Following the food trend...

Eating here is fantastic. Very simple. Very refreshing. Of course you can find nearly every ethnic food you could want, but really, I find myself eating extremely well with the very basics. Fruits, vegetables. Yogurt smoothies for breakfast. Fresh breads. Hard boiled eggs. Small cold-cut sandwiches. Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.

But, it did get some taking used to. Here are couple things that, coming from America, you notice (you know, besides the metric system):

• Things are sold with less pasteurization. Milk, eggs, and other dairy products will typically last about 7-8 days. Good thing my previous residence got me constantly checking the expiration dates on food out of habit…
• Produce is smaller, but probably the same price. I suspect more local and organic sources.
• The breads and cheese selection here are sprawling. Seriously. And the hard cheese is in typically sold in 1 lb packages.
• Vanilla extract is in powder form, not liquid. 
• You don’t buy red meat. It’s crazy expensive. Chicken’s not as bad. But veggies and beans is where it’s at…you know, from a poor student’s perspective.

 And of course, there’s the differences in what surrounds the food you’re eating. Like how I swear the microwaves work faster here. And how plastic containers for, say, cherry tomatoes and the like, are quite flimsy (less plastic). And how yogurt is sometimes in cardboard boxes. And how there are far less plastic bags in plastic bags in plastic bags in boxes. The packaging here is great. And recycling here is practically mandatory—like breathing.

This week, I plan to launch my first endeavor to bake something in a European kitchen. This means converting my American recipes to metric measurements, looking up Swedish vocabulary words, finding the equivalent supplies, and—most importantly—figuring out how my oven works.

Being that the odds of this project gong horribly wrong are quite high, I promise I’ll post my findings.