I can see that other people are wondering where to get sloe berries because this blog gets some traffic from searches about sloe berries. I looked high and low and could not find a supplier in North America. If you want to try using dried sloes I would suggest using the phone (strange, I know) to call home-brew suppliers in the UK. They may be willing to ship you some and label the box with something like “totally no fruit in here, officer”, or something to that effect.

Anyways. The recipe maddeningly calls for 4 quarts of cucumbers. I am making these notes here so that I can remember this for next year. One 10lb bag of pickling cukes slices into 9 quarts of soon-to-be-pickles, plus a quart of onions means that tomorrow I am making a 2.5x batch of sweet sickles. At the rate my sister and I eat these I bet they will last about six months. (Ask us about the crackers/cheese/pickles-with-the-fridge-door-open diet.)

My friends, that was the best sandwich I have ever had. I don’t know why. Fresh bread? Quality ingredients? Setting? Snotty hipster service? Probably all of it.

The next day I went back for a fresh fruit tart with almond filling stuff. I caught some other tourists looking at me in the mirror, I think because my eyes rolled back in my head many times as I was eating it.

I suppose I should start working off those 3000 calories. Diet starts tomorrow and ends as soon as I go on another electro-gastro-trip.

The magic of the Gold Dragon Bowl is, without question, the miso gravy. You can buy miso gravy in a bottle in the store for about $6 a bottle and it will be gone in two meals. I started making my own a few months ago and I won’t go back to buying. Rarely do I go through the process of making the full Gold Dragon Bowl but miso gravy goes on everything. Typical dinner is a starch (rice, quinoa or roasted taters), steamed or roasted veggies (broccoli, beets, carrots), grated cheese, tofu (fried or plain) and a topping of fresh sprouts (bean or alfalfa). Oh yah and a metric crap-ton of miso gravy.

• 4 tbsp miso paste
• 2 c veggie stock
• 1/4 c veggie oil
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 1/8 c apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp soy sauce (optional substitute tamari)
• 1/8 c honey or maple syrup
• 2 tsp sambal olek (chili paste, i use sweet chili sauce)
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tbsp grated ginger
• optional 2 tbsp red star nutritional yeast
• flour or corn starch & water for thickening

Mix all ingredients except flour in a small saucepan. Heat on medium until just before boiling. Turn the heat down, mix the flour (or corn starch) and water and add to the gravy until desired consistency is reached, whisking continuously. Cover bowl of yummy stuff with gravy and be happy.

I think leftovers could be stored in the freezer but I haven’t had any leftovers yet so I’m not too sure about that.

Sloe berries grow on Blackthorne bushes. As I understand it these are a prickly hedgerow shrub that grow mostly in the UK. Sloe gin can’t be bought in Canada. I have had it a few times in the United States and fell in love. Now as it happens I have access to a large amount of gin for not much money. Usually people just use cheap 40% alcohol gin for this because the fruit flavour masks any defects in cheap quality gin. Hypothetically, I may have access to litres of 70% alcohol gin. This is just a nasty rumour though, started by Stephen Harper. He’s gunning for me so don’t listen to any rumours, especially if you work in law enforcement.

Anyways. Hypothetically if I had access to 70% alcohol gin then all the recipes on the internet don’t exactly apply. Furthermore all the recipes are different and yield different results, not all of them good. So being a pseudo-scientist and really-real cook I have decided to experiment. Behold, my jars of potential awesomeness:

Jar 1-3 contains 1 cup sugar, roughly 1 cup dried sloes and gin from batch #4
Jar 4 contains 1 cup dried sloes and gin from batch #4
Jar 5 contains a schwack of dried sloes that I rehydrated with boiling water for a few hours then topped up with gin from batch #3.

The plan is to shake up the jars every few weeks until I think its done. The jars that are already sugared will just need some filtering and/or straining to achieve the product. In theory the jars that aren’t sugared will go through the standard homebrew liqueur process where the gin is removed and the remaining berries are sugared, then the syrup is added to the gin until the desired sweetness is reached.

