborg and Research Meringues

Last week I spent in Aalborg, where I participated in the 2010 European Signal Processing Conference. I got to present two of my papers as posters (one seen above, written with my colleauge Guillaume Defrance). I would like to say people were trampling over each other to get a look, but I take crowd safety very seriously. So I perimeterized the entire zone and allowed one person at a time. I also got to attend some excellent talks by leaders in my field, which I summarize here at my research blog.

While I was gone for the week, Carla had a great time working with her new KitchenAid stand mixer, named "Anchor Baby." Above you can see some apples she made. Carla also claims she made those meringues, but they are far too perfect for this terrestrial realm.

We also received another relief package from Carla's mom! Cold medicine, chapstick, hot sauce, and some Japanese curry cubes. There are also anchovies, taco seasoning, and a cookbook for Vietnamese food! Here we come pho! Thanks yous Sharon!

With Carla's new mixer, she was able to whip up some Hollandaise sauce in a matter of seconds! Faster than I could poach the eggs. Placed on top of the some ham and homemade bread warmed in the over, we had an excellent Saturday breakfast.

After that, I went out on the local street corner and played my accordion to much fanfare. There was no actualized fanfare, but one man stopped by and gave me his card. He is the "formand" of the Gladsaxe Accordion club and invited me to join. He said that they need youth because nearly everyone there is 60 years old. I don't know if I will bring youth, but we shall see! He also said, "We play at the old mans home every Wednesday." Now that sounds like fun.

New Toys and Happy Memories

Santa came a little early this year for Bobby and me. We've been keeping our eye out for used goods on dba.dk, the Danish equivalent of CraigsList. It was through this website we found the used TV we mentioned in the previous post. Aside from household needs, we also look for new toys: accordions for Bobby and kitchen gadgets for myself. Bobby lucked out this week with this great German-made Weltmeister piano accordion, which was purchased for the unbelievable price of $50! Now Bobby just has to relearn how to play a non-button accordion.


I also got a new toy this week. We have been searching for a slightly used KitchenAid stand mixer on dba.dk. We thought we lucked out last week but it turned out to be a scam. The guy wanted us to wire him money before he would send the mixer. Seriously, who runs a scam with kitchen appliances?!? Anyways, I was a bit disappointed and had resigned myself to hoping for a mixer for a Christmas gift. On Saturday, Bobby went to a local store to buy a DVD player. He game home with a brand new stand mixer instead!!





I was so excited and put my new toy to use right away. A stand mixer is one of those appliances that lasts forever and can be used to make so many different things. My Mom has had the same KitchenAid stand mixer since I was born. I remember helping her make chocolate chip cookies when I was little, so I decided to break in my own mixer by making these cookies. You may notice that some of the cookies look like they don't have chocolate chips in them. That's because they don't. I love chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips. If I weren't making cookies for other people to eat, I would leave out the chocolate completely. But, since I am kind-hearted and wanted to share the cookies, I made a separate batch for me sans chocolate chips.












I also made carrot cake earlier in the week using Grandma Townsend's recipe. My paternal Grandmother was an excellent baker. Whenever I had dinner with her and Grandpa (which was pretty often, since we only lived 5 miles apart), she always had a dessert prepared. At her funeral, my second cousin told this lovely story about Grandma:
"When I was a little kid, I ofter went over to Uncle Don's and Aunt Frieda's home for dinner. One day, I came home from such a dinner and asked my Mother why she doesn't make desserts for us like Aunt Frieda does. She responded, 'Oh, that Frieda, she spoils Don.'"
I love this story. My Grandma baked with love and happiness, which is the best way to bake. This cake, which was my Grandpa's and Dad's favorite cake, is very moist and bursting with flavor. I miss both of my grandparents, but some of the heartache is mollified by cooking Grandma's recipes while recalling the wonderful moments we shared.