Attack of the killer tomato sauce

So, can you guess the number one relationship clash that constantly rears it's ugly head between me and M?  Finances?  Children?  Marriage?  Future hopes and dreams?  Nope.  It's tomato sauce.  Both of us are completely appalled and offended by the other's use of all types of tomato-based products, including ketchup, salsa, spaghetti sauce, and pizza sauce.

It all started when I first got here and watched M sit down to a big plate of plain spaghetti noodles, squirt ketchup all over them, and start chowing down.  I was horrified...it looked absolutely disgusting.  He informed me calmly that "Ketchup was invented to put on pasta."  Oh really??  Swedes are indoctrinated into this gruesome practice in early childhood, making it seem normal and delicious.  Kids here go nuts for pasta with ketchup.  Barf.

A few months later I decided to make a nice spaghetti sauce from scratch, with fresh basil and oregano, wild mushrooms, ground moose meat, and I let it simmer for a good couple of hours.  What does M do?  Heaps a pile of pasta onto his plate, spoons a pile of spaghetti sauce next to the pasta to eat separately, and squirts ketchup all over the pasta.  *facepalm*

 Next it was my turn to offend M.  He made me a traditional and well-loved Swedish dish with the provocative name "Jansson's Temptation"...layers of sliced potatoes, onions, and anchovies baked in cream with bread crumbs on top.  Think a fancy, thicker version of scalloped potatoes.  It was good, but I thought it was a little bland, so I squirted some ketchup on the side and started dipping my potatoes into it.  M looked at me like I had just kicked his dog in the face.  He told me I was ruining the food and he never wanted to make it for me again.  The same thing happened when he made burgers from wild boar meat.  Burgers = ketchup, right?  WRONG.  Apparently burgers made from wild game are not to be "ruined" with ketchup, even though I thought it tasted great.

 We had some guests over for dinner recently and I made a cold Greek quinoa salad with sundried tomatoes, feta, kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, lemon juice, and red onions.  While I was making it, M started concocting a crushed-tomato based sauce on the stove that included chunks of moose meat and slabs of extra-fatty bacon.  When I asked what it was, he said it was "to your salad."  ?!?!?  I tried to calmly explain that I didn't think the flavors would work well together, but of course when dinner rolled around he smothered his portion of my fresh, cold salad with his greasy invention and claimed it to be delicious.

Don't even get me started on salsa usage in this household...when I put it on my scrambled eggs he looks like he's about to vomit, and I just turn the other way when he mixes it in with his pizza sauce.  As with all relationship compromises I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one and let the other person get on with their repulsive tomato sauce habits.

Things I Like About Sweden, Part 4: Hearts and more hearts

Swedes seem to enjoy making things in the shape of hearts...I'm not sure where this comes from, but luckily they don't overdo it too much or else it'd be tacky. My favorite standard heart-shaped Swedish items are:

Outhouse Doors

and Waffles

Incidentally, last Friday was International Waffle Day, which started out as a religious holiday celebrating the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary ("our lady" = "vår fru"), then got deliciously and blasphemously twisted into "våffla."  Mmmm, thanks Swedes...I'll take a hot heart-shaped waffle with jam over a hard church bench any day.

Viking in the Oven

Well folks, it's official: I'm expecting, with child, knocked up, in a family way, eating for two, up the duff, and my eggo is preggo.  Our little Ameriswede is due to make an appearance in mid-August, just in time for his or her birthday to be celebrated with loads of crazy Swedish crayfish parties! 

Since this is my first pregnancy I've been a little obsessed with over-analyzing every little symptom that comes along, but luckily everything has been pretty laid-back compared to some of the horrific morning sickness that some of my poor friends have dealt with.  I took a positive pregnancy test on the first evening we arrived in the US for my brother's wedding in early December....in a hotel room in Chicago, after sneaking one last taste of a sadly-missed Leinenkugel's beer.  We managed to keep the big news undercover during most of our trip to the states with the excuse of me designated-driving after my brother's wedding rehearsal dinner and reception, and luckily I wasn't feeling anything different at that point aside from a little jet lag.

Things started to kick in when I was around 6 weeks along...I was putting on mascara and it smelled really strong.  I thought, "Since when does mascara smell so weird and chemically?"  Then suddenly the smell and taste of coffee, which I usually love, just didn't seem appetizing at all.  Not like an instantaneous barfing reaction, just more of the sensation that coffee was suddenly a weird non-food that didn't interest me in the slightest.

