Wednesday, April 28, 2010

IKEA food run

Princess cake for morning tea

This is my morning tea today, with a nice cup of coffee. Ahhh.

I've been sick with a cold the last couple of days (today included), so I've been home from work. And the problem with being home is that you eat the food that you would normally have used for meals. So today when I went to the cupboard, it was pretty bare. And nothing is worse for a grumpy sick girl than being hungry.

The other thing worth mentioning is that around this time every year, I get really mean cravings for Scandinavian food. Who knows why? Possibly the changing seasons make me want rye bread with mustard herring. Honestly, sometimes I think something weird must have happened to me in utero, because I have a really strong affinity for a number of different food cultures, but not my own. So anyway, knowing that I had to go get some food anyway, and that it wasn't really further to travel than my usual grocer, I decided to make an early morning run to the IKEA food market and kill both birds with one stone.

The new IKEA store (I say new, though it's been open since Valentine's day 2008) has a nicely sizeable food section. It's possible to get there pretty quickly from the front of the store if you take all the shortcuts that you can, skipping all of the display sections and most of the market hall. I wish there was a special entrance just for the food section, but never mind.

The thing with IKEA is that while I like it a lot, I don't ever want to go there more than I have to. So if I'm going to make a run to the Swedish food market, I'm not just going to pick up some crispbread and some gherkins. Nope, I'm going to stock up properly. Here's my haul for today.

IKEA perishable food

First, the perishables: meatballs, gravlax, tiny shrimp, salmon paste, lumpfish roe, the aforementioned Princess cake and mustard herring, and a packet of rösti.

IKEA non-perishable food

And the non-perishables - crispbread, rye bread mix (currently baking as I type), cream saucce mix for the meatballs, cloudberry jam, gherkins, gravlax sauce, and some candy for Anthony - Daim, Ahlgrens bilar (Sweden's best selling car, har har) and some chocolate.

Now all that's left for this sick little girl to do is eat my princess cake and assemble some smørrebrød for lunch. Yum yum. (Yes yes, smørrebrød is Danish. Whatever. It's all Scandi to me.)