I was to young (read: not even thought of) when Woodstock was on so instead I am heading up to Wood(ford)stock (Woodford Folk Festival) for the coming week with my brother who went up this morning and another one of my friends who will be there for a couple of days.
It is currently drizzling here (Rain, what is rain?). Which means that maybe I will get to wear my gumboots round the site at Woodford, I painted them up last night so my feet will not get lost in the crowd!
Matthew and I are both going as volunteers which means we get free entry and camping in exchange for 5hrs work each day. I will be in the general store and Matthew will be working in one of the bars. I can’t wait for the bands to start playing tomorrow as there are so many bands that I know I want to see and I am sure there will be many others I will discover!
We come home on Jan 2nd so I don’t plan on been in contact before then. Have a good New Years and enjoy the rest of Boxing Day today 🙂
The Christmas tree was decorated on friday night after I came home from work at 9pm and before Matthew went to work at 12am. The presents are under the tree. The smoked mutton leg was picked up yesterday. Mum is currently in the kitchen working on the glazed carrots and cauliflower au gratin. The table is set. Christmas carols are playing.
We are just waiting for it to get dark enough. It is 6:45pm and it is still fairly bright outside. If we were true to our Icelandic roots we would be sitting down to dinner at 6pm like the rest of the country when the bells ring out across the country. I remarked to Mum before that we are some of the first people in the world to celebrate Christmas as we follow our Icelandic roots and celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. You have to love the fact that the International Date Line is just two timezones away 🙂
We had a Christmas afternoon tea before with our “surrogate” grandmother which was lovely and tomorrow we will have an Australian Christmas at the Farm with Grandad. Karl also rang up this afternoon before we had afternoon and we had a nice hour long chat with him which was just the most delightful Christmas present.
Christmas Menu
Smoked leg of Mutton
Mashed potatoes
Cauliflower au Gratin
Glazed Carrots
Peas
Dessert
Christmas Rice Pudding.
I leave you with this Christmas tree that I made with Grandmum many, many, many Christmases ago. 10 perhaps? It is made out of polystyrene trays from the butcher 🙂
This photo was taken the other week when Mum and I went up to visit Grandad. I spent the day in Grandmum’s sewing room sewing my graduation dress. I have always loved Grandmum’s sewing room, well actually as a matter of fact I love the whole house and the whole farm. Grandmum’s sewing table runs the length of the room and has a large window that looks out over the farm and towards The Twins (Tunbubudla East and West, two mountains which are part of the Glasshouse Mountains), you almost spend more time looking out the window than sewing. The chest freezer also lives in the sewing room and I remember when we were younger Grandmum would keep a bag of icy poles in there to give to Matthew, I, our cousins or our friends who also came up to the farm.
It has been just over three years since Grandmum died and this year in particular I have started to miss her more than I have in the past. I don’t particularly know why but I have.
Yesterday after I finished work, I was picked up and we headed straight up to the farm for a very special trip. A trip that has happened every year since my parents have lived in Australia. The collecting of the Christmas tree. Matthew chops the tree down now and we no longer travel on the front of the tractor or sitting cross legged on the wooden trailer. We also only collect two trees now; one for us and one for Grandad instead of the four or five we have had in years past when Matthew and I each had our own little Christmas trees.
We were lucky this year and found two suitable trees rather quickly. We then drove back to the house and proceeded to throughly decorate Grandad’s house for Christmas. Grandmum was a very crafty person in her life and made so many things for Christmas that means all the living areas in the house are amply decorated for Christmas.
Once the house was decorated we all sat down for dinner which consisted of a very very yummy rabbit stew and wrote the list of all Matthew and I will need for our upcoming trip to the Woodford Folk Festival from Boxing Day to Jan 2nd. As well as what we wanted to eat on Christmas Day when we come up to the farm. Then it was time to head home and Matthew and I a managed to catch the JAG final that finally aired in Australia last night. We have watched it on and off for the last six years or so and it was a relief to finally see Harm and Mac together for real.
