A Swedish-Vegan takes on the Super Bowl

(SCENE – 7pm Stockholm Time on Sunday, January 20th)

WOOOO!!!!

It’s the AFC/NFC Championship games today – and BOTH of our families favorite teams are in it!!!  We root for 2 out of the final 4 teams left playing!!!  This is going to be the best Super Bowl EVER!!!!

(SCENE – 7am Stockholm Time on Monday, January 21^st)

Uhhhhhhhh – I hate football

(SCENE – Mid-Day on January 23^rd)

Jonathan:  OK Lis, I think I’m ready to start preparing for a Super Bowl Party.  It’s basically a holiday in the US and most of the time we don’t have a team in the game.  We need to get our heads right and make America proud.  The game’s in New Orleans this year, so on top of the normal pizza and wings, let’s get nuts and make some jambalya with sausage and shrimp too – they have a ton of that stuff out here.

Lisa:  I want to go vegan

Jonathan: ……………..

Cafe Lagom

This many strollers in front gives you a good indication of its popularity

There is a super sweet cafe behind our house that is an old farmhouse, Cafe Långagen, that is about a 10 minute walk from our front door.  It is one of the best cafes on our island and has a great playground in the back for kids.  Calvin loves playing in its sandbox and the food is top notch and reasonably priced.  You can enjoy a gourmet lunch outside, watching your kid play on the slide and relaxing with your dog at your feet.  What's not to love?

However, there is one aspect

The Swedish Chef Diaries

Considering we are in a small “flat” in the middle of a city where we still wear our winter hats in April, I came to grips with the fact that I will not be grilling up a storm anytime soon. This is a big change from the A where we would grill almost every night and I was making my way through the Weber Grilling Cookbook (their skirt steak is where it’s at)

But, like most of the lessons we learned so far, adaptation is key for us out here. So instead of lamenting my lack of brisket, ribs, bbq wings and grilled pizza, I am branching out. While I wouldn’t have my mac and cheese side dishes, I decided to look local and focus on more traditional foods from around here. I found a few good Swedish cooking blogs (below), and then branched out to “Scandinavian Cooking”, which yielded some pretty solid results.

http://blogs.sweden.se/food/author/swedishrecipeoftheday/

http://annesfood.blogspot.se/

http://www.newscancook.com/

The goal now is “when in rome” style, and I am going to try out as many Swedish dishes as Lisa can handle (we will break her of her salmon ambivalence yet). I will mostly be covering how I messed up the dishes (knowing how I roll), and will provide links to the online recipes (so you can know how you are actually supposed to do it). The major driver of what we make will be what is on sale – food is really expensive and we are really cheap. So if it is salmon for $2,50 a lb, or elk steaks (any price really), we’ll let the market direct our recipes.

And just so I remember what to cook when guests come in town, we’ll be giving a rating to each recipe – from both Lisa and I (and anyone else that happens to be in town)

Enjoy!

(and if you find any good Scandinavian recipes, send em our way!)