Hi fellow fans of Francis Lam!  In case you were wondering, the Swedish article in question can be found here.

And for those of you who haven't seen, I'm on the front page of Salon Food today!  Here's the article.  There will be a follow-up recipe.

Did I just lose my authenticity cred for citing Martin Yan?  I don't care. I'M GOING ROGUE.

I'm watching Ballerina and falling in love.  You know, I wonder if the reason there are always so many octogenarians in the audience for opera and ballet is not that they are artforms for people with money, but that as you get older, you like to see the accomplishment that follows years, sometimes decades of training, accomplishments you know you will no longer be able to achieve in your lifetime.

I'm watching these gorgeous ballerinas bending like reeds, and I know that their fate would never have been possible for me.  I mourn the rigidity of my thirty-something body, but also the inflexibility of my future, the narrowing of my paths.  It's saudade, a sweet sorrow.

Johan's apartment was a little Swedish haven in the heart of downtown Manhattan -- all white walls, extremely sparse and airy.  But he was using these overturned crates as coffee tables out in the living room that looked impossibly familiar, so familiar they made my heart ring.  Could they be?  They couldn't be, could they?  I pointed them out to him.

ME: Those look like farmer's market crates.

JOHAN: Yeah, that's where I got them.

ME: From who?  Do you remember?

JOHAN: Yeah, from a guy on the, let's see...west side of the market, in the middle.  He sold them to me, I think they were $15, maybe $20 each.

Which means they absolutely had to be from the Paffenroths of Paffenroth Gardens at the Union Square Greenmarket.  My first job in New York was helping the Paffenroths sell vegetables at their stand.  Not only were they my first employer in New York, but they're also like my east coast parents.  Isn't it crazy that Johan was using some of the Paffenroths' crates as decoration in his house?  Maybe that's not crazy to anyone but me, but it was CRAZY to me.

I heard Ilse Crawford speak about emotional design over the summer.  She said that having a piece with history in your home brings life to a space in a way that no new object can.  She showed  slides of Mathias Dahlgren's restaurant in Stockholm's Grand Hotel, which I had been to, and talked about the 300-year-old tables with uneven legs.  The souls of meals past etched deep in the heart of the wood can have an effect on the meals eaten on them today.

Of course, I understood in theory.  But before this weekend, I've never had an interior object resonate with me so intensely before.  Here were these familiar crates in an unfamiliar downtown Scandinavian loft, among white cabinets and in front of a flat screen TV.  Here, they were clean, worn, weathered and beautiful objets that echoed the slightly uneven planks of the loft's painted floor.  They have a story of their own, but they also figure strongly in my personal history.

I spent my first few years in New York lifting, loading and emptying those wooden crates at the Greenmarket.  I know their exact width and weight in my arms.  I know the way the slats feel when they're moist with water and caked with the black dirt of Orange County.  I know how three can stack perfectly together in a little latticed package, and I know the particular clacking sound they make when they're stacked together at the end of the day. 

I've seen them packed with dewy red radishes at 6am, the green leaves cushioned in the center of two red stripes.  I've seen them full of beet tops and carrot greens and hacked onion stalks, ready to be put on the truck and carted back to the farm for compost.  I've sat on many of those crates to eat my egg sandwich after the rush of morning customers was gone; I've rested my tired feet on them, waiting for the tents to be put away for the evening.

Alex has told me that he's sold the crates to people in the past for $20, enough to cover the cost of the materials.  But he talks about selling those crates with the same bemused tone that he has when he talks about people buying purslane, which he grew up thinking was a weed, a nuisance.  But it was with some pride that he told me, and I told Johan, that crates with the initials PP carved into them (which one of Johan's has) were made by Alex's grandfather, Peter Paffenroth, and might be 100 years old.
 
There's something thrilling about the idea that these very simple objects, just nails and wood, which may have passed through my own hands, are finding new life in a totally unrelated place. And yet it's also ashes to ashes -- those crates have survived Peter Paffenroth, but who knows how long they'll have a place in Johan's home.  It was a wonderful wink and smile from my own past.  And now I want to tell Ilse Crawford, hey, I totally get it.

Lina put me in charge of the Janssons frestelse (left), a duty which I took very seriously.  It can be a challenge to make a dish you've never tasted -- how will you know if you got it right?  In that situation, the only way to go is to follow the recipe as close to the letter as possible.  But I ran into trouble hunting down Swedish anchovies.



On the left, we have standard Spanish anchovies cured in salt and preserved in olive oil.  On the right, you see Swedish "anchovies", which are not anchovies as we know them, but sprats.  They're cured in a sweet/salty water-based brine that tastes of Swedish spices -- allspice, clove, that kind of thing.  Absolutely not the same thing.

I had to stalk the Swedish anchovy for a day and a half before I found some.  Let no one say I lack persistence:

> 6 train to Wall St.
> IKEA ferry to Red Hook
@ IKEA - Find out they ran out of anchovies an hour before I got there
> IKEA Shuttle to Jay St.
> F train and walk to Eagle Provisions in Park Slope
@ Eagle Provisions - Closed for the night.  DOH!
> Walk home to Sunset Park, where I eat my disappointment in the form of half a roll of Göteborg Singoalla cookies, which I had purchased from IKEA
> Wake up the next morning, play hooky from work to hunt for anchovies, walk back to Eagle
@ Eagle Provisions - no anchovies
> Take the bus to Bierkraft
@ Bierkraft - not open until noon
> Walk to Union Market
@ Union Market - no anchovies
> Walk to Blue Apron Foods
@ Blue Apron Foods - no anchovies. Counter guy suggests Russ & Daughters, though my friend Emil tweeted in reply to my frantic request for advice that they have none this year
> Walk to Brooklyn Larder
@ Brooklyn Larder - they don't open for another half hour, but the guy who answers the door says there are no Swedish anchovies
> 2 to the 1 to Christopher St.
@ Gourmet Garage - no anchovies
@ Murray's - no anchovies
@ The Lobster Place - no anchovies
@ Citarella - no anchovies
> Cab to Gramercy to pick up some keys from my friend Sarah R.
@ Sunflower Diner - we have grapefruit and tea, Sarah suggests I try Schaller & Weber.
> Call Schaller & Weber:

ME: Do you have Swedish anchovies?

GUY: Of course we got Swedish ham.

ME: Not Swedish ham. Swedish ANCHOVIES.

GUY: Hold on.  [Muffled voice] Do we have Swedish anchovies?  ANCHOVIES.  Yeah? [Back into the mouthpiece] Yeah, we got 'em.

ME: Hmph. Alright, thanks.

> With great skepticism, take the 6 train up to 86th St., walk to 86th and 2nd.
@ Schaller & Weber - SUCCESS!  Stacks of anchovies in the refrigerator case, as well as all kinds of Swedish foods.   
> Take 6 train to the N train all the way home, where I reward my hard work with the other half roll of Singoalla cookies.

Here's another recipe adapted from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking (Husmanskonst).  Theories on the dish's etymology vary, but the basic recipe is onions, julienned potatoes, cream and Swedish anchovies.  I was intimidated by the amount of anchovy called for in his recipe, since nobody else seemed to include as much as he.  Even with half the anchovies, the dish tasted plenty saline to me. 

The anchovy liquor and sauteed onions add a unique sweetness to the dish -- again, this is a bit of a level 2 Swedish dish.  It's not for everyone, but I quite liked how the rich cream and gentle sweetness cut the umami sprat flavor.  Also, pretty nifty, you can do as I did and cook it 3/4 of the way through, cool and refrigerate, then travel on the subway with it to your destination, top up with a little cream and bake at 400 for 20 minutes until heated through, finishing with the broiler to brown the top.



 
Jansson's Temptation (Janssons frestelse)
Adapted loosely from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking

4 medium yellow onions
5 large Yukon Gold potatoes
Butter
2 tins of Swedish anchovies
2 cups of heavy cream
salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Peel onions.  Use mandoline to slice onions thinly.  Melt a knob of butter in a pan.  Saute the onions slowly over medium heat until golden brown.
   
3. Peel potatoes.  Use mandoline to julienne the potatoes.
4. When onions have cooked down and are golden brown, add the potatoes, cream and anchovy liquor to the pan.  Taste and season with pepper and a bit of salt if needed.  Stir and let cook over low heat for 5 minutes.
5. Butter a large oval casserole.  Line the bottom of the casserole with half of the potato onion mixture.  Put half of your anchovies on top of the potatoes.  Cover with the remaining potato mixture.  Top with the other half of the anchovies.
6. Bake for 45 minutes until golden brown on top and bubbly.  Alternatively, bake for 30 minutes, then cool and refrigerate, covered in foil.  When ready to serve, bake uncovered in 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, finishing under the broiler at the end to brown the top.  Serve as classic fixin' with meatballs for Christmas Eve dinner.

--


 
For future ref, should you ever be in need of Swedish ingredients for Christmas, save yourself some grief and try Schaller & Weber first.  Fine selection of Abba herring, source for German 25% vinegar, which can be substituted when diluted with one part water for Swedish ättiksprit spirit vinegar (which is 12% acidity).  I like the rather alarming warning at the bottom of the label:

I've never had lussekatter, traditional Christmas Swedish saffron buns, so I had no idea if I had made them right or not.  Luckily, there was a translated recipe in the December Saveur, which came from an Allt om Mat editor, so I knew the recipe would be straightforward and trustworthy.



These buns are very mildly flavored and not very sweet.  They reminded me of Hawaiian bread (do you know what I'm talking about?) which I adored as a kid.  But it didn't really go with dinner -- I suspect it should be a fika treat, something to nosh with coffee either mid-morning or mid-afternoon, before dinner.  It's definitely not a dessert.
 
I tried to follow the recipe closely -- the only deviation I made was to soak the raisins in amaretto overnight -- I love a boozy raisin.

They really need to be baked and eaten day of -- they go stale quite quickly.  But the leftovers made a pretty lovely bread pudding with the addition of almond paste, cardamom, custard, and more raisins.

Lussekatter
adapted from December 2009 Saveur

2 1/4 oz. packages active dry yeast
2 cups whole milk, heated till finger-warm (110 degrees)
2 tsp. saffron, lightly crushed
3/4 cup plus 1 tsp. sugar
6 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
3 eggs
12 Tbsp. unsalted butter, room temp and cut into 1/2" cubes
64 raisins soaked overnight in 1/3 c. amaretto liquer

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, mix together yeast, milk, saffron, and 1 tsp.sugar.  Let sit until foamy, about 10 minutes.  Stir in remaining sugar, flour, salt and 2 eggs.  Mix on low until dough forms and gathers around the paddle.  (I don't have a stand mixer, so I just did this by hand.)
2. Replace paddle with dough hook and add butter.  Knead on medium-high speed until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, 8 minutes. 
   
3. Grease a large bowl with butter.  Transfer dough to the greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  Let sit in a warm place until double in size, about 1 hour.
4. Divide dough into 32 pieces and roll each piece into an 8" long rope.  Form each rope into an S-shape and then roll each end into a tight spiral.  Place buns 2" apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.




5. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Uncover the dough pieces and place a raisin at the center of each of the spirals. 
   
6. Lightly beat remaining egg with 1 Tbsp. water and brush each bun with egg. 
   


7. Bake until buns are golden brown and cooked through, 16 minutes.  Cool for at least 10 minutes.  Serve with strong brewed coffee for fika.

Lussekatter Bread Pudding

Okay, there is no tradition of lussekatter bread pudding in Sweden, as far as I know, but it's a nice way to use up some of those stale buns, and it's quite pretty to boot.  I used some leftover frozen almond paste butter with cardamom, so I'm just going to give you an approximate recipe and you can trust your judgment for the amounts to add.



1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Take 6 stale lussekatter.



2. Slice into 1" pieces.

3. Heat 2 cups of milk with a knob of butter, some grated almond paste and a bit of ground cardamom over low heat until hot but not boiling.

4.  In a large bowl, beat 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk with 1/3 cup of sugar.  While whisking vigorously, pour in a bit of the hot milk mixture.  Once well beaten, add more of the hot milk mixture until it's all well mixed. Add a splash of vanilla extract and, if desired, a splash of amaretto.

5.  Add cut-up lussekatter and some soaked raisins, let the bread soak for a few minutes. 

6. Butter a small 5" x 9" casserole.  Pour soaked bread custard into casserole.  Bake for 30 minutes until top is crisp and golden brown and custard is cooked through.  Serve warm.  Or eat cold from the fridge.  I'm not judging if you're not judging.

My parents are in Thailand now, so I wound up having orphan Swedish Christmas with some NYC stragglers.  One person got stranded here after his flight was canceled because of the weekend blizzard, one person was finishing closing on a new apartment, and a few, like me, were staycationing for no particular reason.  Given the travel nightmares abounding -- major delays, swine flu, explosive-rigged terrorist -- I can't say I'm sorry about it.

Besides, I'd been hoping to do Swedish Christmas since I left Stockholm.  My Swedish friend Lina and her friend Johan hosted and we made the julbord (Christmas table) of my Ingmar Bergman fantasies.  We even watched the beginning of Fanny and Alexander, the part before it descends into domestic violence nightmare.  Tjohoo! 


Lina and Johan in the kitchen.

I adore Lina's singular sartorial sense.  She's near six feet tall with short, asymmetrical blond hair and she's always the most interestingly dressed person in the room.  On Christmas night, she wore a single shoulder length earring with little tufts of recycled fur and a metal mesh belt in the shape of a snake clamping down on its tail. She was dressed in the colors she had painted her apartment walls, which she referred to as her "favorite ice cream flavors. The bedroom is Haagen Dazs vanilla and the kitchen is Haagen Dazs coffee."


Janssons frestelse on the left, prinskorv in the pan next to it.


Herring, consumed with snaps.  Skål!

The Swedish palate favors sweet and pickled flavors, far east spices like cardamom and saffron, fishy little fish like herring and anchovy, zero garlic and buckets of butter and cream.  As with all cuisines, you can rank the foods' level of accessibility, universally-lovable cinnamon buns being Level 1, bulging, natives-only cans of surströmming being about level 10.

So our julbord's Level 1 dishes included:
Classic köttbullar (meatballs) with rårörda lingon (stirred lingonberry preserve), pressgurka (pressed cucumber) and cream sauce
Lussekatter (Swedish saffron buns)
Prinskorv (little cocktail sausages)
Ham
Gravad lax (cured salmon) with dill on rye bread
Glögg (mulled wine)
Eggnog
Various cheeses
Pepparkakor (gingerbread thins)
Apple pie with vanilla ice cream (Paj, as it's spelled, is actually quite Swedish)

Level 2 dishes were:
Janssons frestelse (Jansson's temptation), a julienned potato, onion, cream and anchovy dish that sounds weird but is less weird than it sounds
Sweet pickled beets
Sill (herring) plate with curried herring, cream herring, matjes herring, mustard herring and dill herring, with boiled potato, knäckebröd (hard bread) and Västerbotten cheese
Snaps (aquavit)



Johan's meatballs were superb, and it was instructive to watch a native expert's technique.  He rolls the meatballs a little larger than I have -- about 1 1/2 inches in diameter, making sure to push any errant pieces of onion into the meatball so they don't break apart.  A generous amount of butter goes into the nonstick pan to melt down.  Then, before he places the very round meatballs in the pan, he jiggles the plate they're on a bit to make sure they roll around easily.  Then into the pan they go, enough to almost cover the entire pan in a single layer. Johan immediately gives them a good shake to make sure they roll and brown all around.  None of them fell apart.  Genius!  Another key -- LOTS and LOTS of white pepper.  

Dinner was such a lovely affair, about ten of us sitting in white chairs around an all white table, two caterpillars of tea lights flickering against elegant conical glasses filled with syrupy frozen snaps.  I led Helan går, since that's the only drinking song I know, and Lina and Johan each contributed a few from memory.  (One of them translated to something having four legs, something having three legs, and a cock having no legs but it can stand on its own?)  Am feeling a bit nostalgic for Sverige, du gamla, du fria.

Recipes forthcoming!

Dear Hollywood types who made Made of Honor, which I am ashamed to admit I have been watching on Netflix streaming:

1. Any guy driving through Times Square in a convertible looks like an idiot and a complete douchebag -- who would ever want to cross town like that to get to the Met?
2. Nobody would let you stroll through the sculpture room at the Met with two cups of coffee.
3.  Nobody at the Met would ever let a non-employee roll in to a painting restoration with two cups of coffee.
4. If it's 3am in Scotland, it's not daylight out in New York. 
   
5. That Figaro place is in L.A. You are not allowed to pass that off as New York.  And I don't even know where that antiques mall is supposed to be.

And I haven't even finished the first half hour.  I don't think I can keep going.

Please do not use this city to up the cool factor of your movie if you're just going to paint a totally fake portrait of it.

I <3 NY,
Ganda

I have an orange blossom candle which I've placed on my radiator.  Whenever the heat is on, it releases the slow, lazy smell of desert blooms -- the Orient, powdery and sweet. 

In my dreams, I invite the women of Marjane Satrapi's family over.  They sip strong tea from a samovar, perhaps in glass cups hugged by metal filigree.  The steam rises in double brushstrokes from their thin cups.  I sit on the floor at their feet, knees together, ankles tucked next to one hip. 

I serve these cakes. They are the secret held behind Ilsa Lund's plush lips when Rick Blaine corners her at the bazaar.  They are a pink silk nightgown trimmed with cream lace, pinned to a clothesline.  They are the sillage of an arch-browed woman in seamed stockings, the thin embroidered lines like the continuation of her spine down into the tips of her heels.  They are the inner courtyard of a tiled blue palace, a rose garden where a teenage girl fans her long, wild hair in the grass for a sun bath.

Persian Tea Cakes

The base of this cake is Smitten Kitchen's yellow cake recipe, which I am officially obsessed with.  With cardamom, rosewater, orange and pistachio, they are impossibly feminine and perfumey and delicate. They're perfect with a strong cup of tea.  I used foil cupcake cups, but you could easily use a greased cupcake tin and pop 'em out before icing for prettier presentation. I am in love with them, and I can't wait to show them off again.

CAKES:
2 cups plus 2 tbsp. cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick unsalted butter, room temp
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, room temp
1 c. buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tbsp. rosewater
1 tsp. cardamom seeds, ground in mortar and pestle

ICING:
Juice of 1 orange
1 tsp. orange zest, grated AND chopped fine
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 pinch salt
1/2 c. Turkish pistachios, chopped

EQUIPMENT:
22 cupcake foil cups
Baking sheet

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt together.  Set aside.
3. Beat butter and sugar together. 
   
4. Beat in one egg at a time on low speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl. 
   
5. Add buttermilk, vanilla, rosewater and cardamom.  Beat on low until blended.
   
6. Beat in dry ingredients, a third at a time, until just blended, scraping down the sides of the bowl.
7. Drop cupcake cups onto baking sheet.  Fill cups about 1/3 full.
8. Bake for 23-28 minutes until barely golden brown on top.  Cool completely.

For the icing:

1. Put powdered sugar, grated zest and salt into a bowl.  Add enough orange juice to make a thin, drizzle-able icing.
2. Ice the cupcakes with plenty of orange icing.  Top with chopped pistachios. 
   

--

I submitted these for my office's bake-off today.  Though they came in second place, two of the judges (one of whom was Jim Oseland, EIC of Saveur) said they gave it 10 out of 10, meaning the third judge was my downfall.  DAMMIT!  But, BUT, Jim Oseland said my cake and the olive oil cake (which just happened to be from a Saveur recipe) were his favorites (!).  So take that, pedestrian caramel oat chocolate chip WHATEVER in first place.  Harumph.

The town I grew up in was predominantly Catholic, and you'd have no doubt about that if you saw it during the holidays.

Right after Thanksgiving, La Puente would start lighting up like Vegas. Holiday enthusiasts all over the neighborhood would string giant colorful gumdrop lights from the eaves of their homes.  A few eager beavers might have a red-nosed reindeer lamp or a giant candy cane or an apple-bellied Santa on their green lawns. In later years, strings of icicle lights would drip from the rooftops -- the closest thing to a white Christmas we'd get to see in Southern California.  Plastic Maries and lambs and camels and bearded men in togas or whatever would come out of hibernation for their yearly display, patiently awaiting the arrival of the baby Jesus doll.  The Holy Ghost could feel confident about receiving a hero's welcome on almost any doorstep in my neighborhood.

On those dark December nights, you could spot our house from the other end of the street.  Candy-hued bulbs twinkled on every single house on the block -- every single house but ours.  Our house was like a black hole, a void, a spot as dark as sin at the end of an otherwise cheerfully lit street.  X marks the heretic spot.  This slot machine is out of order.  NO TRESPASSING -- Christmas spirit, that means YOU.  It was like the easiest game of Find the Heathen ever.  Whenever we rounded that corner, I'd sink a little lower into the back seat of our van.

"Pau, can we pleeeeeeeeeze have Christmas lights this year?  Pleeeeeeeeeeze?  We'll help you put them up!" my brother and I would beg.

"And who's going to take it down after Christmas then?" my parents would ask.

"You don't HAVE to take them down!  You can leave them up all year!  See, everybody else does that!"

They never relented.

But we got Christmas. Or something Christmasish.  We had to beg my father to bring our Christmas tree down from the garage rafters.  It was a balding plastic fir, probably purchased at Sears or Best in the late 70s, a perfect geometric cone you could practice equations on.  If we were lucky, we'd get it up the week before Christmas, a decade of tinsel still strangling the abrasive green needles.  It would stay up in the corner of the living room through Christmas, through New Year's, through all of January, and maybe by February my Pau would put it back in the garage.

I know we'll look back at the aughts and think, "God, salted caramel is SOOOOOO 2000s, isn't it?"  But I hope these Liddabit Sea Salt Caramels never go out of style.  It's a 2-inch bar of soft buttery goodness, shot through with the perfect amount of crunchy salt crystals and wrapped in a square of wax paper.  Best 75 cents you'll spend at the Chelsea Market.  I picked them up at Lucy's Whey, my friend Amy's fab newborn artisanal American cheese shop there. 

I also got a block of Prairie Breeze Cheddar from Iowa -- sweet, grassy and insanely good.  I am really looking forward to breakfast. 

--

NaBloPoMo is almost over, and thank god for that!  I need my sleeping time back.  I'm hoping to have something special to finish the month off tomorrow.  Check back!

Of course it's a little sad to not be with my family on Thanksgiving, but my god, New York is such a pleasure when everyone clears out.  Holiday weekends make it possible to go out on the Lower East Side on a Friday night and not be suffocated by the descent of the usual choadfest.

Which is how we wound up at Bacaro last night.  I don't go out very often on the weekends because I'm too much of a grandma, but seeing as how my chances of finding a date while sitting at my computer watching Law & Order SVU on Netflix streaming are strangely low, I've decided that it's time to get out there.

And it was a wonderfully brisk night, no?  Just the right side of winter.  A little hard and shiny but with a hidden heat, like the black patent heels I had on with plum tights.  Like the delicate swirly stem of the wine glasses holding the warming, dark cherry Valpolicella we drank all night.  Like the curlicued, shiny white plate holding up a round pool of velvet, buttery polenta and creamy, saline baccala.  

We were there with our friends Andy and Jen, who were in town for the evening.  Eventually, we had 8 people on the bar stools around the front seating area.  We stayed for a good five hours, doting on the fresh face of our curly-haired waitress as Negronis and herbacious Aperol cocktails melted us like chocolate onto the cold marble slab table.  Our crystal tumblers were never without water; a freshly lit white tapered candle replaced the one on our table that had gone down to three inches. 

I could have stayed all night, alternating vino and nibbles, sending text invites to absent friends that went from cajoling to belligerent as the night progressed.  Little fried meatballs arrived like shooter marbles in a glass cup, poppable and crunchy.  When I felt the wine sway in my stomach, crumb-coated fried rice balls oozing a mess of mozzarella brought my thirst back.

Plenty of exposed dark bricks capture the flickering bling of the huge acrylic chandelier, the crystal on the tables, the sweet engraved mirror and the copious candlelight.  The place definitely feels like it's been finished with a woman's touch, and the presence of many pretty women in ripped black lace, striped bustiers and Sol Moscot eyeglass frames were a testament to its feminine appeal. I'm sure it's a totally different scene on a busy weekend night, but I'm so very glad I got to see it like this.

Bacaro
136 Division St. btwn Ludlow and Orchard
F to East Broadway

Considering we met through his apartment listing on craigslist, it's funny how many random things Doug and I have in common.

Had an amazing Thanksgiving with Adam, Jessica and their family at Lunetta.  Polenta with ragu, stuffing with plumped, rehydrated raisins and fennel sausage, crazy porky beans, moist heritage breed turkey, banana pudding, tons more...and I'm eating leftovers in front of the TV right now.  I'm bummed to not be with my family, but I am not bummed about missing the airport madness.

Back to my banana pudding and TV!  Enjoy your Thanksgiving, dears.

Tequila is so sneaky.  I thought I was fine, I was fine, I was fine until I fell asleep last night, having rolled on top of all of my clothing with half a cold sweet potato in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.

But it's wonderful to have a day off.  God, it's fantastic.  And I'm really looking forward to T-Day dinner, which I'm spending with a few friends and a few strangers in Brooklyn.  I can't tell you how excited I am about the prospect of getting home on my bicycle.

Must go hunt a coconut down for my Thanksgiving sweet contribution.

I am dating this yesterday because I'm cheating.  Nablopomo has squeezed me dry.  And a girl needs a night off.

Photo from Winnie Yang

These köttbullar were so crazy delicious.  The recipe is from a book called The Art of Home Cooking by Leif Mannerström.  It was a parting gift given to me by my co-workers in Sweden, with reassurances that it is the best husmanskost cookbook out there.  (The Swedish title of the book, by the way, is Husmanskonst, a play on the word husmanskost, which means Swedish home cooking, and konst, which means art.)

The book says, "The following recipe is your chance of making the best meatballs in Sweden."  And brother was not kidding.

Winnie did all the work prepping them -- all I did was help shape and fry.  You can't go wrong with meat fried in tons of butter, but I think the texture was what really made those meatballs great -- crisp on the outside, soft as a cheek and super moist on the inside. 

But there are a few things you wouldn't really know on your own if you just read the recipe cold.  I have a few suggestions:

1. The anchovy liquor referred to in the recipe comes from Swedish anchovies, which are actually sweet sprats, not the salted Italian anchovies in oil.  Winnie used regular anchovies and just melted them down with the browned onions, but if you want to stick to the recipe, you'll have to hunt down Swedish anchovies. You should be able to get them at IKEA.
2. We found that the meatballs fell apart a bit in the frying pan.  I remembered a little later, though, that ground meat in Sweden is ground quite finely; mince comes out of the grinder in strands like thin spaghetti.  For rounder, more shapely meatballs, it might help to ask your butcher to put your meat through a finer grinder an extra round.  Or, you could pulse the meat in the food processor for a minute.
   
3. A nonstick frying pan helps keep the meatballs together.  It's also helpful to deglaze the pan every once in a while to pick up the fond, which wants to stick to your meatballs.  You could probably deglaze with cream to make a cream sauce instead. 
   
4. I think Winnie made the meatballs with half pork, half beef, and they were phenomenal, so that's the balance I included in the recipe.  Original recipe calls for half ground beef, half ground beef-pork mixture, which is a thing in Sweden.  So you could do three parts beef to one part pork instead; find the balance that works for you.   
   

Anyway, you MUST try these!  They went over like gangbusters with the 20 or so people who came to Winnie's Choice Cuts dinner and movie night.  (Details on the dinner here; more pics here.)  The Swedish factor makes it a bit cosmopolitan, but it's really accessible comfort food.  It's also a VERY kid friendly meal.  Meatballs are to Swedish kids as chicken nuggets are to American kids.

One interesting note -- Mannerström adds freshly grated nutmeg to his mash. I bet that's gooood.

Also, if you've never had the pleasure of attending a Choice Cuts event, sign up for her mailing list. The company is always interesting, the food is always delicious and ambitious, and Matt curates an excellent short before the well-chosen main feature.  It's the perfect thing to do on a Sunday night in Brooklyn.

