Food habits

One of the first, and biggest things I noticed when I moved here (even though I was prepared for it) was the dramatic difference in diet.Breakfast is much the same, with most people eating cereal, and some toast, I again being the weirdo having just bread. With Vegemite of course- which the family all tried and was disgusted with haha! :D 

But the biggest difference is that the main meal of the day is lunch time! Workers get an hour for lunch, and most go to a nearby restaurant (restaurang) for lunch with friends or co-workers. Staying at home, we spend a long time making a decent meal, and eat together at the table, with conversation. I'm used to this for the dinner meal of course! Then for night time, they have barely a snack- I can't stomach that however, and still have a decent size sandwich or a pie (paj) or some leftovers.

The contents of lunch here are quite different to what I'm used to as well. in Australia we typically eat a lot of British and American type of foods, and a few summery things more common to the tropics. A typical dinner in Australia (or at least in my family) could be sausages and mash potato, Roast chicken or pork, Chinese stir fry, peanut satay, a big steak, or perhaps some corn beef fritters. We often eat out at a restaurant (for special occasions or more formal dinners), pub, (sport) club, or get take away. The most common take away is by far fish and chips. Then pizza. Actually they probably tie...every decent sizer city wiull have a fish and chip or pizza store in every suburb and several of each in the city.

Here in Sweden, we go out for lunch even more often than in Australia- if you are working that is. Mike and I rarely go out because we are trying to save money, but we could easily afford to go out. Prices here are very cheap for a good lunch compared with a good dinner in Australia. Here, you typically pay 70-80 kronor ($11-13), but in Australia the same amount and quality would probably cost you $22-25 (130-150 kronor). I havn't seen a middle price range restaurant yet...so after these cheap places the next thing you can find is a steak house. A steak meal can cost you  upwards of 300kr ($50) so you'd better be hanging out for a steak if you're going there!

The most important thing for Swedes when we are talking about food is Fika. Fika is THE thing to do. It is afternoon tea usually but can mean morning tea or a snack at any time. Normally for fika there is cake, biscuits or cookies, and coffee tea or softdrink (soda). A few of the swedish things they put out are kanelbullar, syltgrottor or rulltårta. The Swedes do love thier coffee...they drink more than any other country in the world! From what I have seen, most Swedes like a short black coffee with no sugar, or maybe one sugar. Very few people add a little milk. The fika cups are the tiny sort. In Australia most people would have a large cup or mug of white coffee with 2 or 3 sugars!

On your birthday (födelsedag) here, you invite the family around for fika. For this special fika, the normal array of snacks can be accompanied by a smörgastårte (sandwich cake) and/or a special sponge cake. This sponge cake has berries in the middle, cream on top and is drizzled with strawberry sauce. The smörgastårte has a sandwichy sponge base with a creamy mayonnaise and dill mix in the middle. On top you have salad and meats and sometimes fruit.  They look spectacular!

Once again, I urge any readers interested in learning Swedish or about the Swedish culture (or many others for that matter) to head to www.byki.com
http://www.byki.com/category/Swedish/a/
and do some research online or in your library :)