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.