Meatballs a la Lilian
adapted from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking

1 1/2 dl (scant 2/3 cup) milk
1/2 dl (scant 1/4 cup) cream
2 dl (4/5 cup) dried breadcrumbs
2 eggs
1 dl (scant 1/2 cup) water

4 medium-large boiled potatoes (go for floury over waxy)

2 large onions

800 grams (1.75 lbs.) minced beef, ground finely
800 grams (1.75 lbs.) minced pork, ground finely
1 tsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. "anchovy" liquor (or substitute a few anchovy fillets)
4 tbsp. concentrated veal stock
2 tbsp. Kikkoman soy
salt and pepper

butter for frying (at least a stick, maybe two.  Don't be shy)
Water or cream for deglazing

1. Blend the milk, cream, breadcrumbs, egg and water into a loose batter.  Let mixture swell for a while.
2. Mash the potatoes well.  Set aside.
   
3. Peel the onions.  Grate one of them finely, chop the other one finely and fry till golden brown.  (If you substitute anchovy fillets for anchovy liquor, fry the fillets with the onion here.)
4. Blend all the ingredients quickly into a smooth mixture.  Add salt and pepper.  Fry a small dab to test the seasoning.
5. Shape the roundest meatballs you can.  (Helps to have extra hands to shape meatballs here.) 
   
6. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a nonstick or cast iron pan. Fry meatballs in butter till golden brown on the bottom, then roll over and brown on the other side.  Don't crowd the pan or they won't brown correctly.  Try to brown the meatballs all over.  Add another tbsp. of butter for each batch you fry.
   
7. After you've fried a few batches, deglaze the pan with a little water.  You could use the juice to moisten the meatballs, though they don't need the help.
   
8. Serve with mashed potato, pressgurka (quick-pickled cucumber) and lingonberry jam (or cranberry sauce, as Winnie did).  Serves 10.

Pressgurka
adapted from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking

1 English seedless cucumber
1 small bunch parsley
salt
pepper

Dressing:
1 dl (scant 1/2 cup) ättiksprit*
3 dl water
2 dl (4/5 cup) caster (superfine) sugar
10-12 slices chili
salt

1. Shave cucumber thinly.  Place on a dish and salt lightly.  Leave for about 15 minutes and then drain well in a colander.  Pat gently with paper towel.
   
2. Chop parsley finely. 
   
3. In a glass bowl, alternate layers of cucumber, parsley and pepper.
4. Mix dressing together, checking for seasoning -- you want sweet and sour.
5. Pour dressing over cucumber.  Sprinkle lots of parsley on top.  Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.
   

*Ättiksprit is a special Swedish 12% strong vinegar.  Heinz distilled white vinegar, by comparison, is 5%.  If you are not as hardcore as Winnie, who brought a giant bottle back with her from Sweden (I'm certainly not that hardcore), I am guessing that you can do 2.5 dl (1 cup) white vinegar and 1.5 dl (scant 2/3 cup) of water instead of the 1 dl ättiksprit and 3 dl water.  Or, check IKEA to see if they carry it.

 

I say I live in Sunset Park, but really, I live at my office in Gramercy.  So here are my 10 favorite things to eat when I'm at my place of residence (in no particular order.)

1. Mike's Coffee & Deli -- a tiny hole in the wall for my breakfast.  These guys are consummate New York professionals -- three guys in a tiny 8x12 space keeping track of 5, 6, 7 finicky New Yorker sandwich orders at any given moment.  Plus, it's cheaper than any of the other places by about half ($1.50 for my egg and cheese on a roll).
   
2. Tiffin Wallah -- lunch buffet for $7.60, my fave dishes are the palak paneer and the okra tomato.  I prefer the little pancakes to the chapati.  I refrain from seconds because that can render me completely useless in the afternoon.  When pressed for time, consider dropping in for lunch -- you'd be surprised at how quickly you can be in and out of there, especially if you're alone.
   
3. BCD Tofu -- Soon du bu with pork, regular spicy.  Their rice is always perfect.  Love the fried mackerel you always get for free as a starter, and the oyster in the slightly sweet kimchi adds just the right amount of brine.
4. Chipotle -- chicken burrito bowl, rice, black beans, tomato salsa, lettuce.  Go ahead, judge me.
   
5. 'Wichcraft -- olive oil poached shrimp salad over mixed greens instead of arugula.  I often need to supplement with a hard boiled egg.
6. Maoz vegetarian -- Forget the falafel -- their fried eggplant is a marvel of shard and goo.  That and the salty fried cauliflower from the toppings bar and I am in heaven.
7. Mandoo Bar -- kimchi & tofu dumplings with pork.  Boiled.  Though it never feels like a full meal to just eat dumplings.
8. E-Mo -- kimbap, usually with spicy tuna and sesame leaf, to eat on the subway.  With my hands.  Yes, I'm that person, and stop looking at me.
9. Stumptown -- Soy cappuccino.  It really is the best coffee.  I wouldn't normally trust a place so overrun with hipsters, but the coffee is unfailingly a cut above.  The espresso drinks are pretty nicely priced.
   
10. Kalustyan's -- California dried apricots with the right balance of tart and sweet; high turnover means they're always moist. 
    

Bonus:
Best place for office birthday treats: Penelope for cupcakes or 'Wichcraft for cookies.  We especially like the oatmeal with cream cheese frosting cookie sandwich.

Place I never eat, even though it's super close:
Artisanal -- I went there once for dinner, didn't like it much, and seems dangerous to eat too much cheese for lunch.

Fried a gazillion meatballs at Winnie's tonight for her Choice Cuts showing of Tillsammans.  Felt nostalgic for socialist Sweden.  Meatball recipe huge success, from translation of Husmanskonst or The Art of Home Cooking.  Will share complicated recipe when I have a moment.  But discovered a few things:

1. Deglazing the meatball pan helps the meatballs to not get stuck to the bottom and fall apart.
2. Carola's tårta really requires the tart red currants to balance the sweetness of the custard.  If I were to make it with banana again (as I did tonight), I would fold some whipped cream into the custard to cut the sweetness a bit and give it a little more body.
3. The fransk chokladkaka from Rosendals Trädgård's cookbook is a recipe I'll have to post, too.  Good with whipped cream, but I miss a crusty top.  The search for the perfect recipe continues. 

Found some old pics when I went home.  In case you were wondering, this is how I will always look in my mind's eye:

Where in New York did we go for a little vino, holiday cheer and the gaze of dozens of slightly creepy dolls?  Do you know?  I'm not going to tell.  But it would be a great place for a holiday season first date.  Everyone looks gorgeous under the glow of a million Christmas lights. It dances off of ornaments that hang from the ceiling like giant clusters of metal grapes.  Yay glögg and glitter and fruitcake and pine resin and candles and cloves!  IT'S ON!
 

I've been meaning to post this for a month now, but I wasn't able to figure out how to cut up the darn PDF scans I made because I don't want to pay for Photoshop and I don't want to download it either.  But I think I found a solution.

Anyway, here I am in the October 2009 issue of Allt om Mat!  Remember I said I would share?  Well, here's the epic, many page story about me.  My Swedish is so-so, so I'm not sure how I come off.  But my dear friend Malin wrote it, and hopefully she made me sound as I am. 

Cliffs Notes version: title of the story is "New Thai flavors in borrowed kitchens".  The gist is hey, Ganda's new in Stockholm, and she's meeting people by cooking in their kitchens.  She has a blog and cooks Thai-ish food.  Blah, blah, Thai Pimms Cup!

The recipes, however, are totally mine.  The test kitchen tested them and everything.  So exciting!  I will translate them for you another night when I haven't been at work for 12 1/2 hours.  (Holy shit, that's really how long I was at work today.  Sheesh, I've got to go to bed.)

So now I am totally famous in Sweden.  Like ABBA in reverse.  Only ABBA in reverse is still ABBA.  Whatever, look at me and my stand-in model friends!  (Except Malin, in the cool old school apron.  She is bona fide friend.)

Click on a thumbnail to see a larger image. 

These Nunu Chocolates, they're dangerous.  A little 1 1/2 inch thin of firm, stretchy dark caramel is covered in a thin layer of dark chocolate and sprinkled with a little fleur de sel.  They're too good.  And they ought to be -- they're wicked expensive at 5 in a box for $7. 

The worst part is that once you have one, you'll start thinking about them once in a while.  You'll get a flash of that bittersweet chocolate shell.  Then maybe you remember the meltaway sea salt on the back of your tongue, prepping the slate.  But in comes that damn salty-gooey siren song in your mind's palate until...you can't take it!  You must have it!  You find yourself crashing through the door of Brooklyn Larder, hunting for that infernally small, see-through cube of chocolates.  And you might share a few begrudgingly with your friends, but in a matter of four, maybe five bites, they're gone, a receding caramel dream, a dark secret your tongue will brood and pine for until your next dalliance.

I have one left.  Look at it taunting me from its plastic cage.  I will hide it in a drawer until the moment is right and the Precious and Sméagol can get some QT together.

Oof, see what happens when I open the door a crack for sugar?  It barges in and sets up camp on the sofa.  Starting tomorrow, I'm back on the no sugar wagon. 

God, I love the Met.  The giant Chagalls, the quivering crystal starburst chandeliers, the gold ceiling, the nodding-off septuagenarians...it's my favorite thing about fall and winter, hands down. Saw From the House of the Dead tonight with La Doug, Eric, and my friend Chris who's in town from L.A. 

What happens when you change your mind about going out on Saturday night and forget about the bottle of Raventós i Blanc chilling in the freezer?




---

Halfway point!  NAMBLApopozão!

The more often I return to California, the stronger my love for New York grows.  The sunshine makes my brain stop working.  And no, I don't think that's a good thing.  It feels like the majority of my time there is spent sitting in a car that is either A.) stuck in traffic or B.) careening down the freeway at speeds that make me anxious.  The only time I really enjoy being in a car is late at night in the cab that is taking me home when Grandma has been out past her bedtime.

There are a few things that are better in California, though.  One is the housing situation.  My cousin just moved into a cavernous, quiet hacienda-style house at the top of a hill in Echo Park for about the same amount of money as a one-bedroom highrise apartment in Manhattan with about 1/10 the square footage.

Some of my favorite features are an indoor grill with hood:

A tangerine tree heavy with fruit in the backyard (backyards!):



And this insanely cool giant cactus.

 

I've always dreamed of having fruit trees: lemons, limes, avocados; maybe peaches and plums in the summer.  But someone (who was it, Swiss cheese brain?) was telling me about the fruit tree they had in their backyard when they were growing up.  When fruit was abundant, it would thump onto the ground and lay there until the rats came to feast.  With the fruit fermenting and rotting as it lay, the rats would get drunk, stumbling and lolling in the shade.  I don't know if that's possible, but I love the image.

Captain's Daughter ($8): Salted foccacia with sardines, a sliced pickled egg, and "salsa verde" of whole parsley leaves and sliced scallions tossed with olive oil and capers.  YUMS.  Does everyone already know about this place?  Best possible thing I could have eaten before the gig at The Knitting Factory.  The individual quince tarts' crusts sparkled with granulated sugar, enrobing fuchsia colored fruit.  Though I yearned for one, I held back.  The cup of loose leaf jasmine tea was the perfect cap to a really tasty and virtuous meal. 

From the outside, I wasn't quite sure what the brightly lit, sparsely furnished railroad space was.  A fish and chips shop?  A bakery? The counter is set deep in the narrow storefront, and the pastry case also houses stacks of books. The purposefully askew white lettering on the cartoon whale blue wall menu spells out abstract sandwich names like Spanish Armada and Ship's Biscuit without descriptions, forcing customers to consult the card on the counter for ingredients.  It feels preciously sewn, and it brushes my hair in the wrong direction (Steve Zissou?). But that's a teeny quibble for such sandwich pleasure.  My only request: add some chips to the menu so I can make it a square meal.

Saltie
378 Metropolitan Ave
(at Havemeyer St)
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 387-4777
  

Did you have plans today?  Cancel them, because you are going to need the entire day to make these cardamom buns.  I'm serious.  You might be able to read a New Yorker article while you're waiting for the dough to rise, or maybe catch up on an episode of 30 Rock, but this triple-rise dough -- or the homemade almond paste, or the hand-ground cardamom -- will hold you hostage for the next seven hours.  

Also, be warned that this recipe yielded 72 cupcake-sized buns.  72!  But this is good, because you will not want to make them for a long time once you realize how jobbigt (an adjective meaning much hard work) they are, as the Swedes would say.

But oh gentle marzipan sweetness, sultry slow-burn cardamom and rich, salted butter filling!  The pärlsocker (pearl sugar), looking like little crunchy bits of snow melting on a golden brown pillow!  "They're like chips," said La Doug.  It takes an uncommon amount of willpower to eat just one.

These bullar are sturdy yet seductive, never cloying, like a seasoned belly dancer gently stoking a fire you didn't know you had in you, leaving you wanting more.  With coffee for fika, or toasted in the oven in the morning, nothing brings me back to Sweden like this flavor. 

 

 

This recipe is adapted from the beautiful Vete-katten cookbook.  Vete-katten is the unbelievable konditori that was just down the block from my Stockholm office.  This is the second recipe I tried -- the first, from another book, was not nearly as good. The dough requires THREE rises -- the first rise apparently makes the yeast stronger, and the long second and third rises make for a lighter dough.  Or something like that -- my Swedish isn't that good.  

Swedish Cardamom Buns

 

A few tips:
 
1. Use a scale to measure the dry ingredients.  
2. You must use whole cardamom -- not the pods, but the kind that are little black B.B.'s.  And you must hand grind, preferably with a mortar and pestle, so you get some big bits and some tiny bits -- think cracked black pepper.   
3. The recipe calls for 375 grams each of butter and almond paste for the filling. I only used about 3/4 of the filling I made, so I'm cutting down the amount by a little here.
4.  In Sweden, you can get mandelmassa, or 50/50 almond paste, from any grocery store.  I could only find atrocious looking canned crap at my local shop.  I've included a simple recipe for mandelmassa I found online which worked really well and was probably the easiest part of this very long recipe.
5. I also used Doug's mom's rolling technique instead of Vete-katten's, which I didn't really understand through translation.  The picture above features buns wrapped in the Vete-katten method, which is to take a wide strip and wrap it in a knot around your finger.  I much preferred the swirl to dough ratio of Doug's mom's method, detailed (but not pictured) here.   

Translated from the Swedish and adapted to American measurements and ingredients.  I hope you had a good breakfast this morning because you are going to need some energy. 

For the almond paste:
Adapted from CHOW
1 1/2 cups whole raw almonds (make sure they're fresh)
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
5 Tbsp. light corn syrup

1.  Boil water in a medium pot.  Blanch almonds for one minute.  Rinse under cool water.  Squeeze the skins off.
2.  Pulse in a food processor until it's a coarse meal, 20 seconds.
3.  Add powdered sugar.  Pulse again until sugar is blended in.  Add corn syrup and grind until you get a pretty smooth almond paste, 40 seconds.   Set aside. Makes 1 1/2 cups of almond paste. Are you tired?  I hope not.  There are a gajillion more steps.

For the starter dough:

1 block (50g) fresh yeast (or 1 packet dry yeast)
1 cup (250g) finger-warm whole milk (80 degrees F or 26 degrees C)
3 Tbsp. (50g) sugar
12 1/3 oz. (350g) flour

1.  Dissolve yeast in the milk.  Mix in the sugar and flour and work the dough until it's elastic, about 5 minutes in a mixer or 10 minutes by hand.
2.  Cover the dough and let it rise in a warm place until it has doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

For the second rise:

starter dough above
1 cup (250g) whole milk
Scant 1/2 cup (150g) sugar
Scant 1 cup (200g) room temperature salted butter, cut into pieces
2 tsp. (10g) salt
1 1/2 Tbsp. (20g) whole cardamom, coarsely-ground (mortar & pestle work best for this)
26 1/2 oz. (750g) flour
1 egg

1. Mix the starter dough with the rest of the ingredients for the second rise.  Work the dough until it is elastic again, about 15 minutes by hand or 10 minutes in a mixer.  You know the dough is ready when you can stretch it into a thin film without it breaking.
2.  Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes.  Watch some TV.  Grab a magazine.  Maybe grind some more cardamom -- you're gonna need it later.

To make the buns:

Dough above
About 1 1/2 cups (340g) almond paste from above
About 1 1/2 cups (340g) room temperature salted butter
1 1/2 Tbsp. whole cardamom, coarsely ground
2 eggs, beaten
Pearl sugar (pärlsocker), available at European markets like Eagle on 5th Ave. and 17th St. in Brooklyn
Foil cupcake liners
Baking sheets

1.  Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2.  Drop a bunch of foil cupcake liners onto your baking sheets, with about an inch of space between each cup.
3.  Blend almond paste, butter and cardamom in food processor into a light and airy filling.  You can grate the almond paste to make it easier to mix up. 
4.  Divide the dough in half.  Working quickly, roll out one half into a rectangle a bit thinner than 1/4 inch (4mm) thick and 12 inches (30cm) wide.
5.  Spread half the filling over the rectangle.  Starting with the long edge, roll the dough into a tight log.
6.  Using a sharp paring knife, slice through the log in 1/4 inch increments but leaving the last 1/4 inch intact.  Every third cut, slice all the way through the log.  It's like you're making a bunch of pieces of dough in the shape of the letter "E". 
7.  Take the middle slice of each "E" and flip it over so you have a "Y" instead. 
8.  Drop the Y, swirly side up, into a foil cupcake liner.  Don't worry if it's a mess, it'll work itself out in THE NEXT RISE.  Yes, there's still another rise.
9.  Repeat with the other half of the dough, still working quickly.
10.  Brush tops of buns with some egg and sprinkle with the pearl sugar.  Cover with plastic wrap.
11.  Let the buns rise AGAIN for about 45 minutes or until they are double the size. 
12.  Bake in the middle of the oven for 5 minutes.  Then reduce the heat to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) and bake for 10 more minutes until they are golden brown.  Do not overcook or you will have dry buns and you will cry because you worked so very hard all day.

Makes 72 little buns.  If you aren't going to serve them right away, as soon as they are cool, freeze immediately in single layers in Ziploc bags.  Then reheat in the oven any time you are sugen för något söt (craving something sweet), as they say.

Oof, even writing that out made me tired.

Did I tell you that I sing sometimes?  My band, The Solitary Cyclist, is comprised of me, my buddy John Lindaman (True Love Always) on guitar and vocals, Julia Rydholm (Ladybug Transistor) on bass  and Chris Deaner (+/-) on drums .  Together, we are like Voltron -- there is no pink ranger in our formation.  When we rehearse, we bring delicious snacks, discuss car-free bike routes in Brooklyn and complain about how the other guys in the space never pick up their empty cans of Bud.  Yeah, that's how we roll! 

And -- get this -- we are opening for the amazing Versus and +/-!  How cool are we?  Very cool, I would say. 

It's sort of being billed as a Teenbeat night because JL is part of the Teenbeat catalog and Cotton Candy, Mark Robinson (Unrest, Air Miami) and Evelyn Hurley's band, is also opening.  Plus, there's a band called Ciudad coming from the Phillippines.

The Solitary Cyclist plays bossa nova-tinged duets.  We're good, clean fun.  We aren't going to rock your socks off, but we may tickle your feet.  As our Facebook page says, we are all love songs, no ambition.

Also, I may be guest squawking with +/-.

Versus, +/-, Ciudad, Cotton Candy
and The Solitary Cyclist
Friday, November 13
8pm
$12
The Knitting Factory
361 Metropolitan Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Tel: (347) 529-6696

Is the author of this blog.  

La Doug is making a guest appearance over on The Amateur Gourmet!  Eating Thai food.  With another food blogger.  The famous Adam Roberts, no less, who by all accounts (including Doug's) is a lovely, lovely chap.  I'm not jealous or anything. Nope, not me, not jealous.

Proof positive that pork* makes the world a smaller place.

*See also swine flu.

I have been sitting on this YAWYE for much too long, so the answers are from earlier this fall.  Apologies, Emil.  This is a Stockholm entry, but he usually lives in Brooklyn, so it's the perfect transitional YAWYE.

Name: Emil Arvidson

Occupation: Journalist/editor

Neighborhood: Vasastan, Stockholm/Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Relationship status: Practically married

What did you eat today?

I have the swine flu, so only one orange and one piece of Swedish sourdough bread, Rallarhalvor, my favorite. Also some milk. Looking at a bag of cheese doodles now. [Got this YAWYE from Emil right after I got back from Sweden, so he probs doesn't have swine flu anymore. --Ed.]  

What do you never eat?

Surströmming - Swedish fermented fish. Also, the Chinese answer to surströmming - stinky tofu. Never again.

Complete this sentence:  In my refrigerator, you can always find:

In my temporary fridge in Vasastan, you'll find mostly wine and ginger root. In my Brooklyn-fridge you will always find kimchi, and Coop-produce going bad.

What is your favorite kitchen item? I like any grill pan.

Where do you eat out most frequently? In NY, I probably go to Grand Sichuan (any branch) the most. Taro Sushi and a great mexican place called Chavella's.  In Stockholm, a place called Dragon House in Hornstull, and hopefully I will be going a lot to a new place called Djuret. Amazing prices on wine there.

World ends tomorrow.  What would you like for your last meal?

One oyster and champagne. Eric Ripert brought that. Then I would actually like to repeat my first meal at Momofuku Ko (have you guys ever heard of this little place?), with wines chosen by my friend and wine consultant, Johan. Then I would like a couple of each of the fruits that grew in my garden when I grew up. Strawberries, currants, raspberries,  etc. Apples. Blueberries from the forest. Then I would like a cake of some kind. My girlfriend brought that. Whiskey after that. Then I would drink Burgundy wines until my heart stopped.

Sugar ban be damned, I always have to eat pang ji (or pang chi) when I'm in L.A.  These Thai street snacks are silver dollar taro coconut patties flecked with chewy kernels of corn.  The batter is scooped into little mounds and pan-fried on a griddle.  They're chewy, not too sweet, and I can eat ten of them in a single sitting.    There's something about the mochi-like, glutinous texture of them that makes my teeth happy, while the delicate lavender hue appeals to the unicorn princess in me.

In case you haven't ascertained on Twitter (or berated me for not calling on Facebook), I'm in L.A. for a visit with the parents.

My Pau's Asian sauce arsenal is unparalleled. Over the years, the collection of bottles has creeped ever closer to the edge of the counter and stove, multiplying and spreading across the tile like an urban colony of salty sauces in tall glass buildings.  For a few years, the condiments were banished out of sight to a cabinet underneath the sink.  Today, they have reclaimed their proper place in arm's reach, right next to the stove, so you never forget what you've got in stock.  The counter display would probably fill other people with anxiety, but its sprawl comforts me.

On the plane from JFK to LAX.  I put my blanket over my head and managed to sleep for five hours of the six-hour flight.  When I woke up, had this convo:

WOMAN SITTING NEXT TO ME: Excuse me, have you been sleeping this whole time?

ME: Yes.

WOMAN: How do you do that?

ME: Oh, I didn't get enough sleep last night. 

WOMAN: I didn't either, but I couldn't sleep at all.

What I really said:

ME: Well, it's one of the few talents I have.

What I wanted to say:

ME: It's amazing how swine flu just completely knocks you out.

This morning, I got a note from a reader who asked me:

"Hi,

Special at Hasaki: grilled mushroom plate ($18).  Sprightly white shimeiji, bluefoots, meaty chanterelles, king oyster, maitake, grilled on a flat iron casserole with soy sauce and butter (soy sauce with butter needs to become a more regular part of my repertoire) and brought to the table under a blue ceramic dome, sizzling and chattering.  Robust, animal, like nibbling on a plate of hot earlobes.

Seriously, I need to go out on a date.
 


Hasaki
210 E. 9th St.
Between 2nd and 3rd Ave.
212 473 3327
6 to Astor Pl. or R to 8th St.

Seven minutes left for the day!

Cliffs notes: Had dinner with the gorgeous and charming Luisa of The Wednesday Chef fame and my buddy Francis Lam.  I love the internets because it has allowed me to meet such lovely people.  Seriously.  Anyone who thinks the internet is killing socializing is doing something wrong. 

Luisa made some kick ass pork meatballs, which I hope she'll write about for you.  Francis made his famous koshary and I contributed some French Mints from Li-Lac.  Queens on a weekday, totally worth it.

Picture from the Manna Kitchen website

Heej is probably going to kick me for blowing up our secret spot, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Many Tuesdays and Thursdays after yoga, we refuel at Manna Kitchen in Union Square.  It's an modest, cheap little Korean joint on 18th St., right next to the Fresh store.     

We've pretty much eaten our way through the entire menu at this point, but the thing I order most often, the thing I have probably eaten more of in the last year than anything else, is the Rock 'n Rice -- it's a variation on dol sot bibimbap, the hot stone bowl kind, that can be ordered with tofu or white meat chicken instead of beef. 

You've seen it all before -- the ketchup squirt bottle of chili sauce, the bottomless cups of barley tea, the colorful assortment of sesame oil-sauteed vegetables.  But their secret weapon is the magical, mystical brown rice option.  Brown rice you say?  YES!  It crisps and puffs in that fiery rock pit like nothing else.  Think of that crunchy, toasty, nutty goodness against the jiggle of tofu with a slick of hot sauce.  I can eat it twice a week after yoga and not feel disgusting.

Entree prices hover around $10, and every dish comes with little environmentally-unfriendly foam bowls of kimchi and panchan like cold soy potatoes and onion or marinated fish cakes, often accompanied by a shallow bowl of miso soup.

As a myopic Asian, I really don't mind the retina-stimulating fluorescent lighting against the orange and kelly green formica tables.  In the winter, we sit at the bar stools, hovering over spicy soups that fog up the window we're facing.  In the warmer months, we bring our cafeteria trays outside and sit at wobbly aluminum tables outside, sipping ice water from little styrofoam cups.

Considering the regularity with which we sup at Manna Kitchen, we should probably be on a first name basis with the tall, jolly and bespectacled Korean guy who's always behind the register in his cap and orange t-shirt.  I think I see that guy more often than I see some of my good friends in New York, and though we never acknowledge that out loud, he probably smiles inside about that, too.

Okay, it's not destination dining, obviously.  It's not going to make it onto any best of lists, or even any obscure-chaser's cheap eats list.  And yet it is a destination I dine at probably three or four times a month. The whole ritual -- yoga, casual Korean grub and Chit Chat of Beautiful Ladies with my girlfriends Heej and Sarah -- is something I look forward to every week. 

If you're looking for black goat chigae blessed by a female Korean shaman who smokes mountaintop sesame leaves, then it may not be authentic enough for you.  But that kind of authenticity is bad for my arteries.  I could happily eat this perfect, perfect dish twice a week for as long as I live in New York.

Walking to the subway after dinner:

HEEJ: Do you know how many times I have eaten Korean food this week?  And I'm eating Korean food again tomorrow.

ME: Let me tell you something -- in Korea, they eat Korean food every day.

HEEJ:  Hey, that's true.

Manna Kitchen
28 E. 18th Street between Bway and Park Ave. So.
New York, NY 10003
212-228-1044

*Hello!  Three posts three days in a row!  This NaBloPoMo thing is working!  Except I can't get the acronym right.  I keep thinking NAMBLA.

Fuck me, 11pm and I still haven't posted for the day?  NaMoBloPo is going to kick my ass, I see.



I parked my bicycle in my work building for the first time today!  They just announced bike parking in the building and I couldn't be more thrilled.

Nevermind that there are only four spots for a building that spans the entire block with 16 floors.  I am going to put a placard on my portion of the rack, pee on it a little and set up camp.

I am having trouble finding proper bike fashion, though.  I wind up wearing bike clothes (light but warm, visible, unrestrictive, able to get dirty) and changing into work clothes (professional but colorful).  But if I'm taking the train home and I'm feeling too lazy to switch back, I wind up in getups like this one.  (Why am I sharing this strangely angled picture which makes me look like I have the legs of an obese toddler?  Because that's all I got for NaMoBloPo and you are going to have to deal with it.)

After years of shirking commitment, I am taking the plunge with NaBloPoMo.  Seems as good a time as any to start as I have been totally delinquent in posting since getting back from Sweden.  I gotta get back on this horse. 

