Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday (which doesn't sound nearly as good)
We call it Fettisdagen, which is a direct translation of Fat Tuesday. And it's exactly that.
Swedes are pretty lenient about their holidays, there's some who doesn't celebrate Christmas (not necessarily for religions reasons, but just because they don't want to), some fail to see the point of New Years Eve, Midsummer is so traditional, everyone has their own version (a same procedure as last year, kind of deal) and Easter is too religious, so we color our eggs and call it done.
But Fat Tuesday? That's a completely different story. Last year, a coffee-shop in the shopping centre I work in, made six hundred (SIX HUNDRED!! ONE COFFEE SHOP!) "semlor", which is the signature pastry for this day.
Semlor is probably available during most of the year, but in very short demand. Now, this Tuesday in particular, we eat millions of them!
I don't know the exact numbers, but there's just over 9 million people in Sweden, I would estimate about 60% of us eat semlor, and some of us eat two (including me!).
That means tha at leas 5,5 million semlor are consumed today. For a country this small, they're staggering numbers.
These are my rations for today:
nbsp;
The first one is filled with custard, and the other one is made of puff pastry.
They are two of the non-traditional kinds, since it's usually made of sweet buns, almond paste and whipped cream. Custard are for those who can't/won't eat almond paste, and puff pastry... just because, I guess. I've never tried the latter one before, until just now, and it was good. Not as good as a regular one (or the custard one) but good enough to placate the Semla demand that's been growing in me since I started counting down.
Swedes are pretty lenient about their holidays, there's some who doesn't celebrate Christmas (not necessarily for religions reasons, but just because they don't want to), some fail to see the point of New Years Eve, Midsummer is so traditional, everyone has their own version (a same procedure as last year, kind of deal) and Easter is too religious, so we color our eggs and call it done.
But Fat Tuesday? That's a completely different story. Last year, a coffee-shop in the shopping centre I work in, made six hundred (SIX HUNDRED!! ONE COFFEE SHOP!) "semlor", which is the signature pastry for this day.
Semlor is probably available during most of the year, but in very short demand. Now, this Tuesday in particular, we eat millions of them!
I don't know the exact numbers, but there's just over 9 million people in Sweden, I would estimate about 60% of us eat semlor, and some of us eat two (including me!).
That means tha at leas 5,5 million semlor are consumed today. For a country this small, they're staggering numbers.
These are my rations for today:
nbsp;
The first one is filled with custard, and the other one is made of puff pastry.
They are two of the non-traditional kinds, since it's usually made of sweet buns, almond paste and whipped cream. Custard are for those who can't/won't eat almond paste, and puff pastry... just because, I guess. I've never tried the latter one before, until just now, and it was good. Not as good as a regular one (or the custard one) but good enough to placate the Semla demand that's been growing in me since I started counting down.