Bluebird's Nest

I’m in Valbella in the Swiss German speaking part of Switzerland. I’m going to blog tomorrow about our out trip but today I wanted to talk about two things. Swiss weddings and the Swiss languages.

First up, the weddings. I consider myself a bit of an expert at Swiss wedding since I’ve had one here. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with them, I’ll give you a little insight as we just attended another one for my hubby’s best friends last weekend at the Beau Rivage Palace in Ouchy. It was uber cool.

A few things to note about weddings in Switzerland. There are 4 events (unlike the standard 2 in Canada). You have your civil wedding which is the wedding where usually only your family and your temoines (maid of honor and best man – these are the only two people you have working for you) are invited to at the city hall. This is the actual bonified, we have our paper and we are married wedding. It consists of a suit for the man and a simple white dress for the woman.

Then either the same day or some days later, there is the big party day. This starts with a wedding usually in a church. But not any ordinary church. We’re talking a church that is a few hundreds of years old and is usually amongst vineyards tucked away in a cobblestone village.

Then we would go for photos and meet up with everyone a few hours later, the Swiss (and the French (as I’ve been to 3 French weddings (I think I’ve actually been to more weddings in Europe than I have in Canada now))) have something that is called “the aperitif”. This is where you and all the people who came to the wedding, go elsewhere to some other location and have drinks and wonderful little dainty appetizers. You mingle and chat for a couple of hours and then you move onto the reception (as we like to call it in Canada. Dinner is what they call it here).

But wait, not everyone goes to the reception. Some people aren’t invited (which for me seems strange but from talking with some people, it’s normal). Anyway, at the wedding we were at on the weekend, there was a SECOND aperitif, with more food and drinks. Talk about fancy. This was located at the same place as the reception.

The reception works much the same way as a Canadian reception where you can either do a sit down dinner or buffet. We did a buffet style but our friends did a sit down. But the biggest difference is that we plow through our meals and speeches and cake whereas the Swiss take their time. And I mean take their time. Dinner starts around 8:00pm. No kidding. And then it ends around 12am. Our friend’s dinner had a little salad, then a speech. Followed by a wonderful risotto/shrimp dish and then another speech. Then the mail course (divine by the way) and then some animations they call them. This is little movies or games that the couple play. Then desert and some more games, then the cutting of the cake and whewf! It’s time for dancing. You’re good and liquored by then since the booze is non-stop and all free usually so dancing is not out of the question.

Dancing lasts until around 4am. Let me say that again. Dancing lasts until around 4am. At our wedding, I think it was 5. It’s literally insane. I’m surprised I’m not asleep under a table at that point. Although I did see one of the guests at last weekends wedding, running through the sprinklers at the end of the night. (Nice Yann!)

The whole night was spectacular. You really couldn’t have asked for more. Oh and in two more weekends from now, we get to do it all over again for another friends wedding although from what I understand, it’s not going to be quite so posh. Heaven help me.

I think I googled Swiss weddings when I was trying to figure out what are the traditions of them were for my wedding, and I couldn’t find much to report so I hope this helps all those out there looking for some advice on what exactly happens during such an event.

Thanks Jule and Steph for such and amazing time. I think I can safely say, everyone had a GREAT time (except for maybe a certain vegetarian)!

Now onto the Swiss languages. There are four official Swiss languages here. French, German, Italian and Romanch. English is not an official language although a lot of people speak it here fluently. French is obvious as there is a French speaking part of Switzerland. I always get confused with German and Swiss German. What the hell is the difference?? But from what I’ve been told, Swiss German is only a spoken language like gangsta speak I can only assume. I kid. So some people speak both German and Swiss German but it’s not interchangeable.

There is a beautiful little spot in the south of Switzerland really close to Italy that speaks Italian. It’s wonderful. So that makes sense too. And then there’s Romanch which is a fading dialect that only a handful of people speak.

Ok, so get this. Switzerland is the size of Vancouver Island. Say what?!? You’ve got four official languages wrapped within 25 and 2 half provinces (huh? I just asked my hubby how many provinces there were and that is what he told me so go figure.) with several different accents in a country that takes 4 hours to drive across. I JUST drove across Canada and there is no way I can even compare that. Crazy insane.