So a few short things:

1.  I was out watching the marathon in front of my house at 10am when a cavalcade came by, including a convertible with none other than Mayor Bloomberg.  I totally raised my arms in victory and yelled, "MIKE BLOOMBERG!"  And Bloomberg smiled and pointed right at me.  I now realize I should have yelled, "MORE BIKE LANES!" or "MAYOR MIKE 4 LIFE!" or something.  We had a total moment, anyway.

2.  Halloween scares me.  It's not the ghosts, it's the egg-pelting teenagers in my hood.  Also, I realize that the pressure to come up with some clever but not too obscure costume overwhelms me.  I have one non-sexy nurse costume that will probably get trotted out every year until it no longer fits.    

3.  I am no longer eating sugar.  More on that later.

I'm posting a press release here because the guy asked very, very nicely.  The friend of a friend actually went to the trouble of reading my latest blog post and spelling my name right.  In fact, I know nothing about the cause and I'm only posting to spite all of those PR people who spam me with irrelevant crap.  I'd donate some sweets myself if I were going to be in town, but I'm not going to.  My cardamom buns, which I must write up for you when I have a free moment NEVER, would totally win.

---

Please join The City Reliquary Saturday for The 1st Annual Havemeyer Sugar Sweets Festival.

A bake sale to benefit The City Reliquary, the Festival will also feature family-friendly baking demonstrations and competitions to determine New York 's best amateur baked goods.

When: October 10, 2009, 12-6pm

Where: Havemeyer and Grand Street

About The City Reliquary

The Reliquary is one of New York's most unique cultural institutions.   An all-volunteer museum and civic organization, The Reliquary celebrates the small and often overlooked aspects of New York City .   It is also a community organization that promotes civic responsibility. The Reliquary achieves this goal with a wonderful mix of exhibits and programming.  They:

* Collect and display everything from the original 2nd Avenue Deli sign to geological samples of our city's soil.

* Stage exhibits by local artists, historians, and public school students.

* Host block parties and bike rides that promote civic engagement and appreciation of New York 's past and present.

You can learn more at http://www.cityreliquary.org

And, we are still looking for treats to sell at The Festival.  If you want to donate baked goods, please contact Jeff Tancil at jtancil@yahoo.com or 347-307-6474.

Life in New York has been completely, decidedly, mercilessly kicking my ass.  Ugh. Between work and trying to get back in shape, I've had no time or energy to write.  If you want to know what the difference is between life in New York and life in Stockholm, that's it in a nutshell.  New York eats time, devours it, snorts it up until, all of a sudden, you have been living here for ten years and you've only had one failure of a relationship in your whole life and the most expensive thing you own is your mattress which, by the way, needs to be replaced because of the single lonesome dip in its saggy center.

Ahem.

And the cherry on this bloody cake is that my Swedish bicycle got stolen last Saturday.



Here we were in happier times, riding the ferry over to Fårö.  That pannier on the side was lent to me by a sweet kid at the bike rental spot next to the ferry from Nynashamn who let me borrow it for free for a week, with only my word to guarantee that I would return it.

I originally bought the bike thinking I would sell it at the end of my time in Sweden, but I wanted to bring it back with me.  Alas, I knew she was too pretty to stay with me long in New York. 



Bike Snob says you should really leave details about how your bike was stolen as a service to others in New York.  I was reluctant to do so in my Craigslist posting, but I think I can say a bit more here.

I'd been leaving the bike in our apartment hallway because I didn't want to have to haul it up and down the stairs everyday.  I always locked it to itself, but I didn't lock it to anything in the hall because there was nothing to lock it to.  (This despite the fact that my friend Mike gave me a handful of rules when I started cycling, one of which was to ALWAYS lock your bike to something, even in your house.)

My friend Dom came over for lunch and left my house at about 4:30pm.  That's when I showed him my Swedish bike in the hall, locked the gate behind him and closed our front door. 

Later that evening, I heard a noise, some kind of metallic noise, and my heart literally skipped a beat.  My heart just squeezed for a second.  I don't know why, but I thought, "Somebody's stealing my bike!"  I looked out the window and saw a guy rolling a bike away.  I didn't think it looked like my bike, and he was rolling it away so I figured it couldn't be mine since I had locked it to itself.

Then, at about 9pm, I went downstairs just to check on it, and my bike was gone.  GONE.  I felt a little panicked. I went and checked our front door -- totally unlocked.  I knocked on my neighbors' door to tell them what had happened.

Turns out that they had had their toilet fixed just an hour before and the guy left the door open and unlocked.  We have two doors, a wrought iron gate door and an inner regular wooden door.  Often, my downstairs neighbor would leave the wooden door open but the gate locked.  I had been meaning to talk to them about closing the inside door so people wouldn't be able to scope out my bike, but I hadn't gotten to it yet.  (In case anyone's casing my place, we are now on total lockdown, so fuck off.) 

So maybe the guy fixing the toilet took it, though my neighbors don't think so.  Or maybe someone had been casing my place for a while, waiting for an opportunity to come in and snatch it.  I don't know if I'll ever know. 

Now I'm keeping my eyes peeled for my bike, which is quite distinctive looking -- for sure nobody else in New York has this bike.  Or it's extremely unlikely, because the only way it would have come over is if it got boxed and dragged onto a plane the way mine did.  I have a couple of parts for it in my house which I can't bring myself to throw out, so I feel a little bit like Prince Charming waiting for Cinderella to reclaim her glass slipper. 

Of course I'm mad that someone robbed me while everyone was home, and I'm pretty embarrassed, but I'm mostly pissed at myself for not heeding Mike's advice about locking the bike up inside.  I was too city to bike around Gotland alone, and maybe now I'm too soft to be vigilant enough for New York.

I mean, it's not that I was so attached to the thing, but it was maybe the third most expensive possession I've ever purchased, especially if you include the extra fee I had to pay to get it on the plane and all the accoutrements I tricked it out with.

I went and filed a report with the police, who happen to be practically across the street from my house, but I don't have much hope.  If I see someone on it, I am totally pushing them off.  I don't care if they stole it or if they just bought it off someone.  That's MY BIKE and I want to hurt someone. 

Some part of me wonders if Ice-T, my Brooklyn bike, put a hit out on the pretty Swede because I had been totally neglecting him.  I will say that Ice-T is slower and heavier, but probably a lot better for my shoulders in terms of symmetry, so that's a silver lining.  Still, I am trying to be Buddhist and practice some detachment over the whole thing.  Considering the fact that I met three people at a party that night who had had their bikes stolen in the last three weeks, I suggest you do the same. 

So...can someone remind me why I live here again?

Forgive my absence.

Coming back to New York from Stockholm is a little like drinking the finest champagne while sticking your leg in a meat grinder. 

It's been glorious -- a perfect picnic with friends at Governor's Island, a tête-à-tête promenade up the High Line, tacos, buying running shoes at 8:30pm because I needed them and because I can, a grand BLT party with 25 pounds of bacon, kick ass tomatoes and four kinds of homemade mayo at Winnie's. 

But the onslaught to the senses is also overwhelming after quiet, clean Stockholm.  The noise, the traffic, the unexpected street tar that ruined my sneaks (hence the need to buy a new pair), the way you can regret opening your mouth to stick a piece of chewing gum in if you're walking down the wrong block.

To go from the land of lagom -- where life is engineered to be in the middle, not too high, not too low -- to New York, the land of Ultimate XXXXtremes! is kicking me in my callous-free gonads.  I know I've got to get with the program or New York will kick me out.  And I'm sure I'll get there.  I just need a little adjustment period.

In the meantime, I just want to say: FUUUUUUUUCK!!!  MY FOOOOOOOT!

Kära raring,

Ursäkta. Min svenska är inte så bra, men jag vill prova berätta dig detta på ditt språk.

Imorgon flyger jag till New York.  Det är jätte, jätte konstigt.  Manniskorna har frågat till mig: Hur känner du dig?  Är du trist? Glad? Ser du fram emot åka hem? 

Och sanningen är att jag är alla de.

Jag kan klyfta min tid här inte bara med årstiderna, men också med blommorna.  Krokusarna var här när jag var ensam, pionerna märkt när jag förändrade, syrenerna var när jag blev kär i dig.  

Nu är hosten på luften.  Bruna blad är virvlande och gömmer sig bakom cykelhjulen.  Kallt vinden blåser en flickas blå klänning ut och inne, som en simmande manet.  
 
Kan man älska två samtidigt?  Ja, tror jag.  Återvänder jag till New York med ett svullet hjärta -- det är full av glädje och vemod, minne och hopp, erfarenheten och undrar. 

Min svenska lärare lärde mig en bland favorit finsk idiom: "Oma maa mansikka, muu maa mustikka." Den betyder "Hemland jordgubb, annat land blåbär," eller "Borta bra, hemma bäst."  Om New York är min jordgubbland, kan du vara mitt smultronställe.  Jag kommer att sakna dig så jätte mycket...Jag kommer tillbaka, jag lovar.  En dag, vi kan börja var vi slutade.

Puss och kram,
Ganda

August is kräftskiva (crayfish party) month in Sweden!  I'd really been hoping to get an invite to a crayfish party, and my friends Joy and Otto came through with a traditionally debaucherous weekend in the country.

A little background: back in the day, you used to only be allowed to fish for kräftor, or crayfish, in August.  That meant one month of furiously scarfing crayfish as an excuse to get drunk. 

These days, crayfish are a popular menu item in Sweden all year long -- you can get them already peeled in salads, mixed with mayonnaise on toast, etc.  You can also buy frozen ones from the supermarket -- those mostly come from Turkey and China.  In August, kräftskiva-style whole crayfish can be purchased from any supermarket seafood counter.  For the party, we were instructed to get fresh Swedish crawfish, which are cooked in salt and copious amounts of dill. 

The mudbugs are eaten cold, cracked open with hands and teeth.  Every guest was given a skinny little crayfish knife to dig meat out of the slim claws.  By the end of the night, you've got cuts all over your hands, but the general idea is to get drunk enough to stop noticing.

Fixings included white toast with butter and caraway cheese, as well as a creamy västerbottenpaj, a sort of quiche made with Västerbotten cheese, a sharp, hard cheese from the north of Sweden.  Joy also got this AMAZING strawberry meringue cake from Lux Dessert and Chocolate -- feather-light fluff on the thinnest layer of sponge with a strawberry puree stripe down the middle.  It is what My Little Pony angels eat in heaven.

Besides the crayfish, the other star of the show is the snaps, the Swedish national liquor which I have totally come to develop a taste for.  It's an aquavit flavored with caraway, fennel and anise flavors.  I think O.P. may have elbowed Hallands Fläder out as my favorite snaps. 

Crayfish parties, and generally all Swedish drinking festivities like Midsummer and sour herring parties, offer opportunities to break out Sweden's numerous drinking songs, which all seem to be about drinking and lack of women.  I haven't been here long enough to make commentary about the drinking habits of Swedes.  Actually, I haven't been drinking with Swedes often enough to make any of my sweeping generalizations.  But I will say that the whole singing and drinking thing is one of the most charming parts of Swedish culture. The only song I sort of know is Helan Går, but Joy and Otto printed out a little handbook with about 30 different tunes.  

Crayfish are a lot of work for a little meat.  And every time you sing a song, you drink some snaps.  We didn't sing all 30 songs, but we got through a great deal of them. Small amount of protein + large amount of snaps = 12 very quickly drunk people.

This was really only the second time I've been really drunk in Sweden, and I really could have used my Drunk Guard iPhone app again.  The next morning I woke up in a bit of a haze, having passed out on the couch with my glasses still on.  A few choice bits I remember:

• Naked wood-fired sauna followed by skinny dipping in the cold sea.
• At around 1 a.m., we had hot dogs and chips for vikning, which is the Swedish word for post-drinking snacks.  Useful meal, useful word.
  
• I did my first ever keg stand over the mini-Heineken keg.  My frat ho fantasy has finally been realized.
  

I am totally having a kräftskiva in Brooklyn next summer.  PAR-TAY!

View Gotland and Fårö by bike in a larger map

I'm back early.  Actually, I've been back for a few days now.  Gotland was a bust.  I spent the whole ride listening to podcasts of This American Life, which was great, except when I was riding on the 90km/hr highway while listening to the story of the kid who hit and killed a cyclist.  It also wasn't so great when I was riding through the forest in Fårö (which, if movies have taught me anything, is always full of axe murderers) while listening to the story of the Iraq vet who sliced up his girlfriend and her grandma.

And maybe I felt a twinge of recognition when I was battling the wind, carrying way too much stuff in my panniers, going 9km/hour and playing chicken with the thunderstorms while listening to Shalom Auslander say, "I ruin vacations.  That's just what I do."

There were several points during the ride when I looked at Gotlandsleden, the official island bicycle path, and thought, "Aw HELLS no," and turned right back around.  Like the ride up to the Hall-Hangvars nature reserve, which was an all gravel road leading into the forest (which, we've already established, is always filled with maniacs and escaped convicts).

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad.  It was just lonely.  Every time I was riding for long stretches, my thoughts alternated between, "Wow, this place is so peaceful" and "OMG, I am going to get caught in the rain with a flat tire in between one empty town and another empty town and not have enough water and I'll dehydrate and drink my own urine, which will make me so delirious and weak that I will get hit by a car at dusk when there are no lights on the road and I'll be dumped in the forest where adorable Swedish deer will pick my bones clean and if I'm lucky, the battery on my cell phone will last long enough so that they can trace my remains via GPS." 

I am way too city to go cycling through the country alone.

But if you're going to cycle around Gotland, here are my quick tips:

• I stayed in Visby for two nights, then one night each in Stenkyrka, then Bunge, then Fårö, then back to Visby via bus.  I probably could have gone longer distances between, but I'm glad I didn't because when the wind was blowing against me, boy was it hard to pedal to the next stop.  Stenkyrka Mejeri and Fårögården were the best bed and breakfasts, affordable and pretty.  Ihrebadens Vandrarhem would have been a good alternative to Stenkyrka because they have a slice of beach looking up at the Hall-Hangvars Naturreservet coastline. 
  
• Best eats were the fantastic fish soup and saffranspannkaka (a sort of saffron rice pudding pancake) with salmbärssylt (jam made of blackberry-like berries native to Gotland) and vispgrädde (whipped cream) at Bakfickan, the färskost (cream cheese) with bread and buttery bullar at Rute Stenugnsbageri, which is in the middle of fucking nowhere.  Smoked shrimp with saffron aioli at Lickershamnskrogen made for a pretty good seaside shack snack, too.
  







• Also, eat anything from Sylvis Döttrar.  I ate three bullar there in one day -- a buttery cardamom braided bun, a vanilla custard bun with raspberry jam and this vanilla custard filled bombolona thingie.  ZOMFG.  If I hadn't been bored out of my gourd, I could have stayed another two days and just eaten bullar, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
  



• The marshy eastern island of Furillen is like being on the moon -- chalk gravel roads, big chalk basins filled with water.  I thought the island was super creepy feeling, but some people love it.  There is something extremely horror film about it to me.  Fabriken Furillen is an ultra chic little hotel on the little quarry island, and the restaurant is very tastefully-decorated, but it's a major pain in the ass to get there by bicycle.  The roads are in bad condition on Furillen, and the roads leading to Furillen are not lit at all, so if you're staying in Fårösund or Bunge, you need to give yourself 45 minutes before sundown to get back to your sleeping place. This was also the place I first encountered these insane, alien Swedish mosquitoes which bit me THROUGH MY KNEE HIGH SOCKS.  For me, Furillen is missable.  I couldn't pedal away fast enough.
• If you ask me, the Lummelunda Cave is not worth the 100 SEK.  It's a ten minute dramatization movie, followed by a talky tour that's a bit anti-climactic because the stalactites/stalagmites are not that impressive.
• Loved Fårö, which is a more manageable size, with really pretty coasts and plenty of picturesque scenery.  It is what I pictured Gotland to be like.
  
• Pack light!  Next time I do one of these bike tours, I'm either going to only do the kind where someone shuttles your luggage for you from hotel to hotel or I'm going to bring just two of each article of clothing.  I had a "DUH!" moment when I realized early on that I really didn't need to lug both of my heavy U-locks around on an island you can only get to by three-hour ferry.  During a more frustrating moment when I couldn't board the bus back to Visby, I came very close to chucking everything.  Also, I made the mistake of riding out somewhere and riding back against the wind.  I think it is important to only ride in one direction, forward towards your next destination -- otherwise, you wear yourself out unnecessarily.
  
• You don't always have to take Gotlandsleden.  Sometimes, the fastest and most convenient way to go is on the main road.  Between Stenkyrka and Bunge, I took 149 and 148 all the way.  You have to be careful of the speeding cars and trailers, but it's doable and saves a lot of time if you're not prepared to ride for many hours.
• If you are planning to take the bus, you should know that you CAN take your bike on the bus for an additional cost of 40 SEK -- there are rack spaces on the back of the bus.  HOWEVER, they only allow two bikes per bus, so if the rack is full, you are SOL, my friend.  I found myself in that sitch and tried to ride all the way back to Visby from Fårö, but my legs and soul were too tired.  I wound up catching a later bus in Lärbro and totally riding like the devil to catch the ferry back to Nynäshamn, where I was the last person they held the boat for before shutting the trap doors.  And maybe that was the problem -- I spent so much of the vacation hurrying to the next stop, trying to beat the rain, trying to beat the wind, trying to beat the sunlight, that it was hard to just enjoy being there.  But if you are not as neurotic as I am, you might have a better time.
  

I'm about to go on vacation!  There, I said it.  One week, possibly two weeks without my computer.  That means I'm dropping a cover over this site and I'll be back in a week or two.  I will bring the iPhone so I can use the map function (and possibly Twitter), but that's it!  It'll be me, my bicycle, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea called Gotland, and the crazy spiral of my mind which I will attempt to hypnotize with physical activity.  It might rain, a lot, but I'm trying to nut up about it.

It's early August in Sweden and that means everyone has been on vacation for the last few weeks.  I get tons of auto-replies that say, "Jag är på semester" ("I am on vacation").  I even received one auto-reply with the subject "Paraplydrinkar" ("Umbrella drinks")!

You American readers know, of course, that it is practically verboten for an American to actually admit in their auto-reply that we are on vacation.  Instead, we say something purposefully vague like, "I am out of the office until August 3" or even "I am working out of the office". 

Whenever I tell a Swede that we would never dare say that we're on vacation, they ogle the crazy on my face and ask, "But why?"  And I don't know why.  Why are we Americans so ashamed of vacation?  Would it be such a terrible thing to admit that we are taking time off from work?  I would like to propose a few different auto-replies for your next non-work period. 

---

Subject:  No deadbeat dad

Hi!  Thanks for your e-mail.

I am taking five days to play catch with my son who thinks that I live at work. 

Do you remember what your dad looks like?

---

Subject: Moo!

I will be gone for the next three weeks so I don't have to pump breast milk in the bathroom on my lunch break.

Between breastfeeding my child and continuing my career, I choose both.  What do you think of that?

--- 

Subject: I work hard so they don't have to 

I will be in California for a week visiting my parents, whom I get to see once a year.  I will read your e-mail on the five-hour red-eye flight home.

---

Subject: Couples therapy

Thank you for getting in touch.

I am at home this week reconnecting with my workaholic wife, but I am clearing out my inbox once a day so I don't have to go through 1500 emails when I am back in the office. 

When I come back, the world will still be turning, I promise.

---

Subject: Umbrella drinks! 

I am sitting on a beach with an umbrella drink in hand.  Don't be mad at me. You will be on vacation soon, too.  Then you can rub it in my face.  And we can all have a good laugh about how nice it is to not have to pretend that the only thing we care about in life is work.

Cheers!

 

 

On the rarest of occasions, it is possible to take a bite of something and taste an entire lifetime in it.

Sometimes it's an animal's life, very straightforward.  Sometimes it is the chef's life you taste, his memory, her touch.  Sometimes it's your own life. 

I can count the number of times in this has happened to me.  The first time was when my whole clan went to visit my cousin when she was in college.  We ordered takeout from the Thai House on Market St. in San Francisco.  My father, whose brother did the electrician work for many of the Thai restaurants on that side of the bay, popped his head into the kitchen and asked to get our food extra Thai-style.  We ate sitting on the floor of my cousin's railroad apartment in the Mission.  What I remember was a tom yum goong, so pungent and tangy, topped with blistered chilies that singed and sang.  That night, I tasted my family's life, in a moment when we were all together, just a few years before we dispersed around the nation.  I'll never forget that meal.  We still talk about it to this day.

Another time was a meal I had with my then boyfriend at Nobu.  My boyfriend wanted to impress me.  I was mostly ungrateful and unimpressed.  Until, that is, the final course came out -- a small bowl of broth, all golden clarity and tasting of the sea.  It had a few small pieces of pink and white fish, poached to perfection, with just a few sprouts of mitsuba floating about.  It made my boyfriend cry.  It made me a little teary.  We looked at each other.  We looked at the chef.  The chef nodded knowingly.  I tasted the ocean in that bowl, the Pacific ocean, the history of kelp, the bright sun that warms the upper reaches of the water. 

And then there was Mathias Dahlgren's Matsalen.  Francis and I decided to go and treat ourselves one night when he was in Stockholm.  My appetite was ample.  The little teasers had been clever and delicious -- a seascape made of paper-thin, dehydrated cauliflower floating like coral in a glass of sesame seeds, a sail of soy-seaweed paper, a crisp sheet of beet.  And there it was -- a tiny bun warmed on a charred piece of wood.  The waitress gave some story about this bun being Mathias's first memory as a child.  Yeah, yeah, I thought.  Just lemme at it.

The smell -- coal, fire, dough.  Smooth, round bread against the wavy grain of the wood pedestal.  I popped it into my mouth and clamped down.  And -- was that a gob of butter?  A little salty, and then the dough was sweet.  Creamy.  Soft.  Oh god.  My blood vessels dilated up to the roots of my hair.  There it was -- recognition.  The chef's life in a bite.

The tasting menu at Mathias Dahlgren was one of the best meals of my life.  Seriously.  Moments of true bliss followed as Francis and I chuckled our way giddily through the seven-course dinner.  A little tile of ling, a cod-like fish, and the daintiest scallop, seared with just a smack of heat, was tender and sensual against a masculine garlic puree and palate-cleansing parsley sprouts.  It lit Francis's face up.  Bling!

Raw tongue lengths of coral-colored salmon folded over bright orange whitefish roe, nestling against a creamy bit of artichoke puree and emerald green Gotland asparagus tips, all moistened by a touch of browned butter and adorned with lilac chive flowers. This dish was absolutely feminine, encompassing the delicate complexity of spring, all fertility and sensuality.  It was my favorite dish that night.

Langoustine wrapped in -- was that pure pork fat? -- pork cheek, served with an astringent lovage-pea puree.  A pumpkin porridge topped with parmesan cheese, black truffles and pumpkin seeds -- simple and earthy.  Rich saddle of lamb with fried sweetbreads were decadent but played up the complex flavors of the meats themselves.   

But over the next few days, I realized that another dish was haunting me, continues to haunt me.  It was so deceptively simple, so audacious.  A rectangle of their crustless pillowy sourdough was stuffed with cow's milk cheese, pan fried on all sides in olive oil and touched with honey, sea salt and black pepper.  The grilled cheese (because, come on, it's a grilled cheese) came with a thin, long shot glass of fermented birch sap, a lightly fizzy, lightly alcoholic translucent white beverage.  Epic sagas could be written about the flavors that came forth with every alternating bite and sip.  Honey + salt. Milk + yeast.  Tree + animal.  Age + brew.  Is it too soon to taste that again?  Will I ever taste anything like that again?  I wonder.

A visitor I had recently made the observation that Swedes wear the same standard H&M clothes that we do in the States, but they style them much more interestingly.  The same could be said of food here -- the Swedish sense of style is in play here.  Matsalen doesn't have an infinite palette of flavors.  But what it has, it uses gracefully, bringing out nuance.

Matsalen, located in the Grand Hotel, looks out on the dock where Waxholmsbolaget ferries drop anchor when they're in the Stockholm harbor.  The boats come and go over the course of a dinner as the cloudy sky fades from gray to navy.  It's a really quintessentially Stockholm view.  Inside, the dining room is chalky but warm, done up in complementary shades of blue gray, beige and white, echoing the colors of the boats and their headlights against the changing evening backdrop.  It's elegant, not stuffy, mimicking the hushed reverence and charm of a seaside chapel.

Matbaren, the more casual restaurant next door, offers a few of the same dishes on Matsalen's a la carte menu, though the food a little less interesting.  The room is a lot more casual, with wood walls, tall stools, Poul Henningsen light fixtures and a long, curved dining bar.  The unmissable: the horseradish herring was fucking unbelievable -- a cream herring, pickled but not tart, with a row of adorable, halved boiled fresh potatoes and a rope of bleak roe.  A few purple rings of onion add color and zest; underneath the stole of cream and above the brown butter slip, the herring hides tiny segments of lemon which burst with the bleak roe at precisely the right moments.  Make sure to also order a frosty shot of Mathias Dahlgren's own double-biting horseradish snaps.

And check out this dessert: a chilled 50s martini glass is filled with plain yogurt, with a soft ball of peach sorbet plopped in the middle (had to be robot-couped, it was so fine and smooth).  Around the glass, a ring of toasted, skinned whole hazelnuts (which have become a regular staple in my diet) circle the sorbet, with a little honey and a halo of fruity olive oil, topped with a pinch of sea salt.  Two temperatures, several textures, and big, bouffanty flavors.  I have got to make it for a dinner party sometime.

I will say that it's a good place to take yourself on a date.  I wasn't the only solo diner in there tonight -- two guys on the other side of the bar were also eating alone, though I think I totally out-ate them both.   

I've been considering going to Matsalen one more time before I go home, but I'm not sure I want to.  The experience was so sublime, so moving in my mind that I dare not disturb the dream.  But you can bet that the next time I'm back in Stockholm, I'll have a reservation there.

Matsalen
Mathias Dahlgren
Södra Blasieholmshamnen 6
T-bana: Kungsträdgården
Matsalen tasting menu: 1500 SEK (about $200).  Reservations required.
Matbaren 3 courses with 3 drinks: about 1000 SEK (about $130).  Reservations recommended, but there's supposedly always room for a drop-in.

Of all the things I will miss about Sweden when I leave, perhaps at the top of the list will be my solitary weekend bicycle excursions.  There are lots of beautiful places around Stockholm that are very accessible via safe, cordoned off bike lanes.  You could use City Bikes for some of these trips, but then you have to watch the time and make sure you don't keep your bike out for more than three hours, which may mean stopping to switch bikes at the furthest station.

Stockholm is not hilly like San Francisco, but it's not completely flat like Copenhagen, either.  There are a few bridges that make you earn your bullar.  But the best part about these rides is that you can feel very virtuous about the caloric treat you pack with you for the ride.

Most of these rides are 20 minutes to an hour from the city center, depending on how fast you ride.  Keep in mind that these are really amateur rides, less for the person who owns spandex shorts and more for the person who likes to ride around with their mouth open.

What you'll need: 

Get a cykelkarta, or bike map, which you can pick up at any bike shop around town. You can probably also get one from the Tourist Center across the street from NK at Hamngatan 27.

Lights are helpful at night.  While you won't need them much around the summer solstice, you will need them as it gets darker out.  I also always wear a helmet.  I don't care if it doesn't look good.  I don't want my Mae to have to put my melon back together.

Provisions: If you want to buy a sandwich for the road (never a bad idea), my absolute favorite place to pick up a bicycle bag lunch is Thelins Konditori.  There are a couple of Thelins around town, but the one I go to is on Kungsholmen at S:t Eriksgatan 43.  I always get the vegetarian sandwich, which has fresh cream cheese, shredded carrots, peppers and lettuce on fruit and nut bread, which features huge hunks of dried apricot and walnuts.  It's the best bicycling sandwich ever.  Add a vanilla cream cardamom bun or a chocolate dipped meringue for a little extra sugar boost. 