Hopefully some of this will be drinkable by summer and I can sip sloe gin over ice in the garden on a hot afternoon.

• Wear heels if you are a woman. Also a scarf. Skinny pants and skirts are acceptable.
• Men can wear anything, especially if riding with a woman dressed in the aforementioned fashion.
• Keep a plastic bag tucked under your seat for tying over the seat in case of rain.
• Baskets, buckets, boxes.
• Kids
• Any bike is acceptable.
• Steel-framed step-throughs are tops for women.
• Steel or aluminum regular frames are tops for men, especially single-speeds.
• Internally geared rear hubs.
• Small lights.
• Chain guards. Skirt guards.
• Bells, kickstands, fenders.
• Putting your girlfriend in the bucket or cargo carrier, or having them sit on the rat trap.

Totally Not Cool

• Lights on handlebars. Must go on forks and seatstay.
• Bike helmets. Skateboard helmets are acceptable.
• Elaborate hair-dos on women. Hair must be beautifully messy.
• Excessive makeup.
• Water bottle holders and water bottles. Hydration = not cool.
• Toe clips. Clipless pedals.
• Boot-cut or wide leg pants.
• Disobeying traffic rules.
• Spandex.

Major Differences

• Every wall, fence, house, bike rack and parking lot in densely populated areas has bikes covering the available surfaces. Sometimes there are 1000 bikes in one bike parking lot. Sometimes there are 2000 bikes within view at one time. NO KIDDING.
• Separated bike lanes on all major routes.
• Separate traffic signals for bikes on major routes.
• Vehicle drivers won’t attempt to cut you off or run you over for any reason.
• Pedestrians will not obstruct the bike lane unless drunk. Only english/british tourists stand in the bike lane when drunk, Danes know better.
• The bike bell is a more common sound than the car horn.
• Pedestrians obey walk/don’t walk signals.
• Cyclists obey all traffic signals.
• The yellow light means “push off” for cyclists and precedes the green light.
• The city is flat. 3 gears is enough.
• Cars go the right way around roundabouts.
• Construction does not block bike routes, there are always paths through construction.
• Passengers, even drunk ones exiting taxis, will not open a car door into a bike lane without checking for cyclists.
• You don’t need to lock your frame, wheels and seatpost TO ANYTHING. The rear wheel lock is sufficient for the average bike in the average neighborhood.
• There are specially designated cars on the metro and S-Tog for bikes AT ALL TIMES.

Nuances

• If you are slow it is expected that you keep to the right of the bike lane.
• Signal if you are going to stop in the bike lane to answer a phone or talk to a pedestrian etc.
• Signal if you’re turning onto a side street and there are cyclists behind you.
• The rental agencies close at 2pm on Saturdays and are closed on Sundays (major personal fail).
• You will use your ability to shoulder-check for cars to instead check for cyclists trying to pass you.
• Most bikes have internally geared rear hubs of an older style. You can freewheel but not pedal backwards. For this reason almost everyone has to push off to get going – you can’t spin your pedals backwards to put one at the top of the arc while at the red light. Try not to wobble after pushing off.
• Bikes on kickstands often get blown over by the wind. Use the bike rack instead of the kickstand if possible, only to keep your bike upright.
• Traffic lights downtown are timed for bike traffic. Don’t go too fast or you will keep hitting red lights.
• Fellow road-biking ladies, remember it’s a step-through. Danes look at you very weird if you swing your leg over the seat while wearing a skirt.
• If you care about looking cool then try to keep your mouth from hanging agape and try not to cry, stare or hug strangers at stoplights.

My friend Rachael lives in a very southern suburb of Stockholm. There is a massive, comprehensive public transit system that boggles my Vancouverite mind. I donöt think this will be the only European city I visit with a transit system that will further disillusion me about my home town. There are three layers of rail transit, all intersecting at a series of downtown stations. There are urban and suburban busses. Women with strollers ride for free and get preferential treatment. We are about 25km south of Stockholm central and it takes a 10 minute bus ride and a 25 minute surface+rail ride to get to the city center.

