Greetings from New Mexico

I'm back in New Mexico after an ultramarathon journey from Stockholm—it took more than 40 hours to get here, with delays in Stockholm, Newark, and an overnight stay in Houston. I was one of the lucky travelers, though. If you've been watching the news over the past week, you may have seen how people have been stranded in airports for days. When I arrived in Houston (very late, after my scheduled connection had already left), the customer service lady told me they'd booked me on the next available flight to Albuquerque, which was scheduled to leave three days later! Luckily, I managed to get on a standby list and was able to make it Santa Fe the next day.

And it's well worth it to be here: there's over foot of snow on the ground (see photographic evidence) and I'm happily vegging out in my own living room with John, the kitties, and a roaring fireplace.

But I still have a couple of Sweden-related items to share:

1) My mother-in-law reminded me yesterday that I never posted about the results of the Sverige's Lucia contest. My favored national Lucia candidate, the dark-complected Nicole Wångne, did not win the flaming wreath. Instead, it went to a blondie named Emma Johansson. Oh, well.

2) I spent today revising the menu, shopping and prepping food for my Allt Om Mat dinner, the photo shoot for which will take place on Sunday. I realized that a few of the ingredients I was planning to use are impossible to find in Sweden. So I nixed tamales (no masa harina), switched the ancho peppers in my soup to chipotles (thinking those will be available in Stockholm—if not we can probably make due with smoked Spanish paprika), and switched the stuffed poblanos to stuffed roasted bell peppers. Hopefully that does the trick, but further revisions might be needed once we go back to the magazine's test kitchen. In any case, we're going to have a killer dinner with family and friends on Sunday. I'm making people wear earth tones so they don't clash crazily with our new pumpkin-colored dining room. This is perhaps the only dinner party ever in which the hostess tells the guests how to dress. Oh well, they'll get to be in a magazine and eat some yummy food in the bargain!

Here's the final menu:

Turkey caldo tlapeno
(soup with smoked turkey and chipotle peppers, thickened with pinto bean puree and garnished with Mexican crema and avocado)

Mincemeat empanaditas
(instead of the sweet, pie-filling style mincemeat, I'm slow-cooking the beef in rum and then mixing in the fruit and spices, for a rich and unique appetizer)

Grapefruit, shaved fennel and pumpkin seed salad
(with oak-leaf lettuce and sherry vinaigrette)

Roasted brussels sprouts with chestnuts and bacon

Chiles en Nogada
(poblanos and bell peppers stuffed with pork picadillo and covered with walnut cream sauce and pomegranate seeds)

Pecan pie with chipotle frozen custard

Yummmmmm!

Countdown to Christmus!

It's drizzly and dark here. I'm working like a maniac. People are asking me retarded questions about the Internet. I'm addicted to the Hallmark Channel and cheap Tetrapaked wine. And yet, I am PSYCHED, because in about 48 hours I'll be leavin' on a jet plane for sunny Santa Fe, New Mexico, home to my man, my mountain and my wrestling gray kitties. Woohoo!

It's snowing buckets at home right now and John promised that he might even go hiking in the snow with me, or at least drive me up the mountain and sit in the car listening to music while I hike. (Sorry, inside joke there—John hates hiking.) There's a whole cord of firewood stacked up in the living room and a Christmas tree bent over a little at the top because it's slightly taller than the ceiling. And at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, there's a barstool shaped like a tractor seat and a margarita with my name on it. Plus a new train that I can ride for free to and from Albuquerque. Can you tell I'm giddy with homesickness?

I've never been away from home for so long before. I mean, I've moved a bunch of times, but I've never had a home with my stuff and pets and husband in it and gone someplace else for four months. And I hope I never do that again, honestly. Not that I'm not really enjoying this stint in Sweden, but as the departure time on that SAS flight grows near, I'm increasingly ready to get the hell outta here for a few weeks. (That's right, a few weeks. The office is closed till January 7th and then I'll be attending CES in Vegas, which puts me back in Stockholm the week of the 12th.) I don't feel I'm offending any Swedes by admitting this, either—the weather here is miserable by any standard, and everyone who can go away for the holidays is doing so.

I've been largely insulated from the recessionary blows during my stay, so it will be interesting to feel the difference in the U.S. I know people are really struggling with layoffs and holiday bills, so this season more than ever will be a good time to do something nice for people in need. Maybe I'll go to the local soup kitchen and cook while I'm in town.