1. Drottningholms Slott
Ride time: 45 - 75 min.


How to get there:
From the north: Take S:t Eriksgatan into Kungsholmen, make a right on Drottningholmsvägen and take it all the way west, cross a bridge, pass Alvik and Stora Mossen.  Make a left at the roundabout at Brommaplan, and keep following Drottningholmsvägen until you get to Nockebybron, another bridge.  Take it across two bodies of water into Ekerö.

From the south: Take Västerbron north into Kungsholmen, make a left on Drottningholmsvägen, then follow the rest of the directions above.

Drottningholm is the actual residence of the Swedish royal family.  You could go inside and check out the part that's open to the public, but then you have to pay an entrance fee.  There's some kind of Chinese pavilion here that you could also pay to gawk at. But the opulent (well, as opulent as Sweden gets) grounds offer plenty to look at.  It's modeled after French palaces from the 1600s or something -- I don't know, you can read about it on their website.  I'm no architecture nerd.



Swans grace the water lily ponds.  They dip their long necks into the water to bob for fish, their tails jiggling upright like little floating island meringues.

This is a lovely spot to picnic when the weather holds.  Your non-cycling friends can take the ferry from Stadshuskajen at Stockholm City Hall, which is probably just as enjoyable as taking the bicycle.

Drottningholms Slott
Ekerö

2. Ulriksdals Slott
Ride time: 30-45 min.

How to get there:
Take Hagastråket north, all along the west side of Hagaparken.  Ride until you reach the top of the Brunnsviken body of water, then turn right along the water along Bergshamnavägen. Keep your eyes out for the signs to Ulriksdals Slott.  There is one little tunnel that you turn left into to reach the Ulriksdals complex.  Ride along the narrow path, make a left and go up a hill until you reach the main entrance for Ulriksdals.

Yes, another castle!  Plenty of little gravel paths and wood bridges to ride over.  But it's a little off the beaten path, so if you go in July, there is actually a chance that no one else will be around.  There's also a dreamy little set of hedge-enclosed gardens that would be perfect to sit and make out in if  you were a Swedish princess sneaking around with the stable boy (or your personal trainer).
 


But this one has something better -- a pick-your-own stuff garden.  Rows of various potatoes, green beans and onions, as well as artichokes, giant cardoons, pretty flowers and tons of other stuff which you can cut with a little knife to put into the baskets they provide.  Chic!





If you're a city girl like me, you'll get a kick out of picking your own potatoes.  It's magic!  You pull up these big leafy plants and there are freaking POTATOES in the dirt.  Lots of 'em.  In all sizes.  They're as alien as giant maggots but they're crazy delicious. 





The cafe has a classic Swedish fika spread -- pies, cakes, meringues and more, with plenty of hot coffee to help you pep up for the ride back.

 

Ulriksdals Slott
Solna

3. Skogskyrkogården
30 - 60 min., depending on where you start

How to get there:
Take Götgatan through Södermalm.  Cross the bridge and keep going straight, past Globen.  Go under the freeway and to the left to get to Skogskyrkogården.

Skogskyrkogården is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.  It's a breathtakingly beautiful and huge cemetery that doesn't feel at all like a cemetery.  When you bike in, all you see is a huge cross at the end of a long slope of grass.

The place was designed with the mourning experience in mind.  A long walk (or drive) takes you up to the chapel entrance, so you can prepare yourself mentally and emotionally for a funeral.  Once you exit the chapel, you're greeted with the humble splendor of the tall evergreen woods.  The small, carved headstones are like rows of dotted lines throughout the ancient woods.  The trees are magnificent.  They tower over the little planted flowers on the graves as if to say hello, we know you're mourning, but remember that life is beautiful, and it goes on.



Greta Garbo is buried here. Her earth-toned tombstone has what I presume is her signature etched in gold. She has her own little plot of grass, surrounded by stepping stones and a red carpet of flowers, just behind the Skogskapellet, or Woods Chapel.

 

I ate my smörgås up in the meditation grove, which is a little square at the top of a hill with a gorgeous view of the woods and chapel. It felt a tiny bit weird eating in a place called the meditation grove, but I promise you that I concentrated respectfully as I ate. Anyway, I think it would be weirder to drop crumbs on someone's grave.

 



I highly recommend listening to the Choir of King's College as you cycle around -- that's about as close to Christian divinity as I'll ever get.

I hear this is the place to be on Allhelgonadagen, or All Saints Day, when the entire forest glows with candles on every grave.

Skogskyrkogården
South Stockholm, near Gamla Enskede

4. Millesgården
Ride time: 20-45 min.

How to get there:
Ride east on Odengatan until you get to Valhallavägen.  Turn right and ride past the Tekniska Hogskolan until you reach Stockholms Stadion.  Make a left onto Lidingövägen.  Follow the bike path until you reach the water.  There's a tricky bit here where you have to ride down to the Silja ferry terminal, and it seems like you're going the wrong way, but stay on the path.  Go straight until you see the sign for Lidingö.  Follow the path to the very straight and easy low foot and bicycle bridge.  Once you get over the bridge, you have to find your way to the top of the hill.  I took the path to the right down until I reached a staircase, then I walked my bike up.  Then I walked up the steep paths from there.  There is probably an easier way to the top, but I didn't find it.



Millesgården was the home of sculptor Carl Milles, his wife Olga and his sister Ruth during the first half of the 1900s.  It's a huge garden at the top of a hill with lots of Milles' whimsical sculptures, big and small, pretty flowers and tinkling fountains.  The sculpture's not really to my taste, but it is a really peaceful, beautiful spot for just soaking in the sun and looking at the ferries docked on the other side of the water. 

The place is enormous, built on a really grand scale, especially by Swedish standards.  The house sits higher than most places in Stockholm, overlooking the Lilla Värtan body of water between Lidingö and Norrmalm. 

The house is filled with Milles' collection of Greek artifacts, as well as art deco light fixtures, Swedish woodwork and pretty tiling.  But the best thing about the place is the way the air flows through the house.  You walk from room to room and the air just moves with you, filling the place with a lightness, a freshness that is incomparable on a hot day.  The feng shui must be off the hook.











Statues on the terrace garden play at eye level.  The sculptures in the main garden face out towards the world on giant pedestals, glorious in the sun and towering over the city.







The adjoining Bistro Rosenterrassen is pretty good, too.  I had a nice pear tårta and a bottle of fizzy water in the cosmos-filled garden.  They serve bullar from the Milles' own recipe.  They looked a little boring to me, so I went for cake instead, but they were offering a special deal with your entrance fee -- 90 SEK to enter the garden, and only 10 SEK more for a coffee and bulle.

Lidingö is one of the prettiest places around town, so it's nice just to ride along the edge of the island at the foot of the cliff, too.

Millesgården
Lidingö

5. Norra Begravningsplats
Ride time: 15-30 min.

How to get there: Take Torsgatan north until you get to Solnavägen.  Take it up until there is a fork, where you can choose to take Märstastråket.  You can't miss it.

Norra Begravningsplats was a really lovely surprise.  It's off the beaten path and it's barely on the map, though it's quite close to the city.  But once you ride up north this way, you can't miss it.  There are hedges around the edges of the grounds, so you don't really get a sense of what's inside until you actually go in.  It's an enormous cemetery, similar in style to Skogskyrkogården but a little less perfect. 

I met someone tonight who lives in Solna, very close to Norra Begravningsplats.  She said, "There are many gläntor there -- that's quite a romantic Swedish word you should know."  Glänta translates into glade, but what it means is a special spot where the light falls through deciduous trees just so, like in the John Bauer illustration she showed me to explain the word.



In the States, people often place cut bouquets on graves, but I've noticed that in Sweden, everyone plants flowers right in front of the tombstone.  Makes the cemetery a much less gloomy place.  I like the idea of living things growing in a place that marks death.



It's probably not the place to put out a picnic, since there aren't any spots really to do such a thing, but it's a peaceful place to ride around and listen to music in.

Norra Begravningsplatsen
Solna

----
I've put them on my map for you here.  And if it's a hot day, I highly recommend riding to Kungsholmens Glassfabrik for some citronglass or polkaglass to cool off after your ride.

Any of you Stockholmers have any suggestions for other day rides? 

View 4 Days in Stockholm in a larger map

ITINERARY 2, DAY 4: Sunday

Get on your bikes and ride east along beautiful Strandvägen for brunch on your last day.

Museum time: Vasa Museum

Photo by Flickr user Telstar Logistics, CC licensed

I'm not much of a museum person when I travel.  Most of the time, I'd rather interact with people food than art.  But the Vasa Museum is pretty special.  It's basically a giant wooden ship from the 17th century that floated out to sea tiny bit and then sank to the bottom of the sea.  They fished it up in the 50s mostly intact and built a big museum to house it.

What I love most about it is that it's the biggest tourist attraction in Stockholm, and it's basically a tribute to a one of the biggest FAILS in nautical engineering history.  It's like an allegory denouncing the sin of pride.

There's not much to it.  You basically walk in, walk around the big ship, and then you're done. If you ever played pirates as a kid, you'll love it.  If you're not into big ships, you'll feel ambivalent about it.  But you kind of have to see it.  It's a nice, quick hit. 

Lunch and fika: Rosendals Trädgård

I don't know why I saved this for last.  Rosendals Trädgård is probably my favorite spot in all of Stockholm.  I've written about it before here, but it's a very different place in the spring and summer.  It's a big complex smack in the middle of Djurgården, Stockholm's Central Park.  A set of converted greenhouses sit at the top of a hill, surrounded by farmed land and a small apple orchard.  The warmer it gets, the louder the flora colors are -- first come the crocuses and the then tiny grape hyacinths, then feathery tulips,  then apple blossoms, then lilacs, then jasmine, then lilies, as well as all kinds of flowers I don't know the names of.  Nature in Sweden can be so aggressive -- the flowers have two, three months to bloom and they sure do procreate like they mean it.

The organic gardens around the complex provide the cafe with emerald lettuces and beautiful, jewel-colored vegetables.  If no one is looking, you can even gather a handful of smultron, or wild strawberries, from the fruit patch.

I missed the blooming of the apple trees this year, but I hear that a picnic in the orchard as the blossoms start to rain petals down is about as close to heaven as you can get.
 




And the food is wonderful -- organic and locally sourced for the most part, with emphasis on hearty, farm-fresh ingredients dressed with a light hand.  Sej, a firm white-fleshed fish, is served sauteed with crispy hunks of bacon and fresh potatoes. Vegetarian soups like beet with cumin and creme fraiche or vegetable are full-flavored and filling without being too heavy. 

Order your dessert and coffee with your meal so you don't have to wait on line a second time.  I love the cream cheese frosted carrot cake and the perfectly creamy-dense chocolate kladdkaka with whipped cream.  I could eat kladdkaka every day.

Don't forget to hit the butik, where you can get really delicious marmelades like carrot with Persian spices or saffron fig to smuggle back, along with their bakery's breads and cookies for the plane.

Rosendals Trädgård
Djurgården
T-bana: Kungsträdgården

Have a safe flight home!

My jeans are splattered in fish blood from the broken spine of one particularly tenacious perch. I've got purple splotches on the ass of my jeans where I leaned into a blueberry bush.  My foam and leather sneakers have soaked in some of the bilge water from the boat's bottom.  I am like a mixed media canvas painted by Saltvik, where La Doug's uncle Jonas and aunt Carola live.*



Saltvik is a little Swedish coastal village near Hudiksvall, an almost four hour bus ride north of Stockholm.  Along the highway, the wild archipelago opens out occasionally, flashing its waters between the tall, slender birch trees which dominate the landscape.  The branches hang loose and sparse on the trees' pale limbs, like the thinning, stringy hair of an old woman.





Jonas and Carola live in a picture-perfect Svealand summer house, with a carefully tended garden of flowers and berries and potatoes.  It used to be their summer home, but now they live in Saltvik all year round.  There are neighbors around, but at country distances.

Though they have adult children, Jonas and Carola are lighter on their feet than I am.  Carola jumps through the brush and off the boat with the agility of a teenager.  They are fit and healthy in a very Swedish way, from daily activity like long walks through the country in the morning and evening. 



I get to stay in the unbelievable guest house, a fully-contained apartment with four bunk beds lining the back wall.  The kid in me wants to try all four beds to see which one I'll like best.





Carola and I pick buckets of blueberries by the side of the road.  The land is carpeted in blueberry bushes.  Long clusters of unripe lingonberries are still pale green, touched with rose.  Sweden has a law called allemansrätten, or every man's right, which says that anyone can pole fish and pick berries and mushrooms anywhere, including privately-owned land (to a certain degree).   



We take Jonas and Carola's power boat out and cross the sea to one of the many sparsely populated islands in the Swedish archipelago.  The wind is crisp and cold, but it feels good to be out in the ocean.  At the end of the day, as the rain begins to pockmark the water's surface, we pull dozens of aborrar, perch with fluorescent orange fins, light blue vertical stripes and deep maroon gills, up from nets we've dropped into a little rush-lined bay.  The largest of them becomes dinner.  We steam the 8-inch fillets and serve with a garlic cilantro lime sauce.  Its tender white flesh is moist and firm, juicy and mild, though the skin is quite tough and inedible.  The rest of the aborrar get cleaned and frozen for later.





But my favorite consumption of the weekend is Carola's cake!  It's a masterpiece that couldn't be easier to make. It's perfect for those late summer berries I'll hopefully catch when I get back to New York.  A soft meringue shell is topped with a vanilla custard, fresh redcurrants and blueberries.  I could eat the whole thing in one sitting, easily.

I feel like I don't have enough time to write about all of these brand-new experiences.  I want to write more, remember everything, but then I want to spend my time experiencing more so I have more to remember.  Everything is so exotic to me -- the feeling of a fish in my hands, wriggling and gasping for its life, its belly taut, a half-digested herring stuck in its throat; raking my fingers through the wild blueberry ground cover, catching the tiny orbs in my purple-stained palm; trying desperately to follow dinner conversation in Swedish until my head hurts and I lose all sense of the language.

I hope that when I get back to New York, I can be a tourist in my own life -- to accept every invitation, to not be afraid to hang out with strangers, to be open and brave and willing to tire myself out.  That is allemansrätten, too.

Anyway, it's almost 11am!  I've got to get out of the house.  You should get out of the house, too.  There's a lot of world to see out there.

Carola's rödvinbär tårta

The meringue and custard can both be made ahead of time.  Put plastic wrap directly on your cooled custard so you don't get a custard skin.  Assemble just before serving.

For the meringue shell:

4 egg whites
100 grams ground almonds (7/8 cup)**
1 1/2 dl (2/3 cup) sugar

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).  Whip egg whites hard.  Fold in almonds and sugar.  Draw a 30-cm (12-inch) circle onto a sheet of parchment paper using an overturned plate.  Spread the meringue onto the parchment paper in the circle shape.  Bake in the bottom shelf of the oven for 20-25 minutes until very very light brown and top is no longer glossy.

For the custard:

4 egg yolks
1 dl (scant 1/2 cup) sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla sugar (or vanilla extract)
1 dl (scant 1/2 cup) cream
100 grams (7 tbsp.) butter

Whisk all ingredients except for butter in a small pot.  Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, until custard is thick.  Remove from heat and add butter.  Let cool. 

To assemble:

Beaucoup berries
Meringue
Custard

Top cake with cooled custard.  Top custard with beaucoup berries.  Serve immediately.  Carola suggests something tart, like redcurrants, mixed with wild blueberries.  I am sure it would be just as lovely with whatever berries you have on hand, or fresh peaches.  Serves 8 civilized slices, or 4 slices with 4 second servings.
 

*Did I tell you La Doug is half-Swedish?  Isn't that a fantastic coincidence? Makes me feel that much closer to him.

**Almonds are usually ground with a mandelkvarn, or an almond mill, which is like a hand cranked cheese grater with a vice grip so you can clamp it to the side of your table.  I bought one just to make this cake, but I'm sure you could use a coffee grinder if you don't object to loud electronic devices like I do.

Name: Joy Hui Lin

Occupation: Food/Travel Writer & Poet

Neighborhood: Vasastan

Relationship status: Sambo  

What did you eat today?

Cheerios, a white nectarine, a peach, a pastry, Garlicky Eggplant with Pork, and rice.

What do you never eat? 

You won't see me lining up in the milza queue at St. Francis' (spleen sandwiches, which are (in)famous in Sicily).

Complete this sentence: 

In my refrigerator, you can always find: Cheese.  I'm happiest when there are at least five kinds around.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

Dishwasher.  Sometimes I wish I could hug it.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

I love Cafe Piastowska, Cafe Copacabana, Ethiostar, and Roppongi.  

World ends tomorrow.  What would you like for your last meal? 

Either Little Peking in Westminster, CA -- pork and leek dumplings with handmade dough, roast beef and green onion sandwich dripping with hoisin sauce (can you tell I'm drooling), or my boyfriend Otto's osso bucco and risotto milanese.

Read more about Joy's food feelings at joysan.blogspot.com.  

View 4 Days in Stockholm in a larger map

ITINERARY 2, DAY 3: SATURDAY

Weekend Brunch: Djurgården

Sleep in a bit - it's the weekend!  Pick up some bikes from the nearest bike station and head over to Djurgården's Blå Porten, which I've also written about here.  Carbo-load on refined smörgåsar like croissants with brie and vegetables or multi-grain buns, or butter-soaked tosca raspberry cake and thick slices of cardamom cake.  Those who are ready for something a little more substantial can also order cooked entrees from the If you love the colorful Lotta Kühlhorn trays they use there, you can get them at the Liljevalchs art museum next door.











Or if it's raining and you don't feel like getting soaked in the garden, you can try Flickorna Helin & Voltaire a little up Rosendalsvägen.  A few rustic, dark-stained wood tables and booths fill the corners of the inner room.  Try the gubbmacka, a classic country open-faced sandwich made with sliced, hard-boiled egg draped with a few anchovy fillets over ruffly lettuce and buttered, syrup-sweetened dark bread.  Two chives recline over the composition like slender antenna, adding just the right amount of sharpness with each bite.  It's pretty badass.  I also love the enormous face-sized chocolate meringue, a sugar bomb that you'll want to wash down with a nice, bitter cup of black coffee.

Blå Porten
Djurgårdsvägen 64
T-bana: Kungsträdgården
No reservations required

Flickorna Helin och Voltaire
Rosendalsvägen 14
T-bana: Kungsträdgården
No reservations required

Post-brunch bike ride

If you don't have time to ride outside the city center, you should definitely do this inner-city loop.  Djurgården can be a totally magical place, even if the weather is uncooperative.  I ride around here as often as I can.  In fact, there is nothing I enjoy more than to eat something sugary and then take off through the lush green park.

Djurgården is the former hunting ground for the royal family.  These days, Djurgården and the rest of the royal grounds are owned collectively by the Swedish people.  The grounds are extremely well-cared for, perfect for the constitutional walks Swedish people like.  There are very few hills and plenty of well-marked bike lanes; just don't get your tires stuck in the tram tracks.  Take the main drag all the way past Skansen*, past Gröna Lund, and go east towards the marina.  Loop back up all the way along the tree-lined canal.  

If you're out at the right time, you'll pass horses flicking their tails peacefully in the grass.  Dozens of black-faced sheep graze just an arm's distance away; ambivalent red cows stand guard over their frolicking calves. Swans and fuzzy swanlings glide, while gray geese sit staunch on the banks, unperturbed by the crunch of bicycle tires on the gravel path.  Sailboats cut across the water, past mansions and cottages, all of them adorned with exuberant flora in rich Gauguin colors.  The air is unbelievably fresh and crisp.  My co-worker says that being out during a rain or post rain is best for exercise because there is so much oxygen in the air.  I am not sure if this is some kind of sour grapes compensation, but I would like to believe it is true.

Once you get up to the northeast corner of Djurgården, cross the road and ride through the tall grasses of Ladjurgården.  There isn't a ton to see here, but it is a lovely place to zip around.  It's very easy to spend two hours just exploring the park.  If you need to trade in your bike, there is a single, very popular station down at Gröna Lund.

Thirsty?  Let's head down the east side of Gamla Stan and make it back over to Söder.

Afternoon libation: Mosebacke

Mosebacke is a fine place to do a little people-watching while sipping on rosé, the summer refresher of choice.  It reminds me of Harry's at Water Taxi Beach, only it is sitting on a cliff high over the water.  They also have one of the finest views of the city in all of Stockholm.  On a nice day, the place is packed with RayBan sporting hipster kids.  The menu is quite limited to a few items like chicken Caesar salad and roast beef with potato salad.  It is generally uninteresting, so I don't recommend it, unless you're starving/too drunk/having too much of a good time to go anywhere else for food.

A good option for a snack (if you are somehow already hungry again) is the Nystekt Strömming kiosk down by Slussen.  This busy little cart sells freshly fried herring with all the fixings - pressgurka, vinegary cucumber salad,  crème fraiche, slivers of red onion and parsley, all piled on crunchy knäckebröd.  Fresh and clean and delicious.  And utterly authentic.

Mosebacke
Mosebacketorg 3
T-bana: Slussen

Nystekt Strömming
Cart outside the Slussen T-bana
T-bana: Slussen 

Now that you have had a nip of tipple, let's get back on the road!

Afternoon bike tour

You can pick up bikes in several City Bikes stations near Slussen.  Curve down the swirl of ramps and take the path towards Söder Malarstrand, which is a lovely bike path by the water lined with ships-cum-restaurants/hotels/nightclubs.  Curve down to Hornstull Strand and ride all the way until you reach Tanto Lund.

I'm not exactly sure what the history of Tanto Lund is, but it's like a teeny village of elven summer houses with some of the prettiest flower gardens in all of Stockholm.  This area is quite hilly, so you might have to get off the bike and walk around a bit.

Take Ringvägen's wide bicycle path all the way around Söder until you reach Skanstull.  Turn up Götgatan a bit here and you'll get to your dinner destination.

Dinner: Pelikan or Thai Boat

Pelikan is another one of those places that everyone in Stockholm loves.  It's an old Södermalm pub that has been around since the 1600s - well, the pub name has been around; the pub itself has moved locations many times.  

This claimed 17th century heritage feels genuine, though - it's easy to imagine time standing still here, with plenty of impassioned meetings taking place over long glasses of ale and artery-clogging dishes.  The Pelikan room mixes masculine and feminine elements together evenly. Hard, angular, dark wood booths ground the huge room's high walls.  Male waiters in white shirts and black vests glide around the chatter-filled room, which is noisy but not painfully so.  The gentle light filtering in through the huge windows mixed with the candlelight at the tables and the warm beige color on the walls lights everyone's faces up in the most romantic way.  A little gilded art deco mural of a monkey in the jungle climbs the wall, and a single playing card is knifed into the 20 foot ceiling.  Otherwise, the room is quite bare of decoration and garnish.

The food is again classic husmanskost, quite heavy. The best dish was cider mustard-glazed "schweinehaxe", a grilled pork neck, thick and unapologetic -- imagine Tony Soprano's fatty, meaty thugs as pigs and you've got the picture.  Meatballs here are tough nuts and a little liver-like - perhaps venison or moose in the mix? - not my fave. You can only get the pytt i panna after regular dinner hours, at the end of the night - I don't know if this is a good or bad thing.

Plenty of seats in the main hall, which means we were able to get a table without a reservation.  It's also a good place to accommodate large groups.  I actually ran into an old friend from New York whom I hadn't seen in two years, which only added to the feeling that we were being transported in time.

If you're tired of husmanskost, though (which, given the fact that you have only been here for three days, seems unlikely), you can always try the Thai Boat, which is parked in the summer down past Skanstull.  It's literally a boat docked on the south end of Söder, serving surprisingly fair Thai food.  I especially liked the steamed sea bass with raw garlic and cilantro.  The occasional live band plays on a sand-strewn stage, and fresh-from-Thailand immigrants pack the outdoor bar area.  It's a lovely place to sit and be raucous when the weather is nice.

Pelikan
Blekingegatan 40
T-bana: Skanstull

Thai Boat
Kajplats 300 at the end of Östgötagatan
T-bana: Skanstull

Late evening: Hang by the water

Make sure you check out a few bikes before 10pm.  My buddy Niklas called me and convinced us to ride over near Djurgården to drink with him on his friend's two-level boat - CHIC.  Three skinny cabin bedrooms, beer and cider in the fridge, it's the kind of place where I would totally put out under the right circumstances.  Who knew I was such a Hamptons ho?

We sat around and spent a lot of time debating America's merits and demerits with Swedes who wanted to know what America really thinks of them (the honest truth - they don't think of Sweden very much at all).  Company included a dude with one wonky Simpsons eye and a Mike Tyson face tat, though his lack of chattiness was probably the most intimidating thing about him.

But say you don't have a friend who has a friend who has a boat.  You can also ride over to Strandbryggan and have a little seaside cocktail there, or Josefinas, another pricy beach furniture boite by the water.  I haven't been, but it's been recommended to me a few times.  Lots of bland but pretty people in the pictures, but you can't go wrong sitting out at Djurgården.  Ride safely, and don't forget to return your bikes by 1am.

Strandbryggan
Strandvägskajen 27
T-bana: Kungsträdgården

Josefinas
Galärvarvsvägen 10
T-bana: Kungsträdgården

And after the show, it's the after party

Oh, you still want to go out?  My friend Klara tells me the hot party in town right now is Trädgården, an outdoor party which takes place under the Skanstull bridge.   Catch the club kids before closing time at 1am.

Trädgården
Hammarby slussväg 2
T-bana: Skanstull

*No Skansen on either itinerary.  I think it's very missable.  Unless you must see a deeply depressed elk up close.

Dear men* on trains/planes/buses,

Why do you think it is okay to invade my half of the bus/train/plane seat with your spread-eagle?  Does your teeny weenie need a wittle wiggle room?

Stay on your side or I will start humming George Michael songs and passive-aggressively pushing you back with my foot.

Keep out!
Ganda

*Don't look at me like that!  It's always you dudes!

Stockholm, July 8, 2009:

Paris, July 26, 2009:

 

NIGEL: Paris, I just didn't think your heart was in it.  You've got to show some personality.  I mean, you look sexy and adorable and I would love to drop you down my pants with all of your ethnic flavor, but it just didn't work for me.

LIL C: Stockholm, you really took your big ship and sank it, down to the nadir of the ocean of emotion, even though your feet were buoyed by the inflection of your Nordic knowledge.  I just want to say that I appreciate the heart with which your seagulls infiltrate the inner eye.

MARY: Wrap a corn husk around that herring because Sweden is on the hot tamale train! Wooooooooooooooo!!!

The drive into Ekerö from the city takes about 20 minutes, shooting west through Kungsholmen, out past the royal residence at Drottningholms Slott, past spandexed cyclists and thick fields of stiff grass, gilded green.  Clouds are painted in swirls of white and gray with a hundred different brushes -- a filmy watercolor to the left, opaque oil puffs to the right, whimsical woodblock prints overhead.

We pass a giant cargo ship tipped on its side and leaning against a hill behind a deep waving swath of grass.  It looks like it was beached there by a giant wave and left to dry out.  Its steampipe is graffitied in big, red bubbly letters.  The neighborhood thinks it's an eyesore.  I like it. The sight of it gives me something to chew on for a second.  Who is the owner? How did he park it on the side of a hill?  Who tagged its little white cap?

My colleague's house could be a cement-colored Scandinavian beach house jutting off the side of a little island, except it bares its broad face to a cropped, well-behaved lawn instead of the ocean.  The wooden deck holds a dining table and a blocky woven dark wicker lounge set.  The Spanish-style white stucco wall beside the concrete pool reminds me of L.A.  We dig up little carrots from the garden in front of the pool house.  The wild red raspberries we pluck from the bushes behind it are as sweet as jelly candy. 

The clouds have magically dissipated, the blue canvas sky wiped almost completely clean.  We eat home-cooked Thai food outside under a few patio umbrellas.  The suntanned kids begrudgingly eat a few freshly fried spring rolls before jumping into the pool.  Over curry with pineapple, a spicy beef larb, sweet and sour shrimp and a chaise of rice, we mix all of our languages -- my colleague's native Swedish, his wife and her cousin's native Thai, my native English.

The neighbors/best friends, another Thai-Swedish couple, come over for dessert -- a hot crumble made with the liters of wild blueberries the wives picked in the woods behind their houses.  "Lagom söt" says the neighbor -- just the right amount of sweetness.  The inky purple fruit turns the melted ice cream lavender.