So back to my train of thought. For the past 2+ weeks I’ve been here, I’ve been rocking French. Ok, so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit but I’m getting better and people don’t laugh as much at me as they used to.

We drive 1.5 hours and now we’re in the German speaking part. I can’t even say please and thank you or hello anymore. WTF? Seriously? This seems a little ridiculous and now I’m getting even more frustrated as I can’t read a menu, a road sign (speaking of road sign I had a little laugh today as I saw a sign that said “ausfarht”. No really? Ass fart? Gotta love German.) the toilette, etc… you get the idea. I’ve gone from 80% capable to 0 in about 1.5 hours. I can’t even speak French in this German speaking part of Switzerland. I find myself saying “merci” and then “thank you” and finally wrapping up with “danka”. Shit. I’m all discombobulated. People pass me on the path while we’re high up in the mountains and I can’t even say hello so I just look at them and smile. Ugh.

My tweenager even asked today if there was another language she could learn in school if she wanted to. Might as well since Canada is the second biggest country in all of the world and we only have two official languages that only about 5% of the population can speak both of the fluently.

I say, rock it while you’re here girl.

Wow, what a drive. This drive was dialed in at 5.5 hours on the GPS. We arrived after 10 hours. We stopped A LOT.

Let’s see… first stop was 3 Valley Gap where we took a break and bought two ham sandwiches and a fruit cup for $13!! My god.

Roger’s Pass was our next stop where we took a photo with a fake bear and breathed the mountain air.

In Golden there was a HUGE diaper explosion. I took EVERYTHING out of the car to get at the diaper wipes stored in the wheel well and the Swiss Mister thought I was ridiculous.

Of course you can’t go to Golden and not get a some golden delicious apples so we grabbed some food at the grocery store and paid the SAME amount as 3 Valley Gap.At the ‘Welcome to Alberta’ sign we pulled over for a photo op and some other people pulled over too so I asked them to take a photo of us but it didn’t work so then I asked the tweenager to grab the baby and take another photo but the flash was up and the photo was crap so I asked her to go back and take another and the hubby thought I was ridiculous AGAIN!!

Lake Louis was a gong show with sooooo many people there. It was a little stupid for us to go just for a picture as the drive back down was a 20 minute wait.

The wee babe was really not happy for the last 2 hours of the trip so we stopped at a mosquito infest road side pull out where there was a bear gate that the hubby just had to pass through. Then a tourist decided that he wanted to pass through it too (WTF?) and the hubby thought it would be funny to growl like a bear to scare him. We all think he shit his pants because after he jumped he said “Was that some kind of joke?” I thought that the hubby was going to get punched. I think the baby saved his ass.

We continued on and the hubby was convinced that the wee babe was teething so we stopped in Canmore to get some Oragel but Shoppers was closed so I gave her some baby Tylenol. That knocked her out for an hour. Not long enough we still had a half an hour to go to get to my cousin’s house.

I realized that yesterday was too far of a drive. I couldn’t hack it when the wee babe was crying, screaming, howling… It was too much for my nerves. I begged my hubby to do whatever he could (he was sitting in the backseat) to get her to stop. All she wanted was out of the freakin carseat I think. Not sure if she was even teething because each time we stopped the car, she stopped freaking out instantly. It’s really unbearable for me to listen to her. She doesn’t cry like a whining it’s like a cat it getting murdered.

Anyway, we arrived at my cousin Lyndsey’s house and she had forgotten that we were coming. I guess I should have trusted my intuition and emailed her a few days before just to be sure. But we did call twice during the day, she just didn’t check her voice mail

But she was so hospitable and gave us left over steak and ribs. Potatoes and corn. We were so lucky and the food was devine. And then we started in on the wine.

With the time change it was still light out at 11pm. Yeah baby! But it was a bit of a shock when the wee babe and tweenager were still awake at that point. So off to bed the tweenager went.

Man oh man did we laugh. We were up to 2am talking about a bunch of dirty stuff I can’t tell you about. Oh dear. Hilarity ensued. Let’s just say Jeff is now our new BFF.

We woke up at 8am, had a wonderful coffee and some granola, rehashed in PG13 some topics from the night before, packed up and we were off. Thanks soooo much Lyndsey for putting us up. We really appreciated it.

We’re on the road now, the hubby is driving (obviously) and it’s a play by play of the things we’re seeing (not much.) but I’m content with it none-the-less. Calgary was a gorgeous day but now we’re under clouds but I can see blue skies in front of us.