Speaking of cooking, while I'm in Santa Fe I'll also be preparing a holiday meal to be featured in the November 2009 issue of the Swedish food magazine Allt Om Mat (yeah, they plan way ahead). My friend and former pastry kitchen colleague from SantaCafe, Mark Bixby, will be my co-chef for the meal, and the event will be photographed by Stacey Adams, who also shot our wedding. I can't wait! I'm thinking I'll take a bit of a break from blogging during the holidays (seeing as I won't be in Sweden and all), but maybe I'll post a couple photos from the dinner just for fun.

My one wish is that I could swing through New York on some leg of my trip to visit my friends there, especially Christine and Shamus who just got engaged! ("Christ-mus" is pictured above at a 2006 holiday party, before they were even dating) Congrats, guys!

Lucia in the Rain, And A Rap Video

Today is Lucia Day in Sweden, but I'm doing laundry instead, because I celebrated last night by attending an advent concert at the Nordisk Museum (pictured here). I went with my colleague Elizabeth, and it was pouring rain, which made me reflect on the interesting Swedish attitude toward weather. (We'll get back to Lucia in a minute, I promise.)

Earlier in the day, I had tried to hail a cab to take me to a meeting maybe 25 blocks away. It was raining, and although the destination was walkable (by Swedish standards, anyway), I didn't feel like it. I got into the back of a guy's cab and told him where I wanted to go and he said, "It's just straight ahead and then you turn right and go for awhile." And I said, "Yeah, that's right. Go there, please." So he goes, "Lady, I'm sorry, take a walk. It's good for the health." I was shocked! It wasn't like I asked him to drive 100 meters and stop at the corner, and even if I had, it was pouring rain! So I got out of the cab, really pissed, but also sort of doubting myself. Was I being lazy? Was my request unreasonable? I didn't even have an umbrella. But I decided to walk anyway, because maybe I was overestimating how far the place was.

But no, it took me 20 minutes to walk there and I was completely soaked when I arrived. Interestingly, though, I noticed that I wasn't the only one who didn't have an umbrella. In fact, lots of Swedes don't carry an umbrella for a walk in the rain—especially men. I'm not sure whether it's some kind of "we're hardy Nordic people and we can withstand the weather" attitude, or they just don't mind, or what. I like to think it's the latter, because it seems sort of noble to be so harmonious with the weather. Like that passage in Another Roadside Attraction, when the protagonist is trying to teach himself not to flinch and squint in the rain.

So, anyway, people were still not carrying umbrellas on the way to the Lucia concert, but this time I found a cabbie who judged the distance to the museum long enough to travel in a car without shame.

The event was held in the vaulted main hall of the Nordisk—a dramatic setting made all the more mysterious with blue lighting creating shadows and contrasts among the architectural flourishes of the cathedral ceilings. The beginning of the concert was the best part, as the choir wound through the hall with their candles and white garb and star-shaped lanterns on tall staffs. They sang traditional Swedish Lucia carols and advent songs a cappella, and the acoustics in the hall were amazing. At one point, they actually split up, and most of the sopranos and a few altos moved to the other side of the room from the others, to play with the sound bouncing through the chambers. There was a children's choir, too, which featured one hilarious little girl who—singing all the while—kept looking around at everyone else on stage and fussing with her skirt and rubbing her hands up and down the velvet bodice of her dress.

As a nice contrast to the Lucia concert, the first music I encountered this morning was the soundtrack of a rap video being shot in front of my apartment building. So funny to see this happening in staid Vasastan! The music was really good, though—sort of North African influenced hip-hop. The cameraman had his rig set up in the back of a hatchback car, and they were rolling down the street really slowly filming two guys (the rappers, presumably) as they lip-synched and strutted and danced. Pretty great.

Time For Some Photos

It's been a long time since I posted a gallery, so here are some recent shots of random things I find interesting. Several are of food, you will notice. A few shots are from the Bonnier Publishing Program, which was held at a country bed and breakfast called Thoresta Herrgård. Happily, none of the shots included in this gallery involve saunas.