By the time we made it home for Swedish Christmastime, I was feeling pretty blech and had developed a new skill of being able to nap on demand, anytime, anywhere.  I was also amazed at how offensive certain smells and foods had become, like pissed off that certain things could smell so revolting.  We went out to M's parents for Christmas dinner and I was a very quiet, green girl at the dinner table while a huge array of strange and strong-smelling foods were passed under my nose.  Most typical Swedish Christmas foods consist of salty cured meats, mini sausages and meatballs, salmon, pickled herring, deviled eggs, meat pâtés, and other delicacies.

Yum for some, yuck for me. (Wikipedia photo)

My best friends that day were plain potatoes, fizzy water, and bread.  I managed to sit through the dinner and hopefully be polite while all the time thinking that I'd pay someone a million dollars to hold a fan blowing minty fresh air on my face and feed me a plain fruit salad.  M's intuitive mother had a clue that something strange was going on and pretty much read the pregnancy signs all over my queasy face (she told me this after I broke the news to her a few weeks later).  Luckily I never got sick enough to the point of actual vomiting, and now that I'm into my second trimester I've been feeling close to normal for the most part.  Unfortunately I have a feeling that Swedish Christmas food might forever be on my list of "yuck" memories.

Early pregnancy is a weird time...you feel like crap most of the time, the happy-sweet-motherly feelings are far from kicking in, and you can't tell anyone what's going on because it's too early.  Now that the cat is out of the bag I'm starting to get more and more excited and things seem to be cooking up as they should be.

I feel unbelievably lucky to be giving birth in Sweden after watching movies like this one and learning more about the backwards way that hospitals treat pregnant women in the US. 

Here in Sweden, all prenatal visits and births are overseen by midwives instead of doctors, and the general attitude seems to be, "What can we do for you?"  They've been very hands-off with me so far and have treated me like the normal, healthy person I am instead of something that needs to be diagnosed and treated.  We'll have an ultrasound in a few weeks and I'm excited to catch a glimpse of our little squirt soon.  Needless to say this blog is about to get much more baby-fied, starting now!

Blog-slackin'

I haven't been keeping up with my blog lately; we were traveling in the US for my brother's wedding for a few weeks, took a couple of ferry boat trips out to M's parent's island for Christmas and New Year's, and now we're back to our wintry Swedish wonderland so I'll try to write more soon.

For now, all I have is the questionably-flavored ice cream I came across at the supermarket this evening:

I don't know where "wiener nougat" comes from, and I really don't want to speculate.  The additional nuts are not encouraging.

And with that, God Jul och Gott Nytt År everyone!!

My Little Pony Steak

So, the other evening we were on the sofa enjoying another nice, calm, civilized Swedish reality television show called Halv åtta hos mig (Seven-thirty with me), where four people have a competition to see who can cook the nicest and best meal for the other three people.  Swedish reality TV is nothing like the trashy, shocking, guilty pleasure goodness of American reality TV...you'll rarely see drunken bar fights, skanky hookups in hot tubs, or rock stars showing off their bling.  Instead, there's a show where neighbors who aren't getting along learn how to solve their problems with the help of nice, calm mediators; a show where people who have gotten too far into debt learn how to solve their problems with the help of nice, calm financial experts; and (one of my favorites) a show where nice, calm, lonely farmers out in the countryside try to find true love.

Did I mention that the television shows here are nice?  And calm.

Anyway, we're watching a show where a man was preparing a lovely home-cooked meal, and he pulls a large steak out of the oven and slices it up for his guests.  My Swedish has gotten capable enough to follow along with these shows for the most part, but I usually end up bugging M to translate something for me at least several times per show.

I hear the narrator say, "Ponny kött."

Pony meat???

Surely I've heard incorrectly.  They interview a nice, polite young lady who was a guest at the man's dinner table and she distinctly says, "Ponny köttet var väldigt gott."  The pony steak was really good.

I turned to M and said, "HORSE MEAT??"  He looked at me like I was an idiot.  "Yes, horse meat is one of the best meats you can eat.  How is it different from eating cows?"  I just sat there in shock, trying to let the idea of eating horses sink in.  Then I started bombarding M with questions: "Do they raise horses specifically for meat here?  Do they eat people's pet horses when they get old??"  And most importantly:  "Have I been served horse meat since I've lived here???"

The answer was no, but it turns out they do sell horse meat under the name hamburgerkött, which makes me a little nervous about shopping in the deli section of the store from now on.  I'm still having a hard time wrapping my brain around it, even though I've happily chowed down on pigeon breasts, wild boar pâté, moose hearts, duck stomachs, and sheep livers since I moved here.

Then I started thinking about it and realized how many important icons of my childhood involved beautiful, majestic horses:

Swedes love their horses too...there are riding stables everywhere and horses seem to be loved and taken care of better than most places in the US.  But according to Wikipedia:

In ancient Scandinavia, the horse was very important, as a living, working creature, as a sign of the owner's status, and symbolically within the old Norse religion. Horses were slaughtered as a sacrifice to the gods and the meat was eaten by the people taking part in the religious feasts.

Hmm.  As nice and civilized as Swedes have become, it's still a bit of a shock to see hints of their savage Viking roots throughout the culture here (not that we Americans even come close to winning any peace-and-love competitions, but this blog is about Sweden).  And as much as I realize I'm a product of my own horse-worshiping culture and eating them really shouldn't be much different from eating cows, moose, or deer...I'm still not sure I'm ready to sink my teeth into this:

The perfect fall weekend

We just spent a long weekend out on M's parent's island with M's best friend, wife, two daughters, and a total of four crazy little hunting dogs running around.  Our friends were visiting from Göteborg on the western side of the country, and they brought us fresh lobster and a huge bag of shrimp. The weather was unbelievably gorgeous...bright sun, the water was like a mirror, and just a little fall chill in the air. 

This photo was taken just a few hundred meters up the road from our house.

The bay where we live, headed out toward M's parent's island.

 Island sheep

 Island ponies

 This pony is so teeny, he looks like a dog.

One of the best things about M's parent's house is their wood-fired hot tub out on the dock.  There's something about soaking in hot salt water and then jumping back and forth into the chilly sea that makes you feel like ten pounds of dirt has been scrubbed out of your skin. 

 We stopped to grill hot dogs on the way out to watch seals on the rocks

A grey seal

 Taking photos of swimming seals from a bobbing boat wasn't easy, but with a good zoom I managed to catch this guy's eerily human-like eyes.

Swan launch

More funny food

The name of this candy is "Floppy Scum Dolphins."  All I can say is WOW.

I didn't have the guts to try these...but just to clarify a little, skum here really means "foam," not the type of scum we think of in English as something floating on top of old bathtub water.  Still....no thanks.

Bye bye, American food...

Every time I start to feel like Sweden isn't really that much different from where I grew up (Michigan), all it takes is a quick stroll through the grocery aisles to remind me how far away from home I really am.  While all the trees, fields, barns, and mossy forests might look a lot like the upper Midwest, the food is much different and obviously most American brands of food are nowhere to be found.

Honestly, I'm thankful for this...we eat WAY too much processed crap in America and Swedish food is mostly based on whole, natural ingredients instead of different parts of corn that have gone through five different chemistry labs and processing plants on the way to our stomachs.  The food here is delicious and I can find substitutes for most things that I really miss if I need to.  But, I can't help feeling a little bit of nostalgia in saying goodbye to the food that just isn't sold here:

Root beer is nowhere to be found.  No substitutes either and therefore no cold, frosty root beer floats.  

Yellow mustard is not used here.  There are a lot of different types of mustard (senap), and fancy brown spicy mustards are available, which I like.  But, regular everyday mustard here is weird and sweet and sticky....and everyone will look at you like you're nuts if you put it on a turkey sandwich.  

Chocolate chips are absolutely not available...although there are lots of different types of chocolate and wonderful stuff like Nutella, but no chocolate chips = no chocolate chip cookies.  Boo.

 All brands of American Candy are, you guessed it, apparently only sold in America.  None of our delicious chocolatey peanutty candy bars are here, and Swedish candy is mostly based on gummy, licorice-flavored, half-salty concoctions.  Great for the diet because it's so gross for the tastebuds.

Same goes for all this junk: no Chips Ahoy, Oreos, Fig Newtons, or Nutter Butters.  Anyone else starting to realize how us Americans have become such fat-a$$es?
(***Update*** Just found out that they DO sell Oreos here, they just started last year :)

Cilantro doesn't seem to be grown or used in Sweden.  Can't find it anywhere.

There are a few sad excuses for Mexican food, but as a girl who lived in Guatemala for two years, it doesn't even come close.  They put CUCUMBERS on their "tacos" here.  No, no, no.  And on top of that, no Pacifico (my favorite) beer to wash it down with.

So, that's my food eulogy for the day...there is still plenty of crap food available here in Sweden, and I feel a twinge of shame every time I see my country's wonderful contributions to the world when we drive past the golden arches.  And I'm sure all this junk food tastes much better in my nostalgic mind than it does in real life....in the meantime I'm sure I'll survive on all the fresh and delicious real food here in Sweden.

You Know You've Been In Sweden Too Long When....

I compiled this list of my favorites from a longer list on an expat website...


You know you've been in Sweden too long when:

1. A stranger on the street smiles at you, and you assume (a) he's drunk, (b) he's insane, (c) he's an American, or (d) all of the above.
2. You can pick out the real blondes from the fake blondes.
3. Your coffee consumption exceeds six cups per day and the coffee is too weak if there are less than ten scoops per pot.
4. The first thing you do when entering a bank, post office, drugstore, etc. is to look for the queue number machine, and you accept you'll have to stand in line in order to take a queue number.
5. The reason you take a ferry to Finland is (a) duty-free vodka, (b) duty-free beer, or (c) to party hearty; no need to get off the ferry in Helsinki, just turn around and keep partying all the way back to Sweden.
6. You hear people speaking loudly on the train.  You immediately assume (a) they are drunk, (b) they are Americans, or (c) all of the above.
7. You know how to fix herring 105 different ways.
8. Your front step is beginning to resemble a shoe store.
9. You only have two facial expressions, smiling or blank.
10. You don't find it strange when a couple has been engaged for six years and have no plans to get married.
11. You assume that anyone who apologizes after bumping into you is a tourist.
12. You get into a Mercedes taxi cab and think nothing of it.
13. You think it's normal that EVERYTHING is regulated and you obey the rules voluntarily.
14. Pigs say "nerf, nerf," frogs say, "kvack, kvack," and roosters say, "kuckileku."
15. You can use the words bra, fart, and slut in a sentence without giggling.
16. You refer to weeks by their number.
17. You are no longer surprised when you see topless women, full-frontal male nudity, or hear the word "f*ck" on prime-time television.
18. You think an hour-and-a-half cycle on your machine is a "quick wash."
19. A sharp intake of breath has become part of your vocabulary, as has the word, "Ja haaaa."
20. You use "mmmmm" as a conversation filler.
21. You eat your pancakes and waffles with jam instead of syrup.
22. Silence is fun.
23. Your native language has deteriorated to the point where you begin to "eat medicine," "open the television," "close the lights off," "take a beer," "look upon TV" and tell someone to "follow with me." 
24. You associate pea soup with Thursday.
25. Your idea of nightlife has been reduced to a few teenagers hanging out in front of the railway station on a Friday night.
26. The fact that all the V's and W's are together in the phone book seems okay.
27. You no longer have to search for the flushing mechanism.
28. When you're hungry you can peel a boiled potato like lightning.
29. You accept that 80 degrees C in a sauna is chilly, but 20 degrees C outside is freaking hot.
30. You think that riding a bicycle in the snow is a perfectly sensible thing to do.
31. Someone calls you a "good moron" first thing in the morning and you smile in acknowledgment.
32. You think it's more fun to stay home and drink than to go out.
33. You get extremely annoyed when the bus is two minutes late.
34. Americans start to look entertaining, witty, and fun.
35. You think that if you smoke a joint you will wind up (a) in an insane asylum, (b) as a habitual criminal, or (c) all of the above.
36. Your wardrobe now consists of 20 different shades of black and gray.
37. You think that an unripe tomato wedge on a limp leaf of iceberg lettuce can be called a salad.
38. Seeing a young woman with lit candles stuck to her head no longer disturbs you.
39. You become extremely skilled at assembling pre-packaged furniture kits.
40. You mutter "Oy, oy, oy," to yourself continually even if you are the only one in the room.
41. When someone asks you for "sex," you assume they mean a half-dozen.
42. You would rather squeeze past someone and bump into them in the process instead of saying "Excuse me."
43. You are no longer offended by the fact that you are a Swedish size XL when at home you are a medium.
44. You begin to understand Norwegian and Danish.
45. Someone cuts you off on the freeway and instead of giving them the finger, you simply mumble "eedeeyout" under your breath.
46. You aren't surprised to see children trick-or-treating on Easter, all dressed up as witches.
47. You are concerned when the picture on the front page of the paper is not of some random person watering their garden or of a child holding an animal.
48. Anything really good is "giant good."
49. You eat pizza with a knife and fork.
50. You accept that you pay bills at the post office, pick up packages from the grocery store, and you have to drive 5 miles to find a mailbox to put your outgoing mail in.
51. You know that "religious holiday" means "let's get hammered."
52. Paying $6 for a cup of coffee seems reasonable.
53. "Candles" are a permanent feature on your weekly shopping list.
54. It's your birthday and YOU have to make the cake.