Today’s destination is a little undetermined but we’re thinking Morse with a stop in Medicine Hat first (couldn’t miss it Courtney!!). Evidentially, Morse a nice little town on the side of lake. We’ve used up all my relatives and aren’t going to be mooching off anyone now until Ottawa (thanks Allison!).

EXPENSES:

Gas: $56 @ 1.11/litre
Food: $13 sandwiches and $13 groceries
Wee babe disposition: pretty stellar save for the last two hours of howling.
Wildlife seen: Coyote, gophers
Weather: averaged 22 roughly
Things that have already broken: cable for the iphone
Stress level: a solid 100% when the wee babe was howling. Back down to a normal 5% for the rest of the time.

This dish made for a nice light meal packed with veggies and protein. As usual, I found this recipe online and then spruced it up to my liking.

Ingredients:

• 2 cup(s) rice, long grain, cooked, chilled
• 1 can(s) beans, black, (15 ounces) rinsed and drained
• 2 cup(s) tomato(es), chopped
• 1 cup(s) corn, whole kernel frozen, thawed
• 2 tablespoon cilantro
• 1 cup(s) salsa
• 1 cup cheddar cheese shredded (or more I didn’t measure)
• 1 pkg veggie ground round
• 1 pkg taco seasoning
• Iceberg lettuce shredded
• 1/2 cup(s) sour cream, light or fat-free
• 1/2 cup(s) salsa
• 1 avocado
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• pinch salt

I made this fabulous soup tonight for my family. Everyone loved it. I need to give credit where credit is due though: I liberated it from Family Feedbag, my new favourite cooking blogging mommy.

Here’s how she made it:

Ingredients:

a 2 lb butternut squash
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tsp vegetable oil
1 cup diced onion
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
pinch nutmeg
2 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
fresh chives for garnish

Preparation:

“While the oven preheated to 350 degrees (F), I peeled the butternut squash using a vegetable peeler, seeded it, chopped it into chunks, and spread the pieces out on a parchment lined baking sheet.

In a small bowl, I mixed the maple syrup and oil. Using a pastry brush, all the pieces of squash were coated with the maple syrup mixture (my 3-year-old had fun “painting” the squash). The squash roasted in the oven for 50 minutes, flipping half-way through, until the flesh was soft and caramelized around the edges.

I heated a splash of vegetable oil in a large stockpot over medium heat then added the onion, stirring until the onion softened. The roasted squash was then added to the pot, along with the thyme, nutmeg, chicken broth, and water. I allowed the soup to simmer for about 15 minutes. To finish, I used a potato masher to give the soup a rustic consistency (you could run it through the blender if you like a smooth consistency) and garnished with fresh chives.”

In order to add a bit of my own “je ne sais quoi” I topped the soup with goat cheese and I used red onions as that was all I had. Oh and if you can believe it (this is probably blasphemous but oh well) I used Aunt Jemima’s butter flavoured syrup. If I was to make this again, I would probably double the recipe as it’s so good I wish I had more for lunch tomorrow.

I just made this delicious dinner for my family. I got a 9 out of 10 from both the tweenager and my swiss mister so that’s not bad!

There were some critiques:

• Didn’t like the almonds (I substituted almonds for pine nuts as I didn’t have any and this particular person doesn’t like almonds anyway)
• A bit too watery (I used frozen spinach)

I usually don’t reinvent the wheel but do substitute where I don’t have something available. Here is the recipe from Canadian Living:

Preparation:

Lightly brush 9-inch (2.5 L) springform pan with some of the butter. Place 1 sheet phyllo on work surface, keeping remainder covered with plastic wrap and damp towel. Brush sheet lightly with butter; press into prepared pan. Repeat with remaining phyllo and butter, overlapping and offsetting each sheet to cover bottom and sides of pan.

Whisk together eggs, Ricotta, cream, salt, pepper and nutmeg; stir in ham, green onions, spinach and Brie. Scrape into pan; roll exposed edges of phyllo down and under to create crust about 1 inch (2.5 cm) taller than filling. Sprinkle with nuts.

Bake in 350°F (180°C) oven just until set, about 50 minutes. Let cool for 15 minutes before slicing. Makes 6 to 8 servings.