I also posted two shots from Saluhallen, a very cool food market in the posh Östermalm neighborhood of Stockholm. It's not exactly accurate to call it a farmer's market, or a meat market... it's more like an artisanal awesomeness market. Any foodstuffs that can be expensively raised, grown, line-caught, dived for, canned, cured, butchered, cultured or baked are likely to be found there. I tasted little bits of the most exquisite salty, crumbly, caramel-scented farmhouse cheddar and a bite of fantastic homemade sausage, ogled a giant monkfish on ice and a display of gorgeous rhubarb jam, and then had dinner at the restaurant outside the market called Lisapåtorget (Lisa At the Market). The place serves amazing seafood dishes, and at least the night I was there, there were just two women working there, serving about 50 patrons (half were only drinking, but still) while doing all the cooking and running the cash register. Holy moly. They are my new heros. It's weird enough that I took their picture (above left), so I didn't ask them for their names, but here's to you, superwomen!

Swedish Lesson

This is the sort of scene that really gives a Swedish student pause. Oh god. I'm not supposed to do something. But what??

A look inside Megan's brain:

Okay, stare at the sign for a while and see if I can make sense of it..... Nope. Okay, what words DO I understand? Obs = "observera," or "please take notice." "Är" means "are." "Inget på dem" means "nothing on them."

So we have: "Please notice, _____ are ______, _______ nothing on them."

That long word, let's look at that more closely. "Nyoljade." I see the word "ny" in there, which means "new." What does "oljade" mean? Let's guess at something that is close to English. Oiled? So, new-oiled? Eureka! Something is new-oiled. Put nothing on them. Ah, the countertops are newly oiled, put nothing on them!

This is my life, every day.

Half-Year of the Dragon

We just wrapped up an intense three days at the Bonnier Publishing Program, and I am wiped. It is such a neat group to be involved with, and the energy was superhigh, but as soon as the last day ended I kind of collapsed.

The program members come from all corners of the Bonnier world, and all are involved with digital media. The main stated purpose of the program is to help us build leadership skills and develop a tool set that will allow us to successfully launch new Web businesses for our companies. This is hugely interesting to me because my focus at work has been shifting increasingly toward business development. I'm still technically an editor, but I'm finding that the most exciting thing about my job is solving the puzzle of how to execute successful project launches. In today's online media world, it's no longer true that "content is king." Great content has to come hand-in-hand with great technology and a solid revenue model.

So, after a day and a half of warm-and-fuzzy "getting to know our colleagues" activities, the Publishing Program participants were given a task: to divide into four groups that will each develop and pitch a new digital business plan to the top management. This isn't just an exercise, either—the management actually intends to select at least one of the four projects (provided at least one is good enough) to launch in 2009. The format is similar to The Dragon's Den, the popular BBC reality show in which hopeful entrepreneurs pitch ideas to a panel of ill-tempered venture capitalists (pictured above).

We broke into teams and kicked off our projects today, and each team member has quite a lot of homework to do before the next Publishing Program module in January. We'll gather for a total of four more learning modules between now and May, during which time we'll meet entrepreneurs and learn from their successes and failures, study up on the platforms and technologies shaping the online media landscape right now, and have seminars and workshops with top trend analysts, investors and developers. I couldn't be more excited to be involved. It's quite an honor, as this program is very expensive for our company to put on, and there will be a huge internal focus on the business plans we hatch this spring.

I also got a completely unrelated (but also honorific) invitation this week, which weirdly also relates to dragons. My friend Keira, who is becoming kind of famous in the fitness world, offered to train me to earn RKC certification, which will allow me to teach kettlebells classes part-time in her gym (something I'd love to do to keep my fitness-motivation high). The training for this certification is pretty grueling, as I'll have to prove my strength and knowledge of kettlebell technique with a series of difficult physical tests during the certification workshop, April 20-24. The official Web site for RKC Kettlebells is called dragondoor.com.... which means that within one month this spring, I'll be entering first the Dragon Door and then the Dragon's Den. Gulp.

Group Bonding

I'm at the Bonnier Media University Publishing Program today through Wednesday, and so far it's been an incredibly interesting and strange experience. Today's objective was simply to get to know the other members of the program. There are 19 of us from all over the world, and everyone is very bright, professionally accomplished and employed in the Web media field, which makes for narcissistic but really engaging interactions. ("Ooooh, you're just like me! Fascinating!) I'm forbidden from talking in too much detail about what we discussed in the classroom, because that would ruin the surprise for future program participants and also break the circle of trust or whatever, but I will say that the day's activities required us to dig into relationships with our colleagues on an intellectual and emotional level right off the bat. (Now you're REALLY wondering what's up with the photo above, but I'll let you wait another paragraph and a half to find out.) After just one day, I feel like I know about half of the 19 people quite well. We'll meet for this program five times between now and May, and the idea is that we'll improve our leadership skills and learn new techniques and ways of thinking about Internet business.

