Semla

Nam nam

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MAX, Coffee and Bicycle

We just ate burgers at MAX and it was so good! After a dinner here you can have a free coffee of the kind you see in the picture. It is really good coffee. Under the cups you see a map of the area around Solna. We just bought a bicycle for Girlwing and now we will ride all the way home. It will probably take 30 minutes, if we find the way...

Fat Tuesday

Today is the Swedish celebration of fettisdag which is directly translated to "fat Tuesday" and is the Swedish Mardi Gras.

The only way the regular Swede is celebrating this is to eat a Semla. Of course I went to buy me one as I love sweet pastries.

The normal Semla is a sweet bun that is spiced with caardamom. The top is cut off and a small hole is pinched out. Then you mix some almond paste with powdered sugar that you put in the hole, add some whipped cream, put the lid on top and sprinkle some powdered sugar on top.

One crazy way of eating it is in a bowl and pouring hot milk over it and eat with a spoon. I am not that kind so I keep my milk in a glass and eat it directly. But first I eat the lid with some of the cream and then big bites of the rest until my plate is empty and I dream of another one.

Fika at work

After lunch we had a department meeting. Halfway through the meeting we took a fika break with coffee and ice cream. I love ice cream! :D

Apple pie

Yesterday I got the idea to make an apple pie. I googled for a good recipe but it was really hard to find one that seemed to be okay, so I took a couple of them and mixed to make my own recipe.

I started out with a quite small recipe but because I am new at this with baking I cut up way too much apples so I had to compensate with more dough. In the end I had to make two pies of which the smaller one Girlwing and I ate and the larger one I froze to feast on another time.

Boywings apple pie, 6-8 persons.

Dough:
3.5 dl flour
0.5 dl oatmeal
0.5 dl sugar
150 g butter

Filling:
5 apples (I mixed red and green)
1 dl sugar
1 msk cinnamon (I had a little more, maybe 1.2 msk)

• Turn on the oven at 225˚C.
• Mix flour, oatmeal and sugar in a bowl.
  
• Add the butter and use your fingers to break the butters to small pieces so it blends with the flour mix.
• Butter or oil a pan.
  
• Rinse the apples, throw the core but keep the skin.
• Cut the apples into 1x1 cm pieces and put them in the pan.
  
• Add sugar and cinnamon to the apples and mix well.
• Cover the apples with the dough.
• Put in the middle of the oven for 25 minutes. If the pie starts to get too much color you can cover it with some aluminum foil.

Let it cool down some and then enjoy with a lot of vanilla sauce or vanilla ice cream. Tasty... :)

Fika

In Sweden we really like this thing we call "fika". This is something we probably have done for as long as we had coffee in the country. I think coffee came to Sweden in around 1673. Maybe we had something similar even earlier when the Vikings drank their mead.

I don't know any word for it in English but when I look it up I get the translations "coffee break", "tea time" and "drink coffee". Those translations are partly true but in reality it includes some more parts like:

Finding a cosy place to be at

This is mostly of personal preference but I would choose a smaller place on a side street. Not too much people so you always can find a seat when you go there. Dark interior with sparse but strategic lighting. Soft and comfortable couches that you can sink into and relax every muscle in your body. Others might like to stay at home by the kitchen table or sit outside in the snowy forest around a crackling fire. Sometimes we have to search for a while and visit several fik until we find a vacant table at a place that we like.

An adequate supply of hot non-alcoholic beverages

The minimum needed for a Swede is regular hot black coffee but a selection of different types of coffee, tea and chocolate is something most people appreciate. Beer, wine and other alcoholic beverages does not qualify for a fika.

Good selection of snacks

Snacks are not crucial but it is something that most prefer. At least we need a cinnamon bun and a selection of small sweet cookies. If we are lucky there will be a selection of berry pies and cream cakes. It is also common with muffins and sandwiches.

Time to relax

Fika is not something you do in ten minutes. It takes at least an hour unless it is a snabbfika (fast fika) just to increase your blood sugar level. It is common that you sit and talk and drink several cups of coffee or tea for several hours.

Nice company to talk to

This is almost as important as the beverages. Bring a random friend and talk about everything and nothing. It is not the same to fika by yourself.

Chinese fika

Girlwing likes to fika. A lot... So we try to fika when we got the chance. It can be a bit hard to find any regular coffee place in Shanghai so often you might have to try something different.

You can find these alleged low quality coffee places like Starbucks (which actually is 100 times better in China than the copy Waynes coffee in Sweden) in Shanghai but it is more interesting to try the local stuff.

So we went in to a modern Chinese tea house and sat down at a table in the middle of the room. Soon I started to curse the absence of regulations against smoking in public places like this. People were smoking at most of the tables. Try to switch on the ignore mode in my brain and enjoy the moment.

We got the menus and they were impressing. They had everything and a little more that you can think of involving tea. It was not easy to make your pick but finally I decided on a cold sweet and sour green plum and green tea with aloe vera cubes and Girlwing took a cold honey green tea.

You can see my beverage in the front and Girlwings in the back. In the middle and in the beginning of this article you can see the sweet potato strips which is quite close to regular potato strips but red in colour with a little sweeter taste.

Girlwing didn't like her drink so much because she thought it was too sweet. I liked my tea even though it didn't resemble much of a tea and it was quite sour. The aloe vera cubes at the bottom was tasty and easy to suck up through the wide straw. It would be a great drink for a hot summers day.