Well, I now have a piece of paper that says I rock ok it says I can now add letters after my name if I wish and that I am permitted to tell people that I have a Bachelor of Arts in Asian and International Studies. There was a 11 of us graduating from that degree this year and 7 of us were at the ceremony which was nice. We were also the first cabs off the rank so I was the fifth person to walk across the stage 😀
awww, don’t I look pretty? Pity you can’t really see my rocking dress, so I guess I will have to take some photos of the dress so you can see how much it rocks. And look, I am wearing heels! I own one pair and have had them since 2000 🙂
Michelle, Martina, Lydie, Kate and myself. Some of the girls I have had classes with over the last two years
Helen as a Jedi Knight or perhaps I am really a Sith Lord? No. I think I prefer to think I am a Jedi Knight. When Matthew graduates and if he goes to his ceremony I will buy him a light saber so I can take a photo of him as a Jedi Knight.
I don’t think there is really much else to say about the ceremony. I rocked up, picked up my robes and was dressed by the uni staff, sat in a seat, walked across the stage, I doffed my trencher at the Chancellor, received a fake degree paper, walked off stage and was given my real degree paper, walked back to my seat and cheered and clapped for the other people we knew, walked out of the theatre and had photos taken, de-robed, picked up my free drink and went home.
Well in a couple of short hours I will walk across a stage in the city and graduate. Here is a sneak peak of the dress Mum and I have made. You will have to wait till after I graduate to see the whole dress.
In other news last night I lost a tooth I never had. That is right my false tooth broke off my plate, so just like my formal photos were in High School, my graduation photos will also be toothless. Luckily, it was just the tooth part that broke off, so I will be able to keep wearing my plate till I can get to the Orthodontist. Not exactly how I wanted the day to start but I guess that is life with a false tooth.
Christmas is coming. The other night I heard a Christmas Beetle buzzing about outside and I rushed out to gaze at him for a little while, drawing on the memories I have of these little fellas. A Friday night at swimming club was rarely complete without someone catching a beetle or two and placing them on someone else’s back, knowing very well that those little legs would stick to the lyrca of our togs.
Of course Christmas Beetles are not the only sign that herald the nearing of Christmas. The most obvious thing in our house would be the baking that is done. All sorts of goodies picked up from the Christmases that Mum spent in Iceland when she was a new bride in a houseful of kids in a fishing village in Iceland’s Northwest Fjords. The first two recipes in our (Mum’s) biscuit book (which incidentally is in an Icelandic exercise book with stÃÂlabók on the front cover) are two Icelandic/Nordic Christmas biscuit recipes. One is Vanilla Rings and the other are Loftkökur.
Loftkökur are a quirky little biscuit that you either love or dislike, Mum falls into the dislike category but for as long as she has lived with Pabbi she has made them for the rest of the family to enjoy at Christmas.
Loftkökur
Looking at the recipe Mum has written down in the book it is funny to see the mixing of Icelandic and English used either for measurements or the names of ingredients
750g icing sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp hartshorn salt (Hjartasalt in Icelandic or Ammonium bicarbonate – you can get this from some speciality grocery stores or the chemist)
5 tbsp cocoa
This can easily be halved, and I would probably recommend halving it if you are making it for the first time as it does make a lot of Loftkökur.
Mix the ingredients together and refrigerate the mixture overnight.
If you have a biscuit attachment for your mixer use that and ideally you would use the zigzag attachment. You would then feed an arm’s length onto your arm and then carefully flip it onto a well greased baking tray and cut it into thumb size lengths.
If you don’t have a biscuit attachment you will need to roll the mixture into sausages a bit thicker than your thumb and slice it every 1/4″. Then press down on the flat side with a fork to give it some decoration. This is also what we do with the leftover mixture that the mixer can’t process.
Place on well greased trays and cook at about 150°C. They are cooked when they slide on the tray when pushed. Probably 10 minutes or so.
They are best drunk with cold milk and if you are feeling adventurous have a Loftkökur Slammer (just like a Tim Tam one).
This is Mum feeding the shaped mixture onto her arm, ready to be flipped onto a baking tray.
Look at that uniformity in size as Mum cuts the mixture to length, you can tell she has been doing this for close on 28 years!
With the leftover mixture Mum normally lets me “create” with it and this year I decided to make Loftkökur Staws by feeding some of the mixture through the large mincer plate on the mincer.
