Life in Motala

Ingrid wanted to eat the traditional Swedish Christmas food and I wanted to keep on going with the sugar and starch free diet. We ended up compromising. We ate smoked salmon, mackerel, salmon roe and crayfish with sallad as the fish starter and then had waldorf sallad, cooked ham and two kinds of spare ribs (American style and Asian spicy) as the main plate - all SCD "legal". Ingrid also ate Janssons, a potato casserole with anchovies, and home-made inlagd sill, pickled herring (sugar, vinegar and spices). The foods we completely skipped this year were the Swedish meatballs, the short little Christmas sausages and gravad lax, raw salmon marinated in sugar and salt.

We also have a tradition of making a plate of cookies and candies to eat when opening the presents. I was pleased with the plate I made this year, though I did cheat a little, I used some cocoa powder in one of the treats (cocoa is not allowed on SCD).

On the plate: ginger cookies made with almond flour, peanut butter squares with hazelnut toffee, julknäck Christmas toffee made with honey, nut brittle and cocoa and butter balls. The photo does not do justice to the amount of work put into this… LOL. All in all, it was a good Christmas.

Ingrid is off for a few days to visit her dad and she took Lucky with her. In front of me I have three days to work on several projects: turning my book into a printable PDF file and writing a paper on attachment theory applied to religious feelings (my idea of fun!) 

I wish you all a WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY !!!

(here I am at last weeks Lucia party)

This fall Ingrid joined the Swim Team and Saturday night they held a huge Lucia party that continued the next day in the Swimming Hall. The party was really fun! We were split into teams and had to make up new chants for the swim team. These we got to perform the next day at the Swimming Hall. As you can tell, this is a very enthusiastic club!

Lucia was celebrated one last time at the Swimming Hall - some of the teenage swimmers held torches and did a lovely show, then picked up the Lucia who got to ride across the water before joining the rest of the choir.

Afterwards they held a members competition and Ingrid competed in crawl and backstroke. This was her first competition and she thought it was fun.

The last weeks before Christmas are always busy. Ingrid thinks it is the best time of the year. This week was extra nice, we had good friends staying for a few days. The little girl didn’t know what was best - honey on yoghurt or Lucky the dog. I think the yoghurt won by a small margin.

Amy Diamond came to Motala again to sing and sign her new Christmas record.

December 13th, is Lucia. School ended yesterday and Lucia was celebrated as well. Ingrid sang in the school choir with an apron on as a "sockerbagare". The teachers put on a fun show, doing the story of Jesus birth dressed up as Disney characters. My favourite was Sponge Bob as one of the three wise men.

The rest of the evening (and half the night) was Bränna Krut - a huge teenie disco and talent contest. Ingrid and her friend competed with 12-15 year olds from other schools. It went well, but the competition was fierce and they scored in the bottom half. Ingrid is determined to try again next year! A short video on Youtube for those who want to hear the HSM song again, this time in front of a huge audience.

Yesterday Ingrid got her first backstage pass! She is going to sing at a concert/disco in the Sports Hall on Friday night. She is so excited! She will be singing a song from HSM together with her friend (see earlier post) This time they will compete with kids from schools all over Motala.

I am sitting at my desk again and the sun is on its way down. It is just past 2.30 pm. A friend called before feeling a sense of loss. We agreed it must be the sun being so far away.

Something a lot of people don’t know about Motala is that the time meridian goes straight through here, which means that when it is 12 o’clock in Sweden, it is 12 o’clock in Motala, i.e. the sun is straight south (though the sun and clock only coincide perfectly four times a year). In the closest larger city, Linköping, the time difference is actually 2 minutes and in Stockholm it is about 9 minutes.

Tonight the school is having another concert, in a local church. Ingrid is going to sing Away in a Manger in Swedish.