I just posted this over on Blogtown in response to a post about IKEA (a negative one, if you can believe it)… but it’s too informative not to share here as well.
Prawn cheese spread—or räkost—is one of my favorite Swedish food novelties. Walk into any Swedish supermarket, in fact, and you’ll find an entire aisle full of things in tubes. Bacon cheese, pesto cheese, cheese cheese. Then there’s the caviar in tubes, made to be squirted out in zigzags atop your open-face breakfast sandwich. And garlic-flavored mayonnaise tubes with little star openings that make your mayo squirts into lithesome florets. The tube-foods of Sweden are delightful, and they’re begging for a squeeze. Varsågod!
There are a lot of things I miss about shopping in Sweden. Last summer at around this time, I went to Sweden to see my family there; they all thought I was crazy for getting so excited about going to the supermarket. Among the things you’ll find there are:
Salty black licorice…
Vitamin C fizzy drops (these used to come in a metal tube)…
and the most, er, effektivt bug repellent you can buy (19 percent DEET, actually, you get this at the equally amazing state-run pharmacy).
Yes, they really like things in tubes. It is a phallic country. In case you don’t believe me:
