Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Mat (Food)

I thought that I should dedicate one of my posts to the food eaten here in Sweden. Before I do that, I will give you a quick update on what I’ve been up to since my last post, which was quite a while ago!

I must say that Stockholm is a beautiful city. I had an amazing time while I was there three weekends ago. While I was there, I got the opportunity to see Gamla Stan (old town) where we were able to see one of the king’s castles, a famous church, the building where the Nobel Prize is given, the beautiful streets, alleys, architecture, and archipelago of Stockholm. We also went to the National Museum, where we were able to see what Sweden was like in the 1500’s to today through art, history, and a little imagination.
Crazy wood door at the National Museum from a castle in 1629

Two weekends ago, I got the opportunity to go to a summer house in Sunne with another exchange student with another exchange program. Her name is Elizabeth Rasmussen. Yes, exact same last name. How ironic! She too is from the US, but she comes from California. She is only here for 6 months, so she leaves in January. Anyway, we were there Friday thru Sunday (yes, I skipped school on Friday to go!). While we were there we picked many lingonberries, went swimming in the lake a few times, went to town to look at the local shops, and overall had a wonderful time. While we were on our way back home, we stopped at where... IKEA. I have to say, even though IKEA in Sweden looks exactly the same as it does in the US, the Swedish one is way cooler just because all the signs are in Swedish.

Last weekend was very fun too. On Friday night, my second host family invited my current host family over for dinner. I actually move there on the first of October, which is very crazy to think about. It doesn’t seem like I have been here long enough to be moving families soon. Anyway, we had a very nice dinner, and ended up chatting for over three hours! Their daughter is only six years old, and really shy. She did draw me a picture of a Swedish flag though. I really look forward to having a little sister who enjoys coloring and watching kid movies. (Kids movies are dubbed in Sweden, so they are in Swedish, not English with Swedish subtitles). The next morning, my family and I went to a baptism. That was very interesting. This baptism was similar, yet different to ones in the US. Similar to the US, there is a ceremony in a church where the priest says a few words, pours water on the baby’s head, the parents light the candles, and we sang a few songs. Unlike in the US, this service was in the middle of the day on a Saturday, not in the middle of a Sunday church service like I’m used to. A baptism in Sweden is also when the baby is officially given its name. Until the baptism, the baby’s name is not “official”. After the service, we all went to another part of the church were we ate traditional sandwich cake. It was very interesting tasting. I will just leave it at that. We also had regular cake with coffee/tea, so that was good. In the evening, I went to Louise’s (fourth family) house for the night again. We actually went over to her friend’s house for a taco fiesta! We made tacos with all the possible fixings, and the 7 of us had a very fun night. Imagine a bunch of very excited and energetic girls all talking Swedish at the same time. Now, imagine trying to follow all of it. Yeah, that was a challenge. I ended up going through the night understanding most that was said though! So that is definitely progress.
Now for the food……
Even though the breakfast and dinner I eat here will likely differ with each family, I thought I would give you an idea of what I have eaten since I have been here…
Breakfast:
·         Every morning, we eat an extremely similar breakfast. The only thing that never, ever changes is the type of tea that we drink. Every morning, we drink Twining’s English Breakfast Tea. Why this particular type…because a few years back, my host parents decided to have a taste test for various different types of English Breakfast Tea, and Twining’s was the winner. Ever since that day, they (now me too) have had the same tea every morning.
·         Along with our tea, we will often drink a small glass of juice. Almost always, it is either orange or red orange juice. Occasionally, we will have cloudy apple juice too.
Now, for the food…
For breakfast, we always eat small open faced “sandwiches”. With each sandwich, we have a variety of choices of what we want it made of. First of all, we will generally have two or three different types of bread to choose from. One is always dark, very health bread. The other one is usually dark bread with some type of seeds/nuts in the bread. Occasionally, we will have some lighter/white bread which we can toast. The first step to making our sandwich after we have chosen the bread we want, is adding the butter. Now, I have learned that Swedes really enjoy their butter. No matter what you put on top of the sandwich, you must have butter. Not just a little butter either. It needs to be thick, almost thick enough that you can’t quite see the bread underneath. Along with our bread and butter, we have many different options. We can have…
·         Cheese. Lots and lots of cheese. There are probably a hundred different types of cheese that can be found in the grocery store, but they are split into different categories. Breakfast cheese is one of them. There are many different types of breakfast cheese, and honestly, I can’t tell the difference between most of them. They are all really tasty though. Cheese will go on most sandwiches too.
·         Marmalade, aka jam. This too, comes in many different varieties. Currently, we only have apricot and orange. We just ran out of the svarta vinbär (black current). I think that one was my favorite. That may be just because it was homemade, but it was very, very good.
·         Kaviar. Ew. Basically, this is a fish paste that consists of smoked fish eggs mixed with other spices and fish parts. I tried it once even though I was told I would not like it. (They were correct…I thought it was quite bad.) The only reason Swedes like it is because they grew up with it.
·         Banana. Recently, we have had bananas to put on our sandwiches too. I think that banana and cheese sandwiches are my new favorite now that we don’t have any black currant marmalade.
·         Occasionally, we will also slice a tomato to put on our sandwiches too.
Toastable Bread
Darker Bread
Ost (Cheese)
Lunch:
During the week, I eat lunch at school. Like I mentioned before, school lunch is free. You can take as much or as little as you want too. Since this is now my fifth week in school, I have learned what our weekly lunch usually is…
·         Monday is korv (sausage) day. It may be rice with a sausage/gravy sauce that you put on top, or it might be small sausages with potatoes and spinach sauce, or it may even be a Swedish hot dog (this means that you smother the top of the hot dog with mashed potatoes).
·         Tuesday is a random day.  It will be anything from pasta to “meatballs” with potatoes and gravy. I put the meatballs in quotations because they are really more like meat patties/logs. They taste the exact same as Swedish meatballs, except they are just bigger, and not in the traditional ball shape. I think it’s that was just because it is easier for the cooks at our school.
·         Wednesday is fish day. So far, every time we have had fish in school, we have had white fish (mostly cod). To go with our cod, we (of course) have a sauce to go with it. We also have the option of putting lingonberry jam on our fish too. With our fish, we will almost always have boiled potatoes.
·         Thursday is soup day. With our soup, we also have soft bread (similar to pita bread) with cheese to accompany our soup. My first Thursday lunch, was not a good one. We had spinach soup (It was very green, thick, and jiggled on your spoon). So far, this has been the only school lunch that I have not enjoyed.
·         Friday is also a random day. My favorite “random day” meal has without a doubt been the pankakor med lingonsylt (Swedish pancakes with lingonberry jam) day.
Some days, like fish day and pancake day, the school cooks will replace the ketchup dispensers with lingonsylt dispensers. It looks like a ketchup dispenser, but lingonberry jam comes out instead. How awesome.
To go with our meal every day, we have a choice of water or milk. I always drink milk since we never do at home. (No, we do not drink milk with 10-16% milk fat like some people thought. It actually comes in 0.5, 1.5, and 3.0% milk fat, so very similar to the US). We also have the option of eating knäckebröd med smör (hard bread with butter). The hard bread is about the size of a graham cracker, so I was very surprised to find out that when people took the little individual butters, they put all of it on their bread. (I would maybe use one quarter to one half of it). When this much butter is used, you literally cannot see the bread underneath! Even though I have been in Sweden for six weeks, it still shocks me to see how much butter is consumed each and every day.
Dinner:
Dinner here is extremely delicious. Nearly everything is homemade. My host mom, Lena, is a fantastic cook too. Whatever she decides to make, no matter how strange it sounds/looks to me, tastes wonderful. It is not like the US, where someone will prepare dinner from scratch 5 or 6 times a week, and just put something in the oven on the remaining nights. Literally, every single day here, we have food made from scratch.
To accompany dinner most nights, we will eat some type of salad. Sometimes it is just a pile of lettuce that you eat plain, but other times there will be a homemade (of course!) vinaigrette. Sometimes we add tomato or cucumber to our salad too. Once, my host mom forgot to prepare the salad, so what did she do?? She took a tomato, cut it in half, and we each ate half of a tomato (plain) for our salad. Tomatoes are extremely popular here, and it is not strange if someone just picks up a tomato and starts eating it as if it were an apple.
For the main part of the dinner, we have had many, many, many, many, different things. I don’t think that we have repeated exactly what we ate for dinner more than two or three times since I have been here. (and I will have been here 8 weeks on Friday).
Here are some examples of what we will eat for dinner:
Toast that we put tomato and shrimp (in a creamy sauce) on top.
Eggplant with tomato slices and cheese sauce on top.
Grilled sirloin steak with mushrooms we picked in the forest.
Lasagna. (They put carrots in their lasagna too)
Lamb chops with artichokes (boiled artichokes that we ate with butter, salt, and pepper).
Salmon baked in a white sauce with pasta on the side.
Risotto with shrimp.
Pizza (once) that we cooked in the pizza oven. (Actual pizza oven that you need to start a fire in a few hours before you make the pizza) Everything, even the sauce was homemade!
Chicken with rice and a red beet salad.
Sushi. Yes, I ate sushi tonight for dinner. We had four differett types: salmon, shrimp, avacado, and sushi rolls. They were all very good.
Various other things that I can’t think of at the moment…
After dinner, for ‘dessert’ we will often eat cheese. This cheese is specifically for after dinner. It is usually a softer cheese. Occasionally we will eat it with knäckebröd, but not always.
On Saturday, we will generally eat godis, which is basically candy that you pick from bins in the grocery store. There are probably 50 different types of candy you can choose from. It is tradition that Saturday is godis day. (Godis på lordags)

