Foodie Friday: Learning Swedish

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Dale’s grandma and her husband hold a sausage-making party every year. I am a lover of all kinds of parties, but I have to admit that this was my very first venture into sausage-making. Turns out that it’s quite fun!Based on an old Swedish family recipe, we made Potatis Korv–which means “potato sausage.” (You can check out a similar recipe here; the main difference that I noticed was that ours involved adding a mix of spices, including ground cloves.)

After starting the sausage-making process, I started to understand why a “party” was necessary…there were so many tasks: peeling potatoes, parboiling potatoes, chopping onions, running potatoes through a grinder, and lots and LOTS of mixing the meat, potatoes, onions, and spices by hand.

Next, we used an antique sausage stuffer to fill the casings, tying each one-pound sausage off with strings on both ends. It took us a while to get a feel for how fast each sausage should be filled, but settled into a nice production line after the first few sausages.

At the end of the night, were rewarded with a potatis korv and rotmos dinner. With lingonberry jam on the side, of course.

Rotmos is a nice alternative to traditional mashed potatoes. While I don’t have D’s grandma’s recipe, you can recreate it by boiling and mashing together rutabagas, carrots, and potatoes. I don’t think a little butter or cream would hurt, but you could always check out this page a more detailed recipe for rotmos.

In learning more about Swedish food, I kept running across this Swedish proverb: “Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours.” As we approach the holidays, these tips seem to be particularly nice ones to keep in mind. However, if hoping, chewing, breathing, saying, and loving doesn’t make you happier, I suggest checking out some Awkward Family Photos. They always bring a smile to my face.

 




 

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