I am so grateful for the kindness of  acquaintances.  Every invitation I accept into someone's home makes me want to be a better neighbor, to open my door wide and say, Yes!  Varsågoda!  Welcome to my home.  Welcome to my life.  Every day here, I marvel how a million new experiences can become commonplace in six short months, or how the ear can learn to find the words in a stream of foreign sounds, or how quickly a stranger can become a friend over a few spoonfuls of rice.  The heart gobbles the trail of breadcrumbs so the mind can find a new way home now and then.

My colleague tells me that in two months, the gaggle of kids splashing and fighting in the pool will stop playing in their front yard, as everyone cocoons for the dark, cold months.  The patio furniture will be tucked away after only a few short months of use.  The short days will zap people of strength, and the neighborly camaraderie will hibernate for eight hard months, waiting for the sweet moment in May, maybe June, when it can emerge again.
 
For now, the sun takes its sweet time setting, leaving a periwinkle night light on the horizon at 11pm. I take a taxi home, the smell of mosquito incense clinging to my hair.  The slow-burning green coils remind me of Thailand and the Hudson house.  In the future, they will remind me of a quiet summer evening I spent in Ekerö, eating wild Swedish berries with new friends and weaving our stories together in three tongues.

 

Dear Sweden,

I've been collecting all of these clever Swedish food phrases, like Svennebanan.  Svennebanan is like "Svenny banana", a derogatory term describing a run-of-the-mill Swede.  I was flipping channels today and heard it in a commercial for a top hits compilation CD -- I guess there's a big pop hit right now called "Svennebanan". 

I got my Google on, and the video, the song, the lyrics, the whole concept kind of blew my mind.  As far as I can tell, the lyrics are all about what Svennebanans like -- Thailand, karaoke, getting drunk on the ferry to Finland*...there's even a reference to singing Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer"!

And then there's the rapper, a blond guy in totally ridiculous dreads greenscreening in front of a Finland ferry home video while singing the whole thing to some cliche beat.  I can't tell where the joke begins and where it ends.  Well done, jätte roligt!  (For you non-Swedes, that means either very fun or very funny.  That's a Swedish joke from Christine, Francis's lady.  Again, you may need to let it percolate for five months.)

 

But let's get serious for a second -- what's up with the self-hatred, Sweden?  Why is being Swedish (i.e. "svenne") such a bad thing, while being un-Swedish (i.e. "osvensk") is a good thing?  As Francis said when he was here, you can't call someone un-American without expecting to be torn a new poopshoot. 

You got to work that shit out, girl.  Teach your daughters and sons to be proud of what they have and where they come from.  You gave us modern taxonomy!  Semlor!  The EXPEDIT!  Get some farmer's markets going.  Stop eating inferior imported Italian ice cream.  It's cool to make fun of the boozing, the vacation, the uniform striped shirts, but leave room to celebrate the humane social contract, the hel och ren spirit, the flora-gone-amok.  Stop trying to be so "osvensk" or there won't be anything "svensk" left to write home about.  And that would totally break my heart.

 

Puss puss,

Ganda

*Sorry, I should explain the Finland ferry.  Alcoholics and teenagers like to ride the ferry to Finland because international waters = no tax on your booze.  The booze cruise basically floats over to Finland for a few hours, then turns around and heads back to Stockholm, all within the span of an overnight and change, depending on how far you go. If you're looking to party with Svennebananer, I think you ride the Viking line.  If you want to head to Helsinki with more sober folk, try the Silja ferry.

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ITINERARY 2, DAY 2: FRIDAY

Breakfast: home
Okay, we're packing in a lot today, so keep up.  If you need breakfast, have something light at home.  I suggest the Vanilj hjortron äpple (vanilla cloudberry apple) yogurt from Valio with muesli.  Or you can pick up a little smörgås of bread, butter, cheese, cucumber and red pepper from any cafe.  Or just a little coffee and away we go!

Food halls
Stockholm has a couple of food halls worth exploring.  Östermalms Saluhall is the classic food hall in the fancy part of town.  I went there on my first week in Stockholm, and it's worth checking out if you're in the area.  The building is pretty, filled with wood stalls and lots of little ready-to-eat food shops and raw ingredients.  But I think it's also a bit touristy.

I prefer Hötorgetshallen, which happens to be close to my work.  This was traditionally more of a market for the people, but it is also expensive.  Still, expect to find stacks of smoked fish, cheeses, breads, reindeer loins, and a handy Systembolaget, as well as excellent takeout like my favorite, a Turkish meze stand where you can get three types of meze for 69 SEK.  (I always get a bit of parsley and coriander crusted salmon, a scoop of thick yogurt with zucchini and garlic, and a scoop of mashed, roasted eggplant and peppers.)  The produce stall is stupid expensive, but they do sell lots of frozen wild berries like smultron (alpine strawberries) and hjortron (cloudberries).

The outdoor market on Hötorget's square is actually just like the fruit carts on the street in New York -- not local, and the strawberries have probably been shipped in from Germany or Spain.

Farmer's markets here are really hard to come by, which is a shame because that's always my favorite part about a city.  If you're here for the three weekends in August and the six weekends from August to October that they're open, you can check out the Bondens egen Marknad site for details on where they set up.  I haven't seen them yet, so I can't say whether or not they're good; I'm always out of town when they're open. 

Stockholm, you need more farmer's markets!  You of the hälsotallrik and the färskpotatis obsession!  Seriously, it will change your life.

Lunch: Hötorgetshallen, Kajsas Fisk
Stand online and squeeze into a table in the dark, low-ceilinged Hötorgetshallen stand -- it's part of the experience.  I recommend a round of the fisksoppa, mystery mix fish soup, with a little bit of aioli and a healthy scoop of the harissa by the counter.  Filling and fortifying with some buttered knäckebröd.  Skip the fried calamari, which is heavy and greasy.

Post lunch: View from the water
Get a one-way ticket on the hop-on, hop-off sightseeing boat, which is 100 SEK.  This may sound cheesy, but it's really nice to stand at the front of the boat for an hour and see the city from the water.  You can also use this ticket to gain entry to Gröna Lund, where you should stop if you're into amusement parks.  I think there is also a cheaper price for one-way rides, with which you can see the entire loop.

Dinner: 2 options: Matsalen ($$$$) or Max ($)
If you've got a little cash to burn, go to Mathias Dahlgren's Matsalen.  It's one of only two Michelin 2-star restos in Stockholm, and it was one of the most giddy, tingle-inducing meals of my life.  It deserves its own post, so hang in there for the review.  But make your reservation now!

If you're running low on cash, try Max, the classic burger chain from the north of Sweden.  Northerners are real union people (think Detroit), and the chain is famous for having shut McDonald's out of the market up North, where the locals refused to support it.  I'm not going to say the burgers are good -- the patties reminded me of White Castle burgers, without the slime -- but the fries with dipping sauce are excellent.  And then you can say you supported the local Goliath-tumbler.

If, you're on the Max option and your friends are on the Matsalen option, you'll have some time to kill, so it might be fun to check out a movie.  Cinemateket, which is currently closed for the summer until August 17, is the classic Stockholm arthouse movie theater.  You could also try Zita on Birger Jarlsgatan.  If you want to see something mainstream, check out SF Bio. [Disclaimer: They're owned by the people who pay my rent.]

Dancing: Cliff Barnes Restaurant

This place was described to me as "not classy by any means, but a good place for people of a certain age who are too old to go dancing all night."  Music starts promptly at 11pm and ends promptly at 1am.  We walked from Matsalen up to Norrtullsgatan, really not knowing what to expect.

From the outside, the place looks a little bit like a high school; the patrons outside could have been nicotine-addicted moms and dads discussing parent-teacher conferences inside.  But when we walked in, the bouncer asked us to wait for a moment until some patrons could clear out of the rowdy, overcrowded room.  You could feel the humidity and heat pulsating from inside.  And the best part was that every single person in the room was singing along at the top of their lungs to Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer".  When he unhooked the rope to let us in, here's what the bouncer said:

BOUNCER: Okay, there are only two rules.  No dancing on the tables, and no opening the windows.  You can dance in the window or on the chairs.  Have fun and be nice.

And sure enough, there was a lot of chair dancing, a lot of fun, and no air circulation.  Lots of radio hits from the 80s as well as a few Euro tunes we had never heard, but that everyone else knew the words to.  Also, there was very little rhythm to be found anywhere.  But plenty of people jumping on each other's backs and falling over.  In a very benign, clumsy way.  Seriously, nowhere in Stockholm are there more drunk-ass nerdz making total uncoordinated fools of themselves and not giving a rat's ass.  Francis and Raymond stared slack-jawed in disbelief for an hour.  It's really a slice of life spectacle you have to see to understand. 

RAYMOND: If you had told me what this was going to be like, I wouldn't have believed you.

Cliff Barnes
Norrtullsgatan 45
T-bana: Odenplan

And after the show, it's the after party
If you are STILL up for partying, you're going to have to go without grandma.  Everybody usually winds up at Berns or Spy Bar in Stureplan with the rest of the kids at the end of the night, because they stay open til 5am, at least on the weekends.  You ain't in Berlin, people.

I haven't been to Spy Bar, so I can't say what it's like.  But Berns is part of the Berns Hotel, and if it weren't filled with teenagers trying to get their liquor on, it would be quite a beautiful place.  I went there early in my stay in Stockholm and had a great time doing my early 90s booty grinds alongside kids who may very well have been half my age. The main ballroom is  huge, with high-ceilings, wood paneled walls and elegant lantern-shaped chandeliers.  During the winter, the second-floor terrace stays open while they blast the heat lamps.  Not very environmentally friendly.  The snow sparkles in the floodlights, and the crush of bodies and the lamps form a heat shield that melts the flurries of snow on contact.  It's pretty spectacular.

Tomorrow, we get some physical activity in, so drink a lot of water before you go to bed.

Name: Jenny Kramer

Occupation: Registered midwife

Neighborhood: Vasastan

Relationship status: Secret status :)

What did you eat today?

Sushi

What do you never eat?

Liver, brain, kidneys and heart.

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Mango chutney

What is your favorite kitchen item?

My blender, it is perfect for a lot of things.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

It's a tie between my home and out.

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

I would go to a 3 star Michelin restaurant and enjoy their best dishes with the people I love.

To recap: So you've got four days in Stockholm and you want to make the most of it.  Or you're hosting two sets of guests for four days each and you don't want to do the same thing twice.  Here is The EDOW Guide to Stockholm in 4 Days, 2 Ways.

Itinerary 1 can be found here.

--- 

And now, onto the second itinerary!


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ITINERARY 2, DAY 1: THURSDAY

It's funny, I think Winnie and Francis missed each other by about 30 minutes.  Francis and Raymond had an early afternoon arrival and were offered the same snacks chez moi.

Get a bike


Photo by Flickr user Let Ideas Compete, CC Licensed

Welcome to Stockholm!  If I were you, I'd get a City Bikes card right away.  Since you'll be here for four days, I would recommend getting the full season card, which is just 200 SEK (the 3-day card is 125 SEK).  You can go to the Tourist Center in T-Centralen to get a City Bikes card, or go to an SL office at Slussen, Fridhemsplan, or a number of other stations.

The City Bikes system is easy -- you get a card, and you can borrow a bike from any of the many stations around the city.  When you're done riding around, you can leave the bike at any station you can find -- doesn't have to be the station that you borrowed the bike from.  The system is not as big as the Paris bikeshare program, but it's big enough for Stockholm. 

The maximum time you can keep a bike out for is three hours.  The website currently says you can borrow from 6am to 6pm, but actually, they've extended the hours and you can now borrow bikes till 10pm (which means that if you borrow a bike at 10am, you can keep it out until 1am.)

If you keep a bike out for longer than three hours, you get a strike against you.  Two strikes and you won't be allowed to borrow a bike anymore.  If you keep a bike out for more than five hours, you automatically get kicked out of the system.  

All of the bikes have small wheels with a quick-release adjustable height seat, so they work for shorties and tall folk.  We didn't have any trouble getting bikes or finding a free spot to drop them off. Make sure you check your bike before you ride off, though.  While they're supposedly serviced all day long, Francis got one with faulty gears.

Du Gamla, Du Fria

 
This is a good time to walk around Gamla Stan, peeking in at Ye Olde Shoppes and buying reindeer skins if you must.  Gamla Stan means Old Town, and that's pretty much what it is -- all cobblestoned streets, health-inducing hills and sherbet toned buildings.  I don't know, Francis quite liked it, but it doesn't really do much for me.

When you're done, borrow a bike from the Gamla Stan station and ride north along the water, out past the Norstedts building, across the bridge, and up to Vasagatan. This is one of my favorite bike routes in Stockholm, especially at sunset. 

Ride up Vasagatan and follow the bike lane all the way to Torsgatan.  Take Torsgatan to S:t. Eriksgatan and drop your bikes off at the S:t Eriksplan station.  Walk through Vasaparken and down Dalagatan to get to the restaurant for dinner.

Dinner: Melanders Fisk
Melanders Fisk is a good place to start up on the fish and potatoes.  Pictures and my previous write-up about Melanders is here, but I think it's worth mentioning that the gravlax is special -- a coral origami fan of silky, cool fish adorned with a feathery frond of dill is served with a metal dish of hot, cream-enrobed new potatoes.  Divine.  Francis's method was to wrap one of those hot nuggets into a cool lox stole.  The majskyckling, corn-fed chicken, with summer truffled risotto is rich and earthy.  The fish stew I loved the first time wasn't as good the second time.  Go figure.

Melanders Fisk
Dalagatan 9R
T-bana: St. Eriksplan
It's not a super busy place, so I wouldn't say you need a reservation, but you can make one just in case.

After dinner: Music


Photo by Flickr user Bixentro, CC licensed

Okay, so actually, I took Francis and Raymond to Debaser Slussen, but since we already went there on itinerary 1, let's try any number of bars on Söder instead.  Pet Sounds Bar is popular with the indie rock crowd.  The walls are covered in glossy black rectangular subway tiles, giving the place a dark but clean feel.  Pompadoured and star tatted younguns lean their narrow, black jeans-clad hips against the barstools.  The bartenders make really interesting cocktails, including one with apple juice, lemon, and Żubrówka, a grassy Polish vodka.

If you want to stay in one place the whole evening, you can actually eat dinner here instead.  I have only eaten there once, but I remember the food being quite good, especially a gorgeous salad with crunchy pomegranate seeds, pomegranate molasses and chunky lego cubes of walnut-capped blue cheese.



Pet Sounds also has an intimate basement venue where DJs spin when indie rock heroes like Broken Social Scene and Lykke Li aren't playing.  

The whole operation is super sophisticated in a quintessentially Stockholm way.  I mean, imagine getting a composed salad with mixmaster cocktails in a high-design room at the Mercury Lounge.  During the day, check out Pet Sounds's museum of obsolete portable aural devices across the street.

It's also good to check out who's playing at Hornstull Strand, a big venue down by the water.  The young and beautiful cram themselves in wall to wall when international artists like Deerhoof and The Whitest Boy On Earth roll through.

Södra Teatern sometimes hosts interesting local acts.  I saw everyone's favorite Swedish ladies a cappella choir with one of the best band names ever, The Sweptaways.  As an added bonus, it's high on a hill overlooking the best view of the water in the city center.

If indie rock's not your thing, or if you're too old to stand all night with malnourished whippersnappers, look up Cirkus's schedule.  It's a big theater with a restaurant attached sitting in the middle of Djurgården.  There are plenty of seats for your weary gams, and David Byrne and Grace Jones played there this year.  But Chippendales and Cats are also playing there, so take it for what it's worth.

And if you are a REAL party pooper like me, you can just park your ass at home and hunt for Ulla Billquist clips on YouTube all night.
 


Pet Sounds
Skånegatan 80
T-bana: Medborgarplatsen

Hornstull Strand
Hornstull Strand 4
T-bana: Hornstull

Södra Teatern
Mosebacketorg 1-3
T-bana: Slussen

Cirkus
Djurgårdsslätten 4+45
T-bana: Kungsträdgården, but you are better off cycling or taking the bus

 

Getting to and from the airport:

If you're flying from Arlanda, you can take either the Arlanda Express train, which is 250 SEK and takes only 20 minutes to get to T-Centralen, or you can take the Flygbussarna bus, which is 110 SEK and takes 45 minutes and drops off at T-Centralen or a few spots in Stockholm.  I prefer the bus because it picks up and drops off practically in front of my apartment.

You can pay for either with a credit card -- it's cheaper to buy a ticket in the station for the train, and it's easiest to buy a ticket on the bus.  A reminder, the bus does not take cash, so make sure you have a credit card.  If you take the Flybussarna bus on a Saturday, take advantage of the special 2 for 1 price. 

I don't recommend taking a taxi from the airport -- it would cost you approximately 500 SEK, or about $75, and it won't get you into the city any faster. 

If you're flying from one of the smaller RyanAir airports, like Skavsta, your only option is the Flygbussarna or the RyanAir bus, which drop you off at T-Centralen. 


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ITINERARY 1, DAY 4: THURSDAY

If it's a travel day for you, make a little time to get to Cafe Saturnus for a cardamom bun, which I've written about before. Make sure you get the cardamom bun, not the cinnamon bun.  Believe me, you can make a meal (or two) out of one bun.  Avoid the omelettes, which are fried to a greasy crisp.

Cafe Saturnus
Erikbergsgatan 6
T-bana: Östermalmstorg
No reservation required

If you still have a little time, I recommend a nice walk down Birger Jarlsgatan to the water, then over to Skeppsholmen, a quiet little island trimmed with wooden piers and docked sailboats.  Pretend you're at the Pompidou when you walk by the Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely sculpture garden.  Pop into the Moderna Museet, which many Stockholmers say is the best art museum in town.  Tuck into a light lunch of soup or a curry chicken smörgås at the outdoor tables on the pebble patio.

Thanks for coming to Stockholm!  Hope you enjoyed your stay!

---

What was that?  You didn't like that?  Looking for something more active, with a little more nightlife?  Let's face it, I'm the wrong gal to take you on a boozy spin through the club scene.  But Itinerary 2 kicks it up a tiny bit, so hang in there.

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ITINERARY 1, DAY 3: WEDNESDAY

Okay, I'm going to cheat here a little, because there was some overlap here.  The only person who'll notice is Winnie.  Anyway, inner monologue, pretend I didn't say anything.

Södermalm

I'm not going to use the H-word, but if you live in the lower east quadrant of Manhattan, or anywhere in the BK, you'll want to hang with your people on Södermalm.  If you didn't blow all your kronor on Norrmalm yesterday, you'll want to save some for the boutiques in the area known as SoFo (South of Folkungagatan, or We-want-to-be-like-New-York-and-who-could-blame-us). 

Nitty Gritty and Grandpa are favorites round these parts, for men and women's dead expensive streetwear, but there are also some great little vintage shops and furniture shops you can salivate in.  Just walk around, get lost and chase your wallet down the street.

The people watching is fab here.  The men have perfected the look that preppy look The Sartorialist loves and that Wburg metros sometimes try at -- the brushed and gelled Cary Grant hair, the popped collars, the little cardi, the aviators, occasionally accessorized with the non-ironic thin mustache.   And the women can be alien gorgeous, all swan neck and flamingo legs in denim and converse with blond bouffants and red lipstick.  

LUNCH: MACKOR
Swedish mackor, or sandwiches, are fantastic.  I love the morning macka of cheese and vegetables on bread, but lunch sandwiches are fantastic, too.  I still don't know what the difference between a smörgås and a macka is.    
 
Try Louie Louie, my friend Klara's favorite cafe in SoFo.  I haven't been, but I trust her.  I'm never down here during the day.  Or, if the weather's nice (that's the Swedish refrain, sing along with me!), walk west along Hornsgatan all the way to Hornstull Strand.  Far, far, west, you'll find Cafe Vurma, an adorbs little cafe with the menu handwritten on the wall, offering sandwiches with cute, hard-to-pronounce names like Rugguggla, Fjant and Snyggve. 

Pick up solid sandwiches like a vegan falafel sandwich on oat bread, excellent frosted chocolate cake, and, of course, coffee.  Take your sandwich to go and sit out in the park by the water.  If you're lucky, Friskis och Svettis (Fresh and Sweaty gym, the NYSC equivalent) will be holding outdoor aerobics classes so you can laugh at the uncoordinated Swedes at no additional cost.  One warning -- if there's a long line at Vurma, it will take you FOREVER to get your sandwich. 

COCKTAIL HOUR: Eriks Gondolen or Debaser Slussen (or both!)

So say it is 5pm and you are tired of all of the stripes and dangling cigarettes and skinny jeans.  Then take the elevator in the big glass office building up to Eriks Gondolen, a skinny little cabin in the sky where you can have well-prepared cocktails and a pretty fantastic view of Stockholm in all its earthy pastels against chalky gray sky glory.  If it's nice out, go all the way up to the top, where you can have your cocktails on the roof; like drinking at the top of the Empire State.


Photo by Winnie Yang

The uniformed bartender makes a well-balanced Pimms Cup, if a little heavy on the garnish (totally okay by me, as I like my cocktails like "fruit salad", as my friend Malin says). 

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold up.

Isn't this already over?

Nej!



We have an eleventh hour entry from Kungsholmens Glassfabrik on Pipersgatan in Kungsholmen.  Located right next to a school, evil bastards.



Exhibit A: Blodgrape Campari (grapefruit Campari) and mynta lime (mint lime).  Manageable sized scoops, dense and firm.  Flecked with pulp, zest and herb.  Smooth, icy, refreshing.  Chase with a shot of rum and stick an umbrella in your mouth.  Nothing funny about that cone, either.  Smells of caramel and vanilla, the way a good våffla should.




Exhibit B: Citronglass and Polkaglass.  Firm, biteable ice cream, stiff enough that it doesn't melt too quickly.  No air bubbles means zaftig dairy body without too much weight.  Citronglass is like milky lemon curd with bits of biscuit in it.  This is not the lemon perfume spritz of Italian crema.  This is sunny tarte au citron.  It's just puckery enough to make your glands pop but not so tart that you can't chase it down with...
...the Polkaglass.  It's ever so slightly pink, like it just overheard a dirty joke.  And it's pepperminty fresh.  Polka is the word for candy cane.  You laugh.  How about a little polkaglass over kladdkaka, Swedish chocolate cake?  Who's laughing now, buddy?



Exhibit C: Small batches in shades of occurs-in-nature pastel.  Enough flavors for you to want at least two, but not so many that they aren't made with intent.



Exhibit D: Swedish kids can enjoy their glass in the company of Chester, the Acne JR. bear.  Matchy matchy.  We get Fudgie the Whale, made of poo and shaving cream.

Cavity caveat: They're a not-insubstantial bike ride away unless you live in Kungsholmen and they close at 4pm on the weekends.  4pm!  Come on, at least pretend you want my money.

Kungsholmens Glassfabrik
Pipersgatan 14
T-bana: Rådhuset
30 SEK for two kula, which is the word for scoop, which is what I am calling my future ice cream shop.

A few general notes on Stockholm life:

• I feel very safe here (knock wood).  Walking around late at night is fine in Stockholm, even under bridges and through tunnels that I would normally avoid in other big cities.
• Walking is the pastime of choice here in Sweden, to be indulged at least once a day, and the after dinner stroll is the best one. There are plenty of excellent walking paths -- just look for all of the walkers.  Those gaggles of gray geese nesting on the grassy banks may be cute, but be careful -- I hear they can be quite aggressive.
• Everyone pays for everything with credit cards.  Though foreign transaction fees can add up, you can rest assured that you can pay for almost anything in any amount with a credit card.  Also, servers have no problem splitting a bill nine ways on nine credit cards. 
  
• Tipping is discouraged by the locals.  Servers are paid good wages, and locals don't want you to ruin the no-tipping thing for them.  10% is very generous on a nice meal, but rounding up to the nearest hundred is sufficient.  Tipping for drinks is unnecessary. UPDATE: My friend Anna, who used to be a waitress, says this is a misconception. You should tip, maybe up to 10%.  Leave a few crowns of change for your drinks.  General consensus still seems to be tip lightly, so follow the lead of the people around you. 
  
• Generally true, but not always true -- expect Stockholmers to want to split the bill exactly as ordered.  So if I had two glasses of wine with dinner but you had one glass, I would be expected to pay more than you.  Makes bill time fair but a buzzkill.
• Lunch is a very social activity.  Nobody eats at their desk.  That means that lunch can be an excellent deal in Stockholm (about 80 SEK or $10) and usually includes bread, salad, coffee and sometimes even cookies.  If you're looking to save cash, eat out for lunch and eat in for dinner.
  

View 4 Days in Stockholm in a larger map

ITINERARY 1, DAY 2: TUESDAY

Shopping!

If you are shopping for Scandinavian design, there are plenty of places to burn through your money.  July and February are GREAT times for sales in Stockholm -- much merchandise goes 30, 50 and 70% off.  Those sales make high end design actually affordable.

For clothing, I like PUB, a small but well-selected department store in Hötorget.  It is a bit like Barney's Co-op, but with housewares as well.  The top floor features lots of young Scandinavian designers, including Carin Wester, Ann-Sofie Back, Camilla Norrback, 2707, and my absolute favorite, Designers Remix by Danish designer Charlotte Eskildsen.  The first floor also has lots of Scandinavian faves like Acne, Rodebjer, Whyred, Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair, Mads Nørgaard and Nudie.

Weekday is the spot for Cheap Monday jeans, the unbelievable painted on denim skins favored by fat free Swedish youth.  I can't rock them, but maybe you can.  Winnie bought a great ready-to-wear Carin Wester dress from the Weekday on Götgatan in Södermalm, which has a broader selection than the Weekday on Drottninggatan and Kungsgatan. 

NK is the Barney's of Stockholm.  I like the Scandinavian corner, with lots of offerings from Malene Birger, Dagmar, Rodebjer, Hope, Acne, etc.  The bottom floor also has a great kitchenware shop and a food hall. 

Filippa K (pronounced Filippa Ko) has boutiques near NK and on Götgatan.  Her clothes tend to look terrible on me, but I like her cool temp color palette. 

I am a fan of Acne's ugly beautiful clothes, so I would recommend seeing the flagship store on Hamngatan in Norrmalmstorg, right by the Filippa K.  I have to admit, though, that I bought a dress from them and I've been too chicken to wear it.  You really have to own it to make it work.  The store has a chic dressing room that used to be a vault.  You will probably also get to see this guy working there.  (For cheaper, previous season stuff, try Acne Archive on Torsgatan.)  

While in Norrmalmstorg, you can also visit the nearby Marimekko shop for the Finnish label's high quality home textiles as well as clothing, accessories, and more.

Speaking of Finnish design, Winnie went to town on a sale at Ittala boutique on Götgatan, the Finnish glass and ceramic designer whose beautiful and very usable pieces everyone has here.   

Stockholm turned me into a label whore!  If you see me wearing weird Swedish duds, though, rest assured I bought them 50% off or more.  (Except for the one Acne dress I'm still not entirely sure about.  But one day, someone will invite me to the right party for it.)

LUNCH: Vete-katten

I am not sure what Winnie did for lunch on this day, but I would recommend Vete-katten.  They have a labyrinthine and quaint kafferum, or coffee room, which is tricked out to look like grandma's parlor.  Try classic Swedish smörgåsar (sandwiches) on house baked bread or baked potatoes with skagen, the shrimp dill mayo salad.  (Sounds a little strange, but trust me, totally delicious.)  What you really want to save room for, though, is coffee and dessert. 


Photo by Winnie Yang

My favorite choklad biskvie in Stockholm can be found here -- an almond paste macaroon is topped with a mound of chocolate buttercream and dipped in semi-sweet chocolate to form a little coolie hat you crack with your teeth. 

If you are lucky enough to be in Stockholm around Fat Tuesday, you must get the semla, a cardamom yeast roll filled with almond paste and chantilly cream.