Crayfish party!

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to participate in a traditional Swedish Kräftskiva, or crayfish party.  These parties originated back when it was illegal to catch crayfish until the crayfish trapping season started in late August. 

Our landlords here on the farm opened up one of the barns and invited all the tenants who live here to come and celebrate...I think there were around 60-70 people in total.  The barn was decked out with paper lanterns and a big stereo system with disco lights, which really came in handy later in the evening when the tipsy dancing began.  Unfortunately M was away at sea, but his brother was here to help initiate me on proper crayfish-partying.  The rules are pretty simple: grab a crayfish, crack it open and suck out as much meat and juice as you can, sing lots of rowdy songs, and (most importantly) drink snaps at the end of every song.  Some neighbors gave me a taste of dill-flavored snaps, which I don't think would work with very many foods in very many situations except for washing down crayfish!

As one might expect, there is not a hell of a lot of meat inside a crayfish.  And, it takes some work getting the little buggers open.  So, between singing at the top of your lungs and drinking a shot of booze every few minutes while having not-quite-so-much food in your stomach, you end up getting really drunk, really fast.  Here's the official version of the drinking song Helan Går, they way it's supposed to be sung:

Loosely translated, the words mean:

 

The whole shot goes
     Sing hop fa-da-ra-la-la-la-lay 

The whole shot goes 
Sing hop fa-da-ra-la-lay
And he who doesn't take the whole shot 
  Doesn't get the half shot either
The whole shot goooooooooes
[Drink the whole shot]
Sing hopp fa-da-ra-la-lay

Now, here's how the song ends up sounding toward the end of the night (not my video): 

It was a really fun party, especially since my house was just a few hundred tipsy meters down the road at the end of the night.  Next year I'll try to remember to eat more bread to balance out all the booze, my hangover will thank me in the morning.

Another trip to Kallskär

We spent the weekend out on Kallskär again, and this time we brought the kayak.  The weather was gorgeous, the water was warm, and our bellies were full of fresh smoked fish.

If you ever go on vacation with a group of Swedes, you will notice a huge difference between the American and Swedish style of "taking it easy."  There is no such thing as idly lazing around on a Swedish holiday: wake up, drink coffee, take a swim, eat a breakfast smorgås (sandwich), pile into the rowboat, set out the fishing nets, return to the cabin, drink more coffee, eat cake, sip a little whisky, pile back into the rowboat, head to a different island for snorkeling and exploring, drink beer in the sunshine, haul in the fishing nets on the way back, clean the fish, hang up the nets and pick seaweed off them, scrub off the boats, cut up firewood, start the smoker, fix the dock, haul kelp out of the sea to put on the garden, cut down weeds, take a paddle in the kayak, eat smoked fish and drink wine, take a walk, drink some more beer, take another swim, sip a little whiskey, and fall into bed completely and totally satisfied.

Flounder, whitefish, and bass, fresh from the Baltic Sea.  We cleaned the fish and packed them in salt for a couple of hours, then smoked them with juniper branches.  Stockholmers pay hundreds of kronor for fresh smoked fish....we had so much we had to give some to M's parents. 

Triss on the lookout for fish (or anything else that can possibly be chased and barked at).  This crazy guy chased seagulls up and down the rocks for about two hours and ended up with horribly ragged paws.  He still hasn't learned that it's impossible to catch a seagull.

Timon patiently waiting for M to return from a spin in the kayak.

A summer storm rolled through with some beautiful cloud formations.

Not to brag, but...

As the proud daughter of a former beer-truck driver, I couldn't help noticing this stellar advertising slogan on a can of Danish Carlsberg beer the other day:

"Probably" the best beer in the world??  After growing up surrounded by pompous, over-the-top American advertising, this seems so funny and wishy-washy to me.  I'm used to hearing about the "king of beers" and "champagne of beers."  As for Carlsberg....hey, you'll probably like it, and maybe you won't, but you know, whatever.