This session is being held at a country resort about 40 minutes outside Stockholm called Thoresta Herrgård. It's a simple but very cozy bed and breakfast (lots of candles and fireplaces everywhere), but the food is off the hook. I had no idea I'd be enjoying a fine culinary experience when I signed up for this course. I wish I could recite tonight's menu, but it was in Swedish, so I have to just try to remember what we ate. There was an amuse-bouche of some sort of seafood bisque with a ravioli, a first course composed of several pretty little sashimi (arctic char, salmon and scallop) with dollops of horseradish cream, white chocolate-cauliflower puree (much tastier than it sounds) and parsley jelly (also delicious, despite seeming strange). The meat course consisted of a slice of braised pork belly (Oh. My. God.) a gamey little sausage round and some fixins' (pickled onions, minced apples, mustard cream). Then there was a dainty cheese course with little cubes of brie, some sort of sharp Swedish cheese and a bit of blue cheese, followed by dessert: pear-yogurt ice cream, a dollop of chocolate mousse, and a sliver of apple cake. Seriously, I vote for the chef at Thoresta Herrgård to cook the next Nobel dinner. Throw my paltry little fantasy menu out the window—this was hands-down the best meal I've had in Sweden.

The night was capped off with an activity I mercifully managed to bail out of: a group session in the sauna. (By the way, I have no idea who those people in the photo are. It's a stock image.)

To Swedes, it's apparently perfectly normal to hang out nude in a 110-degree room ass-cheek-to-cheek with the people you work with. Call me crazy, but I don't want to be across the meeting table from some colleague a week from now and have to think to myself, "I've seen this guy naked." And we're not even going to talk about the Finnish people who beat each other in the sauna with birch branches. I'll leave you with that thought.

Megan's Nobel Menu

As promised, I spent a little time this morning fantasizing about what I'd cook for 1,300 guests if I were the chef in charge of the Nobel dinner. The elements to keep in mind, of course, are: 1) preparation time— you must be able to get each course out to the ridiculously large number of tables at the same time, so things that can be prepared ahead/in batches are better, with no fussy composed plates 2) seasonal, Scandinavian ingredients 3) deliciousness 4) the traditional Nobel dessert is always ice cream. So, here's what I came up with:

Arctic char sashimi with shaved fennel, smoked salt and orange oil

Smoked venison, lingonberry and gooseliver terrine, served with coarse mustard

parsnip soup shot, crayfish, parsley oil

reindeer "filet mignon" with reindeer sausage, port-wine demiglace, juniper

jansson’s temptation
(potato gratin with bits of anchovy, molded into a little dome with a ramekin)

Shredded sorrel, purslane and pea shoots with cloudberry vinaigrette

vanilla custard ice cream and ginger cookies

Can you do better? Bring it on in the comments!

Nobel Fest

Tomorrow marks the start of Nobel Week, when this year's laureates gather in Stockholm with their families and a cast of thousands of support staff, media people, royals, dignitaries, celebrities and students to celebrate great accomplishments in literature, economics and science. Early in the week, the prize winners will give press conferences and a series of lectures on their topics of expertise. I will be outside Stockholm attending the Bonnier Media University Publishing Program 3.0, but if there's a break in the program I'd like to zip back into town to attend Paul Krugman's economics lecture.

If you're not familiar with Krugman (pictured above—without the dress), he's an American economist who became famous in his field in the 70s after developing a new supply system for international trade (Honestly, I don't know very much about this—this level of economics is way over my head. You can read a layman's synopsis of his research here). This is the work for which he's technically receiving the Nobel Prize. But Krugman is better known for his writing in the New York Times, in which he has spoken out against the Bush administration's economic policies since Dubya's first term in office. It's widely assumed that the Nobel committee chose to honor Krugman this year largely as a statement against Bush (although they would certainly have honored him at some point in any case).

