Thanksgiving was our first official holiday away from home. While we have lived in different cities from our respective families for several years, we have always had great friends to share this special holiday with (special shout out to Ray and Sally, Jade and Mike for the great times!). This year, to be honest, Thanksgiving was not on the forefront of our thoughts. Ben is busy with his new job and I am busy with Danish and general stuff. Not to mention the fact that we do not have the appropriate cooking utensils to prepare most of the Thanksgiving special dishes. AND....where would we get a turkey over here? Not at the Føtex or the Netto!
Then we received an email from a group of lost souls - or should I say Canadian expats in Denmark announcing the planning of a large Thanksgiving celebration for all the Canadians in Copenhagen! Eureka! Let me back track a bit though....
I joined a group called AllCanucks back in August. This group for Canadian expats in Denmark is a catalyst for meeting other Canadians in Copenhagen through a series of events hosted throughout the year. These events can include pub nights, comedy nights (In English!), and general assistance on working/living/being in Denmark. Ben and I had yet to participate in an event until we received the Thanksgiving email....
For the small cost of 100 kroner each (about $20 Cdn) we would be provided with an all you can eat/all you can drink Thanksgiving celebration! Oh - and we had to bring our special thanksgiving side dish as well. I chose to bring the ever important dinner rolls while Ben (aka Julia Childs) wanted to make his famous scalloped potatoes. The scalloped potatoes went off without a hitch. Dinner rolls on the other hand were a little more complicated. I decided to wait until the Sunday of the dinner to purchase them. I wanted to get really nice dinner rolls so started my search off at the bakery...that is until I realized that each dinner roll cost upwards of $1 Cdn. Each! I was not going to pay $35 for dinner rolls! So I decided to walk down to the big grocery store - the Føtex. 15 minutes later I was outside the closed store (apparently 'Shopping Sundays' means that this grocery store is only open on the first Sunday of the month). Can you imagine a Loblaws being closed on a Sunday? So I walked all the way back home to check out the small, Netto grocery store near my house (I like to call it the ghetto Netto) where I was successfully able to purchase 36 dinner rolls pre-packaged for 8 bucks! Far too much effort for dinner rolls.
So off we went with the dinner rolls and scalloped potatoes to the Thanksgiving dinner. We are happy to report that the Canadians abroad are just as welcoming as Canadians back home. It was great to chat with people in English and learn more from the Canadians that have lived here for some time. Apparently canned pumpkin is quite difficult to come by here (in retrospect I am lad we did not offer to make pumpkin pie!). It was a real treat to have pumpkin pie made from scratch at the dinner though. Turkey is also difficult to come by and has to be pre-ordered. Apparently there used to be an American lady who bred and supplied all the turkey for Denmark. While it is uncertain whether she is stil operating, apparently most of the turkey now is brought in from Germany. I guess that means I will not be having a Christmas turkey in December unless I find out how to order this bird!
All in all, we had a great time and met some great people I am sure we will be seeing in the near future. Thanksgiving in Denmark = Success!
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Grandma's Danish Cooking
Ben and I have always enjoyed sightseeing through food. Whenever we visit a new place we do our best to immerse ourselves in the local cuisine. We loved the southern BBQ in Atlanta and Nashville, the fresh lobster in Boston was amazing, and who can forget the fantastic Vancouver sushi! So, it is only natural that we would continue our love of food, cooking and exploration in our new home.
You can expect many more blogs in the future about food. Grocery shopping here is quite different and I have a lot of things left to discover. For instance, someone recently told me that the first Sunday of the month is shopping Sunday; I am not sure if this means longer operating hours for stores or more sales....i will let you know as soon as I find out. I try to buy one random grocery item each week. Last week, i bought some random little fish that were on sale. While I was hoping that they were sardines, and I could replicate the delicious sardine dish I had in Plaka, it was herring. Oh well...they were still delicious in a butter, lemon and mustard sauce. While herring is a very traditional Danish ingredient, I do not think the recipe I used was a truly Danish preparation method.
In an attempt to cook truly Danish food at home, we decided to purchase a traditional Danish cook book. I ventured down to the local Bog&Ide (a much smaller version of Chapters) in search of a cookbook. I easily found the cookbook section, but quickly discovered that all the cookbooks are in Danish (which I should have guessed). When I quickly discovered that I could not pick out a 'traditional Danish cookbook' from the available cookbooks, I asked a store employee to point me in the right direction of traditional danish cooking. His first two suggestions were Joy of Cooking-esque Danish cookbooks; huge volumes filled with many recipes and no pictures. And entirely in Danish. Ugh. I could just imagine myself google-translating pages after pages of recipes, trying to figure out how to properly wash the kartofler.
I think the employee could sense I was overwhelmed with the huge volumes; thankfully he had a third option that was more my speed. The title, Mormors Mad, means 'Grandmother's food while the additional wording on the cover says "food for those who know everything about the wok and pasta, but misses grandmother's pots". He told me this cookbook takes traditional danish recipes and puts a modern spin on them. While the Mormors Mad is also entirely in Danish, it has the fantastic selling feature of pictures with every recipe!
So it was decided: this cookbook would be an integral part of our transition into a Danish way of life, both by learning the language and the cooking. The cookbook is conveniently divided into four sections, one for each of the seasons.
Stay tuned for some yummy cooking in the near future.....
You can expect many more blogs in the future about food. Grocery shopping here is quite different and I have a lot of things left to discover. For instance, someone recently told me that the first Sunday of the month is shopping Sunday; I am not sure if this means longer operating hours for stores or more sales....i will let you know as soon as I find out. I try to buy one random grocery item each week. Last week, i bought some random little fish that were on sale. While I was hoping that they were sardines, and I could replicate the delicious sardine dish I had in Plaka, it was herring. Oh well...they were still delicious in a butter, lemon and mustard sauce. While herring is a very traditional Danish ingredient, I do not think the recipe I used was a truly Danish preparation method.
