Eat well...
Monday, 24. October 2005, 01:49:42
We're lucky in Norway. We complain about the price of rent, food, beer, a tram ticket. It's true, they are more expensive, and more expensive relative to a salary, than anywhere I have lived. But I'm not starving.
Today, I am full. Well-fed, happy, content. We had a Long Lunch, and everyone who was here (about 20 people over the course of the day) made something. A couple of things with neither recipe nor name, Bread, Cakes, Couscous, Custard, Fruit Salad, Pasta, Quiche, some Polish pancakes and Swiss potato and meat dish and Swedish sausage dish whose names I don't know (but I have a rough idea what went in them, and I'm keen to try making them myself), Soup, Stew, Stuffed cucumbers, Thai red duck curry, Tzatziki. Some people followed a new recipe, some did things they have cooked before, some just put ingredients together and came out with something. And surprisingly, 20 people all managed to do something great.
The kitchen was a madhouse for 9 or 10 hours. The living room was filled with people eating, and the supply of plates, glasses, cutlery was pretty heavily pressed. We did a lot of washing up during the day, we had some wine and a few beers, we filled the freezer with leftovers and ourselves with food.
It's all an excuse. Much as I love eating, and cooking, and a glass of wine, what made the day was the people.
The Opera folks who came to spend a precious day off work hanging around with the same people, and feeding them. It's nice to work with people like that.
The people who don't work at Opera, spending time around a bunch of geeks who work on the same thing and often end up talking about it, or even working on it, at home. It's great to actually meet nice people who will come and play a crazy game like this, a gathering of friends and strangers together. It's what makes life something more than a bunch of expatriates filling in another weekend in a strange country.
It's great to host something like this. Because it is nice to have people come around. Because our fridge is full of food, and when I come back from being away it is impossible to imagine there won't still be some of it left. Because it was a fun day. Because if you put something in, you get so much more out.
I am hoping to get Joen's chocolate cake recipé out of this ;-) I'm not a big cake eater, and when he made another one I said I wouldn't have any of it because I had already hit my limit. But I did, before it vanished.
The trick is not to eat too much of anything. Otherwise there is no room left for the next thing, and you wait to be a bit hungrier again and discover that you were missing something great. There must be a size limit for a long lunch, but maybe if we do it again we will have got even better at working around each other and can still pull it off with everyone making something.
We'll see, when we decide to try it all again.
Today, I am full. Well-fed, happy, content. We had a Long Lunch, and everyone who was here (about 20 people over the course of the day) made something. A couple of things with neither recipe nor name, Bread, Cakes, Couscous, Custard, Fruit Salad, Pasta, Quiche, some Polish pancakes and Swiss potato and meat dish and Swedish sausage dish whose names I don't know (but I have a rough idea what went in them, and I'm keen to try making them myself), Soup, Stew, Stuffed cucumbers, Thai red duck curry, Tzatziki. Some people followed a new recipe, some did things they have cooked before, some just put ingredients together and came out with something. And surprisingly, 20 people all managed to do something great.
The kitchen was a madhouse for 9 or 10 hours. The living room was filled with people eating, and the supply of plates, glasses, cutlery was pretty heavily pressed. We did a lot of washing up during the day, we had some wine and a few beers, we filled the freezer with leftovers and ourselves with food.
It's all an excuse. Much as I love eating, and cooking, and a glass of wine, what made the day was the people.
The Opera folks who came to spend a precious day off work hanging around with the same people, and feeding them. It's nice to work with people like that.
The people who don't work at Opera, spending time around a bunch of geeks who work on the same thing and often end up talking about it, or even working on it, at home. It's great to actually meet nice people who will come and play a crazy game like this, a gathering of friends and strangers together. It's what makes life something more than a bunch of expatriates filling in another weekend in a strange country.
It's great to host something like this. Because it is nice to have people come around. Because our fridge is full of food, and when I come back from being away it is impossible to imagine there won't still be some of it left. Because it was a fun day. Because if you put something in, you get so much more out.
I am hoping to get Joen's chocolate cake recipé out of this ;-) I'm not a big cake eater, and when he made another one I said I wouldn't have any of it because I had already hit my limit. But I did, before it vanished.
The trick is not to eat too much of anything. Otherwise there is no room left for the next thing, and you wait to be a bit hungrier again and discover that you were missing something great. There must be a size limit for a long lunch, but maybe if we do it again we will have got even better at working around each other and can still pull it off with everyone making something.
We'll see, when we decide to try it all again.
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