Help needed with "All things Swedish" day

[Globules]

We're off to Abba Voyage next month. We cannot wait.

We're going on the Sunday, so have decided to make a weekend of it by making Saturday an "all things Swedish" day.

My first thoughts are IKEA meatballs, gravalax, lots of Swedish house Mafia and roxette on the playlist.

I'm stuck there! What would you include as part of the day?

TIA

@Globules Waaaah I can smell it from here 🤮

To scale the true heights of Swedish culinary delights, don't forget kebab pizza. Accompanied of course by pizza salad - coleslaw will do in a pinch.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kebab_pizza

A huge bag of Saturday candy so get your self to a pick and mix
Fish balls or blood pudding with hash browns
Get your Nordic walking sticks and get out for a walk in the forest
Flag pole in the garden and raise the Swedish flag
Schnapps in a variety of flavors and always sing a jaunty Swedish song about frogs while downing shots
Wear a combination of white/grey/black or beige

I really really want to go to Sweden now. I’ve been to Stockholm for a long weekend (and have regretted not buying a Dala horse ever since) but that’s it. I fancy a holiday on Gotland.

Precisely the opposite for a Swede. @Lunde . Hot sandwich is lunch, cold sandwich is breakfast. Bloody foreigners.

Thought of another important thing: obviously no shoes indoors. Don’t know about walking around naked but for sure you should be able to wander around in just socks and a t-shirt because you keep the heating on, normally.

@Partyonlikeyoureight it might not just be your family but it is a more or less situation. Definitely a lot more tidy people. This does not include me.

@CheeseWisely , funny you say that about decor, because a Swedish friend who moved back to Stockholm after over 20 years in the U.K., emailed me masses of details of the flats she was looking at, when she was looking to buy. And almost without exception they were stark white, black and grey - maybe a touch of green from a house plant.

Just one, as I recall, had the odd glimpse of colour.
Her son’s large family house is virtually all white - walls, floors, even the staircase!

Friend’s ‘done up’ flat OTOH is cosy with plenty of colour.

Scandikitchen mentioned by a PP have pick and mix sweets, along with Kex, Snore, Plopp and Spunk. Maybe some Abba Kalles Kaviar (smoked cod roe paste) on crispbread for breakfast? Elk or reindeer jerky and akvavit (if you drink alcohol)? Scandikitchen do a selection pack of different flavour miniature bottles.

Channel Four have lots of good Swedish films/TV series in the Walter Presents strand.

Ocado also have some Swedish brands in their World Food section.

They do, but they’ve really cut back recently. They used to do great meatballs in that section.

The Scandikitchen meatballs, @ZebraPensAreLife? They were good. You can buy them online directly from Scandikitchen if you are not in London to get to the shop.

Ocado have another brand now but they don’t look so appetising 😂

I've just remembered I'm in London on Saturday.

I feel a trip to skandikitchen coming on!

I've shared my plans with a work colleague. Her response gave me such a warm glow

"One of the things I love about you Globules, is that when you do something, you do it properly and with so much fun about it"

She liked the idea of bear avoidance courses, a sauna and the weird bacon/chicken/peanut/banana curry...or the idea of me eating it at least.

As a complete aside ABBA Voyage is brilliant, simply brilliant. I'm going to see it for the third time next month. Enjoy!

If you’re in London, the Totally Swedish supermarket near the Swedish Church is walking distance from Scandikitchen.

https://www.totallyswedish.com/

If you want the fully immersive kebab pizza experience you need to get the Kebab Pizza Special which comes with with a serving of fries and salad on the top.

Then there is the "Amore" that comes with a steak and béarnaise sauce on it.

Yes this is true - a "panini" is lunch - but if you appeared in the work lunch room with a cheese roll at lunchtime they would give you sad looks ... although if you ate the same cheese roll before 10am nobody would bat an eyelid as it would be classed as breakfast.

Swedes also have a very odd relationship with jam. Jam on porridge is fine, jam on yogurt is also fine, even jam on top of a cheese and cracker, but put jam on a slice of bread and butter and you are a weirdo. I was once at a work thing where I made this mistake.

However Swedish breakfast sandwiches are positively tame compared with what the Danes eat. They also do the the breakfast sandwiches, but on ryebread. However Danish breakfast toppings include paté, danish blue cheese, "sandwich chocolate" (thin slices of chocolate that fit on ryebread), and "mackerel salad" which comes in a tub with mashed up mackerel in tomato sauce and a thick layer of mayo on the top - so you spread it to get a 50;50 distribution.

Along with Daim chocolate is the famous Swedish Car Sweets
https://www.totallyswedish.com/collections/pic-n-mix-candy-bags/products/ahlgrens-cars-original-34

What's the dress code please? I could get a little dressed up, all dressed up or just wear an abba t shirt.

I am so VERY excited

And this thread is making me even more excited than I was about the Saturday Swedish day. Thank you for all your tips. Really useful.

I'm definitely having open cheese and cucumber sarnies for breakfast. Friend has a rather limited palette, aka doesn't eat fish in any form, so I'll need to select the food dishes carefully. Or just make the crazy banana curry for me!

However Swedish breakfast sandwiches are positively tame compared with what the Danes eat. They also do the the breakfast sandwiches, but on ryebread. However Danish breakfast toppings include paté, danish blue cheese, "sandwich chocolate" (thin slices of chocolate that fit on ryebread), and "mackerel salad" which comes in a tub with mashed up mackerel in tomato sauce and a thick layer of mayo on the top - so you spread it to get a 50;50 distribution.

I'm going to Denmark for work in April and I have spotted matjes herring in the breakfast buffet pictures of the hotel I'm staying. I'm beyond excited.
Germans, at least we Bavarians, do the soup and pancake thing as well, mostly on Fridays, in my family also often Wednesdays, although it doesn't have to be pancakes, it could be bread and butter pudding, or rice pudding, Katheuserkloesse, Zwetschgenkloesse, a "Mehlspeise" a flour dish.

Honestly, anything goes! I've only been to afternoon performances, but the first time I was smart casual, second time a gang of us dressed up in ABBA gear, this time I've been told to wear sparkly stuff!

I was telling my friend about the banana curry. She looked wistfully into the distance and started reminiscing about her childhood.

She told me about the curries her English born and bred mum used to make her as a child...

... That always had a banana on the side.

She'd forgotten about that until I started on about Swedish banana curries.

What is wrong with people? 🤣

Good activity though, to head out to the wood for a bear hunt!

Oh yes - in the 1960s/70s England it was 100% obligatory to have sliced banana, desiccated coconut and possibly sliced almonds and apple on the side with curry (which was made like a stew with curry powder added). Also curries always contained sultanas or raisins for some reason.

Oh yes - in the 1960s/70s England it was 100% obligatory to have sliced banana, desiccated coconut and possibly sliced almonds and apple on the side with curry (which was made like a stew with curry powder added). Also curries always contained sultanas or raisins for some reason.

Bingo. Exactly as my Great Aunt produced them. Needs to be yellow with raisins in it, the rest served in side dishes. Just the garnishes (?) you describe.
It was very wrong but there was something about it...

Thankful that these two threads passed me by. I'm in actual shock! I'm half Indian, so never experienced this sacrilege. My dad taught my mum how to make a decent curry in the 70s. Not this banana and apple weirdness!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/3955620-Banana-and-curry

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/food_and_recipes/3968755-Why-did-she-put-a-banana-on-my-curry

wouod be chuffed with that compliment from a colleague!

my mum served those odd curry accompaniments in the 80s and continued to cook weirdly anglicised but tasty ‘curries’ that changed over the decades.