swedish good eats: countryside edition

After spending 2 days in Stockholm, my uncle took Daiku and me to his cabin in the woods, a couple of hours to the southwest. This was so fun! The cabin is big and beautiful, but also very rustic. It felt so good to sit around the fire the night we got there, getting warm and cozy while the temperatures outside fell.

That night, as Daiku and Daii (daii is the Farsi word for uncle) sat down to a dinner of various kinds of pickled herring and gravad lax (cured salmon) with potatoes, I constructed the most delicious sandwiches- tomato, potato, and avocado on whole grain bread. Now I know there's nothing remotely seasonal or Swedish about avocados (or tomatoes for that matter!), these sandwiches really hit the spot. Besides... we would more than make of with lots of local food shortly.

The next day, we headed outside into the crisp fall air to tend to the garden and grounds and help close them up for the winter. However, we were surprised to find that the garden had kept growing in the previous weeks! There were 3 giant zucchini, which had amazingly survived the cold.

Green beans galore!

Potatoes to be dug up!

Daiku found a whole field of chanterelles growing beneath some trees!

There were even some young garlic and onion buds still to be had!

Here we are getting all the last apples off from the apple tree- there were so many! We left some on the low branches in case any animals were to wander by and want to munch on them...

With all that surprise garden bounty, we made a feast of a meal, something that really hit the spot after a day of working outside. (Well, Daii worked outside while Daiku and I took frequent breaks to come in the house and warm up! We aren't acclimated to the cold temperatures as well as him!)

Here you see: green beans, blanched with a few onions and dressed simply with vinaigrette, zucchini, sauteed with some olive oil and tomatoes, and potatoes and peas (peas that my uncle had picked from the garden in the summer and frozen) cooked with chanterelles. We couldn't get enough of this meal!

Even dessert was local and home-grown- these sour cherries came from daii's tree over the summer- he froze these for us, knowing how much we love sour cherries!

It was such a cool experience to be eating this sumptuous meal, in a cozy warm cabin, with great company, even though outside, the world was getting ready for its long winter nap.

swedish good eats: countryside edition