An Ode to Food
- Oct 10, 2017
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 6, 2020
I love food. A lot.
( Me, when there is free food in the break room. )
So much so, that while other people scoffed at that woman for marrying pizza, I was secretly like, "You go girl." and then proceeded to look up the legalities of it.
Spoiler alert: I don't think you get any financial benefits whatsoever from the sauced and cheesed bread. FYI
Anyway, I have tried to have a reasonable relationship with grub, but I can't get enough. And when I travel, the need to try all kinds of food multiplies infinitely. Loving food so much is not helping me reach my body building goals, but I will bench them for now, if it means having more pizza and sippin' more lemonade.
So to focus on food while on vacation: I often look into what a country is best known for and try it out. For example, during my first excursion over the pond, I decided that I liked fish and I like chips, so that was what I would try...at every establishment we stopped at. No joke. I am going to have to upload all of the fish 'n chips shots from my camera * one of these days. Insteresting side note: most fish 'n chip dishes come with a side of mushy peas, which I haven't had in a long time. Aka when it came out of a Gerber can. And even then, I'm not sure if I loved it. But now it is my FAVE. Go figure.
To take a closer look at one particular food endevour, we must travel over to Scandinavia in this edition of - FOOD. The Good. The Bad. And the Ugly (but delish)
Location : Stockholm, Sweden
Food : A plethora of unique foods from Scandinavian cuisine
Why it is worth mentioning : My Swedish friend cooked / created an authentic Swedish spread for us, instead of eating at a restaurant
Yeah, so my friend from college who came for a year over to the states, lives in Stockholm. When we were planning our trip, naturally I asked her if she wanted to meet up. The first night we got there, we all went out to dinner and had some pretty amazing food and learned a valuable lesson that cheers in Swedish is 'skål' (aka my sendoff each post).
At the end of the meal, my most favorite Swedish friend kindly asked if we wanted to come over the following night for dinner. To me, as a lazy American, that meant: come over, order a pizza, and watch some Netflix.
That's great and all, but that is not what it means in other parts of the world, lucky for us.
When we arrived the next night, there was a plethora of snacks (aka "OR-DERVS - not even going to look it up - I know there is an h and an apostrophe, I'm just lazy). She had gone out and bought all of the most genuine Swedish snacks she could think of. Literally, all of them. She let us "bravely" try each one... many which were fish-related. That was okay for me, but my friend I was traveling with definitely does not care for aquatic edibles... she was so brave that night!
For our main course we ate cooked orange mushrooms (totally regular, like mushrooms guys. but really good and orange), potatoes with dill, and..... CHOCOLATE!!!!
...I should say, what I thought was a scrumptious block of milk chocolate:
But alas, my friends . . . this is not chocolate. This is coagulated blood, in loaf form. Otherwise known as blood pudding, in many parts of the world.
And dear dear friends, I am definitely not knocking this beautiful hunk of internal fluid. It is actually quite tasty. So long as you load it up with MASSIVE amounts of lingonberry sauce ... at least for me. Perhaps Frank's Red Hot would have also been a nice accent to the taste. I'll never know.
What I do know is that it was an experience that I will never forget.
My Swedish sister from another mister was so kind to us as we treated the loaf like a contaminated sardine that you must pick up off the ground and eat. I mean... looking back I guess you could call that rude.
But we didn't mean it meanly. We are still new to the advanced palates of the rest of the world. We'll catch on...
Eventually.
But trying blood pudding is what traveling is all about, I think.
Trying new things so that they aren't new anymore, and then moving on to the next adventure.
Even if that adventure involves eating blood.
:)
Here are a few more pics from the awesome smörgåsbord:
Photo credit : friend who doesn't like aquatic foods
A special thank you goes out to my Swedish friend (who looks like a model, obviously) who went above and beyond with her hospitality to make a memory that I will never forget and delicious food (like the orange mushrooms and dill potatoes) that I still think about today! Yes, even the chocolaty-non-chocolate loaf.
:)
Skål to all xx
* this was back in the day when cameras were a thing
Comments