Vete-katten
Kungsgatan 55
T-bana Hötorget

DINNER: Kvarnen
Kvarnen is one of those classic old Stockholm pubs from back in Södermalm's days as a working class hood.  It's a popular spot for Hammarby football supporters, so don't go in wearing somebody else's scarf unless you want to get your ass kicked.  Otherwise, don't be intimidated -- it's more Sherlock Holmes than Cheers.  The gorgeous, high-ceilinged room has black and white hexagonal floor tiles, funny sculptures mounted on the walls, old wood booths, and lots of stained glass.  


Photo by Winnie Yang

At some point during my stay, I turned from herring-hater into herring-lover.  Which is good because Swedes can really knock the herring back, at least during the holidays.  The smör och sill sampler at Kvarnen is excellent, four types, served with boiled fresh potatoes, knäckebröd (hardtack? rykrisp? hard bread?) and Västerbotten cheese.  Their matjessill, which you have to order separate from the sampler, was the best I have had so far, sweet and salty spice-cured herring served with minced red onion, chives, sliced hard-boiled egg and potatoes in a pool of brown butter. Such sexy texture.  Don't forget to get an ice cold snaps with your herring -- I like Hallands Fläder, but you can go for the classic O.P. or Skåne.

Husmanskost, or classic Swedish comfort food, really sticks to your bones.  I like to imagine old school Swedes eating a huge meal like this with pitchers of ale, passing out at the end of the day, and waking up in the morning to chop down trees in the snow.  As long as you have a hearty appetite, you'll appreciate the cream gravy moistened älg Wallenbergare (elk burger), served with sugar snap peas and mashed potatoes.  The stekt strömming (fried herring) was beautiful, strewn with diced beets and capers. 


Photo by Winnie Yang

Pytt i panna is my favorite kind of dish -- it's like an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink hash, topped with a fried egg, which you spoon up with slices of cooked beets.  It's the kind of dish you only want to eat at a place you trust not to throw past-due horse meat in.  Unless past-due horse meat is your thing. 

Warning: if you show up early for dinner, pace yourself -- hefeweizen comes in a glass you could give birth in.  In fact, if you can really run yourself ragged during the day, you'll feel a lot better sitting down to a meal this heavy.

Kvarnen
Tjärhovsgatan 4
T-bana: Medborgarplatsen
Reservations not required in the summer, but call to make sure

After dinner, take a long, digestive walk back to wherever you're staying, preferably over some hills or along some water. 

So you've got four days in Stockholm and you want to make the most of it.  Or you're hosting two sets of guests for four days each and you don't want to do the same thing twice.  Here is The EDOW Guide to Stockholm in 4 Days, 2 Ways.  I'm guilty of being an over-planner, but I like filling my time and I assume other people do, too.

Here is a map that I will be adding to as I write the content.  (I am so good at this travel guide shit, somebody should pay me to do it.  Toot toot.)


View 4 Days in Stockholm in a larger map

Neighborhood stereotyping:
Stockholm is an archipelago made of lots of little islands that trickle out east into the sea for hours.  There are five main islands in the inner city.  Clockwise from the top, it goes Norrmalm, Djurgården, Södermalm and Kungsholmen, with Gamla Stan as the little eyeball in the middle. 

Norrmalm consists of, from left to right, Vasastan, the city center, and Östermalm. Vasastan is like Park Slope -- young families, quiet, lots of good restaurants.  The city center, near T-Centralen, is Midtowny, with Drottninggatan, a main shopping drag, the biggest department stores, and lots of office buildings.  Östermalm is the upper east side and Soho, swanky, boutiquey and expensive for the most part.

Djurgården is the former hunting grounds of the royal family.  It is a gigantic, gorgeous park with marinas, tons of excellent cafes, a huge amusement park and a funny little Ren-Fair-like village called Skansen.  This island is one of my favorite spots in the whole city.

Södermalm is the East Village, Williamsburg and Greenpoint. If you seek hipsters, you will find them here.  There are lots of great restaurants, bars and music venues here, of course. You get the best panoramic view of the city from the hills on the northern part of the island.  This part of the city has working class roots, so there are lots of classic pubs for the people.

Kungsholmen is where City Hall sits.  I don't actually know that much about Kungsholmen.  It's a pretty place to cycle around, and I've been to a couple of good restaurants there, but it's a bit more quiet and residential.  I do my grocery shopping there because they've got Fridhemsplan, a magic little corner with a bunch of grocery stores.  Not that interesting for visitors (unless you are Winnie Yang), but good to know if you are moving here.  

Gamla Stan is the tourist vortex.  It's pretty, and my guests thought it was interesting. I've only walked through once, and can't say it did anything for me. I generally ride around it on my way to Söder.

General tips for visitors:
 

• Stockholm is a reservations kind of town.  Book your tables in advance. 
  
• Everyone speaks English here.  In fact, everyone speaks vernacular-perfect American-English.  So don't be shy about calling and just launching into English.
• Hope you like fish and potatoes.  The Swedes do.  And so do I.
  
• The city shuts down in July, so if you're here in July, you may find a lot of places closed.  Not all, but a lot.  The restaurants listed here are all open, though. 
  
• Taxis are stupid expensive.  Still, don't bother with the long term train card.  You can pretty much walk to get everywhere.  Even better is the incredible City Bikes system.  The city is wonderful at bike speed, with lots of bike lanes and a good number of city bike stations.  At 200 SEK for the entire season, it can't be beat.  Especially since the advertising that paid for the bike system is completely lost on you.
• Eating out is expensive here. If you are on a budget, do as the locals do and eat picnics in the many parks.  But remember that you can't get cold bevs at the Systembolaget.  Folköl, beer that is up to 3.5% alcohol, is available at grocery stores all the time, though.
  
• It may rain.  Check smhi.se for fairly accurate local weather.  Bring a raincoat.  But don't be deterred by the rain, either.  It tends not to pour.  Just be a viking and get out there and do what you would normally do.
• That said, try to come for the summer.  Summer is pretty spectacular here.  Why see the city when it's less than its best?
  

ITINERARY 1: Made for Winnie, who came from Monday afternoon to Thursday morning.  Winnie just got back from El Bulli and was looking for a taste of life in Stockholm, but nothing too fancy since she'd just blown a wad of cash in Spain.  She was also pretty beat from running around San Sebastian and had some work to do, so we kept it pretty light.  Since it was a weekday trip, I also couldn't indulge in late night partying.  Winnie doesn't cycle, so we didn't have any bike trips.  Not that grandma would have, anyway.

ITINERARY 2: Made for Francis and Raymond, who came from Thursday afternoon to Monday morning.  The two of them were up for anything, and were really pliable to whatever I suggested.  Since they were here over the weekend, we had a few late nights (at least, late for me) and I was able to do more tour guiding.  They had just come from Berlin and were keen on bicycling, so we got to see a lot more of the city.  Francis was also willing to do a fancy hit with me, so this itinerary offers one upscale restaurant visit.

ITINERARY 1, DAY 1: MONDAY


photo by Winnie

Settle in and have a snack.  Winnie had an afternoon arrival.  If I'm not going to be home to greet guests, I like to make sure there's a nice variety of snacks available for them when they first arrive.  They should at least be able to have a bowl of cereal.  I'm always ravenous when I get off a plane.

After a snack, walk around the city. If you're in Vasastan, check out the brief but lively Rörstrandsgatan for good shopping, cafes and eateries.  Or if you are in Söder, walk up Götgatan and South of Folkungagatan (SoFo). 

Dinner: Tranan
This cozy Vasastan bistro is everyone's favorite place to eat in Stockholm.  Golden candlelight bounces off of mural-painted walls and red and white checked tablecloths.  The noise level is  pleasant -- no disco woofers and just enough room sound that you can hear the Skål! at the table next to yours but not the details of the conversation.  The menu offers a good variety of updated Swedish classics.  When the bread basket comes around, make sure to get a few pieces of the amazing black bread.  It's sweet and almost chocolate cake-y, shot through with spices and hazelnuts and all manner of delicious things.  I have no problem with slathering butter all over a piece of chocolate cake-like bread.


photo by Winnie

Try sikrom toast, pictured above -- a chicken egg-sized scoop of yellow whitefish roe is served with butter-fried toast points, red onion, chives, sour cream and lemon.  I could make a meal of it.  Yumz.  Meatballs, served with the classic accompaniments of rårörda lingon (sugared lingonberries), pressgurka (sweet pickled pressed cucumbers) and mashed potatoes, are some of the best in the city.  They aren't always on the menu, but they're always available.  And the stekt strömming is a classic example of breaded, fried herring, highlighting its fresh sweetness.  But skip the tomato salad -- I have yet to have a properly sun-ripened tomato here.  I know it is a little early, but we were able to have some in Italy in May that were divine.

If you are here in a month other than July, you can also try Bar Tranan, attached to the restaurant.  Hand-written chalkboard menus offer lovely girly cocktails like champagne with elderflower syrup.  The dark wood and candlelight create a convincing pub-cave effect.  The electronica DJ can be a bit assertive with the volume, but you shouldn't come to this bar to have an intimate chat.  Grab a booth against a wall and watch the young Vasastan peacocks and mantises check each other out.

Tranan
Karlbergsvägen 14, Odenplan
T-bana: Odenplan
08-52728100
You can also book tables through their Web site

(OMG, writing up this whole itinerary is going to take me forever.  I have already missed an two hours of sunshine today and I only got through one day.  Gah!  Bear with me!)

Is it unethical to talk about my internet dates?  I hope you don't think so, cuz I'm about to do just that.

Internet dating in a foreign language can be a liberating exercise.  Because I don't have a very strong grasp of the language, I can't really understand what the profiles say.  Any prejudices I might have against bad grammar, misspellings or local pop culture are null and void.  All I can do is look at the pictures and wink at any that appeal.  I'm too lazy to even do the conversion to figure out a guy's height.  It's great!

But if I want to discern a tiny bit about someone, I can put their profile through Google translate.  You have to light incense and cross your eyes a little to divine the meaning.  But really, how different is that from monolingual internet dating?  Here's a sample:

From a 37-year-old man, wearing Santa suit in one picture, Obama t-shirt in another:
"A dream job for maximum intellectual stimulation, very craft with hands when I run the experiment, daily exchanges with the rest of the world, and the chance that someday, if all the flaps, to make some kind of benefit."

From a 30-year-old man, dark, jaunty hair, skinny tie:
"I like to fjällvandra and sport fish, preferably with a flugfiskespö deep in the woods in a quiet stream or in the evening at a mirror blank lake."

From a 34-year-old blond haired, blue-eyed pair of dimples:
"Is confused sometimes, obviously, in a charming way, to the next moment have total focus. Ofatst I leave the job when I go home, but have an understanding of the opposite." 



I did go out on one date with a totally hunky, meaty-shouldered six+ footer, but I never wrote back because I don't think he was attracted to me.  I know I'm not supposed to say shit like that, but whatever. 

Date started at the beautiful and romantic Blå Porten.  Situated on Djurgården near Gröna Lund, it's an excellent place to meet up for pastries or coffee before cycling through the park.  I don't love it as fervently as I love Rosendals Trädgård, but the sweets selection looks divine. 

The archway entrance opens into a white stucco and flagstone courtyard filled with wrought iron tables and chairs.  A fountain bubbles merrily in the middle, embraced by exuberant flowering bushes and roses.  The seagulls shriek and soar overhead, cutting through the cafe's busy din.

I think the date was over during this exchange:

HUNK: So where do you like to go out?

ME: [cackling] Oh, I don't go out.

HUNK: You don't go out?!

ME: No.

[Silence.]

ME: I like to ride my bicycle.

[Silence.]

ME: Do you want another drink?

HUNK: Maybe we should just go ride around now.

He was a good sport and took me on a totally excellent tour through Djurgården, as promised in our email exchange.  And it would have been totally romantic if I were a tall, tan Brazilian with more pedestrian taste in Stockholm nightclubs.

Any hopes that I would be less remedial at dating in Sweden than I am in the States have been dashed.  Anyone have any advice on how to unstick my chicken ass from the wall?  I am all ears.

Everybody in my office is on vacation.  Sweden shuts down in July, and of the 70 people usually in my office, we're down to about 10.  I think I'm the only person in Sweden not taking any vacation in July.

Today the sky matches the shirt I'm wearing, my new favorite.  It's a light blue cotton gauzy thing that looks good no matter how many cinnamon buns I have eaten.  It's especially nice to wear when I ride my bicycle out because the wind rips right through it and it feels like I'm riding around in my underwear.  My new rule is to not buy any more black clothing.  Yes, I am totally turning into an Eileen Fisher crone.
 

As you can see, I'm also pretty tan.  I think because we actually go outside for lunch everyday and soak up a little bit of sunshine each day.  I'll admit, I am not looking forward to eating lunch over my computer when I get back.  My SPF 15 face cream probably isn't cutting it, but when in Sweden...

I have been having trouble writing my blog, I think because I feel time winding down quickly and I don't want to spend it chained to the laptop.  There's a Swedish phrase, tidens tand, which means the teeth of time.  It's usually used in reference to a thing or person being ravaged by time, but I also like the idea of time eating, eating, eating life away.  And it is eating my special little experience up.

It's been fully five months, and now I have about six weeks left before I come home.  Of course I'm starting to freak out that I haven't done enough.  But Finland!  Norway!  And I never went back to Paris!  North of Sweden!  Aurora Borealis!  Sauna and frozen lake!  GAH!

I'm really excited to be back in Brooklyn and to see all of my beloved friends, but I have to admit that I'm a little worried about returning to New York.  Is it going to be too stressful?  Am I going to have a hard time adjusting?  Am I going to wish I did more while I was here?  Is everyone going to think I've gotten fat?

My appreciation for Sweden goes in and out, though.  When the weather is nice here, like it is today, I feel like there's nowhere else I would rather be in the world.  I fall in love with the flowers and the bike lanes and the life-first work ethic and the leggy blondes.

And when the weather sucks, which is not uncommon, I feel like, what was wrong with me, why do I think I like it here so much?  I only get the jokes about 50% of the time. Where are the colored people?  Why does everyone wear the same clothes?* 

And the things I've missed back home!  Michael Jackson!  Goldman is turning a big profit now?!  I haven't been to Governor's Island or the High Line.  I missed going to the Hudson house this year.  I don't even want to think about the catch-up I'm going to have to play when I get back to my regular job. 

Some days, I feel like I'm having Stockholm Syndrome with Stockholm.  I've fallen in love with my captor.  And then some days, the love feels very real, and I know I'll dream of my summer here.  This experience has been so very different from my year abroad in London.  I'm pretty sure I was uniformly miserable there.  I've had heartbursts of brilliant joy mixed with hard, tumbled stones of loneliness.  But mostly, life has been sweet, a little bland and sparkling, like the homemade elderflower champagne I had at a picnic the other day.

There's much to look forward to in the fall.  We have a subscription to the Met again and I can't wait for opera season to start.  I'm going to eat an entire jar of kimchi and tofu stew and ramen and congee and let someone else do the dishes.  And I'm going to do my laundry for six hours straight at whatever time suits me best.

I'm going on vacation in a few weeks to Gotland.  By myself!  I'm really going to be The Solitary Cyclist.  My plan is to cruise around the upper coast of Gotland before taking a bus to south Gotland to hang with the Swedish P.Diddy equivalents.  I plan to read and hand-write and unplug as much as I can.  Halla!**     

*Not joking, not a day goes by that I don't see at least one woman or man wearing this shirt.  Often, you'll see whole groups of women wearing it, hugging each other, becoming a wavy amoeba of nautical stripes.

**A Swedish joke.  Get it?  Yeah, give it five months.

 

Name: Björn Jeffery

Occupation: CEO & Internet Strategist of Good Old

Neighborhood: Johanneshov, Stockholm
 
Relationship status: Living with my girlfriend

What did you eat today?

I just ate a veggie bagel for breakfast. But yesterday I had so good food that it inspired me to answer this thing - finally. I had an amazing deep fried salmon roll with Chinese mustard (red hot), followed by some amazing noodles with flat iron angus steak on top. Fab!

What do you never eat?

Things in shells, if I can avoid them. Not at all fond of crabs, crayfish, mussels and that stuff. I think the shell is there for a reason - someone's telling us to leave them alone.   

Complete this sentence:  In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Mustard - the ultimate condiment that you can have on absolutely anything - including a cheese sandwich.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

An old school pot for making stews and casseroles. Throw something in there, leave it for a few hours, and somehow it always tastes good.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

The local thai place. Surprisingly good for being a local actually. Apart from that, I like Jacobs on Riddargatan that does both Danish smørrebrød and French main courses. Clearly underrated place.

World ends tomorrow.  What would you like for your last meal?

Something Asian - probably something fairly simple like proper Kung Pao Chicken with those amazing garlic stirred beans that they have there (in China that is - I've never found them anywhere else). No point making things more complicated than they have to be if you're going to pop your clogs in an hour or two anyway.

And now, a special non-Stockholm, non-New York YAWYE!

Name:  Molly Wizenberg

Occupation:  food writer, sometime photographer, and co-owner of a soon-to-be restaurant

Neighborhood:  Ballard, Seattle

Relationship status:  married

What did you eat today? 

As of right now (2:30 pm): homemade granola with milk, banana bread with cinnamon sugar, blueberries, rigatoni with sweet onions and leeks and chives and ricotta salata, more banana bread, more blueberries.

What do you never eat? 

I have textural issues with raw oysters.  And brain.  I think brain is my final frontier, food-wise.  [

Complete this sentence:  In my refrigerator, you can always find:

eggs, extra sharp cheddar, milk, hot sauces, jam, peanut butter, Roland Dijon mustard, unsalted butter, and Polaroid film.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

I love my kitchen towels. They're all very soft and well worn, and many of them have stripes.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

Lately, a taqueria called Malena's.  It's in our neighborhood, and it's not really all that great, to be perfectly honest, but their guacamole is solid.  So we get guacamole, rice, pinto beans, and a few corn tortillas, along with salsa and chips.  It's cheap and quick and always hits the spot.

World ends tomorrow.  What would you like for your last meal?

I'm terrible at this kind of stuff.  But I think I would choose a cheese pie at Di Fara and a beer.  And then a scoop of Graeter's black raspberry chip ice cream, on a cone.

I had a blast with Molly in Rome last month.  She's a lady.  I'm such a fan.  If you were in Rome on the same day that we were, you might have seen Molly looking totes cycle chic in sweet black ankle strap flats, jeans, a wavy auburn ponytail and Audrey Hepburn specs.  I was the greasemonkey riding next to her, sweating through some Old Navy cankle khakis and a saggy green wifebeater.  You can follow Molly's adventures at orangette.blogspot.com.    

"But, my good lord, I wot not by what power,--
But by some power it is,--my love to Hermia,
Melted as the snow, seems to me now
As the remembrance of an idle gaud
Which in my childhood I did dote upon;
And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,
The object and the pleasure of mine eye,
Is only Helena. To her, my lord,
Was I betroth'd ere I saw Hermia:
But, like in sickness, did I loathe this food;
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,
And will for evermore be true to it."

--Demetrius, A Midsummer Night's Dream, IV.i

It's happening.  I'm falling in love with Sweden.

Remember how I was all, oh yeah, Sweden, nice guy, he doesn't beat me, whatevs.  And now I'm like, Sweden! Mr. Darcy!  Be my baby daddy!

I'm not sure exactly when it happened.  There were moments over Midsummer that I felt Sweden was casting a spell, pouring some love juice into my eyes.  Could Sweden really be this charming and beautiful?  Why have I bothered traveling to other countries when I could have been here the whole time?





My friend's brother Sef and I drove up to Tällberg for Midsommarafton, or Midsummer Eve.  This is traditionally better than actual Midsummer Day -- it's always a Friday and it's the heavier snaps drinking night.  Midsummer Day, Saturday, is spent recuperating from your hangover.  The Swedes are planners, and I like planners.

But oh, Tällberg!  So picture postcard perfect!  Some say Dalarna is the heart of Sweden, and some say Tällberg is the heart of Dalarna.  All the blond children singing folk songs in embroidered caps and dresses, all the maypoles raised with big wooden chopsticks, the horses swishing their tails in the breeze, the birdsong, impressive Lake Siljan...it was like a Swedish dream. 

SEF: Where are the cameras?  Because this can't be for real, right?









Lots of ladies wore thick crowns of wildflowers in their hair. "Where can I buy one?" I thought.  But of course there were none for sale -- you're supposed to gather your own and make one.  American consumer FAIL.



You wouldn't believe how many wildflowers there are here.  It's no wonder Carl Linnaeus created modern taxonomy -- he had a lot to work with.  Purple and yellow and white and FREE, the colors running in wide, ragged stripes through the lush green fields.  It's so incredibly fresh out there...like there's more oxygen in the air.



I managed to get rooms at the last minute at Hotell Långbers, which sits at the top of Tällberg.  It was unbelievably dreamy.  The bedding was delicious, the rooms were airy, with that Swedish country modesty I find so utterly charming.  Their website really doesn't do justice to how absolutely gorgeous the place is.  I booked the rooms on Booking.com for not much more than I paid for the vagrant's room in Rome.  The place reminded me of Mohonk Mountain House -- so unpretentious, but utterly luxurious in a wholesome way.  The morning after our snaps-soaked dinner at Hotell Åkerblads, we booked the hotel sauna and outdoor hot tub for an hour before the long drive.  Heavenly.

 


And the view from my room!  A craggy landscape of pointy evergreens, cut off abruptly by the glassy curve of Lake Siljan, which stretches all the way to the horizon.





Midnight sun at the top of Tällberg.  How wonderful, and how strange that it feels so normal to me now.

Before I came, I thought I would spend my two weeks of vacation in August traipsing about mainland Europe, hitting all of the major cities.  Now, I think I'll stay in Sweden.  I'm trying not to miss it already.  Who knew?

Flickr slide show: Midsummer in Tällberg

It's almost Midsummer!  Though I celebrated Sweden's National Day with some proper husmanskost a couple of weeks ago, people say Midsummer is the real Swedish national holiday.  They may love their Christian holidays, but the Swedes are sun-worshipping pagans at heart. The Finns and the Norwegians also do Midsummer, but I think most people associate the holiday with the Swedes.

Food traditions include eating herring, potatoes, and strawberry cake, and drinking lots of snaps.  Non food traditions include dancing around a midsommerstång (a maypole), singing, and drinking lots of snaps.  And, of course, there will be lots of snaps drinking.  Skål!

I asked one of my co-workers what she would be doing for Midsummer:

VIVECA: Oh, it's a lot of preparation.  You prepare the food, and you drink, and then you eat.  And you put up the maypole, and sing.  And then you probably drink again.

My co-worker Björn's words of wisdom:

BJÖRN: Don't drink too much snaps.

ME: Why not?

BJÖRN: That's a rookie mistake.  Just drink a third of it each time.  Otherwise you'll never make it through the night.

Megan already posted this on her blog, but it's worth repeating here.  This is a German IKEA commercial which was actually banned by the head office (according to the notes on YouTube, anyway).



Another midsummer tradition is for women to find seven kinds of flowers (again with the sju sorters) to put under their pillow in return for a dream of your future husband.  Seems a small price to pay for such intel; I'll let you know whether or not the pagan gods deliver.

Here's the one song/dance I'm going to learn so I can participate -- it's the only kind of pole dancing I'll be doing in this life.




Tomorrow is Midsommarafton (Midsummer Eve), and Saturday is Midsommardagen (Midsummer Day).  I'm actually going to Dalarna, north of Stockholm, for Midsommarafton, which is the classic place to celebrate.  I suppose it's like going to Times Square to watch the ball drop on New Year's -- touristy, sure, but classic.  I'm preparing myself for 11 degree weather (that's 51 degrees Fahrenheit -- witch tit cold, appropriately), and rain mixed with sun, which is apparently the classic Swedish Midsummer weather.

I'm really excited!  And I'm a little relieved that the sun will start to let up.  Last night, I was up at 12:30am, and though it never got fully dark, the sun was actually starting to rise.  I can't even tell you what a mind fuck that is.  I almost couldn't go to bed.

When kids here graduate from gymnasiet (high school), they spend part of their day getting drunk and riding around town on rented big flatbed trucks called "flaks" which have been decorated with hand-painted banners and, oddly enough, fresh birch branches.  Oh yeah, and they're also wearing white sailor caps. 

Every year, some drunk kid falls off the truck and makes the news.  And the partying can get so out of hand that the city has to stagger the graduations throughout the first two weeks of June, thus limiting the number of drunk teenagers vomiting in the street on any given day.

I kept hearing the flaks from the office -- the screaming kids, the blasting music, the honking trucks.  But it wasn't until today that I got to see one with my own eyes.  The whole thing is very pride parade -- a bunch of shirtless sailor twinks and their girl friends dancing on a truck to the sweet thump of Eurodisco.

Name: Joanna Hellgren

Occupation: Freelance Illustrator/ Cartoonist /Graphic designer

Neighborhood: Lilla Essingen in Stockholm.

Relationship status: Living with Anna

What did you eat today?

For breakfast and lunch: My own bread that had unfortunately gone a bit dry, with cheese and cucumber. For dinner, spaghetti and a delicious pasta sauce with tomatoes and zucchini, cooked by Anna. A punchrulle brought to me by my friend Ulrika (Punch rolls are old ladies sweets) and a fruit salad. [Are those the same as dammsugare? --Ed.]

What do you never eat?

Guinea pigs. I rarely eat meat and never at home, but guinea pigs are something I know I have never eaten, and that I'm not curious to try.

Complete this sentence:  In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Soy milk for my coffee. The day holds no promise without coffee. Regular milk for the coffee is ok too, but is usually not found in my kitchen.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

My coffeepot. It's white with golden patterns.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

At a Persian café and shop in Gröndal, close to my work.

World ends tomorrow.  What would you like for your last meal?

I don't know. I like so many things. But maybe my Lilla Essingen Thai dinner from Saturday: Shrimps with green curry and coco nut sauce with lots of delicious vegetables, and their home made spring rolls. Or Stockholm's best ice cream.

So I don't have a lot of money, and having a job in publishing means...not acting like you will have a job forever.  I tried not to be ridiculous with my money, but I did find a few things that I felt were worth spending more than 15 Euros on.

Splurging in Paris:

Bike About Tours -- 30 Euros

I love bicycle tours.  I do them anytime I can.  You get a little bit of trivia, a little bit of exercise, lots of fresh air and sun, all while getting the lay of the land.  But if you're going to do a bike tour, you want to do it in a small group because:
1. it's safer to be in a smaller group and
2. there's less of a chance that you'll be with some talky fuckers who want to show off the history they learned from the back cover of their Lonely Planet guide.   

I'll be honest -- the Bike About Tour, while small at 7 or 8 per group, was still larger than I like my bike tours.  But it's the smallest one you'll find in Paris.  Do the Bike About tour on your first day in town and you'll be able to find your way around in no time.  (I'd never do one of those Fat Bike Tours, which I saw in Berlin. They are always rolling 20+ deep -- no fun.)

The secret garden shtick is a bit much, but the tour goes through mostly car-free streets on the left and right banks.  The little red Dahons are fun to roll around on -- and if it rains, you can all just fold 'em up and get on the Metro. 

Paris is a wonderful city for cycling -- lots of cushy bike lanes, flat, well-paved terrain and if you've got a credit card with a chip, you can participate in their amazing Velib' bikeshare program.

Added bonus: as advertised on their site, the Bike About Tour guys, American Christian and New Zealander Paul, are très adorbs (and très married). Still, who wouldn't want to spend a few hours chasing fit, tan boys around Paris on a bicycle?  [Disclaimer: I've crushed out on every bike guide I've ever had.]

My favorite moment was when we were cycling in an alley in the Marais in front of a piece of the old wall.  Our cluster of bikes was blocking a little Renault or whatever it was from getting through.  The driver honks at us. 

DRIVER: [Leaning out the window] ASDLKFJ!@#%#@# [In French]

PAUL: [With a casual smile] Me fou, ah.

DRIVER: ASDFKLWEFLKJSDKLJ! [In French]

PAUL: [To us cyclists] Alright, why don't you guys come a bit forward.

After the little car made its way through the alley to the intersection, the DRIVER stops, makes eye contact with all of us, grinning, and emphatically sticks his middle finger up in the air before driving away.

PAUL: That's just the French way of saying good morning.



