A Trip to Wales

Mother-in-law A&N moved to Wales a few years back. The lure of endless fresh air, a vegetable garden the size of most London flats, and plenty of large hills up which to hike and jog during dangerously inclement weather proved too much for her. She and her husband now live in a beautiful valley with their 4 ducks and the cows and sheep in the next field over singing them off to sleep.

The biggest shame about Wales (and the biggest factor in preserving its beauty) is that it can be mighty difficult to get to. A 60 mile as-the-crow-flies stretch of road can take two stomach churning hours of dipping up and down hills and rocking to and fro around endless bends in the road, often stopping or reversing since the road isn't wide enough to hold two cars at once. We haven't visited them in two years since the thought of taking the 5 hour trip when pregnant made me immediately queasy. Mr A&N last week found himself with a few days off between his freelance projects, so we packed up the car and set off for a week's holiday at his mum's.

Being with baby doesn't make the traditional early morning hikes easy to negotiate, and Mr A&N was glad for the excuse to take it easy. We instead had gentle walks around ruined castles and several tours of the vegetable patch with Baby A&N taking delight in the ducks and the butterflies that stopped by the say hello. I came away from our castle trips with a build-your-own castle book that I'm trying my best not to rip into until Baby A&N is old enough to do it with me, even though I so desperately want to build a while medieval city on our dining table.

Our dining in Wales always takes place at home, with Mr A&N's mother picking things from the garden that are fresh and balancing them with meat or fish from her local farm shop. Ambling about in the same fields as your sheep and seeing them wandering in your church yards brings me closer to the reality of what I'm eating, so I appreciated the chance to buy some well reared meat from the source. Eating lamb these days does give me pangs, thinking that I'm tucking into some sheep's own Baby A&N. Thank goodness it's delicious enough to help me swallow down that guilt with a slight garlic aftertaste.


At the farm shop, the farmer explained (first in Welsh, then in English as I gave him polite but empty smiles) how he had some goat meat going cheap. He was given two goats, and while letting himself have a day to decide what to do with them (cheese? milk? sell them on? grow a herd?) they managed to eat through two water butts and some important wiring. And so goat was now being served up at the shop. Mr A&N's mother and I happily offered a home to the bargain meat, only scratching our heads on the way out over what to do with 2 racks of goat rib each. Eat them, is the short conclusion, but anything more than that and we're both stumped. Any suggestions, anyone?

Summer Holiday Part 2 - New York

Although the trip to New York is a once-a-year requirement, it's sometimes hard to see it as a holiday. Visiting family and friends can be tiring when juggling everyone's needs, and to return to the same place each year when you're already pretty familiar with it doesn't lead to much travel frisson. Lucky for me then that New York does have its fair share of things on offer.

My parents live far out on Long Island, and we tend to do our own cooking when staying with them. I love going to the giant supermarket near them, in the same way I sometimes love watching horror movies. The produce aisle brings on the first moment of fear in me: uniform and perfect shiny red red apples which my x-ray food vision sees as dripping with pesticides and wax, mushy in the middle and tasting of nothing. The produce has gotten better in recent years and now features some organic goods, though variety is still minimal despite its huge size. I next love to visit all the sugar-based aisles since these are the foods I grew up on: sugary cereals, cookies, drinks, snacks, pre-mixed baking goods. I've curbed my ways so these are more of a fascination than a temptation to me now, though I did still walk away with a giant tub of peanut butter (and our suitcases were already at their weight limit - that peanut butter led to the airlines ordering us to reduce our weight or pay £50, and Mr A&N being very disappointed in me).

Sadly, we didn't make it to a Mets game this year, though it may be due to the 'rule' I set up during our last Mets game, in which Mr. A&N, my brother, and I each had to sample a different junk food every three innings. A hamburger, chicken in a basket, and hot dog later (and that was just my share) and we were in a very bad way; thank god the game didn't go into extra time or that extra Italian sausage might have pushed me over the edge. Ah, those are good memories...

But I digress.

Into Manhattan, and and the real eating can begin. Mr. A&N is fond of saying that we've never had a bad meal in NYC (I'm including the outer boroughs), and with the help of my brother and my good friends, Megan and James (and the biggest gourmet in their house, their golden retriever Daisy) this is entirely true. My brother sought out Counter for our first night, an upscale organic vegetarian place; he was quite intent on helping us eat local and seasonal food (knowing that's something I consider important) which caused mild mental stress on his part but which I thought was a very lovely gesture. He also treated us to an evening at his favorite shochu bar (locally produced, not so much), which we had already acquired a taste for thanks to my brother; if you've never tried the liquor, it is highly recommended for its clean. whiskey-like taste. Megan and James led us to Bao, a Vietnamese place with Thai touches, after having read about my quest for good Vietnamese in London. The general standard of food in NYC is very high (I think it's a combination of plenty of competition forcing places to be top of their trade, and a ready pool of diners who can't cook/won't cook due to long working hours), and our record of never having a bad meal in New York remains.
We also wandered through both the Union Square Farmer's Market, and the food hall within Grand Central Station, both of which proved a nice antidote to the big anonymous supermarkets. The Grand Central food hall was filled with specialty stalls, and the variety of nice meats and cheeses and other goodies was impressive. The Farmer's Market was running over with beautiful bounties of vegetables and fruit, all of which I wanted to take home with me like some would a stray kitten. Tomatoes seemed to be the particular showpiece, with piles of gnarly purple, yellow, orange, and mundane red ones spilling forth from nearly every stall.
I'm a simple girl, though, and my greatest New York eating pleasures come from bagels and pizza. My favorite pizza place is gone so I'm cast adrift a bit on the pizza seas, but I think you'll all be reassured to know that my last stop before getting in a cab and heading to the airport was to buy a dozen and a few bagels from the daddy of bagel places, David's Bagels on 1st Ave and 14th Street. They were, naturally, fresh from the oven, and I had them bag the onion ones seperately so I could stick them in my hand luggage and they wouldn't infect the others with oniony-ness (I'm so savvy, me). They caused a bit of a stir at the x-ray machine, looking like suspicious god-knows-whats, but when the bag was opened the staff sighed at the scent and tried to negotiate buying them off us. Those little onion blessings saw us through the next 24 hours of travelling as we made our way from New York to Sweden, back to London and to home. The other bagels are now safely in the freezer and I shall be rationing out one a month for the next year, until I can return and buy more. My friends and family think I return to New York to see them, but really, it's the bagels.

