the immigrants are taking your cake and juice

if you read danish news (if you don't, i don't blame you), you'll know that something smells good at the post office. according to a political party here called dansk folkeparti (danish people's party), public hospitals and doctors' offices had to take the complimentary cake and 'juice' out of their waiting rooms because of immigrants. now, df has never been bosom buddies with the immigrant population, but this is a new low. they're blaming large foreign families for taking advantage of the free food and 'juice' in waiting rooms. i put the quotes because, more often than not, what's served is some sort of concentrate that loosely resembles juice (or at least it did at some point). as for cake, in the time i've worked at hillerød and frederiksberg hospital, i have never seen cake laid out for visitors. to say nothing of all the hospitals i've visited for job applications in the copenhagen area! fruit, yes. coffee and 'juice,' yes. but never any sweets to clog your arteries in the waiting room. the public hospital doesn't want to make MORE work for itself. private hospitals, however, i'm not so sure about. :P

a hospital director, named ib steen mikkelsen, was a little confused by the announcement: "everyone who has worked in the healthcare system knows that immigrants have more visitors than ethnic danish patients. but that doesn't need to be a negative thing; it just means that they get more visits, which is of course nice for the patient." as a sort of protest to dansk folkeparti, a couple facebook groups were made but the ideas were the same: send a citronmåne to df. a citronmåne is a lemony spongecake that you can find packaged in almost any supermarket. and now these cakes along with a couple hundred others are flooding this nationalistic political party's office. many of the packages came with sarcastic notes like "i have just heard about your terrible crisis and hereby send the closest thing to a cake i could find. take care of it, you never know when a muslim will come by and steal it with their long, black fingers!" i got a good laugh out of it. (:


though i support this sort of sweet, frosted protest, the cake pictured at the top has definitely not gone to dansk folkeparti. pia kjærsgaard will have to come by our apartment herself and have a little chat with me if she would like to try my preserved ginger drizzle cake. i made it, along with some tea sandwiches, for two friends of mine who are going back to england. i thought teatime would be nice, even though they are heading for the land of tea. i made it using ingredients from my friend R, and this is the first time i've even seen preserved ginger, black treacle, or golden syrup! the cake was fantastically moist and very gingery. and the top crust was just barely hardened, so that there was a slight satisfying crunch when we cut into it. a wonderful cake!

so for any dansk folkeparti members or supporters out there; if you want to eat my cakes, cookies, brownies, etc., you'll have to ask nicely and sit with me and my other non-danish friends. otherwise i hope you like packaged citronmåner. (;