Last night I was inaugurated into the Halden Ladies’ Club. (It’s associated with M’s work, but not exclusively.) They are an international bunch – Belgian, Japanese, Thai, Danish, Greek, Russian, English, Norwegian, Italian, and I’ve probably missed a couple. They are doctors, nurses, researchers, IT specialists, mothers (usually combined with one of the above). They live here. They like it.
We had a seriously amazing dinner – sushi, tzaziki, greek salad, shrimp curry, Swedish potatoes, Thai noodle salad, Roman gnocchi, tofu spring roll thingies (completely amazing and unlike anything I have ever tasted), pink layered Russian salad, cheesecake, chocolate pie, hazelnut cake, cloudberry cream, and other delicacies.
My contribution was a chocolate version of my grandma’s sponge roll. I just added two dessert spoons of cocoa to the sponge mixture, and, er, one hundred grams of melted 70% cocoa-solid chocolate to the cream. And some raspberries. M told me I’d give all the ladies heart attacks. And he rudely suggested that its gooey brown tubular appearance reminded him of something less than savory.
It was intense. I think next time I will only add chocolate to half of the cream, and have a mix of chocolate and plain cream… And maybe a few more raspberries. Still, it went down well.
We played some silly games, and I won a shiny spaghetti scooper. There was a kris-krindle and I got a red breadbasket with teddybears on it. One of the games involved getting a piece of card with an animal name on it. You had to make the sound that animal makes, and find the other person in the room who was being the same animal. With everyone coming from different countries, it was impossible. I said ‘quack’, and got mistaken for a frog. I said ‘oink’, and no one knew what I was. My fellow pig was not very helpfully saying ‘boo boo’. It was hilarious.
Anyway, it was soooooo nice to meet some new people, and laugh, and talk, and eat too much. By the end of the night, I decided that a lady wasn’t such a bad thing to be, after all.
northern lights 
I want to come and be a lady too! that sounds fun!
The animal sound game sounds like a fantastic basis for a kids book.
Oh, I am with Penni, being a lady sounds like fun! And delicious!
well, if you are ever in this obscure corner of Norway let me know – all ladies welcome!
It sounds like you had a fun night and that chocolate sponge was fantastic looking. 100g of 70% chocolate sounds like heaven. I can imagine the chaos of the animal noises and I’ve been sitting here chuckling. Being a lady is an OK thing I think.
The teaching was so soul destroying at first, faced with a sea of blank faces who made no contribution to the discussion. My fourth session last week was much better, we were doing essay writing which I think was closer to their hearts than gender theory, and I felt I made a breakthrough and we even had a laugh. It was certainly a baptism of fire! Some haven’t even prepared what they are supposed to have prepared and aren’t even ashamed to say so! The lecturer in charge says she thought of excluding them but decided she wouldn’t because they couldn’t be allowed to get away with everything. I did pick on the one who hadn’t read it and asked him questions! My next teaching is March so I’ve got a rest now and time to prepare all the texts myself.
oh, last time you posted about this cake I had serious, almost psychotic cravings for one!
I wish I were at the ladies party too, even if I aren’t a lady most of the time.
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