Sunday, February 3, 2013

Firsts

Yep, there are still plenty of things we haven't done yet in Uppsala and this weekend was filled with Firsts.

On Friday night, I tried flavor tripping. We used a tablet form of the berry and ate limes, lemons and tomatoes. It was pretty amazing. We liked it so much, we had everyone try it at Sunday Bloden Fika.

Basically, it gets rid of the sour/acidic flavor and all you are left with is the sweetness. Therefore, eating a lime is like drinking limeade. Eating a tomato is just weird. It's pretty awesome, but I think the first experience was the best, when it was so unexpected.

Then, on Saturday night we made sushi. Although Ross and I bought a sushi mat years ago in Newton, we never even opened it. When we were home over Christmas raiding our storage locker, we found the sushi mat and brought it back it Uppsala. Between four of us we made 88 pieces of sushi. While watching Melodifestivalen, we ate 83 of the pieces.

Lisa and Sebastian preparing the items for filling.

Ross, Lisa and Sebastian rolling and cutting.
It was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I prepared the rice earlier in the day, following the recipe here. I made 3 cups of dry rice and that was just enough for 11 sushi logs. We then filled them with some combination of smoked salmon, shrimp, cucumber, carrots, lettuce, avocado, red peppers, and sesame seeds. Of course, then I added plenty of wasabi. Heavenly.

The third First of the weekend was ice skating with the long distance blades. We drove down to Ekoln Lake with Boris and Alli. I skated once last year in Oslo, but before that it had been years. I was a bit wobbly at first, but after awhile (and once the shin and arch pain went away) it started feeling natural again. It was the most beautiful winter day. Full, bright sunshine and still relatively warm, about -6°C. And the ice, oh, the ice. Since it was warm last week all the snow melted. The last few days have been below freezing again and everything refroze into a smooth surface. You could skate anywhere you wanted around all the lakes. It didn't matter if it had been plowed or groomed. Boris wore his gamin, and you can look at the track.

Ross, Boris and Alli
Ross, with ice in all directions.

The castle of some sort.


Me!

Inspecting the giant crack. Suspect part of it was what we heard at the beginning- sounded like thunder.

Ross, and the sun is going behind the clouds.

Ross and I.
Final look over the ice as we were skating back in.
Very little (none) running this weekend for me, but it was still great fun. Ross went and ran district champs on Saturday and ran well in the 3k (9.34). He had a race plan to run 38 second per 200, and he executed his plan well. Soon he will be running 9.00! :) Just for fun, he tagged on an 800 at the end.