Snow Festival 2012

Each year at the end of January, the Kiruna Snow Festival puts on an exciting programme of winter events and entertainment. Skiing and ice skating competitions and reindeer and dog sled races, snow sculpting contest, snowmobile show fill these four days.  There are also numerous art, handicraft and fashion exhibitions as well as concerts.

The Snow Festival itself was first held in 1985, to coincide with the launching of the rocket Viking from the nearby space centre of Esrange. Since then it has developed into a totally unique celebration of traditional – and extremely untraditional – winter activities.

Ice ­arc and Snowmobile ­exhibition

Reindeer ­Race

Snow ­Sculptures

Dog Sledge

Snowmobile­ Enduro 

Northern Lights from our balcony

It started off on this side..

There were moving purple lights in it too, for a while, but my camera couldn't capture it

Then it became bigger..

and it covered the whole sky..

then it moved to the other side, when eventually it faded away. It lasted for a couple of hours. It was so beautiful!

A Beautiful Winter Morning

From our balcony and bedroom window

 For Henrik's birthday I made some Hungarian Langos

It's a Hungarian food speciality, a deep fried flat bread made of a dough with flour, yeast, salt and water. It can be made with yoghurt, sour cream or milk instead of water, a dash of sugar along with salt and sometimes with flour and boiled mashed potatoes. It's eaten fresh and warm, topped with sour cream and grated cheese, rubbed with garlic or garlic butter, or doused with garlic water.
Langos is sold at many fast-food restaurants not only in Hungary but also in Austria.
Langos is known in the Czech Republic, Slovakia Croatia and Serbia too, and it's also popular in Romania. 
Also, a few years ago Hungarian Langos began to invade the Swedish festivals and became a popular festival food.


I normally don't like oily, deep fried stuff, but langos is just different, it's so good!


I only made Langos 3 times in my life (and each time I used a different recipe) and even though they turned out pretty good each time, they were nothing like the real deal that you can buy in Hungary, where they're big, wide and fluffy. 
Something like this:

Then some days later we had Cheese & Crackers night. We like to try new cheeses every time, it's fun and they are sooo good!

So, after all the not so healthy food I've been having during the holidays, I decided it was time to go back to eating healthier again.. :)

Weekend fun in the snow

Winter scenery in the park

 Sliding down a pile of snow is fun!

 Making snow angel

 It's hard to walk in such snow.. :)

♥

Winter pictures

Winter view from our balcony

Bunny loves the snow too!

It's snowing!

 Our street

A big pile of snow in front of our apartment building

 Swedish winter drinks

New Year's Eve

We had a really nice, cozy New Year's Eve with lots of fireworks. We had a panoramic view of most of the fireworks in town. Lots of people were shooting fireworks and a lot of them were very close to our balcony, so we got a great show!

We also shot off small fireworks and firecrackers outside, it was fun!

We made some delicious appetizers and we, of course had champagnes.

I also got to talk to my family on Skype, which was nice. 

Hungarian Champagnes

Lemon - Parsley Gougeres

Prosciutto - Basil Crostini

Bacon - Wrapped Potatoes & Potato Salad Bites & Grilled Prosciutto - Wrapped Figs with Blue Cheese and Pecans

Baked Lobster with Scallops

Happy New Year!