Tuesday 10 November 2015

Celebrating a Catholic Saint.

In Denmark, it is tradition to celebrate 'Mortensaften' (Eve of Saint Martin of Tours) on November 10th (we always celebrate on the evening before the actual day here, like Christmas Eve, Saint John's Eve (Midsummer), New Year's Eve, etc.) with a feast of bird.

Originally, the bird was a goose, as Martin of Tours is said to have hid in a goose pen to avoid being appointed Bishop of Tours, but the geese, startled by the monk coming into the pen, cackled and thus gave him away.

With households having shrunk to a mere 2-5 persons, though, most people these days feast on a roast duck instead, as it is a more manageable meal.

Here in Denmark, much winter's food (like pork roast, roast poultry, 'medister' sausage, etc.) is served with 'browned potatoes' which is small cooked and peeled potatoes covered in caramelized sugar on a hot pan, so, naturally, I have prepared some 'tatoes for todays supper, too.

Now I shall go for an eight kilometer walk with the dog to get my appetite up for tonight, before I put prepare the duck for the oven.

Then it is time for doing some tidying up in the house (we had a delayed Halloween party in the attic Saturday, and I had to remove some of my boxes from up there to make space for the kids - so now I have to make space for the boxes in the conservatory, which means sorting out the contents of some of the boxes already there, and see what I can ditch, and what I need to find storage room for)...

So, probably not much hobby time today, but I hope to be able to report some progress tomorrow!



2 comments:

  1. Sounds nice, though if you eat all of that then I suspect tomorrow will be devoted entirely to sleeping and digesting!

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    1. Nah, but I spent most of the day trying to sort out some boxes with stuff from my father's house (he passed away some years ago, and I still have not finished going through all the things we had to clear out to get the house sold).

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