June 21, 2023 Breakfast - bagel and Gravad Lax with cream cheese, onion slices and capers. Lunch - open face sandwiches. Dinner - Tapas at Crystal and Doug’s house with Albariño

June 21, 2023 Breakfast - bagel and Gravad Lax with cream cheese, onion slices and capers. Lunch - open face sandwiches. Dinner - Tapas at Crystal and Doug’s house with Albariño 

Today was Midsommer, so I had to eat Scandinavian food.

I started out eating Gravad Lax on a bagel with cream cheese, onion slices and capers for breakfast.

Then for lunch around 2:00 I made three open face sandwiches on slices of whole wheat bread; one was tomato slices on basil mayonnaise, one was pickled herring in wine sauce on sour cream and onion slices, and one was Jarlsberg cheese spread with mustard and salami on buttered toast and a green onion. This lunch was like those served at the Hand I Hand Group (Skandia Insurance Group) office where I worked in the summer of 1968 as an exchange student. There was a communal lunch room where the menu was always Danish open faced sandwiches, although the ingredients and arrangements altered occasionally. One of the things about Scandinavian cuisine is that there are traditional combinations of ingredients and traditional sandwiches, such as a slice of pickled beet and fried onions on a slice of roast beef or shrimp with dill mayonnaise or a slice of dill pickle on liver paste or Italian Salad, a lovely combination of vegetables held together by a thick  creamy sauce. A typical lunch would be these four sandwiches on the thin slices of the dense Danish rye bread.  The office was across Holmans Canal from the old castle and the Seaman’s’ Church. My job was to extend reinsurance premiums in a huge ledger book like Bob Chatchit in Dicken’s A Christmas Story.

That summer I lived at a student living complex called Paul Bergsoe in a small village outside Copenhagen named Sollerod.  We celebrated Midsommer by grilling an entire reindeer and drinking lots of beer and Akquavit late into the night because it was still light until 10:00.

I worked on taxes in the afternoon and meditated at 4:15 until 4:45.

Then at 5:00 I napped until Suzette awakened me to go too Crystal and Doug’s at 6:00.

When we arrived we were greeted by three platters of tapas and glasses of   Albariño.  It was like going to a tapas bar in Spain.

One platter included slices of Spanish Iberico ham, chorizo, salami, and Manchego cheese with fig jam. Another platter contained a roasted head of cauliflower seasoned with spices including some chili and a delicious feta, sour cream and Mayo dip to dip the cauliflower flowerets into.  A third platter contained the strawberry on goat cheese crostini Crystal made for the neighborhood cocktail party that I loved.  And there was a bread plate filled with toasted slices of baguette and crackers.

It was an amazing spread and the Albariño was one I had not seen before.

I love Albariño and think Crystal and Doug are real wine and food connoisseurs, so I was pleased that they liked Albariño enough to buy a case of it and enjoyed drinking it with tapas, as we like to do.

At 8:30 we were full of tapas, wine and conversation, and said goodnight.

The sun was just setting with a luminous pink sky so we walked around the block to get a view of the sunset.

When we got home we collapsed and Suzette went to bed at 9:15 and I stayed up to blog and read.

It was a lovely Midsommer because I ate some of the Scandinavian foods I love and shared the excitement and foods and wine of our impending trip with friends which was wonderful.

Bon Appetit