Mardi Gras!

It´s Shrove Tuesday. Apparently. And whilst the German, Dutch and Belgian parts of the planet like to dress up, throw candy at each other and get ludicrously drunk, and the Americans like to get evenly hammered and take their clothes off, the Swedes prefer the Christian approach.
Besides, they do all that other stuff in their spare time already.

Shrove Tuesday, better known as Fat Tuesday, is a weird tradition. Being the last day before Lent, the basic idea is to start eating all the foodstuffs you can get yer grubby little mitts on that fall into the high-fat, high carb category. Basically, everything the good Lord forbade. And, just for the record, these people look at me like I am the epitome of bad health when I mention that we, in the land of Normal People, like to put chocolate sprinkles on our bread. Really.
Lent, by the way, is the day that fasting starts - for those godforsaken heathens of you still in the dark: that´s when people from days of yore stopped eating. Until EASTER. In a brave and slightly idiotic attempt to still uphold this somehow lovely naive tradition, some Swedes do actually cease digesting food, or at least try to. But, as always, when you have to give up on something, you had better damn well make sure you are filled to the absolute brim, and preferably on the brink of severe nausea, before you start. Better hate and part than love and part. Or, as I like to put it, snack fest 2005. Binge tot the Maximus!

Yes sir. It really starts with one (or more) of these little buggers, called ´semla´:


hark at the local delicacy comprised of a sweet bun, whipped cream and almond paste. enough to give your teeth a bit of a jiggle. not to mention your heart rate . and if that´s not enough, in some parts of Sweden they put these things in bowls of simmering milk.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: Semla, future ruler of mankind. Do not laugh at his appearance, for he can turn on you quite easily, transforming the normally oh so pleasurable practice of eating into a path of hardship and turmoil - increasing with every bite. This little bub comes in various shapes and sizes, and today I encountered a big one. Being an eager devourer of all things new and cultural, I decided to get me one of these babies, which were being distributed in the cantine I very conveniently found myself in at lunchtime. But little did I know that old Semla here isn´t the easiest of snacks. Let´s just say that he is certainly no Pringle. In fact, I´m not even sure he doesn´t top me in the food chain.

My God, I am still stricken with intimidation at the thought of another one of these. In one of my usual bouts of childlike enthusiasm - which almost never turn out well - I decided to take on the miniature mountain positioned on the paper plate before me, and put it straight to my mouth. I didn´t regret this choice at first, as it started out reasonably well: the bun itself isn´t so sweet, the bucketload of whipped cream isn´t either. So far so good, or so I thought.
But sweet jesus, when you´re halfway reaching the centre, you realise that you have in fact come to the little axis of evil of the pastry world, where almond and sugar have mated - only to produce wretched little lovebabies of glucose horror. Holy mother of God! And they´re having a party with the rest of the ingredients! Don´t take me wrong, it still tasts relatively ok, but there comes a point where each of us, no matter what personal inkling you may have towards sweetness, has met his sugary match. It´s a disconcerting feeling knowing that your body takes over before your mind fully realizes what it´s eating, leaving a nasty feeling of subdued nausea where your original bravery, enthusiasm and appetite used to be. This was when I switched to the supplied spoon, which I could now totally understand the meaning of, and carefully resigned to scoop a few additional bites out of the now grotesque looking Semla. I don´t know if it was a result of slight hallucination due to severe glucose overdose, but by this time the piece of hollowed out pastry resembled a huge, widely opened mouth with teeth made of splatters of rich cream and strings of almond paste-ridden crumbs. I made the very wise choice to leave the table before it started talking or - not unimaginable - devouring itself.
In light of my recent experience I would therefore publically and openly like to bow to Semla, King of Pastry, for slaying yet another feeble-minded and weak-stomached earthling. It won´t strike me at all as odd as one day in the not-too-distant future the evolutionary buck will be passed to one of these mothers to take over the reign of the ecosystem of the earth.
I pray I never in my life will encounter one again.

Looking back on it though, it does seem like a well-suited farewell to food. All food. Generally. For about a week.

I think I´ll call my first-born Semla, just out of sheer respect.