In an attempt to cook truly Danish food at home, we decided to purchase a traditional Danish cook book. I ventured down to the local Bog&Ide (a much smaller version of Chapters) in search of a cookbook. I easily found the cookbook section, but quickly discovered that all the cookbooks are in Danish (which I should have guessed). When I quickly discovered that I could not pick out a 'traditional Danish cookbook' from the available cookbooks, I asked a store employee to point me in the right direction of traditional danish cooking. His first two suggestions were Joy of Cooking-esque Danish cookbooks; huge volumes filled with many recipes and no pictures. And entirely in Danish. Ugh. I could just imagine myself google-translating pages after pages of recipes, trying to figure out how to properly wash the kartofler.
I think the employee could sense I was overwhelmed with the huge volumes; thankfully he had a third option that was more my speed. The title, Mormors Mad, means 'Grandmother's food while the additional wording on the cover says "food for those who know everything about the wok and pasta, but misses grandmother's pots". He told me this cookbook takes traditional danish recipes and puts a modern spin on them. While the Mormors Mad is also entirely in Danish, it has the fantastic selling feature of pictures with every recipe!
So it was decided: this cookbook would be an integral part of our transition into a Danish way of life, both by learning the language and the cooking. The cookbook is conveniently divided into four sections, one for each of the seasons.
Stay tuned for some yummy cooking in the near future.....
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Learn to speak Danish - Week 1
The more and more I search the job forums here in Copenhagen, the more the realization hits that a strong knowledge of a Nordic language such as Danish is basically essential for finding a good job in Denmark. Unfortunately, the majority of us expats that arrive in Denmark have no knowledge of the language. Luckily, it is very important to the Danish government that foreigners have the opportunity to learn Danish to help integrate into Danish society; foreigners who obtain a CPR number have three years to attend free Danish language classes.
I signed up with a language school called IA Sprog which is located a few blocks from my house. Back in August, I met with a representative of the school who helped place me in the appropriate level of class. Due to my lack of knowledge of ANY Danish, I was easily (and happily) placed in Level 1. I chose to be part of the intensive language program; I attend lectures on Monday and Wednesday nights for 3 and a half hours. Each class consists of a test of 15 sentences (oral and written) as well as practicing basic oral Danish and going over written assignments from the previous class. It has been a while since I have been in school and I will admit that three and a half hours of Danish does not go by very quickly....
There are 10 students in my class who come from the following nations: Poland, Pakistan, Norway, Holland, Canada, Germany, and Great Britain. My partners in crime so far are the girls from Poland and Germany. The girl from Germany is in Denmark for 2 years working on a masters degree in biochemistry and the Polish girl was traveling in Asia, met a Danish fellow, and now lives here.
After my first two classes I am able to say the following:
I am Allison. / Jeg hedder Allison.
That is a car. / Det er en bil.
My dog is small and black. / Min hund er lille og sort.
And most importantly....
I do not speak Danish. / Jeg toler ikke dansk.
I have had the opportunity to practice these sayings on walks with Quigley. Everyone I meet is happy to practice with me (and happy to help me pronounce my 'æ', 'ø' and 'å' sounds as well as the awful soft 'D' sound).
I will leave you today with an example of the videos that I use for each lessons to help learn the language. I could not find the first video of level 1, lesson 1 on youtube...so here is lesson 12 of level 1. The setting is a school where individuals are learning to speak Danish. The topic of the class lecture is apples, oranges and bananas. While I unfortunately do not understand everything said in the video (I am only on lesson 4), I do understand that individuals are asked whether they would like a banana, apple or orange, and that Mustafa is sick and was not able to make it into class. Fatma offers to take Mustafa the bananas to help him get better.
Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Nn9N6tShc
I signed up with a language school called IA Sprog which is located a few blocks from my house. Back in August, I met with a representative of the school who helped place me in the appropriate level of class. Due to my lack of knowledge of ANY Danish, I was easily (and happily) placed in Level 1. I chose to be part of the intensive language program; I attend lectures on Monday and Wednesday nights for 3 and a half hours. Each class consists of a test of 15 sentences (oral and written) as well as practicing basic oral Danish and going over written assignments from the previous class. It has been a while since I have been in school and I will admit that three and a half hours of Danish does not go by very quickly....
There are 10 students in my class who come from the following nations: Poland, Pakistan, Norway, Holland, Canada, Germany, and Great Britain. My partners in crime so far are the girls from Poland and Germany. The girl from Germany is in Denmark for 2 years working on a masters degree in biochemistry and the Polish girl was traveling in Asia, met a Danish fellow, and now lives here.
After my first two classes I am able to say the following:
I am Allison. / Jeg hedder Allison.
That is a car. / Det er en bil.
My dog is small and black. / Min hund er lille og sort.
And most importantly....
I do not speak Danish. / Jeg toler ikke dansk.
I have had the opportunity to practice these sayings on walks with Quigley. Everyone I meet is happy to practice with me (and happy to help me pronounce my 'æ', 'ø' and 'å' sounds as well as the awful soft 'D' sound).
I will leave you today with an example of the videos that I use for each lessons to help learn the language. I could not find the first video of level 1, lesson 1 on youtube...so here is lesson 12 of level 1. The setting is a school where individuals are learning to speak Danish. The topic of the class lecture is apples, oranges and bananas. While I unfortunately do not understand everything said in the video (I am only on lesson 4), I do understand that individuals are asked whether they would like a banana, apple or orange, and that Mustafa is sick and was not able to make it into class. Fatma offers to take Mustafa the bananas to help him get better.
Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Nn9N6tShc
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