The Best Worst Pie Ever

       I went running with EuroSMAC last week. As I may have mentioned, it's been a little wet around here, and the trail was a little splashy. We slogged through some serious mud, baptizing our fancy running shoes. Then we charged up a rocky and uneven hill at a speed far zippier than my usual trot. This is what I get for running with teenagers. So I decided that, as revenge for their efforts to improve my fitness, and since I was hearing a little whining about the mud and hills, I would share some of the wisdom that comes with age.
       "Girls," I began (pant . . . gasp). "Did it ever strike you that sometimes the worst experiences make the best memories?"
       I was thinking about the run, made both more difficult and more memorable by the adversity. Then I thought about how many of the experiences I've shared in this Blog are memorable because they were difficult. Climbing the Salève wasn't fun at the time. Neither was being lost in Italy. Being locked in a subterranean garage was certainly no picnic. But how much more memorable were those experiences than all the times I have successfully parked the car, all the pleasant hikes along flat trails, and all the smooth car trips we've taken (actually, I don't think there have been any of those). When I told the dad of EuroSMAC's other member my musings, he said that adversity is memorable because our lives are easy. If life was full of adversity, it would be the moments of respite that we remembered. I'm sure he's right, but that's more philosophical than I really want to be right now. Right now, I want to write about The Pie.
         It was Thanksgiving, and I was probably in my early teens. We were at my Grandma Emy and Grandpa Bob's house in Indiana with all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. My dad and his sister, my Aunt Jane, decided, with no discernible provocation that this year, they would bake a pumpkin pie. This was not a decision made lightly. Pumpkin pie is my dad's favorite dessert. He often asks for it for his birthday, which is in July. In addition, our family includes several experienced and fully competent pie makers. Nevertheless, Dad and Aunt Jane would make the pie. And they would do it right. From the beginning. From scratch. No Libby's canned pumpkin for them.
          I think the first mistake was the pumpkin they chose. Whether from pure lack of knowledge or from a desire to use up leftovers, they cooked up a Jack O'Lantern pumpkin, rather than the small variety usually used in pies. Actually, maybe the choice was motivated by a good old American love of the large. Without a blender, they simply cooked and mashed the pumpkin flesh. They then mixed in the Carnation milk, spices, eggs, and heaven-only-knows what else, and poured it all into a crust they had made. Probably the crust was made from stone-ground whole wheat flour, in some sort of misguided effort to make the pie healthful. Then they slid the whole thing in the oven.
           The pie was stringy, chewy, with crust like cardboard. In an effort to redeem the whole thing as a joke, they covered the top with shaving cream and set it out on the sideboard. No one was fooled. As a culinary experience, the pie may have been among the worst I have seen; it is, nevertheless, one of my favorite holiday memories. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Cozy

      It is November in Geneva with a vengeance. Saturday night, it was raining so hard that even I didn't want to go out for dinner, so we decided to order pizza. Dominos exists here, and, if one is a COMPLETE BABY about making telephone calls in French, one can order pizza online. Further, if one does not want to venture into the rain to withdraw cash from the bank machine down the street, one can pay online with a credit card. Perfect. Except that when I tried to pay, I was directed to a page that informed me that all the redirects required by the payment process had left my computer lost in cyberspace. I tried again, received the same message, and started to worry that perhaps somehow I had just ordered two Hawaiian pizzas (and cheesy bread and Cinnastixs -- hey, we're hungry over here). So I nicely asked Drew to call Dominos and ask if we had ordered twice. He nicely did, only to be informed that they had no order from us. Pas de pizza. I tried one more time online (I am not a quitter), then called the other Dominos in Geneva, just to make sure. Nothing. So I did what I should have done all along and told the patient man on the telephone what we wanted. In my flusteration over trying to repeat my phone number in French, I forgot to ask if I could pay with a credit card, so guess what . . . we had to go out in the rain anyway. Later, I saw a message in my email from a company called Saferpay, telling me that my credit card payment of 57 chf had indeed been successful. Twice. We kept waiting for the doorbell to ring with our other two pizzas, but they never came. The lesson here seems to be, "Quit being such a coward about the phone calls, and you'll be able to stay inside where it's warm. And save hundreds of francs into the bargain."

      The good thing about nasty fall weather is that it makes staying inside where it's warm that much more blissful. So, in the spirit of warmth, here are some things that make November cosy.

1. The sugar bowl. I don't know what it is about a sugar bowl. I don't even like sugar in my coffee. But there is something about this piece of crockery that just says, "come in and curl up."

2. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. I heard about this group and how it survived through years of communism in a radio segment called, "The Singing Revolution" (The World and Everything in It, Nov. 10. http://www.worldmag.com/podcast/worldandeverything.cfm if you're interested). The story was so lovely that I looked up the group on Spotify. The music perfectly captures the feeling of being inside in candlelight watching rain run down the windows.

3. And speaking of candlelight, the darker days allow for more hours of candle burning. This one, with the candlestick made in my grandfather's furniture factory from the tulip tree that grew near his home, makes me feel connected to my forbears and so is particularly comforting. The marshmallow-scented one from Migros isn't bad, either.

4. The Thanksgiving Tree. Years ago, in an effort to extend my favorite holiday, I started having the kids attach leaves to a paper tree that we taped up in the kitchen. Each leaf bore something for which we were thankful. The idea has evolved, and now we use an actual tree . . . okay, a branch, but it's 3D, anyway. So far, we've been thankful for football, friends, memories, an available God, running, and, I'm pretty sure, video games. We range from the sublime to the trivial by the minute.

