Holiday planning soirée part II

As you may be aware, dear reader, should you be one of the (undoubtedly rare) regular readers of my blog, we are planning a holiday to Mexico / California next February. So this weekend, it was time to have our 2nd planning session, this time at our place (the 1st session we had wasn’t particularly efficient from a planning perspective – but boy was it good fun!)

Since xmas was coming up, and everybody knows Finland is the country of Santa Claus (don’t believe those dastardly liars who claim he comes from the north pole or some such place), we decided to organize “the planning session” as a bit of a Finnish “pikku joulu” (little Christmas).

Which meant making all sorts of Finnish Christmas specialties. So we spent most of Saturday and Sunday preparing our feast, coming up with an impressive list of delicacies (that you have most likely never heard of, unless you happen to be Finnish): karjalanpiirakkas (Carelian pies), lohikeitto (salmon soup, not really an xmas specialty but anyways…), piparkakkus (gingerbread cookies), joulutähtis (Christmas stars), korvapuustis (sweet buns?) and luumuvaahto (plum cream). Quite a lineup, then.

The planning session, I think, was quite a success. The food went down pretty well, all in all; especially the salmon soup always seems to be a success, and even the rather unorthodox-looking Carelian pies (I think their “unusual” shape is somewhat reminiscent of modern art) were nearly all eaten. More down to Mathilde’s cooking skills than any invaluable advice I could offer, I suspect. The snaps drinking and singing (“Helan Går" goes just as well together with Mongolian Chinggis Khan Vodka as with Koskenkorva, it would seem) was also rather popular (the raging headache I suffered from the next day should be evidence enough…). Gilles’ and Valerie’s children especially (but us adults too!) appreciated the “pre-trip xmas pressies” Marie and JayJay had kindly bought us. And the Christmas Crackers acquired from LaFayette brought an Anglo-Saxon slant to the festivities as well.

What’s impressive is that a fair bit of planning was done this time as well – we managed to pretty much sort out the outstanding flights, and even get some hotels booked. But anyway, I’m sure we can find an excuse for yet another planning session ;-).

So great fun, and a success then! But boy did my head hurt the next day… Looking forward to part III already! ;-)