LostInTheWoods

After a long break, I am fired up for this blog again. No idea why I didn't post, but I think it had something to do with the weather. In Northern Europe this summer, the weather has been awful, hardly any sun and on most days rain. This had a big impact on the usual simmer-time activities, which lead me to not wishing to write about how it is still rainy and grey. Hence the halt. This is the trouble with “user generated content”, it is that sometimes the user requires a break, and needs to get their head together.

Last Friday, we made our occasional visit to Sweden's west coast to visit Renee's (for it is she) mother and her fiancée (Frank). Renee's father came too under his own steam, and we feasted on crayfish, prawns, meatballs and “Jansson's Temptation” (which I need to explain, see below). Just some time to catch up, as we hadn't seen each other for about six weeks, and there was the usual low key family business to take care of (Renee and her Mum exchange clothes, I check their PC is running OK, and this time we received a job lot of redcurrants).

Jansson's Temptation: Normally a Christmas dish, this is basically a gratin made with strips of potato, onion, sprats (the Swedes call them anchovies) and cream. An acquired taste for a foreigner. You can get the recipe here. The “anchovies” you can get from your nearest IKEA.

The next day we went out on the boat (called ”Ida”), which is an old fishing boat, but for the past thirty years has been used for pleasure boating. What was not made clear to me was that we were on a mission.

The previous day Renee's father and Frank had laid down nine lobster pots, and we were going to check them. Lobster is “hummer” in Swedish (like the oversized Jeep), so as you can see, Swedish can be an easy language to remember. Sometimes.

The first one came up, and amazingly there was a lobster inside! We measured it to make sure we didn't have to throw it back (it passed by 1 cm), clamped it's claws shut with elastic bands and put it in a bucket of water. We checked all the other pots, but we found nothing except crabs which were definitely too small to eat.

The catch:

Frank and Renee's father were chuffed to bits, this was their first lobster in the three years they had been trying. We took it back, and got the pot on to cook it. It was cooked, but I was not around to eat it, but maybe next time. But they took a picture for me:

A big part of moving away from where you have spent most of your life is to experience new things. Not in a hundred years would I have experienced a morning like that living in the UK. It seems to me that there are more possibilities here.

That is all.

LostInTheWoods