P.S. I had to catch my flight right after the tour, so Paul and Christian made sure I ended with enough time to get to the airport. I cut it close, which was nobody's fault but mine, but if the two of them hadn't kept an eye on the time for me, I would have missed the plane.  Of course, at the time, I was like, hm, getting stuck in Paris an extra day doesn't seem too bad to me.
 
Bike About Tours
Vinci Car Parking 4, Rue Lobau 75004 Paris
+33 (0) 6 18 80 84 92
Metro: Hotel de Ville
Office Hours: 10am- 7pm daily

Tea at Le Mariage Freres -- About 15 euros

I'm sure it's not the most serious tea house in Paris, but it's still fun to be able to try one of dozens of flavors of Le Mariage Freres teas, which I absolutely adore.  The Fleur D'Oranger Oolong was just the right temperature, and the Maria Callas recording in the background was playing at just the right decibel level.  9 Euros for two madeleines is totally ridiculous, but the matcha financier was pretty tasty.  The room is on one of those super quiet corners of St. Germain on Rive Gauche.  I loved the dark wood shutters and giant palm fronds against saffron mottled walls -- very Casablanca.  The waiters wore white, I wore blue.

Mariage Freres
13 rue des Grands-Augustins
(0)1 40 51 82 50
 
3-course lunch at L'Ami Jean -- 35 euros
Looking at the website, I assumed L'Ami Jean would be a white tablecloth gastrolab with tall food, hungry models and the rich men who try to impress them.  It wound up being a rather homey bistro, with a terribly-printed menu and little handheld chalkboards announcing prettily scripted specials. 

I don't really know how to describe what I ate there because my food magazine French was no help.  In any case, I can't remember any of the menu well enough to look up what was in my food.  Poivrade, farcie, morue, that's all I got -- the rest of those pretty French food words confused me. 

I just ordered what the lady next to me was having -- a beautiful globe artichoke stuffed with a swampy mix of mussels and teeny brown mushrooms.  Then a piece of cod, perfectly cooked and seasoned, with herbs and poached apricots and some kind of foam and topped with a thin ribbon of bacon.  It was served with a jam jar full of what I thought was aioli but turned out to be mashed potatoes so full of cream you could drizzle it. 

And for dessert, grilled strawberries on a skewer, bursting with juice, with a little savory taste of whatever preceded them on the fire.  These were served with an icy quenelle of slightly bitter grapefruit sorbet, a dot of whipped cream, creme anglaise, and toasted pistachios and walnuts.  It was one of my fave desserts ever and something that I will have to replicate (simplified) at home. 

The food was killer, but what I loved most was watching the middle-aged French lesbian couple next to me smack their lips and roll their eyes over the food.  A French mother and daughter who were similarly ravishing their food winked and joked with the couple from across the room.  It reminded me of New York and made me wish my French was better.
 

View Paris in a larger map

To be continued...

Happy Sweden National Day!  Yesterday's National Day only became an official, no-work holiday about three years ago.  My Swedish friends tell me it wasn't a big deal because it's not like Sweden was celebrating escape from tyranny, since they were always the ones ruling over others.

Sweden is a small country, and despite the fact that their IKEAs have taken over our suburbs, they're unaccustomed to celebrating themselves.  Check out this clip of the country's greatest sports moment in recent history, Sweden's bronze medal in the 1994 World Cup:



Happily, Swedes are plenty good at eating and drinking.  My friend Malin invited me over to celebrate National Day over a kick ass Swedish meal at her house, complete with a variety of snaps (including one lovely fläder-flavored one) and a Sweden v. Denmark football match on TV.  We did a shot for every goal scored -- sadly, the Danes prevailed -- not very nice of them. 

The starter was a stunner -- red onion panna cotta with fresh dill and bleak roe toast.  If you've never had bleak roe, you should see if you can hunt some down -- the roe is tiny and orange, mild and not too salty.



I also had my very first plate of meatballs in Sweden!  Can you believe how long I've held out?  I'm glad I waited for homemade ones.  Köttbullar are to Swedish kids as chicken nuggets are to American kids.  Malin's köttbullar are adult-palate friendly, with tons of pepper and dijon mustard.  I think it's important not to make them too big -- Malin's are about the diameter of a nickel, very dainty.  The gravy is made just by adding water to the browning pan -- genius!

I'm translating and converting her recipe for you here (with the help of Google translate, of course). 



Cutie's Spicy Christmas Meatballs

The Allt om Mat staff used to call Malin "Gullemallan", which means "cutie".  The notes say that the milk and breadcrumbs mixed directly into the meat swells, so you get a solid mixture that's easy to roll, but not dense to eat.  At least I think that's what it says.  Serve with mashed potatoes, lingonberry jam*, sliced mushrooms sauteed in butter, and sweet pickled cucumbers (you can also try this recipe in English).  We finished dinner with a Swedish strawberry parfait -- himmelsk, as they say.  I'm sure these will make an appearance at the Swedish dinner party I'll have to have when I get back to Brooklyn.

1 yellow onion
1 tbsp. butter
1 kg (2.2 lbs.) ground beef, 10% fat
1 egg
2 tbsp. dijon mustard
1 tbsp. salt
1 tsp. white pepper
1 tsp. four-pepper blend, crushed fine
2 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. breadcrumbs
1/2 dl (3 1/3 tbsp.) milk
3 tbsp. butter for frying
2 dl (about a cup) water

1. Mince the onion.  Malin says, "It's very important that the onion is chopped into smithereens! Now I always grate it and then chop it some more. If it's too big pieces the small meatballs will crack." Saute in butter.  Let cool.
2. Mix onion, meat, eggs, mustard, salt, pepper, brown sugar, breadcrumbs and milk.
3. Roll very small meatballs (about the circumference of a nickel).  Wet your hands with some cold water if the meat is sticking to your hands.
4. Melt butter in a frying pan, cast iron or nonstick.  Fry a meatball and taste it.  Fix seasoning as needed.
5. Brown meatballs about 20 at a time on high heat in the butter.  Let them fry until brown on all sides, not too long.  Transfer to a large pot on low heat. 
6. Pour a little water into the frying pan, picking up the fond.  Pour this gravy into the pot with the meatballs.
7. Repeat until all meatballs are browned and all water has become gravy.

*When I first posted, I forgot to include the lingonberry jam.  Malin says, "You must serve the meatballs with lingonberry jam! It is important. :)"

Sometimes, you go to a city for the first time and it clenches its sphincter, shines a flashlight in your face and tries its very best to kick you back to where you came from.  That's how I always felt about London, and my recent weekend trip just confirmed my suspicions.  Rome was no better -- I could feel the city trying to squeeze me out, and the feeling was mutual.

But sometimes, if you're lucky, you meet a city who leans back, makes eye contact, fans its hair out and parts its knees a teensy bit. 

I arrived in Paris on Saturday morning, dropped my bag off at the hostel (more on that later) near Republique, and walked south towards the Marais to begin one of the sweetest vacations of my life.

Paris was...Parisian to the Paris degree.  Pliant, enchanting and just gorgeous.  I fell in love almost immediately.  As someone I went to dinner with last night said:

STOCKHOLMER: There are only two cities in the world that look just like they look in the movies -- Paris and New York.

But that's not the only parallel.  I found that Parisians engage the way that New Yorkers do.  They joke with strangers, or they shrug their shoulders at you, or they yell things at you and they acknowledge your presence.  That famous Parisian rudeness they talk about -- I didn't experience it.  Maybe I was too busy gawking at the buildings and stuffing my face with delicious things.

.

Look at the sunlight!  Just pure and pearly, trickling softly through the leaves of aged trees lining les boulevards, les avenues, les rues.  The temperature hovered in the 70s for the whole of my stay, raining only once for the five minutes it took me to flip through a rack of clothing in a little boutique.  I didn't even notice it. 

I also didn't go to a single museum.  I didn't buy a single foodstuff to bring back to Stockholm.  I didn't go to a single bar.

I basically bicycled or walked until my feet hurt, looking at beautiful things and beautiful buildings and beautiful people.  I stopped to try on a pretty dress or two.  And every few hours, I ate something utterly scrumptious.  Sometimes I knew what I was eating and sometimes I didn't.  You can forgive me for my lack of details or not, but I don't care because it was my self-indulgent vacation and it made me happy.  It was only 3 days, but it was total perfection.

I took advice from David Lebovitz's site and packed pretty dresses to wear, and I'd encourage you to do the same.  But comfortable shoes are a must for all the walking.

I thought my Swedish lessons would hamper my French, but my one semester of francais came back pretty smoothly.  It was able to ask for water, say please, thank you, etc., and it was enough. 

What I'm saying is, if you've ever wanted to go to Paris, go now!  Go while the current mayor has cleaned up the Seine and made Paris beautiful.  Go while the Velib' bikeshare program is pretty new and well-kept, so it's easy to get around town without having to use the Metro.  Go because there has never been a good reason to keep Paris waiting.  I know that now.

With trips every weekend last month, including the one to Rome that bled my wallet dry, I think I put together an full but thrifty itinerary for myself.  I probably could have been perfectly happy to rent a bicycle for 30ish euros for three days, dawdle through the weekend street market of the Marais and sit on the Pont Neuf at sunset each evening with a hunk of cheese, a baguette and a bottle of wine. 

Scrimping in Paris
 
Breakfast at Le Comptoir des Archives -- about 13 euros 
It's not that the food was so spectacular at Le Comptoir des Archives.  The tartine with a thick trench of unsalted butter down the middle was as reliable as any tartine in Paris, the confiture of an unremarkable berry heritage.  The salade de fruits was a fine mix of apple, peach, mango, banana and grape (thank God they don't put awful melon in fruit salads).  And the cafe creme was perfectly good. (I know coffee is supposed to be terrible in Paris, but I thought all the coffee I had was better than all the coffee I had in Rome.  You don't have to believe me.  But that's what I think.)

But in Paris, it seems that the most popular spot at any given moment is the one that has the most attention from the sun.  And at 9am in the Marais, it feels like the sun is looking only at you in front of Le Comptoir des Archives.  13 euros is obvs. not that cheap for a small breakfast.  But Paris is stunning in the morning, before the tourists wake up, and it's worth it to get up and catch the sun and quiet while you can.  Think of it as 6.50 euros per hour. 

You're better off spending 13 euros and a few hours on this quiet corner of the Marais than you would be for a twice-as-expensive breakfast at Cafe de Flore on St. Germain, where the confiture is an extra 2.20 euros and the salade de fruits is a mushy mess of soggy kiwi and papaya.  Besides, a baguette with butter is pretty much a baguette with butter anywhere you go.

I sat next to the most elegant lovers.  I imagined they'd just rolled out of bed to take a post-coital coffee and cigarette.  Her strawberry blond, wavy hair was wild and thick, framing green bedroom eyes.  But her white linen pullover dress was crisply pleated, punctuated by slip-on black kitten heels.  Her head leaned into the crook of her young lover's arm.  He had tousled black hair, wire frame glasses, a t-shirt and jeans.  His jacket (a suit jacket, of course), was carefully folded in half on the wicker chair across from them.  He had a book on the table but was only paying attention to his girl.  Neither of them was particularly amazing looking, but together, they were irresistible.  
 



Le Comptoir des Archives
41, Rue des Archives
Métro: Hotel de Ville
01 42 72 13 56

Paris Opera -- 5 euros
I tried to see Tosca at the last minute on Saturday, which was playing at the Bastille Opera.  I'm glad I didn't get in, though, because it forced me to see another show the next night at the other venue, the magnificent Palais Garnier.  It's smaller than the Met, but about five times more glamorous, with crazy chandeliers, gold carvings, and a Chagall ceiling mural. 

The show was far from sold out, so the ushers encouraged me to move into the more expensive seating.  No matter that I fell asleep during the concert, quintets and sextets of Ligeti, Prokofiev, Janacek and Hindemeth.  It was totally worth the five euros to climb the marble staircase into Baroque heaven.


Palais Garnier
The corner of Rue Scribe and Rue Auber
Métro: Opéra lines 3, 7 and 8, RER Auber
Ticket prices vary depending on performance and your seat.

L'As du Fallafel -- 5 euros
It's a great falafel, maybe not a life-changing one, but a great one.  The hot, crunchy falafel themselves are a manageable size, a bit smaller than a ping pong ball.  The pickled veggies are great, the tender fried eggplant even better.  The thick pita could stand to be more interesting.  Don't worry, the guy asking you for your order and your money while you wait on the long line is legit.  The question is, where do you sit and eat it?  I wound up in one of the chairs in front of the place -- not ideal, and just okay for people watching.  If you figure out a better place to sit, let me know.  But it's a cheap filler up in the middle of the Marais on a beautiful, historic street.



L'As du Fallafel
34, Rue des Rosiers 
Métro: St. Paul
01-48-87-63-60

Caramella -- 3 euros
 Why does everything in continental Europe have to close on Sundays?  I had hoped to crowbar a meal at Rose Bakery in the Montmartre into my very full itinerary, but had no luck because the French don't like working like New Yorkers do.  I had to have dinner at Caramella instead. Wasn't such a bad option, though -- cooled down with a scoop of mojito sorbet, which was fresh and minty if a bit too sweet, and yogurt sorbet which was tangy, creamy heaven. Totally better than much of the Roman gelati I had.  Again, you don't have to believe me, I don't care.  I don't know how it rates compared to Berthillon ice cream, but it was pretty damn good and I didn't have to wait on line for it.  Worth a pit stop to Rue des Martyrs if only to pretend you are Chocolate & Zucchini for a minute.



Caramella
47, Rue des Martyrs
Métro: Notre Dame de Lorette
01-44-530956
3 euros

To be continued...

You know that Gwyneth Paltrow story about how her dad took her to Paris because, as he said, "I wanted you to see Paris for the first time with a man who would always love you, no matter what"?  I love that story.  In general, I'm ambivalent about Gwyneth, but I love her father for doing that for her, and I love that Gwyneth shared that story with the little girls of the world who long for a father to share that kind of love with them.

But.  BUT.  It's the kind of story that makes you believe that you should wait to go to Paris.  Wait until you are with a man who will always love you, no matter what.  Or at least wait until you are with someone who will love you while you are in Paris.  Wait for the rendezvous, the pas de deux, the tête-à-tête.

I never really thought about Paris before.  Perhaps in the back of my mind, I thought, maybe I should go see Paris for the first time with a man who loves me. 

Which is silly, right?  Here I am, the eternal bachelorette, the stoic loner, a person who calls her blog Eat Drink One Woman -- no Man.  I am a romance pessimist.  What was I waiting for?

But I think of the Isley Brothers' cover of the Stephen Stills song -- "If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with."  I know that's a song about loving the bird you've got in your hand.  But what if you don't have a bird?  What if nobody's ever going to take you out to dinner again, and if you want to go out and be treated like a queen, you have to make it happen?  Would that be so terrible?  If you have accepted that romance is not in the cards for you, don't you have to love the one you're with, even if that turns out to be yourself?
 


To be continued...

Name: Stefan Mehr

Occupation: Executive Director at Bonnier Media University  

Neighborhood: Vasastan in Stockholm

Relationship status: Married and longing for my wife who is visiting in Boulder, Colorado, much far away from Sweden

What did you eat today?

For lunch: Smoked pepper pork with pickled and knuckle of pork and mustard, sauerkraut, roasted vegetable and shiitake.

For dinner: As a starter: Nettles soup, scallops, bleak roe and baked farm egg.

Main course: liquorices, tendered steak with Swedish fresh potatoes and tomato.

Dessert: Elderberry ice cream, raspberries with chocolate and pistachio.

... No, I'm not kidding. This is what they served at the place where we have our media programs.

What do you never eat?

Blood pudding [FYI for you non-Swedes, I always thought blood pudding was a kind of sausage, and it is in England or Scotland.  But Swedish blood pudding is really more like a pudding made of blood. --Ed.]

Complete this sentence:  In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Kalles Kaviar (a typical Swedish fish spread that you can find abroad only at IKEA), and dark chocolate

What is your favorite kitchen item?

For the moment my lemon squeezer and cappuccino milk foam maker. Did I forget my new smart and slick Danish tea boiler.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

At my local Sushi bar Ki Mama, the best in Stockholm.

World ends tomorrow.  What would you like for your last meal?

It used to be calf kidneys flambé. Now, maybe oysters... 

Name: Francis Strand

Occupation: Magazine editor (and blogger - How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons at www.francisstrand.blogspot.com)

Neighborhood: Vasastan, Stockholm [We're neighbors! --Ed.]

Relationship status: Married (partnership to be specific, although now that we can actually do the real thing, we're planning on switching over, probably around the 10th anniversary of when we got hitched the first time)

What did you eat today?

Filmjölk - which is something like yoghurt and buttermilk - with raw cashews, almonds and pumpkin seeds, an apple, black coffee

What do you never eat?

Organ meat - except for foie gras, which I know is very politically incorrect but what can I say, I'm not politically correct when it comes to food

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

At least 15 jars of various kinds of jams, marmelades and lemon and lime curd, a bottle of champagne, Spanish sweet peppers (sometimes totally wilted), butter, fresh ginger (should that be in the fridge?), filmjölk, jalapeños, chorizo, parmesan cheese, tomato paste and Kalles Kaviar (that peculiar Swedish concoction of fish eggs, sugar, tomato and potato flakes in a tube)

What is your favorite kitchen item?

Probably my Kitchenaid mixer, although the hot water cooker comes in a close second

Where do you eat out most frequently?

At our neighborhood bistro, Tranan - which does upscale versions of classic Swedish dishes... I always get potato pancakes with bleak roe and sour cream. More often than going out, however, we order sushi from Ita Mae (a restaurant on the ground floor of our apartment building - very convenient!)

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

Wow. Never thought about it. But amazingly, a last meal immediately comes to mind: First, a Bellini cocktail to whet the appetite. Then to start the meal, a small bowl of cream of Jerusalem artichoke soup with brioche to sop up what I can't get without (rudely) scraping the spoon against the sides of the bowl. The main course would be a perfect crabcake - light but buttery and rich without being greasy - with a little jug of hollandaise sauce on the side; some thin spears of green asparagus, a little undercooked; and even if it's a strange combination, potatoes baked in the oven in duck fat (the way my sister's French mother-in-law does it), all served with Louis Roederer champagne. For dessert, an outrageously large helping of my latest sweet obsession, bread pudding made of banana bread and dark chocolate custard, served with a cup of strong black coffee and a snifter of good old-fashioned Grand Marnier.

I read Francis's blog before I came.  It's an engaging ex-pat read with great style; it really captures what's charming and what's frustrating about being in Stockholm.  I'm totes a fan, and now I scored a YAWYE with him!  I love the internets.

If you're going to Rome because you think Gregory Peck is going to pick your drunk ass up off the street and take you around town on the back of a Vespa, stay home.



If you're going to Rome because you want to wade in the Fontana de Trevi in a black strapless dress with Marcello Mastroianni wrapped around your neck, stay home.


This is me thinking, "I'm going to play Frogger on my bike through this?"

But if your idea of a good time is standing butt cheek to butt cheek with busloads of obese American tourists looking for Vatican City while chasing your wallet down the street and eating mostly Little Italy quality food, by all means, take that road to Rome. 

I got to Rome on Wednesday night and was supposed to leave on Monday morning. I thought I would love it.  I loved the food in Milan.  Wouldn't Rome be even better?  But by Friday, I was like, better eat all the gelati you want because you're probably never coming back.  And on Sunday, I spent the entire morning trying to figure out if there was a way to get back to Stockholm sooner.  When I realized I couldn't get back for less than 500 Euros, I spent the rest of the day just sitting in the cool, quiet apartment hiding from the crowds and doing work. I don't know why I forget that I'm such a misanthrope.  But I don't want to be around that many people ever again.

What I hated:

1. I got swindled by the taxi driver on the way in ("No, it's 70 Euros at night with the tariff, no you gave me 30 Euros, no I need change for this 10 because you owe me five more Euros").  Come on, I am a pretty well-seasoned tourist.  When did I start looking like a sucker? 
   
2. I rented a bike on the first day and nearly got flattened by the INSANE mopeds and drivers and buses; but there wasn't enough room to walk my ride on the sidewalk thanks to the herds of gaping-mouthed Pope tourists.
3. My 85 Euro/night room at Hotel Zara was a total dive. Worse yet was having to hear the tourists at the breakfast room complain about how terrible the breakfast was as they were stuffing their mouths with it.  Two days in a row.
4. I think someone who cleaned my room took my fancy earrings. 
   
5. The food was mostly meh, no better than linguini on Mott St.  WTF?  We are spoiled in New York, people.  
6. The heat! The dry, hot hot heat was such a shock to my body.  It hasn't gone above 65 here in Stockholm.  I packed poorly and sweated buckets through a beleaguered silk dress.
   
7. Did I mention the complete clusterfuck of tourists?  I have lived in New York and London, and I have never seen a tourist situation like this.  At least in New York, all you have to do to avoid the tourists is to stay the hell away from Times Square.  Rome is like 15 different Times Squares.
   

What I loved:

1. Hamming it up with all the friends I met up with there, old and new: Winnie, Francis, Molly, Austin, Jeanne and Joao.  God, I've missed laughing at American jokes.
2. Cooling off, drinking bitter orange soda and a cold cappuccino in the Borghese Gardens with Francis and Molly, reminiscing about our families.
3. Molly and I did an amazing bike tour of Rome with Top Bike Rental, guided by our half-Sardinian, half-Czech, drop-dead gorgeous and knowledgeable guide Giorgia.  We zipped coolly around the cobblestone streets of the city center on the shop's excellent, well-kept hybrids.  About as safe as bicycle riding can get in Rome.  Also very satisfying to plow through the throngs of tourists, breathing in the scent of night-blooming jasmine growing on the alley walls and only stopping into the sites worth seeing.  Giorgia also gave us some excellent food tips.  If you must go to Rome, just go for two days and do the bicycle tour one of those days. 
   
4. The Pantheon.  That thing was built in 146 A.D., and it is one of the most breathtaking things I've ever seen.  And the rain drains into the floor.
   
   
5. Also, the Fontana de Trevi is still a remarkably gorgeous, gaudy thing.  Or it would be if all the freaking tourists weren't completely blocking it.
   



6. The apartment Jeanne, Joao and I got in Celio had the most beautiful view.  Coral buildings, terra cotta roofs, cascades of fuchsia bougainvillea.  It was also in a quiet, calm neighborhood just behind the Colosseum -- well, quiet except for the bumpin Euro disco music the gay bar would play well into the night.
   
   
7. Pizza at Forno Campo de Fiori.  The best.  Pomodoro was amazing, zucchini flower with anchovies and mozz was as good as it sounds.
   
   
8. Volpetti deli and a fruit and veggie market in Testaccio.  Flirt with the old counter guys in white coats, taste some Tuscan prosciutto, get saddled down with bags of Italian goodies.  In fact, my favorite meal was probably the one we had at Winnie, Francis, Molly and Austin's apartment -- noshing on speck, serrano ham, tuscan prosciutto, thumb-sized carciofi, squeaky nubs of mozzarella di bufala and sliced Sicilian tomatoes which Francis dressed in olive oil, salt and pepper.
   
   

Here's a map with more detailed reviews of restaurants. There were a couple of good hits in there, and I ate enough gelati to take a year or two off my life. But I'm telling you, most of the gelati in Rome ain't got nuthin on Il Laboratorio del Gelato.  Green means good, yellow means meh, and red means AVOID.  Click on an icon to read more.  And don't say I never do anything for you.

 
View rome in a larger map

After feeling under the weather in London and totally crapping out in Rome, I'm not too sure about Paris this weekend.  I'm so happy that I'm too broke to leave Sweden for all of June.  Actually, these trips have made me fall in love with Stockholm.  Stockholm is like the sweet boyfriend I've been ignoring -- sure he's not super spontaneous, and he tells jokes I don't get, but he doesn't beat me or cheat on me.

Kladdkaka is not a brownie.



Sure, the ingredients are similar, and the looks are similar, but trust me, they would be in totally different cages at the zoo.

Kladdkaka is a chocolatey, gooey or chewy thing with a crusty top. 

Beyond that, all bets are off.  Some people use flour, some people don't.  Some people use cocoa, some use only bar chocolate.  Some people use a round springform pan, some spread it out in a glass rectangle.  Some serve it with whipped cream, some serve it with ice cream, some serve it with a little sprinkle of powdered sugar.

Best of all, everyone here has their own version.  It's the kind of sweet Swedes seem to always have lying around under a piece of plastic wrap, ready to nosh on. 

"Oh, try a piece of my wife's kladdkaka -- it's the best." 

"Do you want some kladdkaka?  It's a bit dry, maybe have it with a lot of ice cream."

"Oh, I have a recipe.  But it's not a real recipe or anything.  I can write it down for you." 

"Kladdkaka is the one thing I can make that comes out perfect every time."

Kladdkaka recipes vary wildly.  Malin kept her favorite kladdkaka recipe in her purse, a recipe which calls for no flour and a day of refrigeration (!).  My co-worker Sofia knew hers by heart and wrote it up in an e-mail -- a whole recipe with ingredients in about 30 words.  At Kitchen Coup #4 (coming soon), Anja threw one together without measuring anything -- a shake of this, a crumble of that, chop chop chop, poke poke, done!  Anja's, a marvel of crackly top and gooey innards, had a slew of secret ingredients which she wouldn't divulge to the dinner party.

I plan to try a lot of different kladdkaka recipes. We'll start with my variation on Sofia's recipe.  This is not the intense coconut of Mounds or suntan oil.  The silky young coconut gives it a very mild coconut perfume.  Your friends who don't like coconut might even like it.  And if they don't, they can go mooch off someone else's kladdkaka.

If you want to try Sofia's original, classic non-kokos recipe, omit all the coconut stuff, up the sugar to 3 dl and up the butter to 150 grams. 



Kokos Kladdkaka
(which I would call Ko Ko Ko if it didn't have such a terrible meaning in English.)

3 eggs
2.5 dl sugar
125 grams salted butter
25 grams coconut oil*
1 dl flour
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla sugar**
4 tbsp. good quality cocoa
1/2 can young coconut meat*** (don't add the syrup)
Toasted coconut flakes for garnish

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius.  Grease and flour a 30 x 15 cm glass pan.
2. Melt butter and coconut oil together.  Whip eggs and sugar together.  Mix in butter/coconut oil.
3. Mix flour, vanilla, cocoa together.  Add to dry ingredients to liquid and mix well.
4. Add young coconut meat.  Stir into batter to coat.  Pour batter into greased pan.  Top with coconut flakes. 
5. Bake for 35 minutes.  Let cool completely before serving.

*Available in health food stores.
**I'm not sure how much vanilla extract is equal to vanilla sugar.  My best guess is that 1 part extract = three parts vanilla sugar.
***Available in Asian markets.  Can looks like this.

My dear New York friend Francis was in London last week, helping his mum paint the house.  I decided to buy a cheap ticket on RyanAir that would deposit me in London at about noon on Saturday and fly me back to Stockholm at 6 a.m. on Sunday.  I got my friend Helen to come from Copenhagen and make an adventure of it.  I figured we would stay up all night until about 3:30a.m., at which point I'd start making my way to Liverpool St. Station so I could get on the first Stansted Express train available.

What was grandma thinking?

Look, it's not that a 31 year old woman can't do a 12 hour trip to London.  It's just that I can't do that.  Not only that, I don't WANT to do it.  I'll take a hot shower, clean sheets and a comic book over hard partying anyday.


Drinks by the Thames near Millennium Bridge.  Obvs did not exist when I lived there.

But it was super fun to see Francis and Helen, if only for a few hours.  I had all kinds of transportation mishaps, though.  I took the bus to the wrong airport on the way over, but because I am a planner, I had enough time to take the express train back to Stockholm and pick up the correct bus to Skavsta airport.  (Which, incidentally, is like a Barbie doll airport in the middle of a cow patch.)

It's strange because I hadn't been back to London since I lived there twelve years ago.  Twelve years!  I had a miserable time most of the year because I didn't force myself to go out and make friends. 

I did really spend time cooking, though.  I used to go to the Portobello Rd. Market every weekend to pick up vegetables from the loud hawkers, occasionally splurging on a few mushy, tart dolmas from the olive barrel stand. 

