Pancake Breakfast
Jess, Chris and I have had a date to attend the Swedish Cultural Center's pancake breakfast for over a month. They do this on first Sunday of every month. Having grown up in Minnesota, I'm the default resident expert on things Scandinavian, though my default answer when asked something too specific is usually, "I don't know, man, I'm Finnish. That's a Swede thing."
We had Swedish pancakes with lingon berries and whipped cream, a ham slice, orange juice, and (eventually) coffee. In Minnesota we probably would have left a couple of thermal carafes of coffee on each table and called it good, coming by to replenish the carafes as needed. At this breakfast, they had coffee attendants roaming between tables with a pot in each hand. Elderly,sight-challenged, hard of hearing attendants... I raised my hand, waved my empty coffee cup, called out "Coffee here, please!" to a succession of pot-carrying Scandinavians wearing little aprons to no avail. They would get as close at the tables on either side of us, but seemed blind to our needs. Eventually an older guy in a great Norwegian wool sweater sat down at our table with us and even his waving and hooting couldn't attract their attention. It was wacky.
It was a pretty straight-forward affair. Jess picked us up at 9:00 and we were finished and back home before 10:30 (and that's with a short stop at Jess' condo).
We had Swedish pancakes with lingon berries and whipped cream, a ham slice, orange juice, and (eventually) coffee. In Minnesota we probably would have left a couple of thermal carafes of coffee on each table and called it good, coming by to replenish the carafes as needed. At this breakfast, they had coffee attendants roaming between tables with a pot in each hand. Elderly,sight-challenged, hard of hearing attendants... I raised my hand, waved my empty coffee cup, called out "Coffee here, please!" to a succession of pot-carrying Scandinavians wearing little aprons to no avail. They would get as close at the tables on either side of us, but seemed blind to our needs. Eventually an older guy in a great Norwegian wool sweater sat down at our table with us and even his waving and hooting couldn't attract their attention. It was wacky.
It was a pretty straight-forward affair. Jess picked us up at 9:00 and we were finished and back home before 10:30 (and that's with a short stop at Jess' condo).
Labels: food
Of course, the concept of a pancake breakfast is foreign to Swedes, as every good Swede knows pancakes are for dessert. (Preferably after one has ärtsoppa for lunch on Thursday.)