Lifecruiser

Tonight is Walpurgis Night (Valborgsmässoafton). It’s when the spring season is welcomed by us Swedes.

We celebrate it with bonfires, choir singing about the spring and fireworks. The festivities goes on over the whole country.

Though moder nature very often has surprises for us this day with really cold weather and it has even been snowing on Walpurgis for many years…

It’s like King Bore (the winter) must have a last blast before he goes to rest ;-)

But not this year, so it’s a good start of the spring and summer.

Happy Walpurgis!

* F I R E W O R K S B A N G S *

I love old books. This is a cookbook from 1930. The Princesses cookbook with old recipes, both everyday cooking and partyfood from that time.

Browsing through it, you can notice that cooking has changed a lot. Not any fast food in there. The cooking was taking more time then and the ingredients were different.

There is a lot of recipes that no one is cooking any more, but never the less very interesting to read. Then of course I’m a hungry monster, so I may have more interest than you in these kind of matters *lol*.

What do you say about these odd recipes:

- Deep fried tinned sprats cured in brine
- Tongue salad (lightly salted bullock tongue)
- Oven grilled calf brain
- Genuine turtle soup
- Bullock tail soup
- Oven cooked eel
- Cooked glazed calf shoulder
- Cooked smoked pig head
- Cooked pig feet
- Steam cooked hen
- Blood pudding

Getting any hungry yet….?

I guess it was a matter of eating what they could get over and mostly locally produced grocerys. A lot of the swedish folks were farmers, that was how they got their food. Not so much imported food and not so influenced of other countries cooking as we are today here in Sweden.

Of course there is a lot of other more tasty recipes, but that is some how not so fun to write about…. The dessert and cakes recipes are many, so I’m sure there is something to get there. Here is a picture of one of the three princesses cake which had the taste of sweet almond and nougat.

The really useful parts in this cookbook is:

a) All the sauce recipes. That is almost like a gold mine, because no one ever does any sauces any longer, so not many have the knowledge how to. I will definite explore that one further.

b) Other old swedish meals that was counted as true everyday fare, but is on the way to be outdated. They are actually really good. Many of them easy to make and not so expensive. So I’ll try to keep some of them up on the menu.

c) Described details of how to prepare certain food from the scratch. As an example how to lard and sew up a bird - or the different parts of a whole pig or bullock illustrated.

The difference in this old cookbook is that there is no ready ingredients to just mix together, everything is done from scratch with local fresh ingredients. Some of them demands a lot of preparing. The house wifes seemed to have more time over for that then - or didnt have any choice.

I love the extra advices in the end of the cookbook:

1. One huge list of tools needed in a kitchen, counted to a sum of approx. 450 swedish crowns ($59) in 1929. There is absolutely everything they could possible use in a kitchen - even for cleaning the kitchen and the kitchen staffs shoes!

2. Very detailed cleaning advices for iron stoves, silver, windows and washing of white curtains (!). The curtains washing procedure was quite advanced and involved whipping soft soap, turpentine and ammonia. They were supposed to lay in that mix over the night too. No wash machine lazyness. I wonder how dirty they were, demanding that washing procedure….

3. Information about the newest type of stove used at that time, AGA spisen, with coke as fuel.

4. A list of different foods chemical composition, splitted in percentage of albumin, fat, carbohydrate, water, salt and waste. That’s all. Quite different from todays cookbooks that lists the energy, protein, iron and vitamins in the food. People are more aware today and take an active part in their diet.

We’ll see if I manage to cook something from it some day, I promise to report if I do!

Care for a short Swedish language lesson again…?

The word “sex” in Swedish means both the digit 6 and to have sex. That can cause some misunderstandings if you’re not quite awear of it.

For example if you want to buy 6 pieces of something, you can’t just say: - Jag vill ha sex. (I want to have sex).

Or could you…? Uhum…

Warning: If you decide to try this, you’re on your own, we can’t be held responsible for any smacks or other damages you get.

Say hello to out newest friend :-) We only met him today and he already wanted us to take him out for dinner. He was very pushy about that, forcing us to move away from the lake actually.

Yesterday and today we’ve been out walking because of the nice springtime. You’ll never know when it’s gonna be a weather change over here, so: Carpe Diem!

We tried to take pics of a Squirrel too, but he was too quick for us :-) We have one that always jumps from tree to tree and to the house roof on the house in front of us. It’s nice to see some animals even though we live in the suburbs of the capital.

The Roe Deers are still coming here, right outside our windows, despite the fact that spring has come. They have been hanging around here all winter - even in daytime - and we haven’t been able to take any pics of them. This was the first one yesterday.

There is a lot of different spieces of birds here too. I guess it’s because the neighbourhood has a lot of old trees where they can get insects and seeds to eat. And some left over crumbs from the humans. I especielly like the woodpecker and the blackbird. The blackbird has the most beautiful song - no other swedish bird beats his trilling sound. He has been trilling very early in the mornings for a while now, but that isn’t disturbing at all, just truly enjoyable - like beeing on a concert.

