Danish Julefrokost

This past Saturday the Danes on my hall hosted a julefrokost which means Danish lunch.  This never really made sense to me because it's a dinner and not a lunch but just go with it.  Basically it's just a huge spread of delicious food and lots of schnapps.

My friend Anne who lives on my hall with me and I decided to volunteer to help cook the dinner.  We first ventured with the other three volunteers to our local grocery store to buy the food.  A traditional julefrokost includes three courses but we decided to cut ours to two.  We bought lots of fish and meat.

When we returned to our kitchen Anne tried her hand at cooking bacon while I made some meatballs.

Anne and some other volunteers cooking

My meatballs!

We started the preparations at 3 pm and the dinner began at 630.

Our feast included:

schnapps

Course One:

salmon, shrimp, pickled herring, breaded fish filets and other Danish spreads that I wasn't familiar with

rye bread, white bread, more rye bread

sauces

The idea is that you put the fish along with some sauce on top of a piece of bread and eat it as an open faced sandwich or "smorrebrod"

more schnapps

Course Two:

liver paste (which looked like cat food but I was a good sport and tried it and it wasn't bad when served with bacon and mushrooms), my meatballs (!), a roast, lots of sliced deli meat

cheeses, cucumbers, tomatoes

rye bread, white bread, more rye bread

schnapps again

And you also had to take a shot of schnapps when anyone said "skal" or "cheers" in Danish.  I'm sure there was more food that I can't even remember, but suffice it to say that I was stuffed and we still have leftovers in our refrigerators (two days later).