I opened my can of Hearts of Palm. It’s been calling me for a couple of days. I bought it in the States when I was there for work, so it’s not very old, but still: now it’s open and half-gone and by the end of the week, there will be no more Hearts of Palm.
They don’t have canned Hearts of Palm in Swedish grocery stores. I could probably find it if I went to some of the import food stores at Möllevångstorget in Malmö but how often do I get there?
Other things I would like to eat once in awhile that just aren’t easy to get my hands on: straw mushrooms, chicken noodle soups, Colby cheese, semi-sweet chocolate chips.
I went to a “customer meeting” at our local grocery store (the one in Södra Sandby, the next village over) this evening. I got called up and invited personally! I figured it was because we shop there at least 3-4 times a week (what? we’re out of milk AGAIN?) but it turned out to be a random sampling of ICA card holders. Overwhelmingly women. Overwhelmingly …older. Martin called me a tönt tant which basically translates to dorky old lady. This is what shows up when you google pictures of tant.
I wouldn’t have agreed to go, but they promised a grocery goodie bag as incentive and who can resist free food? So I went, and it turned out to be a taste-testing with a couple of little films about the company and their various initiatives (eco, local, etc.) We were given samples of all kinds of things including dried blueberries, mini mozzerella and pepperino tomatoes, their own salami and sausage (one of which won the gold medal in the “Swedish Butcher Championships 2014″…did you know there was such a thing?) and cranberry dark chocolate. We also were given a sample of mango & orange “kvarg” which everyone raved about but I thought was kind of gross. Karin loves strawberry kvarg and apparently it’s very trendy now. But it tasted pretty much like cheesy yogurt to me and I’m not a fan. It’s called quark in English, though sometimes it is referred to as curd cheese or farmer cheese.
The grocery bag was full of good stuff, too: orange juice, apple cider, tinned mackerel in tomato sauce (which Anders likes), waffle mix, dried figs, gnocchi pasta, tortillas, sausage and parmesan cheese. Score!
Today for lunch, I brought salad to work: the aforementioned Hearts of Palm, baby spinach, pine nuts, avocado and a little chicken. Yum. I think I’ll have a repeat tomorrow, it was so good. Too bad I didn’t get one of those bags of dried blueberries to throw in.