Happy Anniversary to me!

As of yesterday, "Change of Shift Report" was a year old. I've been slacking lately when it comes to blogging, but having a combination of work and school six days a week doesn't leave you with a lot of time for anything else. Luckily, I have the entire month of August off from school, so I am very much looking forward to that! I will make my best effort to post a little more often, although I haven't had any good stories from work or clinical as of late. No more fake triplets or the like. I'm sure something will come up though, and when it does you'll hear about it here!

Dagens Namn -- Vecka 26 (26 Juni - 2 Juli)

The name days for Week 26 (June 26 - July 2) are:

Monday, June 26 = Rakel, Lea
Tuesday, June 27 = Selma, Fingal
Wednesday, June 28 = Leo
Thursday, June 29 = Peter, Petra
Friday, June 30 = Elof, Leif
Saturday, July 1 = Aron, Mirjam
Saturday, July 2 = Rosa, Rosita

Dagens Namn -- Vecka 25 (19 Juni - 25 Juni)

The name days for Week 25 (June 19 - June 25) are:

Monday, June 19 = Germund, Görel
Tuesday, June 20 = Linda
Wednesday, June 21 = Alf, Alvar
Thursday, June 22 = Paulina, Paula
Friday, June 23 = Adolf, Alice (Midsommarafton!!)
Saturday, June 24 = No name day! (Midsommardagen!!)
Sunday, June 25 = David, Salomon

Me, myself, I

Bad grammar is one of my biggest pet peeves, followed closely by spelling errors and lack of punctuation. I came across the following excerpt from Paul Brians's Common Errors in English Usage, which details one of the most common and most annoying errors. Read and learn!!

In the old days when people studied traditional grammar, we could simply say, “The first person singular pronoun is “I” when it’s a subject and “me” when it’s an object,” but now few people know what that means. Let’s see if we can apply some common sense here. The misuse of “I” and “myself” for “me” is caused by nervousness about “me.” Educated people know that “Jim and me is goin’ down to slop the hogs,” is not elegant speech, not “correct.” It should be “Jim and I” because if I were slopping the hogs alone I would never say “Me is going. . . .” So far so good. But the notion that there is something wrong with “me” leads people to overcorrect and avoid it where it is perfectly appropriate. People will say “The document had to be signed by both Susan and I” when the correct statement would be, “The document had to be signed by both Susan and me.” Trying even harder to avoid the lowly “me,” many people will substitute “myself,” as in “The suspect uttered epithets at Officer O’ Leary and myself.” “Myself” is no better than “I” as an object. “Myself” is not a sort of all-purpose intensive form of “me” or “I.” Use “myself” only when you have used “I” earlier in the same sentence: “I am not particularly fond of goat cheese myself.” “I kept half the loot for myself.” All this confusion can easily be avoided if you just remove the second party from the sentences where you feel tempted to use “myself” as an object or feel nervous about “me.” You wouldn’t say, “The IRS sent the refund check to I,” so you shouldn’t say “The IRS sent the refund check to my wife and I” either. And you shouldn’t say “to my wife and myself.” The only correct way to say this is, “The IRS sent the refund check to my wife and me.” Still sounds too casual? Get over it.

On a related point, those who continue to announce “It is I” have traditional grammatical correctness on their side, but they are vastly outnumbered by those who proudly boast “it’s me!” There’s not much that can be done about this now. Similarly, if a caller asks for Susan and Susan answers “This is she,” her somewhat antiquated correctness is likely to startle the questioner into confusion.

Dagens Namn -- Vecka 24 (12 Juni - 18 Juni)

The name days for Week 24 (June 12 - June 18) are:

Monday, June 12 = Eskil
Tuesday, June 13 = Aina, Aino
Wednesday, June 14 = Håkan, Hakon
Thursday, June 15 = Margit, Margot
Friday, June 16 = Axel, Axelina
Saturday, June 17 = Torborg, Torvald
Sunday, June 18 = Björn, Bjarne

My favorite Swedish foods

My favorite Swedish foods (in alphabetical order and with pictures):

Filmjölk och sylt
Filmjölk is a fermented soured milk very commonly served at breakfast in the Scandinavian countires. It is very similar to kefir which you may have seen in the grocery stores here in the US. Since it is a little sour, I usually add some sylt (jam). In the picture below, you see drottningsylt, which is made from raspberries and blueberries. Drottning means queen. In Sweden, most milk and milk type products come in the rectanguar boxes as pictured below.