The food in Sweden is as expected. Granted we havenät eaten out that much but I am assured that eating out is much the same as eating at home unless you pay big bucks at a fine dining establishment. For breakfast we eat boiled eggs, dark grainy bread )yummmm=, cheese, vegetables and meat. For lunch we eat bread, meat, cheese and vegetables. For dinner we eat meat, pasta, rice and cheese. OH YAH. Then we drink box wine because thatäs the affordable way to get drunk in Sweden.

I went to the Swedish equivalent of Whole Foods at the local mall on Monday. EVERYTHING IS IN TUBES. And tetrapacks. The beans, tomatoes, vegetables are all in tetrapacks instead of cans. I think this is fantastic, so does Rachael. The containers weigh less, take up less room in the recycling bin and they donät contain BPA like the canned food does in North America.

The market was selling giant atlantic salmon fillets, Iäm assuming they must be farmed. They had that eerie uniform texture and fat marbling of farmed salmon. I worked out the price to be about 30 dollars per pound which isnt that outrageous. Whatäs outrageous is the price of goods like cosmetics, clothing and entertainment. Needless to say we have been spending time at the house drinking box wine because everything else is too expensive. Saving our money for the next cities.

Speaking of money, did you know that some EU countries opted out of using the euro as their currency_ Totally true. Sweden and Copenhagen each use their own currency, plus Iceland, plus the USA, necessitating the biggest wallet EVER for this trip.

I would post more better pictures but my friendäs lappy doesnät have an SD card slot and my mini USB cable fits my phone but not the camera. Perhaps if I find an internet cafe I will upload some shots. Mostly they are of Swedish people on bikes so far, the food hasnät been all that photo worthy.

Tomorrow we take the train to Copenhagen. I guess that makes tomorrow my birthday. I plan on celebrating by finding a new notebook, going to a cafe and staying up late to right self+indulgent things all by myself.

Tomorrow I drive to Seattle then fly to Iceland where I change planes then fly to Stockholm. After spending a few days turning my jetlag around I will then venture on to Copenhagen with my friend and her son. After Copenhagen is Berlin, then Brussels, where my friend’s husband will join us. After Easter weekend in Brussels (CHOCOLATE ANYONE???) Ben and Ira will go home to Stockholm, leaving my friend and I to go onwards to Amsterdam alone, no child. Hooooooo boy. Then I’m off to Iceland for three days on the way back.

Please dear readers, pray for my liver. Don’t bother praying for my waistline, its a foregone conclusion.

This year my Auntie J made chocolates again but her candied grapefruit peel is what I look forward to the most. It is so crisp and just the perfect mix of citrus, bitter, sugar and chococolate. I ate all of my peel before boxing day. She also gave me a cookbook of sorts, The Art of Eating, which I look forward to making my way through. AJ also made soap this year and I was given an assortment of three soaps and one shampoo bar and they all smell delicious.

My mom gave me a Williams Sonoma cookbook (yay!) and three jars of stuff she made that I didn’t make this year. It’s like she knows what I failed to can and gives me stuff to fill in the gaps. This year I failed to make raspberry jam, salsa and dill pickles. I will be guarding that jar of salsa with my sharpest paring knife. She also dug up some silver soup spoons (that used to be my grandma’s?), polished them and gave them to me. They are big enough to be serving spoons, something I am also lacking in my otherwise-overflowing kitchen.

My sister clearly had the most fun with presents. She found us all a set of Weck Canning Jars. She packed us each a box of nine jars and filled each of the jars with fun stuff like marshmallows, mints that remind me of my grandma, fun socks etc.. Needless to say I am totally thrilled to have some pretty canning jars! Squeeee!

I also saw some moonshine, granola, bread-baking utensils, cookbooks, wine, coffee and chocolate being exchanged! And that is how I like it, and apparently how everyone else likes it too. Consumables only, please. I arrived home with two bins of books and food and booze and I couldn’t be happier that nobody spent money on a new iThing or Scameraputer.