CRAZY LITTLE PARTY GIRL

As you can see it's very cold here in Oslo today - minus 12 degrees Centigrade - so I didn't mind spending the whole Sunday indoors, under the covers. I'm not a great one for outdoor life in winter - to be quite honest I shouldn't really be living in this cold country at all. 

But there was another reason for spending most of today in bed, and that was because I'm a crazy little party girl who likes to socialise and have fun all night long. You can be sure that I'm the last one to leave the party, and do you think I go straight to bed when I'm finally home? Oh no, heaven forbid. Then I put music on, surf the internet and generally think of things to do so that I can postpone my bedtime.

The party I went to last night was what we call "juletrefest" in Norwegian, and it's an old tradition - for children. I remember going to these kind of parties when I was a kid, at the bank where my Dad worked. It's usually arranged at people's offices and workplaces at the beginning of January, before Christmas draws its last breath and the tree is discarded. And all the children receive a bag of sweets and goodies from Santa. 

The "juletrefest" last night, however, was for adults, also a long tradition. Our host serves Fondue Bourginonne - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fondue, which is not the cheese variant, but instead we're dipping meat and vegetables into boiling hot oil. Very popular in the seventies, a bit retro now. But SO delicious, and he goes out of his way to make it appetising! After dinner we hold hands and sing and dance around the Christmas tree. I'm amazed at us all and how we still remember those old Christmas carols that we learnt as children - they're forever imprinted on our minds. This session culminates with all the guests running and singing through the apartment in a long line - similar to what the Christmas guests do in the famous Bergman film Fanny & Alexander. www.imdb.com/title/tt0083922/ If you haven't seen this please promise me that you will!

When we finally leave the party (was it around 3 a.m I wonder?) the host gives us little homemade presents (instead of sweets bags) - traditional Norwegian cured meats, herring and bread that he has baked himself. Yummy! 

In fact we're not quite finished with Christmas in this house either - this evening I'm cooking "pinnekjøtt" - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnekjøtt. This will be my final farewell to Christmas!