Sewing Club for Ex-Californians

Belonging to a ‘sewing club’ (eat good food and chat once per month or so) of Icelandic women in California went a long ways towards saving my sanity at times while at school.  I still remember walking into ‘a real home’ for the first time in a month, after only hanging out in student housing where all the furniture is standardized and hardly anybody bothers putting art on the wall, or making their abode feel like ‘home’.  It was like being yanked back to reality!  Life can be nice! 🙂

As the years passed, the women started migrating back to Iceland with their families (because Iceland is Niceland, and the extended family is pretty much all here), and so an Icelandic branch of the original sewing club slowly developed.

Meetings have been somewhat sporadic of late, but we’re hoping to get some monthly-momentum going again, and last night it was my turn.

The food consisted of crepes (pancakes) with the batter prepared earlier in the day (yay for having two pans!), some Hale & Hearty brownies, a home-made pineapple cheesecake, cut-up fruits, grapes, some cheese and crackers, and chocolate sauce (on the darker side).

We had a great time, chatted about everything and nothing, and laughed a lot.  It was great. 🙂

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The pineapple cheesecake was partially made from this recipe (Icelandic), but I changed it to be:

Bottom

Almost a full pack of Göteborgs KornMo Fullkorn (oatmeal) ‘crackers’ (because we had some)
150 g butter (smjör)
3-4 tablespoons (raw) sugar (sykur, notaði hrásykur)

Butter and sugar melted together, and mixed with the crushed crackers.  Mixture pressed into the bottom of the serving plate.  (Note: This concoction didn’t really hold together at all when served, so I’ll have to try a different brand of crackers next time, or more butter?  But it tasted good!)

Put the serving plate in the cooler for at least an hour to cool the crackers so they won’t dance all over the place when you put the topping on. 🙂

Topping

400 g creme cheese (rjómaostur)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (vanilludropar)
1 small can of drained crushed pineapple (lítil dós af kurluðum ananas, án safa)
0.75 cup sugar (3/4 bolli sykur)
whipped cream to taste (bætt við þeyttum rjóma eftir bragði)

All mixed together.  I added some whipped cream (probably a half a cup to a cup, measured whipped!) after I’d mixed all the other stuff together to soften the taste a bit.  Put the topping on the bottom, and leave in the cooler until served.