Bellman’s Pale Rhenish
Dear Reader, please try saying “ENSKTBLEH”. Yes, six consonants in a row. ENSKTBLEH. OK? Now sing it, loudly and happily. Go! I’ve spent three happy days at the first ever Picture Stone Symposium in...
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Sheep In Cabbage
I am making fårikål, a dish whose name has a kind of brutal literality, meaning “sheep in cabbage”. It doesn’t ring quite so harshly in Swedish, as we have no separate word for mutton, using the same...
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Phew, Salami Is Not Spiced Adipocere
Adipocere / corpse wax: a wax-like organic substance formed by the anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat in tissue, such as body fat in corpses. … a crumbly, waxy, water-insoluble material consisting...
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Bread and Microbes
I found some slightly mouldy bread in the cupboard, cut off the mould and made toast. And I thought about bread and microbes. For flavour, not as a raising agent, I make sour dough. My method is...
View ArticleDeservedly Forgotten Swedish Drink
Sweden used to have its own version of Irish Coffee: kaffekask. It was big in the 19th century and I believe it dropped from favour during our 1917-55 period of liquor rationing. Nobody seems to drink...
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Friday Mushrooms
Has it really been almost four years since I blogged about mushrooms? This afternoon me and my wife repeated our September 8, 2010 expedition to the hills between Lakes Lundsjön and Trehörningen and...
View ArticleCrayfish Gastroliths
It’s the time of the year when it used to become legal to catch and sell Swedish crayfish (since 1994 there is no limit), and so the grocery stores sell Turkish and Chinese crayfish for a few weeks....
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Saturday Morning Mushrooms
Mushroom picking again this morning, this time in the area between Lakelets Skinnmossen and Knipträsket. Found more velvet and birch boletes than we cared to pick. King bolete, Stensopp/Karl Johan,...
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Weekend Fun
One of four grotesque male faces on a 17th century object in the Tre Kronor castle museum. The piece looks like a little baptismal font, but the label says “possibly a kitchen mortar”. Neither function...
View ArticlePalm Oil Non Sequitur
Weird argument in the World Wildlife Fund’s magazine for why Swedes shouldn’t avoid buying palm oil. “Sweden has such a small population that it doesn’t matter to the environment whether we buy...
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