Gravad lax
Gravad lax is thin sashimi-like slices of salmon cured in salt, sugar and dill. My dad actually makes his own gravad lax at Christmas time. It is super yummy and equally good at both breakfast and dinner. In this picture they are plated with hard-boiled eggs, which is not necessarily a traditional combination, but it looks pretty.



Kardemumma Bulle
A bulle is a type of sweet bun. Bullar (plural of bulle) are kind of like the American cinnamon rolls, but much less sticky. Sometimes the Swedes replace the cinnamon with cardamom, which makes for a very interesting and yummy taste. The bulle pictured below is from Vete-Katten, a bakery and café in Stockholm, which I highly recommend if you ever go to Sweden. It is the perfect place to fika (roughly translated “take a coffee break”).


Kroppkakor
Kroppkakor are potato-dumplings with a filling of pork or bacon. They are a traditional Swedish dish and are mainly eaten in the Swedish landskap (regions) Öland, Småland and Blekinge. We had the ones pictured below on Öland, an island of Sweden’s eastern coast.


Kåldolmar
Kåldolmar are Swedish cabbage rolls filled with pork and rice.


Messmör
This is a hard one to describe. Messmör is basically a sweet spread made from the whey of goat’s milk. I know it doesn’t make it sound too good, but it really is quite yummy. It is very good for spreading on ragkaka or Skogaholms limpa (see below).


O’boy
O’boy is basically the Swedish version of Nesquick.


Rågkaka
Rågkaka is a round Swedish bread made from vetemjöl (wheat flour) and rågmjöl (rye flour). My favorite variety is made by the Swedish company Polarbröd.


Saft
Saft is basically juice. It is usually made from some type of berry. It is commonly prepared or bought in concentrated syrup form and then reconstituted with the appropriate amount of water. The saft pictured below is made from svartavinbär (blackcurrants).


Senap
Senap is mustard. I mention it in this list because of the particular mustard pictured below, Slotts stark senap. Stark means strong. This type of mustard is particularly good on kåldolmar (see above) or mixed into ärtsoppa (split pea soup).


Skogaholms limpa
In Swedish, limpa means loaf, but it is also used to refer specifically to a traditional type of Swedish rye bread sweetened with syrup. One of my favorite varieties is made by Bageri Skogaholm, a major Swedish baker founded in 1926.


Tunnbröd rulle med korv och potatismos
This a common combo that you can get at most road-side kiosks. It involves tunnbröd, which is kind of like a tortilla, but slightly puffier. Korv is sausage and potatismos is mashed potatoes. The combo pictured below was topped with ketchup, mustard, and some lettuce.


Välling
Välling is basically a thin porridge. When I googled it for this blog, I came up with mostly hits for baby food, but I swear adults eat it too. I like to mix in a handful of raisins when I’m cooking it up, so that they get nice and plump.

Metzizah b'peh

Interesting little post from blog.bioethics.net today.

From Wikipedia.org regarding the same subject (you have to scroll down a little).

Motiv Stockholm

I found this very cool shop at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport. They have the most wonderful black and white photographs of Stockholm. Check out the Motiv Stockholm website!!

Dagens Namn -- Vecka 23 (5 Juni - 11 Juni)

The name days for Week 23 (June 5 - June 11) are:

Monday, June 5 = Bo
Tuesday, June 6 = Gustav, Gösta
Wednesday, June 7 = Robert, Robin
Thursday, June 8 = Eivor, Majvor
Friday, June 9 = Börje, Birger
Saturday, June 10 = Svante, Boris
Sunday, June 11 = Bertil, Berthold

Back to reality

As 7:30 pm yesterday I was back here in the good old USA after two long weeks in Sweden and Denmark. I had a great time, but it is nice to be back. School starts up again tomorrow and Wednesday and then work on Thursday. I hope those of you to whom I sent postcards received them. I'm curious to know how long it took them to arrive. Hopefully very quickly considering the obscene amount of money I paid to send them. Since the weather pretty much sucked most of the time we were there, the food was by far the best part of my trip. For those of you who are interested, when I get myself together I will be posting an entry about my favorite Swedish foods complete with pictures.