Reader’s Note: This is the reissue of a thread that was mercilessly hamstered into The Cheek Pouches of Oblivion™. I’m hoping that everyone who contributed to the previous release of this thread would repost their memories. Some of them were rather poignant and others quite touching. Thank you.
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I was reading Quasimodem’s thread about his Oma (German Grandmother) and was immediately deluged with memories of my own Danish grandmother.
I suppose it would sound a little too ubiquitous to mention how the smell of freshly baked bread instantly transports me back into her kitchen on Spruce Street in the Berkeley Hills. Her Danish style French bread was a wonder to taste. It had a tight crumb and dense yeasty interior. This was no baguette full of carbonated voids, it was a bread that was food in and of itself. The egg washed crust was a perfect golden brown and scattered with poppy seeds. According to Danish tradition, each slice was slathered with enough butter for you to see your teeth marks after you took a bite. There is even a special Danish word for buttering bread so thickly (which I do not remember). Maybe one of our Danish posters will provide it for us.
I can still remember her pouring me my first (small) cup of coffee. I also recall the first time my Danish grandfather let me have a taste of Aalborg schnapps. I was all of eight or nine and tossed it down like I had seen everyone else around the table do. This was rewarded with the sensation that I had just ingested a full measure of napalm with some chile peppers on the side. My grandfather was the keeper of the licorice and chocolate. He would always have some white wrapper Van Houten chocolate bars in milk chocolate and orange flavor. These were divided up between us three boys for an evening treat. Every once in a while, we would receive small boxes of Gajol salmiak or salt pastiller licorice. Just yesterday, I dropped by Nordic House in Oakland to by some Haribo salt pastiller and Super Piratos.
We would crowd around the old Philco television set (our own family did not get one until I was almost ten) and watch first runs of “I Love Lucy,” “The Flintstones” and “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I can still remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan for the first time. During the day, we would watch “The Three Stooges” and Warner Brothers cartoons after hiking up to Indian rock or playing at Live Oak Park.
My grandfather’s birthday closely coincided with December 31[sup]st[/sup], so we traditionally celebrated it on New Year’s Eve. It was the perfect excuse to have another big time blowout after the glow of Christmas had worn off. Having two very different sets of Grandparents proved to be quite a boon. In reflection, I can now understand that my father’s somewhat dour middle American stock parents probably took a dim view of my Mother’s folk. My father’s mother was a hypochondriac and insisted that she was of poor health most of the time. Quite a contrast to my Danish grandparents who epitomized the usual Viking stock. All of this played quite well with us kids. We ended up having three Christmas celebrations each year. There would be Christmas Eve at my Danish grandparents, Christmas morning at our house and then Christmas Day with my father’s relatives.
More than anything about Christmas at my Danish grandparents house, I remember the Christmas tree. It would be brought into the house only days before Christmas Eve. During the day on the 24[sup]th[/sup], the tree would be trimmed with all sorts of traditional Danish decorations. There were paper hearts and krammehuset (?) stuffed full of candies, garlands and some glass ornaments as well. Little Nisse (elves) would peek from the mantelpiece and bookshelves all through the living and dining rooms. Day after day, all of us boys had eagerly pried open one of the little windows on the Advent calendar hoping to be the lucky one who would open the large doors on Jul Aften. Each evening, my grandmother would light the Christmas candle. This is something almost unique (to my knowledge) to Danes. It is a candle with 24 gradations marked upon it’s shaft. The candle is allowed to burn down by one gradation each night starting on December 1[sup]st[/sup] all the way until Christmas, when it is allowed to burn down all of the way.
Speaking of candles, many of you will shake your heads in dismay when I tell you this. Every single year we spent Christmas on Spruce Street, the Christmas tree was covered in candles. Yes, lit glowing, burning fire laden ultra-dangerous candles. If you have never seen a darkened room splashed with the flickering glow of dozens of candles reflecting off of the ornaments and tinsel, they you have yet to see a real Christmas tree. My dutiful grandfather always had a bucket of sand at the ready. It was never once needed. The Danish Christmas candles are like few others. Made of the hardest wax, they are dripless and smokeless. Held in wire wrapped mounts with pendulum bases, they stay perfectly upright at the branch ends and cast the entire tree with a thousand dancing gleams and shadows.
We would all hold hands and dance in a circle around the tree singing “chim tah rah tah” and other ancient songs (comsa bjorn, nu skal ve sees). Although not at the time, now the presents that were opened are merely an after thought. All of this took place only after the feast. Sometimes three tables had to be put end-to-end in order to accommodate our entire clan. My grandmother would make a roast goose or turkey, her famous red cabbage, two types of pickled herring, three types of potatoes (mashed, caramelized and boiled), home made rolls and bread, gravy, pasta salad and more dishes than you could count. For dessert it would always be the same thing. It is a traditional dense and very rich pudding called, risengrød. Rice is first cooked in scalded milk until soft. It is then stirred into whipped cream with vanilla and some sugar. All of this is topped with lignonberry syrup or fruit preserves.
According to tradition there is an almond (or small gold coin) buried in the pudding. The person who finds the almond gets a special prize. One Christmas, my aunt won and the prize was a gigantic wrapped box. Upon opening it, she was confronted with another wrapped box, and so on through about eight iterations. Her final prize was an ordinary trinket in a tiny little box. In reality, there should have been a prize for anyone who could get through seconds of the risengrød. The pudding was rich enough to balance the national debt. If you weren’t full after the meal, you most certainly were after dessert, that was for sure.
Somehow, Christmas at my Father’s relatives never held an advent candle to how my mother’s family celebrated. I can only recall a more subdued and less festive atmosphere. I can easily trace some of my love of cooking to sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen and watching her at work. I still make some of the traditional Danish dishes I learned from her. I’ve posted a few of them in the recipe thread for posterity.
So, let’s hear your tales of days spent with your grandparents. Perhaps Quasi will peek in and regale us with some more tales of his German Oma.