What do Sweden and Italy have in common? That's right. Both Italians and Swedes celebrate Saint Lucy's Day. Anything else? Yes. We learned something about both countries this month.

We started with Italy which included Oliver and Ty mashing potatoes and mixing them with flour, salt and eggs to make gnocchi and then making an aubergine-tomato sauce.
But that was not all. Why only have the main dish when you can have an appetizer? In our case a quiz about Italy that would eventually lead to delicious gelato (or at least some variation of ice cream slightly similar to the good old Itlaian gelato) for pudding.

So, here we go:

1. What is (most likely) the origin of the word "gnocchi"?
a) nocca ("knuckle")
b) knohha ("knot")
c) nocciola ("hazelnut")

2. When were gnocchi first made?
a) in the 17th century
b) in 1931
c) during the Renaissance (1300 - 1700)

3. Why aren't gnocchi smooth but are given their distinctive texture?
a) to make them look nicer
b) for the sauce to stick to them better
c) because whoever made them first didn't manage to make them smooth

4. What is Italy's capital?
a) Rome
b) Florence
c) Naples

5. Where does W. Shakespeare's play 'Romeo and Juliet' take place?
a) Verona
b) Venice
c) Volterra

6. What was the most popular entertainment in the Roman Empire?
a) gladiator fights
b) theatre
c) the Circus Maximus (chariot racing)

7. How many bridges are there in Venice?
a) 394
b) 417
c) 713

8. What do the flag's colours represent?
a) hope (green), faith (white), charity (red)
b) life (green), peace (white), love (red)
c) basil (green), mozarella (white), tomato (red)

9. Which is NOT an Italian volcano?
a) Stromboli
b) Etna
c) Galeras

10. Leonardo da Vinci was the first to prove that...
a) the earth revolves around the sun.
b) the world is round, not flat.
c) the big bang must have been the beginning of the universe.

11. Which river flows through Rome?
a) Po
b) Reno
c) Tiber

12. According to legend Rome was founded by Romulus. Who was his and his brother's (Remus) father?
a) the god Mars
b) Remulus
c) a shepherd

13. Which Roman Emperor was the first to invade Britain?
a) Nero
b) Augustus
c) Ceasar

answers: 1a or/and b; 2c; 3b; 4a; 5a; 6c; 7b; 8a; 9c; 10b; 11c; 12a; 13c


A few days later we made cinnamon buns and learned about Sweden. After Ty and Oli had mixed together flour, milk, butter and yeast and set the dough aside they learned that cinnamon buns are called "kanelbullar" in Swedish (the singular being "kanelbulle"), that Swede's refer to their country as "Sverige" and that Christmas is "jul".
Since we had quite some time until we'd be able to continue baking we matched the following dates to relevant Swedish events.
The 30th April is not only Walpurgis Night but also King Carl XVI Gustaf's birthday.
The Swedish National Day is on the 6th June.
About two weeks later - on the 21st June - we have the summer solstice (the longest day of the year after which the days will get shorter again) which is celebrated as "midsommar" on the Saturday closest to the 21st. It is a celebration of the summer and the light.
In October (on the 4th) the National Cinnamon Bun Day ("Kanelbullens Dag") is celebrated. Cinnamon buns were first made after World War One but didn't become popular until the 1950s when the Swedish people had more money to spend and more people took a liking to home baking. By the late 1990s "kanelbullar" had become so well known and liked that they got their own celebratory day.
Since we were talking about cinnamon buns anyway we temporarily changed (or rather varied) the topic to "fika" which is basically the Swedish version of an afternoon tea.
Saint Lucy's Day takes place on December 13. In Sweden it is celebrated with saffron buns and girls and women dressed in white dresses with red sashes wearing crowns or wreaths of candles singing songs about "Sankta Lucia". Saint Lucy's Day is a day in memory of the 3rd-century martyr Lucy but it also is a celebration of light.
On the 21st December we are half way through the dark. The days are getting longer now and on December 25 we can celebrate a "god jul" with a spectacular "julbord" before we start all over again in the next year.

What happens when you put an egg in vinegar? 
Yes, that's absolutely right: the whole room stinks.
But there's a fun element to it, as well.

"The shell will dissolve", Oli and Ty guessed correctly while standing on the tips of their toes in the kitchen reaching for a glass, the bottle of vinegar and an egg.
As soon as they had poured some vinegar over the egg bubbles started to appear all around our test object.

 And - wonder, O! wonder - when we looked at the egg the next morning it had turned into an oval-shaped bouncy ball and the shell (at least most of it) had disappeared. 

But why?

To understand the the disappearance of the eggshell Ty had to become calcium and Oli was temporarily turned into carbonate. Together they then represented the solid calcium carbonate crystals known to us mere non-chemist mortals as lime (and in this case eggshell).

And so they stood there being rock-solid eggshell until the vinegar (in form of a workawayer) separated calcium-Ty from carbonate-Oli. Ty started spinning around and floated through the room as free as calcium in vinegar while Oli looked around in search for some oxide in order to form carbon dioxide which is visible to the human eye as small bubbles all around the egg in its vinegar bath.

With the shell dissolved we were able to take the egg and squeeze it without breaking it. Yet, when we tried to put a rubber band around the egg we had quite obviously reached the limit for the egg burst leaving us with an of vinegar smelling mess.