Language-
On a side note, I know many of you are wondering about my Swedish. I am happy to say that my Swedish is coming along quite nicely now. (You can probably tell because my English is slowly getting worse.) When someone points to something, says the word in Swedish, then asks me what it is in English, I sometimes have a hard time remembering what we would call it, for example, a dresser that you put clothes in.
On the other hand, in my Swedish class, one of our assignments was to write a letter to the editor (though not actually sent...). I wrote the entire thing in Swedish, and only had to use a dictionary to look up the word 'wasted'. I think something clicked the other day, as now I can understand nearly...60-70% of what is being said. Some conversations, I understand everything, others, if I don't pay attention in the beginning, I don't understand anything. My Swedish speaking is not that good yet, but it is slowly getting better.
Random story, I never remember dreams (maybe 2 or 3 a year) but on Monday night I had a dream that was in half English, half Swedish! YAY! It was really random and about finding things in drawers, but oh well, it was partly in Swedish!
Hej då, Kristi

1 comment:

  1. OMG Kristi...I feel like I am reading Breanna's blog posts from 3 years ago! Especially the part about dreaming in Polish...I mean Swedish! And your detailed descriptions of the food over there are simply amazing...I could pass for an expert in Swedish cuisine! Thank you for your stories and your posts...I hope you keep sharing your adventures with all of us back home!
    Have you heard about the NHS Girls swim/dive team? They are rocking this year...they even won the Lakeville Relays this past weekend!
    Take care and have a blast over there!
    Hank Tetreault

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