Summer Holiday Part 1 - Sweden

My trip to Sweden for the first half of my summer holiday was as much due to desire as it was necessity; we needed to go to New York, and since direct flights were too pricey we combined a week-long layover in a country we wanted to visit, followed a flight to New York. Two trips for the price of one, and I got to dip into a country and cuisine I hadn't yet experienced. As ever, the most exciting part of travel for me was the food: eating in local restaurants, seeing the wonders of foreign supermarkets, and in Sweden's case, foraging for wild berries.

We spent two days in Stockholm (where our restaurant-going was anticipated) and 5 days in the country (where the lingonberries came into the equation). With so little time in Stockholm, I tried to gather food recommendations for traditional Swedish places, and thanks to bloggers like Wendy from A Wee Bit of Cooking I went armed with some solid-sounding choices. I realize that 'traditional' might not equate to current cuisine: proof of this is in Britain, where traditional cooking can mean something a bit dull but the modern take on traditional is a delight. With more time in the country, I would have liked to branch out further and seek out modern Swedish cooking, but I did feel like I needed to first acquaint myself with the basics, served to me from somewhere other than Ikea.
Our glimpse at traditional food did reveal some solid, meaty comfort food which would clearly help get you through the winter. We supped on a bit of reindeer (gamey and steaky at the same time while still being tender) and Swedish meatballs, plenty of herring, and a nice breakfast smorgasboard with some wonderful cinnamon rolls. Vegetables weren't abundant but Vitamin C was represented by lingonberries in the form of jam, sauce, and pudding.

Lingonberries were further on hand when we moved out to the country, by Sweden's biggest lake. There were plans afoot to swim and fish and hike while spending more wild moments picking fruit, though these were slightly scuppered by (in order) it already being too cold to swim, us not catching any fish, having difficulty finding good berry picking, and me being ill. We eventually found some fine berry troves at least (after much walking through wild and windy woods - that's me holding up some of the bounty, below), and used them in our own savory meat sauce as well as in a lovely crumble filled with other 'found' fruit, apples and plums.
I remained intrigued by cloudberries and though we didn't find any of those to pick, I did find some cloudberry jam. I was warned that the taste and smell of them might be an acquired pleasure; indeed, sniffing the jam made me wonder more if it had gone sour than if it would be the most tasty mouthful I had ever experienced. But after the first slightly medicinal hit, they did become sweet and vaguely yogurty. So although we didn't get to experience any modern Swedish cuisine in Stockholm, I created my own modern, fusion food when I sampled my first spoonful of cloudberries atop my hard-won bagels, brought back from New York. Now that's fusion, folks.

Holiday!

It is with great happiness that I am posting to say I'm off on holiday for 2 weeks. First stop is Sweden, for a bit of touring around Stockholm and a lot of relaxing and fishing by the lakes. That is followed by a trip to New York to visit the friends and family.

Thank you to everyone who has sent along Sweden eating suggestions. Blogging will take a break until my return, but I'll be back in full force in September.

See you then!
Annemarie

Cloudberries

I'm off on holiday shortly (hooray!) for a week in Sweden before going to visit my family for a week in New York. The Sweden leg is meant to be the relaxing one, with reading, swimming, sleeping, fishing, and berry picking being the most taxing things we'll do. After that is a week in New York (city and suburbs) visiting as many family and friends as possible; I suspect I have my weeks the wrong way around.

Part of my excitement about Sweden has to - naturally - do with the food. The house we're renting has its own boat and fishing rods, fruit trees in the garden, and the owner has given me maps for nearby cowberry picking. I was fairly stumped about what a cowberry would be, until Wikipedia informed me they're the same thing as lingonberries. I am gathering lingonberry recipes now (any lingonberry-usage suggestions you might have are very welcome).

From Chris Walton's/Philocrates' Flickr photostream

While figuring out what cowberries were, I mentioned them to a few people to see if they had heard of them before. Mike, a reader of Ambrosia and Nectar, suggested that I might actually mean cloudberries. Although it was another berry I hadn't heard of, I was confident I was dealing with cows rather than clouds. Cloudberries, however, are also a type of berry found in Sweden, and are a highly prized (and highly priced) commodity. Mike, being the clever sort that he is, works with someone who is involved in mapping, and working out patterns behind mapped data. He went on a cloudberry hunt at and looked at cloudberry picking in Sweden through this lens.

I'm intrigued by cloudberries now, and would like to find some, although their locations are kept quite secret since they are worth a good deal of money. Reassuringly, Wikipedia also informs me that cloudberries can be found on Long Island, so perhaps even if we miss our chance of intense berry picking during our laid back week in Sweden, we can work in some laid back berry picking during our intense week in New York. Sounds a fair trade off to me.