In Sweden we count Anemone Hepatica as a true springtime sign. Even the white Wildwood Windflower, but we haven’t seen any of those yet. They use to cover all ground in the wood, like a white carpet.

It really is springtime, so the only thing that’s missing is: all the love couples hand in hand, kissing every where!!!

Ah, what the heck, we’ll start…..

* L O U D K I S S I N G S O U N D S *

To do some small talk in Sweden is actually called “kall prat” (meaning cold talk or chat or something similar if you try to translate it right off).

The most popular subject to talk about is the weather - and that’s cold - so that’s it ;-)

After 9 months of cold weather (!), we really long for the summer in June-August. No wonder we worries and talk much about the weather…

Actually I think that we deserve to have a warm summer this year more than ever, because last summer it rained for 4 weeks in a row during the big vacation leave (July).

I long for the summer! So can you please please give us some summer?

QUESTION: What are the most common subject you’re small talking about in your country?

As a sunday pleasure, I thought I should invite you to our city, the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. (Stock = log, holm = islet or small island). There is no clear evidence of how it got it’s name.

The earliest mention of Stockholm dates from 1252 (not counted as town until 1270), so we really do have an old town. The most popular part of it is called The Old Town and have very old buildings with narrow streets (Mårten Trotzigs Alley measures 35 inches between the walls!)
and a special athmosphere of time aging, like you were thrown back in time.

The mentions I’ve heard from tourists is that Stockholm has interesting architecture, it’s beautiful, clean, green (38 parks) and with a lot of water. Often called The Northern Venice - no wonder - it’s 14 islands joined by 53 bridges! The city is one third water, one third green and the last third is urbanized.

Mr Lifecruiser forced me to write this fact: Stockholm region has about 54 golf courses too.

The beautiful and popular stockholm archipelago starts here with it’s 24.000 islands, rocks and skerries. The sweatwater Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic Sea at the sluice. Actually it’s several sluices, the most central’s name is Carl Johan after a swedish king, but it’s also called “divorce ditch” among people, because of all the problems and swearing that’s going on when boat people are going through the sluice with their boats ;-)

You can even go fishing in the middle of the city. The unpolluted swiftly-flowing water that runs through the city has the greatest number of fish species in the region. Salmon trout, pike, perch, bream, and salmon. The biggest known salmon caught there weighed 48 pounds.

Stockholm has 760 000 inhabitants. Greater Stockholm 1.900.000. (Sweden’s total: 9 millions). The average Stockholmer is 39 years old, earns SEK 20.500 ($2.622) per month, and has 1.36 children. And what about this fact: Stockholm has more single-person households than any other capital in the world. I can’t decide if it’s good or bad…. I think bad. I can’t imagine that all of them really wants to be single…?

Now we comes to the most important stuff for the hungry monsters like me: Sweden publishes more cookbooks per capita than any other country in the world, averaging one per day. We’re really appreciating good food, wanting variations in the recipes and have taken up cooking from all over the world. Only in Stockholm there is said to be between 1600-2500 restaurants. What can I say? We like to eat… Or maybe we need more because of the cold weather?

Mostly people come to Stockholm for the food, the design and the music. We enjoy the highest density of galleries and museums in the world, but there is so much other things to enjoy here too. After all, it’s a capital, so even the nightlife is high rated.

So what are you waiting for…?

NOTE: We’ve uploaded some old pics from The Royal Swedish Castle with surroundings, taken in springtime 2004. We were there to see the change of the royal guards (with horses, you know how much I love horses!) - and it was freezing cold. Brrr… Cold winds made our poor camera hands stiff, so no good photos…

Lifecruisers Royal Castle Photos

Stockholm Town Guide about The Royal Castle
Wikipedia about Stockholm

In Swedish: Skål för Fredag!

It’s foggy outside this evening… and obviously even here on the inside… *lol*.

We decided to cheer for the fact that it’s Friday. Seems blurry to you? It is!

Swedes do have problems with the alcohol - it’s too expensive! We pay bloody high taxes, so no wonder that we love to shop tax-free…

We can only buy alcohol in special stores, called Systembolaget. Not in ordinary stores. Well, sort of, very light beers, but not wine or anything else.

Have a toast with us! What can we offer you to drink? Champagne? Campari? Martini? Whiskey? Mixed drink with a colored umbrella?

C H E E R S. . .

[ H I C K ]

Oh, and you better hurry up with your orders while we still are able to mix your drinks properly - if you don’t like surprises…

Swedish crispbread, the noisiest bread ever, has been crunched for 250 years. In the past its long life made things easier for housewives as they only had to bake once or twice a year. Today, people on the look-out for a healthy diet delight in its rich source of fibre.

