Grabbed the mail this morning and realized today is not only Sophie's two-month birthday, it's also waffle day. Maybe I need to have a second breakfast. (And I wonder why I am still 10+ lbs overweight...)
In other food news, the big grocery store in town is launching an eco line. It's like a taste of Whole Foods right here in little Älmhult!
Today is cinnamon bun day (kanelbullens dag) in Sweden! Trays and trays were brought into the office this afternoon. Yes, we still had to work... the country's love for this pastry apparently does not warrant paid time off. :)
A few posts ago, I mentioned that the lingonberry was now in season. So when Lewis and I walked down to the farmer market (yes, it's a one-farmer market) yesterday to get some fresh raspberries for our morning waffles, I also picked up a half kilo of lingonberries. By the way, I erroneously posted that raspberries were already gone for the year, but we've been able to get them the past two weekends.
This morning I made lingonberry scones. And for dinner this week, I'm going to try this recipe for mustard-roasted salmon with lingonberry sauce. You carnivores out there would find a lot of good uses for lingonberries. There's the IKEA staple: Swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce. And I found this recipe for duck breasts in lingonberries and red wine.
To be truly Swedish, though, we should have picked the lingonberries ourselves. This time of year, you see lots of families on the side of the road and in the forest picking lingonberries. The former owners of our home left a lingonberry picker behind, but we've never gone out on our own lingon hunt. Honestly, I wouldn't trust myself to know that I was picking the right berry and could easily end up with something poisonous. I don't think Tito would appreciate that.
Maybe we'll be brave enough to try it next year...
Oh how I miss thee, house of bean
Your high-pitched whirling grinding machines
Your frother blowing like geyser steam
I sit and daydream over my double latte,
and enjoy the rest of the day in my own little caffeine part-ay
Yes, I am a coffee maniac (and a really bad poet). I found my ideal coffee shop today: Coffee Maniac in Malmö. Had a work meeting all day, and then found this creative oasis for my own little "fika." The city girl inside me was jumping-off-the-walls happy.
Ah yes, those festive swedes. It is the beginning of a wonderful season here... with the Christmas stars in everyone's windows, and glögg parties and ... er ... reindeer tongue.
Was invited to a "julbord" or Christmas Table dinner with some coworkers and our clients for the Asian catalog. We went to a mansion on the lake for this typically Swedish dinner. It starts with a fish table (lots of herring and salmon), then a cold meat table (which included pig's feet and reindeer tongue (hopefully not Rudolph!) and then warm dishes, then dessert, then candy. And I had some snaps and Christmas beer. Tomorrow is officially the beginning of it all with advent. We have our Swedish advent calendar with chocolates inside all ready to be opened.
A little more than 4 months into employment, I was finally able to take part in the English version of the IKEA tour called Älmhultsdagarna. After 2 days of visiting every department in IKEA and seeing vintage IKEA furniture, I remembered why I am such an IKEA freak. This company is awesome, and I feel really lucky to work here. The highlights for me were visiting the IKEA museum, where you could see how IKEA's style changed through the decades, and IKEA of Sweden, where one of the actual designers showed us how she came up with 3-4 different product designs. For one of them, she was shown the box that the floor lamp had to fit into, then told to design something creative. The engineers had already calculated transportation costs based on that size flat-pack box. And the product she had to design was a floor lamp with an uplight as well as a reading light. Really two different lamps in one. I've always heard about how IKEA designs the price tag first. Now I actually got to see it in action. For other products, she had more freedom, but of course it still had to have a low price.
Other places we visited included Swedwood, where they make many of the kitchen cabinet doors, wardrobe doors, etc., MODUL, where they bag up all the screws and wood dowels you need to assemble your furniture. It's all completely automated with robots, and each bag is weighed twice to make sure the right pieces are inside. So, if you buy IKEA furniture and are missing a screw, it's rare.
Oh yeah, we also got a tour of the distribution center in Älmhult. It's where all the flat-packs get shipped out to your nearest store. Actually, they don't get shipped to the U.S. from here, but throughout Scandinavia, Iceland and Greece. It was MASSIVE. And, again, everything is automated. I have some pictures of the distribution center (didn't bring my camera Day 1, so I don't have pics of the museum.) There are two pictures [pic 1][pic 2] of the huge yellow robotic cranes that place and retrieve pallets in a huge warehouse. It's ALL automated. No humans. A little creepy, like what if the robots from MODUL and the distribution center team up and turn on us? Anyway, it's hard to explain what's happening in those photos, but they basically fly down this track (with no lights because they don't have eyes. Really, they don't!) and put/retrieve flat-packs from the right spot.
OK, so what else have we been up to?