5. Soup. It's such a great meal. On Saturday, a person could cook up a pot of say, chicken vegetable soup with gnocchi, and on the following Wednesday, the family could still be enjoying a tummy-warming dinner in a pot. I did promise to make something different for dinner tonight. Chili?

The Aliens Visit the Old Country, Part One

       Spurning all advice from people who had actually visited the country, we spent the last days of October and first days of November in Sweden. Turns out, our advisors were right. The country is cold and dark this time of year, even though we confined ourselves to the southern 20 percent. The truth is, we just couldn't manage a summer trip, and as it turns out, the purpose of the trip wasn't really sightseeing, anyway.
        For those of you who may not know, my mother's parents are both from Sweden, having moved to the U.S. as adults and met and married there. Many members of both families stayed in Sweden, meaning that I have a host of relatives there, mostly of the second-cousin-once-removed variety. I've met many of them at reunions in the U.S., and I was in Sweden as a 7-year-old, but Eric and the kids hadn't met most of the family. We're a 2-hour, 35-Euro plane flight away, and clearly, it was time to go.
        Because of the time of year and because we are not entirely loony, we decided to focus on my grandfather's family, who mostly live in southern Sweden. My grandfather Martin spent the last years of his life in Göteborg, which is Sweden's second-largest city (about the size of the greater Geneva area). He apparently shared my enthusiasm for public transportation, spending his days riding the tram from one end of the line to the other with stops for lunch and coffee. We planned a tour that began with a flight into Copenhagen and a train ride across one of the longest bridges in the world (16k from the Danish coast to Malmö, Sweden, where a cousin lives with her family). We were then going to take the train to the other side of the country (a ride of only 1 1/2 hours, as opposed to something like 24 hours from top to bottom, which, if you haven't seen a map lately, gives you a good idea of Sweden's shape). My mom's cousin, Tonnie, lives in Sölvesborg on what has to be one of the world's loveliest properties, sitting on about 3 miles of Baltic coastline. Then we would take the train to Göteborg to visit the trams and some other cousins there.

At Nyhaven in Copenhagen. We actually had sunny weather the first few days,
and Copenhagen is well worth seeing, even in the cold. 

Nyhaven again.

The Little Mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen fame. She sits in the harbor in Copenhagen, and is the city's most famous landmark. She's also one of the world's most disappointing landmarks, because she is really unexpectedly little. We were saved from devastation by the fact that my dad had forewarned us.

       My initial impression of Sweden is that it is much more like America than Switzerland. First of all, nearly everyone speaks English. My cousin Lotta said that Swedes like Americans, like America, and like to practice their English with Americans. My young cousins told us that they speak such good English because they watch a lot of YouTube and play a lot of video games. Hmmm. When I mentioned that in Geneva one kind of has to know a little French to get around, one young cousin was shocked, telling me that in Sweden, if you are making a doctor appointment, you can talk in Swedish, English, or even Italian if you want. In addition to the language, Sweden has adopted some parts of America about which I am not so crazy . . . there seem to be McDonald's and Burger King restaurants on every corner, and shopping malls and traffic abound. Convenient for sure, but I have to say that I like the quaint bakeries and narrow streets in Switzerland and France. Nonetheless, I do appreciate the larger cups of coffee up north, but I think the Americans probably adopted that from the Swedes, and not the other way around. It's a chilly place.

       The Swedes, or my relatives at least, are also outstandingly hospitable. One cousin made wonderful dinners every night, then invariably apologized for them, saying, "I hope you can eat this."  Another cousin insisted on driving us the four hours from Sölvesborg to Göteborg, even though we had planned to take the train. Everywhere we went, people opened their homes and took time to visit with us. We weren't allowed to pay for anything -- not even our toothpaste and shampoo at the grocery store. Strangers were friendly, too, asking where we were from, offering directions, and generally being far more open and smiling than the Swiss (which, okay, isn't difficult).

Tonnie's place on the Baltic. It's called Bjorkelund, though I'm not sure I have the spelling right.

Lucas braving the rocks at Bjorkelund.

Our guesthouse. The hot tub on the porch was a highlight for the kids, especially Lucas.

While we were in Sölvesborg, Tonnie took us on a tour of Småland, which is famous for glass factories. This was taken in the Kosta Boda factory, which also has an outlet mall. He's making wine glasses, I think.

The Småland tour included some family history, as that is where my grandfather (and his brother, Erik, who was Tonnie's dad) grew up. Anne Svensson was Martin and Erik's sister, who died quite young. Their father is also buried in this cemetery, but we didn't know where to find his grave.

          In Sweden, we also realized how much French we actually know. While we can conduct daily business in French, our Swedish is sorely lacking. Despite the fact that most people there speak English, a few of my older relatives do not. I had foolishly underestimated what a barrier this would be. We spent one whole morning driving around with Tonnie, and about all we understood was "titta," which means "look." I, and I think the rest of the family, too, felt bad that we couldn't communicate to Tonnie (and a few others) how much we appreciated their hospitality and how interested we were in them. A few of the younger members of the family plan to remedy this problem at some point in their lives. Until then, a big "Tack så mycket" (our other useful phrase) to all the wonderful people who made the trip one of our favorites.

Johanna, typically, found little friends everywhere, from Isa in Malmö . . . 

       

. . . to Esther, whose family (nobly representing my grandmother's side) traveled 12 hours
from Umeå to see us in Göteborg.

The boys made friends, too. Drew is way happier to be eating Swedish pizza with
 his third cousins than he looks . . . really.