Thursday, December 10th marks the Nobel Awards ceremony and banquet, a gala event held in the ornate gold and blue halls of Stockholm's beautiful City Hall. The occasion is extremely formal, but in many ways it's more like the Oscars than the stuffy affair most Americans might imagine. The Swedish and international press pool around the red carpet, remarking on the ladies' evening gowns and narrating the arrival of the celebrity guests and Nobel honorees, play-by-play. The dresses worn by the Swedish queen and princesses obviously get a lot of attention—not only because of who they are, but because they make some daring fashion choices. Queen Silvia was on a Nina Ricci kick for a few years there (which I think is cool), and then for a few years she wore extravagantly beaded numbers by Jacques Zender, that to me looked unappealingly like quinceanera dresses. The past two years she's worn interesting designs by Japanese couturier Gunyuki Torimaro. My favorite one, a dramatic bell-sleeved sheath from 2006, is pictured above. You can see the full gallery of her Nobel dresses since 1976 here, if you care.

Each year, 1,300 people are invited to the Nobel banquet from all around the world, and tickets are enormously coveted. Seats within view of Queen Silvia are considered extremely prestigious. Among the invitees each year are 200 university students from Stockholm, a symbolic gesture honoring future generations of academic achievement that will lead to tomorrow's Nobel Prizes.

The food is also a huge deal during the Nobel festivities: Sweden's top chefs are selected to create lavish menus for the banquet and other soirees during the week. This year, the desserts are being made by Magnus Johnansson, the pastry chef behind Xoko, a really great dessert cafe in my neighborhood. I'm not sure the menu for 2008 has been publicly released yet, but last year's consisted of: "lobster aspic with dill-baked halibut and Kalix bleak roe, young cockerel with cockerel sausage and almond potato-celery root terrine and raspberry and blackcurrant parfait on beds of pistachio with vanilla ice cream." Huh. I think that sounds extremely elegant, but a bit precious, and not sky-high on the yumminess index. Which suggests a fun game! What do you say we play, "What I'd Cook for the Nobel Banquet." I'm going to take some time and really think about that, and I'll report back later today or tomorrow. Please feel free to submit your own fantasy menus, keeping Scandinavian-inspired flavors in mind, of course.

You might wonder why I've been studying up so much on the Nobel Festivities... Well, I was hoping to cover some of the events for CNN International next week. I contacted the producer I've worked with in the past, and he was interested and asked for a more detailed pitch, but then Turner broadcasting laid off a bunch of people in his department this week, and I think he forgot about me (or, um, is no longer working there??). I plan to follow up on Monday, but with the Bonnier Publishing Program next week and the fast pace at work right now, it will be much easier on me if I don't do this additional reporting. Still, being in Sweden during the Nobel Awards is probably a once-in-a-lifetime affair for me, and reporting about it for CNN would be something to tell the grandchildren, for sure. So, we'll see what happens. In any case, I learned a lot about it!

Work, Parents and A Crazy Old Lady

The last week has been crazy! Work is really ramping up, with the new Bonnier.com site production going into high gear. If anyone reading this happens to be from Bonnier, well, not to toot my own horn, but I think you really have something to look forward to. We're building a very slick social network/wiki tool with groups for all the businesses around the world, which we hope will effectively replace the need for the company-level intranets that exist now. Not that we're encouraging people to close down their old internal sites, but for those groups who were planning to upgrade and redesign, you now won't have to, because we're giving you something really good for free. And in this economy, I think that will make everyone happy.

My mom and dad (pictured above in their Icebar gear) are still in town, and I feel a little guilty because I've only been able to hang out with them in the evenings for the past few days. I was hoping to slip out of work early at least one day and accompany them on their activities, but it's just been too busy. And they go home tomorrow! Kind of sad. So far we've done some really fun stuff, though. I told you about the julbord in my last post—that may have been the week's highlight. But we also went to the Absolut Icebar, which they loved. It's a really silly place: A bar completely constructed of ice and situated inside a huge freezer kept at -5 degrees celsius. They give you a furry poncho and a fake reindeer skin to sit on, and hopefully you had the good sense to also wear a warm coat and gloves. Admisison includes a vodka cocktail served from a glass made of ice. The drinks were really good, and it was kitschy and fun for about the amount of time it takes to finish one cocktail. They were so tasty we were about to order another round, when we realized we were freezing our asses off, and could simply go to a different bar.

