Sweet Christmas

Advent Calendar / 11 December

I forgot one  kind of pig in my Christmas Pig post the other day:

The  Marzipan Pig. Real Marzipan is made of sugar and almond meal; there are also cheaper varieties where peach or apricot kernels are used instead of almonds.

 

Here are some other typical kinds of Christmas sweets that many people in Sweden often still make their own at home for Christmas:

 

Knäck
This is a kind of toffee, made from
cream, sugar, syrup, butter and chopped almonds.
(Warning: Do not eat if you already have tooth problems!)

 

Ischoklad (ice chocolate)
50/50 chocolate + coconut fat

 

Mint kisses
Icing sugar, vinegar and peppermint oil,
with dark chocolate on top
(taste reminding of After Eights)

 

My Mum used to make ice chocolate, and another kind of toffee. We also made marzipan figures back in my childhood. I used to make the mint kisses sometimes, but I think that was not until after I moved away from home.

I don’t make any of these now; partly because if I do make them, I most likely also end up eating them! Some things I just have a very hard time resisting if I know I have them in the house…

None of the pictures in this blog post are my own,
the were all found by Google Search or Wikipedia.

Onwards and Backwards

Yesterday was another day of phone calls + a visit to the hospital. I talked to a nurse at the hospital in the late morning, and then twice with the municipality's assistance evaluator, in between which she in turn had investigated the options at hand just now.

Result: Tomorrow dad will be moved to a short-stay nursing home for a month. His problems include general weakness and increasing dementia. He had fallen a couple of times at home over the weekend so that's why the home care nurse decided on Monday to send him to the hospital. Tests and X-rays showed nothing new though. Some attempts at training will be made at the short-stay nursing home. Then a new evaluation will be made to decide if he can go back home as before (with home care) or if other arrangements will have to be made.

The short-stay nursing home is in town - across town from me, and further away than the hospital – but I will be able to visit more often than in his home village.    

Lucky coincidence in the midst of all the unlucky is that my brother starts his summer holiday next week anyway and will be able come down and stay in the house for a few days. 

Later in the afternoon I went to the hospital to see dad. He was asleep most of the 1½ hour I sat there. During the few minutes he was awake I tried to ask him if he knew where he was, if he remembered what had happened the day before. He had no recollection of it. I soon realized that any discussion of details was pointless. I think he recognized that it was I who was there but I'm not even 100% sure about that. When I left he was fast asleep again. (As were two of the three other elderly gentlemen in the room. Imagine the sound…) I left a bar of dark chocolate and some pastilles I know he used to like on his table as a visible sign that I - or someone! - had been there…

.~.~.~.

… I remember, way back from my childhood, the taste and smell from those liquorice pastilles - a little too sharp for my taste back then, but associated with early memories of dad. He used to keep a box in his breast pocket - Läkerol Original, back then they came in metallic boxes . (Since then there have been - probably dozens of new tastes?) I also remember that he always preferred dark chocolate to milk chocolate. A fragment of memory from some train journey... Milk chocolate for me*, dark for dad...

*(Nowadays I only buy dark chocolate myself, since in my late thirties I developed lactose intolerance.)