Its lasting qualities were proved in the Fourties when a tin containing crispbread was found in the Stockholm attic of the Schumachers bakery after the owners death. It had been baked in 1897 exclusively for Andrée the explorer and his north Pole trip in the hot air balloon Eagle. The ill fated expedition didn’t last very long, but the bread in the attic that the baker Schumacher had kept as a memento was still edible after almost 50 years!

Knäckebröd
Recipe for 12 round cakes

50 g yeast
0,5 L lukewarm water
1 L rye flour (or oatmeal)
400-500 ml wheat flour
1 tsp salt

Dissolve yeast in water and add the rest of the ingredients. Let dough rise for 40 mins. Roll out as thinly as possible, cut round cakes and place them on a tray. Prick cakes with a knitting needle, golf peg or similar. Leave to rise for 30 mins. Bake at minimum 250 degree celsius for 3-4 mins, turn the cakes over and bake for another 2-3 mins.

Source: “Things Swedish” by Mari Hemming

Generally people don’t bake crispbread themselves any more, we buy it in the store. There is a lot of different brands, shapes and taste to buy. We often buys the heartshaped “Leksands knäcke”, see our photo.

I haven’t tried to bake the recipe above on my own - yet. We eat a lot of crispbread, its really yummy, the crispy feeling is kind of addicting. Its suitable to eat together with the dinner meals and especially soup.

Or just as a snack meal in the night with some good stuff on it. You can put almost anything on top… Like Dagwood, famous for his super-duper sandwiches, in the good old comic Blondie. I feel really connected to him, as he loves food too :-)

Something really yummy is to put on some creamy potatoes au gratin (with onion and garlic) left overs from the dinner, in the middle of the night after a party or something nice like that.

The Swedish crispbread is one of the typical swedish edible things that we Swedes really long for when we’re away from home.

Writing about it made me hungry as usual…

A very important event for the Swedes has been held this evening, the voting for which song will be the participant for Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest for 2006. The Contest has been going on since 1956.

The winner of the Swedish songs this year is Carola with the song Evighet (Eternity). She is a very popular singer over here and she has a very good voice, no doubt about it! She has a very powerful voice and can sing everything from Gospel to Pop or ballads or whatever.

She will go to Athens to participate in the big contest 18-20 of May. She has come in 1st place once earlier, so she have routine. We have one more Swede participating there too, Sandra, who is representing Estonia.

Earlier times Sweden has come on 1st place in the contest:

1974 Abba, Waterloo
1984 Herrey’s, Diggi-loo Diggi-ley
1991 Carola, Fångad av en stormvind (Catched by a storm wind)
1999 Charlotte Nilsson, Take me to your heaven

Usually, we do have a habit of getting pretty high up in the ranking.

Eurovisions Song Contest 2006

Secret whisper: Personally I’m often fond of United Kingdoms and Irelands contributions….

When asked what he would like for dinner, chances are the average Swedish man will answer “Mothers Meatballs”, traditionally served with lingonberries. The berry contains a natural preservative and has enriched Swedish meals since before the days of regrigeration.

Although meatballs have a firmly established past in Sweden, the prefix “Mothers” dates from 1959. It arose in from the world heavyweight fight in the USA between Ingemar Johansson (challenger) and American Floyd Patterson (champion). During the build up to the match it emerged from the Swedes camp that his entire family were with him and that his mother was doing his cooking.

Because of this and because Johansson was often seen out in Manhattan nightlife, the Swedes unexpected victory caused a big, worldwide sensation, but his mothers meatballs received almost the same attention and it was even suggested that they provided the power for that celebrated right hook. The secret of mother Ebbas recipe? “Lots of onion,” according to the champion himself.

Classic meatballs

400 g minced meat
1/2 onion
150 ml milk or cream
1 egg
5 tbsp breadcrumbs
1-2 tsp salt
1-2 pinches allspice (alternative cayenne pepper, Dijon mustard or similar)
Butter and/or oil for frying

Mix milk or cream, breadcrumbs and spices and leave to soak for at least 10 mins. Peel onion and chop finely, brown on low heat. Mix all ingredients. Roll into small balls (works best with wet hands) and fry. First brown to seal, then lower heat and fry the meatballs in another saucepan or in a roasting dish in the oven.

Source:
“Things Swedish” by Mari Hemming

I can confirm that mothers meatballs (mammas köttbullar) really is delicious, but I wouldn’t do meatballs on only 400 g, I would do it on 1 kilo, because the are disappearingly yummy and if I’m going to dirty my hands with it, I want a lot of them. I wouldn’t take allspice, I would take white pepper and then grated onion instead of chopping it.

There are a lot of different recipes how to make them. Some put in a bit of liver pâté too, but I’ve never tasted that myself. I don’t use to change to another saucepan either or put it in the oven.

Usually we eat meatballs together with pasta and ketchup or boiled or mashed potato and the lingonberrys. There is always meatballs at the christmas dinner table too.

They’re perfect to throw into the freezer to take out and warm up again - or eat cold on a sandwich. A very useful picnic ingredient.

Oh my, I’m beginning to drool here….