Last night we went to a random Thai restaurant because we were sick of Swedish food. The evening's dinner entertainment came in the form of a strange woman who sat down next to us and told us her left arm was completely numb from having surgery earlier that day, but it was okay because she'd just taken a pain pill. She was a rather older lady, past the age limit where everyone speaks perfect English, but she was chattering away in Swenglish anyway, which was sort of sweet. But then the pain pill kicked in and her English went downhill, and became a bit slurry. She started asking all kinds of questions about money ("How much did your hotel cost?" "Is it expensive to live where you live?" "You spent quite a lot to order all that food and you're not eating it," etc.). That was a little uncomfortable, but maybe just a cultural difference so we laughed politely and answered her questions discreetly. But THEN she started telling us that she's moving to Finland because she doesn't like Sweden's easy immigration laws. She thinks the country lets in too many Muslims. Whoa! She went on and on about this, getting increasingly snowed under by the second by whatever narcotic she'd taken. She wasn't drinking or anything, but by the end of the meal, we all had pushed our chairs away from her and were awkwardly looking down at our plates while she leaned over the table with a wagging finger saying "devil Arabs, devil Arabs" over and over. Yes, lady. Go to Finland. Go waaaaaaaaay north in Finland where you can be all alone with your fifteen cats and the open tundra.

A Riot and a Feast

The Riot

Yesterday was November 30th, the anniversary of the 1718 death of King Karl XII, Sweden's "warrior" king. King Karl had great imperialist ambitions and during his reign, the borders of Sweden were extended all over the Baltic region through a series of wars. For some reason, today Sweden celebrates the day of his death with pretty little cakes. And also Neo-Nazi riots.

The weird cakes were served at my office last week, but the latter bit came as a shock last night when my parents and I tried to take taxis to the Grand Hotel for dinner, and found that all the roads near the hotel were closed off with police barricades. Apparently, Sweden's skinheads see King Karl Day as a good time to demonstrate for their racist cause, so every year they gather at the statue of the dead king (which happens to be in a park right near the Grand Hotel). Unfortunately, another radical group, the extreme-left militant communists, also see King Karl Day as a good time to fight for their "warrior" cause, and they also gather at the statue.

So what ends up happening is the two groups annually beat the crap out of each other in a posh city park.

Luckily, there aren't very many communists or skinheads—the number of protesters is usually only about 600 people. And since they both have the right to peaceful demonstration, the government allows them all to converge on the statue each year. But inevitably there are arrests, and often the riot police have to come out with rubber bullets and shields, and the whole thing costs taxpayers a lot of money.

We didn't actually see any fighting last night, as the protest had been broken up by the time we got to the hotel, but you can see a few images and a rant from a pissed-off Swede at this site, if you'd like to learn more. He makes it seem like the Neo-Nazi problem is widespread in this country, but from what I've gathered in conversations with my Swedish friends, it's a toxic but tiny minority.


The Feast

Once we arrived at the Grand Hotel, we were treated to the most amazing spread of food I've ever seen. And I'm a pretty serious foodie, so that's not a statement I'd make lightly.

Since I "missed" Thanksgiving this year and I won't be with my parents at Christmas, I wanted to share a holiday meal with them, so I thought it would be nice to have a traditional julbord at a nice hotel. Happily, the Christmas season starts here on November 29th, so we managed to do it while they're in town this week.

Well, the food was incredible. There were probably 10 different types of pickled herrings, smoked and cured salmon and char, smoked venison, pork ribs, slow-braised pork, a whole table of interesting housemade force-meats, pates and charcuterie, deviled eggs with prawns and caviar, grain salads, beet salads, green salads, homemade pickles, jansson's temptation, Swedish meatballs, lingonberries, amazing cheeses, chocolate-covered hazelnuts, handmade caramels, chocolate pannacotta, crullers with cloudberry jam.... and I'm only naming my favorites. We also had excellent wine, tasty Christmas beer and five different kinds of aquavit (fennel and coriader, elderflower, carrot, and two others I can't remember, for obvious reasons). Wow. Wowee wow wow. Today I am taking it easy—I think I have a herring hangover.

Anyway, Mom and Dad were suitably awed by the interesting foreign food and booze, the gorgeous hotel setting and the elaborate wreaths, flowers and greenery everywhere. Today, we're downscaling to salads and tea, and there are no militant protesters or SWAT teams in sight.