Spread the Love

Go With It
Go With It
Jam
It Ain't Too Much Stuff
It Ain't Too Much
It Ain't Too Much For Me To
Jam

-Michael Jackson “Jam”

As the typical author of this wonderful blog is currently away gallivanting throughout North America I have been given the great honor to come in to do a special edition post to keep all the avid readers happy until her return. So sit down, strap in and hang on because we are about to rock your world.

First I’d like to tell you a little about myself. On the outside I am like any other person you know. Well, I guess in reality I am nothing like anyone you have ever met but I do my best with what I have. I have no desire to be trendy and to keep up with the times because really you can’t improve on perfection. I don’t wear my hat sideways, I don’t have bling and I would not be caught dead in jeans of any color but blue. Seriously, they are called blue jeans for a reason. Don’t fool yourself into thinking they were cool in 1994. They weren’t. And trust me they aren’t any cooler now. But that is a topic for another time.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. As your mom will always tell you, it is not necessarily what is on the outside but better yet what is inside that makes a person special and I am no different. I find that I give and give and give but never really expect anything in return. That’s just the way I am. But don’t worry about me. I always find a way to “refill” myself so that I can dole out more of what I have to offer to the world.

As I am only here as a special guest this is where I will leave you for now and maybe one day I will be asked to come back to tell you more about the trials and tribulations of my life but I guess you never know. Hopefully Melissa has a great vacation and will have a new post upon her return.

“Spread” the love!!!

BOB

Okay, Bob is just the jam they have here in Sweden and not a real person but it is awesome jam none the less. I won’t go as far as to say that it is better than my mom’s but it is definitely a contender. The refill tubes are awesome, a little weird but great.

Swedish Chef: Not just meatballs

Here is my typical menu of how I’ve been converted to eating a traditional Swedish diet.

Breakfast (frukost) : I usually have muesli with runny yogurt and, of course, coffee. The yogurt is more liquidy than at home, which I much prefer to using milk. The yogurt is thick enough that it takes much longer for your muesli to become soggy.

My coffee used to be ‘Nescafe instant’, but now that I have a coffee maker - (free! with the purchase of two second hand sofas. but wait: buy now and the special offer also includes a rolling pin) - I make real coffee and treat myself to Arvin Norquist Classic mellan blend. On special occasions I would have some knäckebröd (crisp bread cracker) covered with gräddfil (slightly soured cream), then topped with fresh smoked gravlax (lox) and capers. mmmm.

Fika: Later in the day, between breakfast and lunch, and also between lunch and supper, comes fika. Fika is basically a coffee break, but also usually includes a sweet treat to eat as well. Swedes drink a lot of coffee and therefore also have fika every few hours (so important is fika, that the lunchroom is actually called the ‘fika room’). My favourite fika treat is a kanelbulle. (Cinnamon bun, with the most delicious speckles of cinnamon-ey sugar on top).

Also they seem to really love green marzipan here. You can buy entire cakes covered in it, or even little cupcakes, or little rolls with the ends dipped in chocolate.

Dinner: Special meals like midsummer’s eve usually have herring (I haven’t tried it yet, but I promise I will) in dill sauce, or the brave even try surströmming, a rotten fermented herring that smells like hot garbage. Surströmming must be eaten outside, preferably deep in the forest away from civilization, opened under water to temper the stench, and is illegal to bring on airplanes due to the risk of exploding and potentially killing people if the stench is contained in a small place for too long of a time. I don’t think I will be trying this 'food', no matter how adventurous I feel. I don’t think I could ever pollute my insides with something so horrible. My tastebuds would never forgive me.

The most typical Swedish meal would have to be the following: meatballs with gräddsås (cream sauce), fresh forest chanterelle mushrooms, new potatoes and lingonberry jelly.

Although it may sound cliched, Swedes really love their meatballs.

The Hunt of the Blåbär

Narrator (in the voice of one of those animal safari nature documentaries):

Watch how the native berry picker hunts the noble blåbär, eyes quietly scanning the forest floor for blueberry plants. She stops, stands still, and then realizes the entire forest floor is covered in blueberry plants as far as the eye can see.

The delicate blåbär hides, slightly protected under it’s own leaves, hidden from clumsy eyes of bicyclists riding by too fast to notice.

The hunters instantly spring their traps, using their red blueberry pickers to comb the undersides of the leaves, harvesting the shy blåbär, while leaving it’s mother plant intact for the next season’s crop. It is backbreaking work for the hunters since the blueberry plants rise only to a modest 30cm above the ground. The picking becomes addictive. There are so many plants, with so many berries, the hunters are in a frenzy. Though tired, they don’t want to stop picking. They nearly pick more than they can eat or carry.

Tired and satisfied with their bounty, shoes and socks stained with the blood of the blåbär, the hunters begin their retreat.

Until one hunter eyes a sparkling ruby poking through verdant green underbrush, and the frenzy starts all over again.

Lingonberry season has begun.