Day 33

Got to work about 7.15 this morning – not the first there, but nearly.  Jens said he’d heard on the news today that the winter just finished was officially the coldest in Sweden since 1987.  I feel kind of lucky to have been here to see some of it.  In true spring fashion the sun was out and the sky was blue all day today.

Five of us walked down to the local pizza joint for lunch.  Although the weather was beautiful it was still freezing outside.  The ‘restaurant’ was cute (even if it looked a little dated) – it had booths with fully upholstered seats and an all-you-can-eat pizza bar (complete with little Swedish flags on top).  As well as pizza you could also get hamburgers, kebabs, chivapcici and fried chicken.  I went for the pizza bar.  The pizzas were deep-pan, like Pizza Hut and tasted pretty good.

Before I left work I wrote out a list for the supermarket.  I decided to cook polpette with bisi in teccia and mashed potatoes.  On the list was mince, breadcrumbs, Italian herbs, cummin, frozen peas, potatoes and garlic – easy right?  Kind of. 

Kind of over-did it with the potatoes...

The mince, herbs, potatoes and frozen peas weren’t too hard to find.  The garlic was okay once I thought about where it should be, but the breadcrumbs?  Forgetaboudit!  Spent about 15 minutes scanning every aisle for something that looked like breadcrumbs with no luck.  Spent another 10 minutes walking around trying to find someone that worked there to ask.  Eventually found someone and, once she figured out what I was asking for, was able to track it down – right there with the rice crackers and biscuits… sure, why not?

The preparation was okay – no potato masher so had to use a fork, which was actually way easier than I thought it would be.  Had to look up a conversion of cups to dls (whatever that is) for the breadcrumbs.  1 cup = 2.3 dls in case you were wondering.  Peas were done in the microwave with garlic, salt, pepper and water.  Hardest bit about the polpette was finding a dish suitable to use as a mixing bowl.  Decided on a kind of shallowish rectangular serving dish.  It worked, barely.

All in all the meal turned out well and tasted delicious.  I don’t think I’ve gone this long without mashed potatoes before!