1. We got our Swedish license plate and passed Bilprovningen (Swedish inspection). It was quite a relief. As we sat there watching all their tests, Lewis said he doubted 50% of U.S. cars would pass. The other thing was that our Volvo was made for the U.S. market and has MPH on the speedometer and possibly different turn signals. I had been told to get my MPH blacked out and change out the lights. I didn't do anything and was fine. I did fail one thing, though. Everyone in Sweden has to have an orange road triangle in their car in case they break down. I totally forgot. We were let off with a warning and bought the triangle right away.
2. We made an offer on a house here in Älmhult!!!!! And they accepted. (Pictured here) The only thing 
that needs to be worked out is our move-in date. They want until July 1. We want May 1. So we'll see. All of our belongings, including spring clothes, bikes, etc, are sitting in Jönköping waiting for us to find a place to move into. And Lewis is just anxious to redo the kitchens and bathrooms. I think he visits IKEA every day. :)
3. Just to tie this whole entry back to the "box" theme. We found some boxed wine at the systembolaget (Swedish liquor store) in a nearby town. They had all sorts of varieties from France. I decided drinking red wine from a box just didn't feel right, so I picked a white wine to test. I love the idea of hauling cardboard boxes instead of glass bottles in my bike basket.
OK, that's all for now. We are really psyched about the house. More details on that soon ...
Hej då!
So, I'm not sure how else to say this ... but we have blood pudding in our refrigerator.
Ummm, yeah, I could read you the ingredients off the label, but the name pretty much says it all.
You should have seen me asking the person behind the counter at the Konsum (local grocery store) what the heck this was. I said in my broken Swedish ... "OK for min hund?"
Yes, this latest mouth-watering morsel of Swedish cuisine is for the one carnivore in our family: Tilly. We ran out of soft food for her to mix into her kibble. A Swedish coworker of mine who is into natural foods once said she mixes "blodpudding" into her dog's dish.
I figured what the heck. (Of course, when I got home I searched the Internet for an hour before I gave it to her!)
So what's the verdict? 
Well, I'm nervous it's going to give Tilly the runs. Lewis is worried it's going to turn her back into a wolf. I actually haven't seen her go so nuttso over food. I think I just stumbled onto a goldmine for the dog food industry.
Plus, it's just fun to gross Lewis out by asking if he fed Tilly her blood pudding yet.
Well, we're halfway there ... I've been here nearly 3 weeks and Lewis arrives 3 weeks from now. Being apart has been tough. Some days I worry that we made a mistake. I guess this is natural. I just really miss our life and friends in Denver. I'm glad we sold our house, but sad that it won't be ours anymore.
So I've been a little depressed the past few days. Today I decided I needed to try to snap myself out of it. It helped that I biked to work through 3 inches of snow and slid all over the place. It was pretty funny. The people here bike through anything so I decided to see how far I could push it. I almost wiped out a few times, but it put me in a pretty good mood by the time I made it to the office.
After work, just to fuel my upbeat spirits, I stopped by the systembolaget (government liquor store) to pick up some glögg. Glögg is THE holiday drink ... it's mulled wine, with things like cloudberries, cinnamon, raisins, etc. Have I mentioned that you can only buy wine and spirits at the systembolaget? It's Sweden's way of trying to limit alcohol consumption ... they make it REALLY difficult to buy alcohol. The shop is only open until 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and it's open until 2 p.m. on Saturdays. But you don't want to go then unless you're desperate. Instead, I go midweek when I don't have to wait in line. There's only one systembolaget in Älmhult, and the whole town seems to show up on Saturday mornings.
Anyway, I'm not sure what to make of the glögg. I think it would taste really good mixed with champagne. I think I'll try it this weekend. Anyone want to join me? :)
I made a salad tonight (17/11/2005), and when I pulled the lettuce out of the refrigerator, I realized that a pot of dirt was attached. It cracks me up just thinking about it. It appears I bought a ready-to-plant head of lettuce. The supermarkets here do the same thing with herbs. Though I was prepared for that one ... the plants were sitting on a shelf and I could see the pot. I thought it was really smart. Why buy cut leaves when you can keep growing the herb and just take a little at a time? I have cilantro growing on my windowsill ... though I think it would be just as happy in the fridge.
The grocery store is definitely an interesting place for a non-Swede. The first time I went, I was all proud of myself because I thought I had done a pretty good job of figuring everything out. I got to the checkout line and all my items ended up at the end of the conveyor. Went to bag everything and realized there ARE NO bags. I asked the girl next to me where she got her bag and she said at the front of the checkout counter ... like where all the gum usually is. I grabbed two and everyone around me looked shocked. Apparently, the woman said, you must pay for them. I looked at the cashier and she said, "Just take them."
So now I keep a bag in my purse, and I feel like a pro when I whip it out to bag my groceries.
Other grocery oddities and things that surprised me ... they don't use maple syrup, they don't have choices when it comes to most things, but they have a HUGE caviar section, you can find taco shells, they don't have tofu, yogurt comes in a milk container, and lots of condiments come in tubes, which makes me happy. :)
