After yesterday's post, I thought I would show you just how timeless the view of Stortorget in the old town is. I am not joking when I say that it has remained unchanged for hundreds of years as this lovely old postcard shot shows:




This was designed by Jan Bergerlind, who paints the most beautiful, traditional Swedish Christmas scenes on postcards. They are instantly recognisable and I spend ages looking through the card shops and often end up buying them all! Just look at his Tomte and Christmas series.

Christmas is getting closer and closer and this can be a really hectic time. One way to call a halt to the holiday madness is to take a day off to bake some seasonal breads, a tradition that satisfies the soul and makes the house smell really, really good! Today I decided to bake some traditional buns for tomorrow's celebration of Lucia.

I have explained what the Lucia traditions are in an earlier post, so I won't repeat the story, but I will say again that this is one of my favourite Swedish traditions. I love watching the parade through town and going along to the local boat club for singing and a glass of glögg in the evening. But in the morning, we need buns and since I'm totally lazy and refuse to get up at 4am to bake fresh saffron buns for my husband's breakfast, I did them today. I mean to say, breakfast in bed TWICE in a week is quite enough, eller hur?

I used the same recipe I posted previously for my Lussekatter ("Lucy cats") and Lambi supervised carefully just to make sure no other type of feline snuck in.




Once the dough had risen, it was quick work to shape them for baking. The actual shape of this bun does vary somewhat according to regions, but is always based on old designs dating back to much earlier pagan and Christmas celebrations in Sweden. You can find some of these designs on this page. I usually go with the most common, "S" shape, with the two cat eyes.




I divide the dough into four, then each piece into six balls slightly smaller than my fist and fashion them into ‘serpents’, formed like the letter S. I then covered them with a cloth and left them to rise again for around 40 minutes.




While that was happening, I preheated the oven, then beat an egg and brushed this over the risen buns and added two raisins for the eyes. Before popping them into the oven.




The smell of freshly baked buns was beautiful and in only a few minutes they were golden brown and ready to be placed on a wire rack to cool. I think it's best to cover them with a clean cloth while they cool, so that the outside does not become too hard. And as they can dry out easily, it's best to freeze them as soon as they are cool. In the morning, I will serve them warmed up along with Lars-Göran's morning coffee and a glass of glögg.




Lambi looks reasonably interested in sampling these cats as well. And in case you were thinking that it's the middle of the night because its so dark outside, you'd be quite wrong. That picture was taken at around 3.30pm! This is why we look forward to this day - Lucia is a celebration of light in the darkness of winter that brings renewed hope and peace.

Today's mail brought a mixed bag of goodies. As well as Christmas cards, I got a postcard from Australia with a picture of a kangaroo and a koala surfing. I smiled and flipped it over to read "Varma solskenshälsningar..." Whoa! Hang on a minute. I flipped back to the front in case I was dreaming and it was really a moose in the snow, but no that jolly kangaroo and koala were still there. Who on earth do I know back home who would send a card written in Swedish? Back to the writing and I saw it was our friends Björn and Marianne, who are spending six weeks in Oz at the moment! Mystery solved.

The other lovely surprise was that I got a book, sent by the funny and fabulous Ms Mac in Switzerland (who I now see I have as "Mrs Mac in my Blogroll - sorry about that Stella, I realise it should be Mrs Clooney!). She had raved about Martha Moody's book Best Friends and I no sooner expressed an interest in reading it too when it appeared in my letterbox. Thankyou so much! I shall read it this week and send it back with a couple of books you may enjoy, both by Australians now living in Europe. We gotta stick together, you know.

The other "surprise" was this letter from our local paper.




It basically congratulated me on my upcoming birthday and since I was turning 50 (who the hell told THEM that?) they were offering to advertise the fact (No thanks!) as well as give me a free subscription for a month (yeah, okay, I like that word free). I looked at the letter and there it stood - turning 50 on January 1st. I hadn't expected the paper to know stuff like that, but I wasn't reckoning with Sweden's person number system, where every man and his dog knows your date of birth. It was a bit unnerving to see that even they had access to that information, something that would be considered private in Australia.

But we'll put that aside and finish off with a fun Christmas quiz I found at Connie's blog.