On the flight over, I had little flashbacks of my year.  I remember the view from the window of my craptastic apartment on Canfield Gardens off of Finchley Road.  I spent the entire year wondering where the fucking gardens were.  Suddenly, in May, that naked tree I'd been resenting all year clothed itself in lush green foliage.  And I was on my way back home to California.

I remember the big pots of sauce I would make from fresh tomatoes, breaking them down over low heat until they liquefied.  Or the spot on my roommate's carpet where the one space heater we shared melted the thin pink rug underneath it, branding it with a black waffle shape.

The weird thing is that when I got to London on Saturday morning, not a thing was familiar.  Not a thing.  Okay, maybe the Royal National Theatre I remembered.  And Waterloo Bridge.  But Francis took me to Borough Market, the oldest food market in London, for my first time.  How could I have never gone there the entire year I was in London?  I'd never even been near the London Bridge tube station.



Francis and I walked around the Tate Modern, which had not yet opened the last time was in London.  TWELVE YEARS AGO.  (How did I get to be old enough to say shit like that?)

After meeting up with Helen and her friend Ia, we strolled through Covent Garden.  The only corner I remember was a Nike store that used to be a Shelley's (probably a decade ago).  I also had vague memories of a Buffalo shoe store on that street.  (Do any of you even remember those?  They were these horrific platform sneakers in pastel colors popularized by the Spice Girls.  THE SPICE GIRLS.  And of course I wanted a pair.  Good God.)

Wound up in a dusty old sherry pub called Gordon's on yet another street I didn't recognize, just off of the Strand, the street my university was on.  Seriously, what did I do that whole year?  I have no idea.  I didn't drink, I remember that.  Maybe all I did was stay in the house and cook.  Am I going to come back to Stockholm in a dozen years and realize that I never left the house here either? 

Dinner with Francis's sister Rosie and her husband Julian was at the Eagle, the original gastropub near Exmouth Market (another street I'd never seen).  (Tart boquerones, sweet colored peppers with raisins and pine nuts, grilled sardines on crusty bread with chili jam, roasted tomatoes and arugula.)  I totally copped out of staying up all night and wound up crashing in Helen's hotel room.  Before midnight.  So much for partying til the break of dawn.

The next morning, the cab company I had called the night before told me they had no cabs.  My underground travelcard had run out, so I couldn't take a night bus.  And it's not as easy to get a cab in London at that hour as it would be in Manhattan.

I waited for a bit and finally got a guy in a black cab, who then tried to convince me that the Stansted Express wasn't running.  He said he'd take me to Stansted for 18 quid (even though it's usually 100 quid, he said).  When I told him I didn't have the cash, he offered to take me to a cash machine.  He kept asking me where I was from, talking about some girls from Ohio he drove to the airport last weekend.  

At which point I was like, look, I have to see for myself if the train is running, because the website said it would.  And he dropped me off at Liverpool St., and guess the fuck what?  Station fully open, train totally running, first train leaving at 4:10, just as the website said.  I thought the black cab drivers were the trustworthy ones.  Innocence lost.

The lesson of this story -- no more weekend dashes for grandma.  Next time I try a cockamamie stunt like that, can one of you please check me back into the nursing home?

I will say that when I got back, I really felt relieved to be home.  Home!  This place is home now! 

I've managed to cook in four Swedish kitchens now.  It's hard to document the kitchen coups because I'm always fussing over the food.  But I'll try to give you some snapshots.

----

The guests:
The editor
The style writer
The musician
The nurse
A 9 yr old
A 4 yr old
A 2 yr old

The kitchen: an eat-in family kitchen, mostly white, with tall ceilings and a short green Smeg refrigerator.  Induction stove, 4 burners.  Big empty slot under the counter, currently the 4 yr old and 2 yr old's favorite hiding place, soon to be the slot for the new mini-dishwasher.  A silver lamp arches widely over the kitchen table like a shiny basketball in mid-toss.  The table is set with a pair of white Tripp Trapps, the Scandinavian high chair of choice. 
 
The coup: Six sea bream halves.  Bones-in, skin-on.  They have no heads, and yet they stare back at me, gray, dull.  What now, boss?

The plan: Chinese-style steamed fish.  I try to put the sea bream on a plate.  But the plate will not fit in the steaming pot.  I try another plate.  And another pot.  And another plate.  And another pan.  The editor and the style writer are pulling out kitchen cupboard keys, unlocking cabinets, climbing onto chairs.  "We always think we have too much stuff." 

We borrow a bigger pot from a neighbor.  But the editor and style writer's kitchen has an induction stove, and the pot refuses to heat up.  I put my All-Clad underneath the borrowed pot.  Like magic, the induction burner lights up.

The guests will arrive soon.  I am dubious.  The fish is going to put up a fight, I know it.  I stuff the fish with ginger, cilantro, dainty straws of Chinese celery, to shut it up. 

Gentle steam, check.  Steaming plate raised up from the bottom of the pan with the help of a little bowl, check.  Lid on, check.  Make note of the time plus ten minutes.  Go!

The guests have arrived.  The 4 year old and 2 year old are ready to eat.  It's past their dinnertime.  They start up on rice cooker rice doused in soy sauce.  We start to eat the other dishes, which have been ready to go. 

I check on the fish.  Done?  Hm, done around the edges.  But -- dammit! -- raw inside, the wan, translucent color of disappointment.  Shit.  Well, we'll let it go.  I turn the heat up.

The rest of the courses pass.  Chicken green curry over somen is pleasantly creamy and starchy, if a bit undersalted.  The pork larb is excellent, made chili-free for the kids and chili-ful for the adults.  The water spinach with bean sauce is reliable.

Oh the fish!

We are at rolling boil.  The steam is angry.  It shoots out of the sides of the lid like the ears of a dragon.  The fillets are now decidedly opaque, strands of white protein leaking into the steam puddle.  I scrape the soggy ginger off and pour the soy sauce-sesame oil-julienned ginger over it.

Overdone.  Overdone overdone overdone.  FAIL. 

Nobody else seems to notice.  The 9 year old has actually cleaned her plate completely.  She is totally fascinated by me, the Asian lady cooking exotic food and speaking only in English, a language she has not yet mastered.  She asks her mom to whisper English to her so she can talk to me.  "Where are you from?"  "How old are you?"  and even stranger, "You're skinny."  I protest that I'm fat, but then I think, what kind of message are you sending?  So I switch tactics and tell her that she's pretty and lagom, which I use to mean that she's just right, but I'm probably not using the word correctly.

The conversation floats around me.  The musician offers to get more wine at his apartment down the street.  The editor asks for the recipe for the pork larb.  I smile, I laugh, but inside I shake my fist at the fish and vow to avenge my failure.

Name: Malin Eriksson
 
Occupation: Editor for the Swedish food magazine Allt om Mat - All About Food
 
Neighborhood: Sickla, Stockholm, Sweden
 
Relationship status: Living together with Tomas, another Luleåbo in exile.
 
What did you eat today?

I had a great breakfast with cooked Italian ham, Danish rye bread, OJ and coffee. For lunch, I had six Danish smørrebrød made by a famous (in Denmark) chef named Adam Aamann-Christensen. They were small and delightful and he is very cute! Now I'm looking forward to a big beer tasting real soon here at work! The dinner is a secret but I have high hopes, cause there's another great chef in our kitchen, making it right now.
 
What do you never eat?

Oysters. They make me sick, unfortunately. I hope I'm never served eyes from sheep, or any animal. I don't want to eat eyes.
 
Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Mousse of artichoke, perfect on crostinis with a fresh basil leave on top. One of my many favorite snacks! I love snacks.
 
What is your favorite kitchen item?

My Kyocera knifes. They have ceramic blades and break easily but man! Are they sharp!
 
Where do you eat out most frequently?

Vietnamese restaurant Noodle House, Korean restaurant Arirang, and Thai restaurant Korat. They are all great! [Malin just took me to Noodle House.  We ordered her favorite, these little silver dollar rice flour pancakes topped with shrimp, peanuts and cilantro that were squishalicious.  Me hongry.  --Ed.]
 
World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

Probably something as boring but tasty as spaghetti Bolognese.. You can't go wrong with that!

Malin is one of the dear people saving me from loneliness.  She makes excellent crostini.

"S is for Sad...
...and for the mysterious appetite that often surges in us when our hearts seem breaking and our lives too bleakly empty. Like every other physical phenomenon, there is good reason for this hunger, if we will be blunt enough to recognize it."

--M. F. K. Fisher, An Alphabet for Gourmets

I wish I had my M. F. K. books with me.  I know she was married three times and had lots of lovers, but I also know she understood what it was to be a bachelorette -- how peaceful it can be, how lonely it can be. Who understood the effects of a full stomach on an empty heart better than she?  Those moments of self-clarity were butterflies she pushed pins through and put on display.

Remember back in March when I asked you for help making my apartment feel like home?  Little did I know, my subconscious was already hard at work answering that very question.

What does home mean to me?  As I'm sure you could have guessed, it's not about the furnishings:



It's not about the bedroom or books, despite the fact that I miss M. F. K.:



It's not about toiletries:



It's not about clothing:
 


It is now and always will be about the kitchen, and my almost pathological need to comfort myself with quantities of food.  The rest of the apartment looks like a hotel I've moved into for the week.  But the kitchen, the sweet little kitchen with shelves that are the perfect height and depth -- the kitchen looks like the home of someone who's been collecting condiments for years.









When you learn to carry recipes in your hands, your heart, and your palate, you can always create a sense of home for yourself.  And as long as you can be flexible with ingredients, you can do so anywhere in the world.  What a comfort the kitchen continues to be for me. 

I'm so grateful to my Pau for teaching me love through food.  But I'm also grateful to the friends I have made dinner with -- to Miho for teaching me how to make gyoza; to Helen for teaching me to make bread; to La Doug for teaching me to swim in butter; to everyone I've ever watched from and learned from in the warmest room in the house.

In my head, I've invited M. F. K. over for to share a bachelorette's meal of romaine salad with hard-boiled eggs and herbs snipped from my windowsill plants.  I'd serve it with a homemade Danish bun, sliced cheese and a glass of cold white wine straight from the refrigerator.  Or we could have a simple tomato sauce filled out with canned borlotti beans and blanched broccoli over penne, spruced up with cubes of fresh mozzarella.  Or a gigantic bowl of cold glass noodle salad with shrimp, lots of lime juice and cilantro.  I'd carry the kitchen table out to the main room, prop the window open with a piece of wood, and light a couple of tealights.  We'd sit in the squeaky wooden chairs, two ladies alone together, listening to Blossom Dearie sing "Manhattan" and watching the sun set and set and set into the Stockholm spring night.

Saw Star Trek this week.  It was probably the first movie I've seen in the theater in over a year. 

Phone convo with La Doug:

DOUG: I saw Star Trek this morning.

ME: Ooh, I saw it too!

DOUG: You did?!

ME: Yeah, I got tickets to the premiere here through work.

DOUG: What'd you think?

ME: I loved it.  It was so American.  Made me really nostalgic.

DOUG: Argh, wasn't it so fun?  You know who's my new crush?  Chekhov.  Wasn't he so adorable?

ME: Really?  I was totally hot for Spock.  Of course.  The emotionless limp fish.

DOUG: [laughing] Girl, you gotta call [MY THERAPIST'S NAME REDACTED] for that one.

Commenter Janet asks:

How late is the sunset now?

The view from my window at 9pm on Wednesday night.  All the light is disconcerting. It's hard to go to bed, and it's hard to sleep deeply in the morning.  I wind up eating dinner at 9:00pm because my body is confused and not hungry til then. 

The light has been coming on hard and fast.  The idea that the days will continue to get longer until about June 20 really boggles my mind.  I wonder if the descent into winter is just as rapid.

This is what the spice rack looks like to everyone else:



And this is what it looks like to me: 



Shit, what's "bay leaf" in Swedish?

Name: Hannah

Occupation: School

Neighborhood: Ekerö

Relationship status: Single

What did you eat today?

Breakfast, which was Weetabix with sliced banana and milk and an orange. For lunch I had a mix-up with tuna, cottage cheese, avocado and tomatoes served with wheatberry and salad. It's that kind of dish a restaurant in Sweden would name "Health dish", but it was really good! And for afternoon snack, I ate a cake which my grandmother had made.

What do you never eat?

Hmm... I don't really know, but maybe fried food? Don't like it at all.

Complete this sentence:  In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Well, though I don't have a refrigerator for my ow.n I guess I can tell what you always find in my family's: Milk & sour milk (something really Swedish!). [For you non-Swedes, that's filmjölk, and it's like kefir with a different funk. --Ed.] Because if you have that you can at least eat breakfast!

What is your favorite kitchen item?

I don't know... maybe a really good knife? At least that's what I use most frequently.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

In school I guess? But that doesn't count! I don't eat out very frequent, and when I do I like to try different places. But maybe SoFo Café at Söder, Stockholm.

World ends tomorrow.  What would you like for your last meal?

A dessert with really much dark chocolate and berries. Yum! And a cup of coffee.

I found Stockholm's best ice cream at Stockholms Glasshus. 

The end.

---

So maybe you're thinking, wait, how can you have already found the best ice cream if you've only been to two places? Here's why:



On top is fläder, or elderflower, sorbet.  Not too sweet, fine fine ice crystals, a touch of perfume, a kiss of citrus.  I love all things fläder, and I love the word fläder.  Ask a Swedish person to say this to you and just TRY to not crush out on Swedish. 

Under Neat that is Teheran gelato.  That's right, it's called Teheran, as in Tehran, Iran. 



And it's made of vanilla, pistachio, squiggly threads of saffron and rosewater. I detected a hint of orange as well. It's eggy and smooth, like a shorn mink for your tongue. Surely this is what the most devout teetotaler Muslim virgins get served in heaven.

Jealous much?  Hate me now!  

In the interest of journalistic integrity, I may try more ice cream places.  But I will probably resent them for taking up space in my arteries that could otherwise be occupied by Stockholms Glasshus glass.  But the reportage will continue -- you know it's true, everything I do, I do it for you.    

I remember fawning over my friend Helen's bread the first time she made it for us.  "Everyone in Denmark can make this kind of bread," she said, bewildered at my enthusiasm.

I like that attitude.  Why has bread become this special occasion thing?  I would never buy pre-made rice.  Why should I buy pre-made bread? 

Look, this is not some slender, golden Parisian baguette with slashes and leaves, or a ciabatta with holes big enough to put your fist through.  But it's a sturdy, honest bread, the kind of bread your body would be happy to wake up to.

When I was in Copenhagen, I asked Helen to teach me to make her bread.  No measuring, no kneading, no chopping, and she can make the dough after partying until 8am.  I've seen her do it.  And now I can do it.

Now that I understand how it works, I can make as few or as many buns as I want to at a time.  I can make it in metric countries or in non-metric countries, whether I can read the food labels or not.  The world is mine.



Ingredients: flours, water, yeast, salt, honey/sugar, whatever hippie flourishes you want in the bread.

Equipment: A bowl, a spoon, parchment paper, a rice paddle, a baking sheet, a dish towel, an oven



Take 1/8 of a block of cake yeast.  That's a little bit of yeast.  And drop it into some warm water.  Like a couple of cups.  Add a generous teaspoonish mound of salt and a tablespoonish squirt of honey.  Mix it all up until everything dissolves and the honey smell blooms. 
 


Add nuts, seeds, dried fruit and a glug of oil.  Whatever you got, that's fine.



Add enough spelt flour (or rye flour, or wheat flour, whatever alternative brown flour you can find) until you get the consistency of pancake batter.



Sprinkle in some muesli.



Add enough regular flour so you get a wet bread dough.  It should be kind of elastic and pull away from the sides of the bowl.



Cover with a well-wetted clean dish towel and go to work.  Or go to bed.  Or set it in a warm place and do your laundry.
 


The dough will be twice the size.  Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.  (That's 375ish Fahrenheit, or 3/4 to the top of the dial on a home oven.)  Use something like a rice paddle to plop bun-shaped mounds onto parchment paper.



Bake until brown and crusty.  I don't know how long this takes.  Use your nose.  When your kitchen smells like bread, take a look at them.  The buns should be brown, and the exterior should be crusty.  



Enjoy with sliced cheese.

This is the bed I sleep on here.  It's a nice bed, but it's not my bed.
 

My bed back home has a dip slightly right of center where I sleep, as though someone were sleeping on the inside, next to the wall.


I watch my neighbor across the courtyard cook for himself everyday.  When he's finished cooking and he's ready to eat, he turns off the overhead lights and turns on a small lamp on the kitchen table.  He always eats alone.


The flowers are going nuts out there, especially the cherry blossom trees.  The pink petals were everywhere, swirling around in the fountain, turning the water pink.  Reminds me of April in New York, when the cherry blossom petals whoosh along Park Ave. by 42nd St., swept into blushing piles by the wind.
 
Not to be all emo, but what other flower is as pretty as it's dying? 
 

This weekend was Valborgsmässoafton and Labor Day.  I love these random Swedish holidays.  Valborgs involves a big bonfire.  I went to Rosendals Trädgård and Skansen on my day off.  I thought I would stay for the bonfire, but I got bored.



I did stay for the Stockholm Academic Male Choir (Stockholms Studentsångarförbund), though.  I loved them.  At the end of the set, the old men helped the older men step gingerly off the risers.
   

On Sunday, after a texting my friend at the wrong number, I wound up on a boat to the Stockholm archipelago by myself.  I went to an island called Sandhamn.  The boat ride was 2 1/2 hours.  Luckily, I brought a book. 


I walked through the woods until I reached the sea.


The ocean, the scene of so many feminine demises, pastel silk floating around willow wrists.  Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin's Edna Pontellier, the real little mermaid.  But water can also enlighten.  Think of M.F.K.'s Sea Change, Helen Keller.  W-A-T-E-R water.  After a long walk along the rocky beach, I nearly missed the boat back to Stockholm.  I had gotten lost in the woods, so I used the iPhone GPS to try and make the blue dot (me) connect with the little ship icon on the map.  As I ran down the hill, I had to laugh at the lesson -- nobody's going to save me but me. 


To celebrate having caught the boat, I treated myself to a cheap mazarin (my favorite) and a cup of tea.  I think I have to lay off the coffee.  It's giving me acid reflux.  


Tonight, La Doug and I ate ice cream together over Skype. He had Haagen Dazs vanilla chocolate chip. I had Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk with sliced strawberries. We both finished the last of our tubs.

Name: Anne Skoogh

Occupation: Politics - and food blogger

Neighborhood: Nacka

Relationship status:  Married

What did you eat today?

Just breakfast so far - rye bread with Swedish liver paste and sliced cucumbers, a glass of vitamin-c, coffee, and a fruit salad with orange and raspberries.

What do you never eat?

Despite having a food blog and all, I'm surprisingly un-adventurous in food. I won't call myself a picky eater, but... let's just say there are many, many things that I have no urge to try.

Complete this sentence:  In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Pepsi Max. How embarrassing to admit - but it's certainly true.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

I really do love my Kitchen-Aid!

Where do you eat out most frequently?

I don't eat out all that much, but  I do meet friends for "fika" quite often. Vurma is one of my favorite cafés - great sandwiches, and nice coffee.  [I got a pretty great falafel sandwich on sesame bread from the one next to Hornstull Strand last weekend, but it took a full hour from the time I got on line to the time I got my cold sandwich. That is too long to wait when the sun is out. --Ed.] 

World ends tomorrow.  What would you like for your last meal?

My mom's chicken in mild curry sauce.

Anne blogs (in English!) at annesfood.blogspot.com.

I've decided to stop and take pictures of the flowers whenever I see them.  (At least, whenever I see them and I'm not on my bike in the middle of traffic.)  Not to bash you over the head with the obvs, but I just have to remember to stop and notice them and smell them or whatever.

 

From commenter Richard:

not a comment on this post (I do that later), but have a look at these, if you haven't seen them already, from ABD and Jon Stewart:

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=7438955
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=225113&title=the-stockholm-syndrome
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=225126&title=the-stockholm-syndrome-pt.-2

Yes, all this US chatter about socialist Sweden is hilarious.  Those clips are making the rounds over here, too.

Here's another reason to fear socialist Sweden.

When you own a bike shop, you and your shop buddy can be open Monday through Friday from 12-6, and be closed for lunch from 1-2.  That means your shop is open 20 hours a week; and if you split those hours with your shop buddy, you are working 10 hours a week.  10 hours a week, people.  And you never have to worry about healthcare, or day care, or education.

Of course, this is not terribly convenient for certain people who have to work regular office hours and need to get their bike fixed, but can't hate the playa.
 

People speak incredibly fluent English here.  That's why it's easy to pick up on the Swedish language idiosyncracies being translated over. There are certain phrases that seem to be popular in Swenglish (or svengelska).  Lately, I've been hearing a lot of "for example" in the middle of a sentence:

She likes to eat fruit, for example, pineapple, cherries and raspberries.

I've also been hearing a lot of "among others":

She likes to drink cava, Pimms' Cup, and red wine, among others.

I asked my co-worker Niklas what the Swedish equivalent of these phrases are.

till exempel = for example
bland annat = among others.

Niklas speculated that the proliferation of till exempel and bland annat may be a linguistic manifestation of the Swedish dedication to fairness, inclusiveness and equality (*cough* socialism *cough*).  The phrases act as a tiny disclaimer in the middle of a sentence.  Their presence helps to make it clear that the items listed are just a few of many, and that they don't necessarily take precedence over those not listed. 

So a Swede might say:

He has expensive taste.  His closet is filled with shoes from Dolce & Gabbana, Bloomingdale's and Martin Margiela, among others.

And an American might say:

He's got expensive taste.  He owns shoes from Dolce & Gabbana, Martin Margiela and Bloomingdale's. 

I don't know about you, but I tend to front load my lists with the heavy hitters, the point-provers.  In the Americanized sentence above, I wouldn't assume that the man in the sentence only owns shoes from those three designers.  And as a writer, I wouldn't deem it necessary to explain that there might be other kinds of shoes in the guy's closet.

I don't think I use "among others" much, if at all.  And I only use "for example" at the beginning of a sentence, when pointing out a single item in order to illustrate a point.

Is the sentence better with or without the explanation?  Which tells the story more accurately?  Depends on who's listening, I guess.

 

I've decided to make it my mission to find Stockholm's best glass, aka ice cream.  Copenhagen's Paradis set the bar pretty high.  Oh, sure, there are articles I could put through Google translate, but I don't know which critics to trust.  Besides, it'll give me something to do with all my free time.

Anyway, we start today with Glass on Dalagatan near Kungstengatan in Vasastan.  There are about 25 flavors, advertised as "importerad från Venedig" (imported from Venice).  This boggles my mind.  I don't want to know that my ice cream sat on an airplane for several hours and had to pass customs before it got to Stockholm.*

I got two scoops on recommendation from the cashier -- croccantino and hazelnut. 

Croccantino was a kola (caramel) variant, and it was awful -- like a gritty cross between those penny candy butterscotch discs and hard water ring around the bathtub.  My burps taste of cheap vanilla Glade.  Hazelnut was alright, but I kind of hate hazelnut flavored things and I don't know why I agreed to get it. 

I like my ice cream either eggier or ice milkier, and this was in that boring in-between place, with a couple too many ice crystals for that classic velvet gelato mouthfeel. 

The verdict: Fine to scratch a glass itch, and there are probably better flavors, but I think I'll save my calories for somewhere else. 

*This baffles me almost as much as this sign advertising "Bagels direct from London" does.
 


The locavore movement has not hit Stockholm yet.  In fact, there are no farmer's markets.  No farmer's markets!  I don't know where to get real deal produce.  People keep telling me about the wonder of the new potatoes, and the local strawberries, but where are the farmers?  I can't very well trust Daglivs and ICA to provide access to the most loving farm fresh food.  Stockholm, have faith in your own abilities to grow and make food!  Go local!

UPDATE: Commenter Anne says there is a farmer's market!  If my translation is correct, it's only open 3 Saturdays in May and 2 Saturdays in June until August.  But I'll only be in town for two of those days.  And then my job here ends on August 14.  Blerg!

I spent my weekend on the bicycle, trying to hunt down the flowers in Stockholm.  Where are they?


I rode up through Hagaparken all the way to the motorway.  I saw little white flowers dotting the green carpet of ground cover.  But not much color.

I rode back down Norrtullsgatan and met some friends at Hornstull Strand for a picnic.  Not many flowers there.

I rode past Kungsträdgården, where there were some pretty spectacular pink cherry blossom trees, but the square was clogged with tourists on the borrow-a-bikes.   

I rode out to Djurgården, up to Rosendals Trädgård, which was lovely, but no flowers, really.  Where are the flowers?  The apple tree garden is budding up.  I bet by the end of this week, they'll have flowers.


The sign says "Apple garden closed!  Please let the grass grow" or something.  As you can see, many ignored the signs in order to lay out under the trees.  I can't decide if I want to chide or admire their irreverence for the grass.
 
I don't know why, but I'm craving a big explosion of color and scent.  I'm obsessing over perfumes and candles.  Maybe I want confirmation that the city is alive.  I'm hoping the exuberance of nature will spur me out of this mild depression, which I totally hate myself for.  And then I hate myself some more for my lack of compassion.  It is a vicious cycle.

This is my time of year.  I love spring!  I only get it once a year.  Such beauty, such scale.  I have friends now, and I'm actually meeting up with them from time to time.  So why can I not kick myself out of this funk?


Look!  Coffee, a chocolate cookie, sunshine, a garden bench in the sun, an iPhone, a pen for my tortured slambook...good god, you ungrateful bastard, what more could you want?

I hate feeling like a total cliché.  I've done this before.  I knew I'd hit a rough patch.  I just figured I'd be able to pull myself out of it faster, having experienced living abroad before.  Here's how I might characterize the stages: 

Stage 1.  Fascination
They're blond and tall!  They eat food in tubes!  Look at the pretty latch on this window!  The coffee is soooo delish!  I've had a cinnamon bun before, but this one is different!

Stage 2.  Alienation
I'm not blond or tall.  I don't eat food in tubes.  I've had those cinnamon buns, but they don't fill the void in my heart.  I miss my nightly decompression talks with La Doug.  Wait, give me back those cinnamon buns.

Stage 3. Internalization (current stage)
Okay, kid, I guess it's just me and me.  I'll catch up on my reading.  And get better at cooking.  Do more yoga.  I'm not such bad company, when I'm not being mean to myself.  Except that I will probably be alone for the rest of my life and never know love and get even fatter and have a cat named Pebbles and I should just accept this loneliness as the period at the end of my sentence.   

I'm trying to remember what's next.  Participation?  Navigation?  Emancipation?  Uh oh, I'm not sure I got past this phase during my year in London.  Because I was definitely a much better cook by the end of the year.  If I can push through this part, what's next?  Anybody?

Dear guy in red station wagon,

So you know how the other day I yelled as you pulled out in front of me, "YOOOOOOOO!!!  ASSHOLE!"?  And then I rode up alongside you just so I could stick my head in your window and give you the evil eye?  And you know how you said something to me in Swedish, but I didn't respond?  And you repeated it but I still just kept giving you evil eye because I didn't understand?

Well, after you pulled away, I thought maybe you said "viktig" or "riktig".  And then I thought, hm, I think that means "right".  Maybe you were saying "right of way"?  But then why would you be saying "right of way"?  Weren't you cutting me off?  Or was I cutting you off?

And then I rode past that intersection again, and sure enough, there's a light there.  Which is weird because I didn't notice it before.  There's only construction work going on on your side of the road.  But I probably ran a red light.  Or did I?

So, um, listen, I'm really sorry I called you an asshole.  You probably weren't used to being called an asshole in English by an angry Asian cyclist in a stupid helmet and stupid aviators.  And I probably ruined your day. 

I always think that getting a good expletive out will be better than the slow burn of l'esprit d'escalier.  But it didn't help. 

And then I thought about how I maybe made you hate cyclists a little more.  Or Asians.  Or women.  Or Americans.  Or aviators.   

So if it makes you feel any better, the guilt eroded me and totally ruined my day, too.  And I have no way of unburdening myself of this guilt because I don't know where to find you.

But if you see me again, if you could please not run me over with your station wagon, that would be cool.

Förlåt!
Ganda