I was reading a book on writing a while back by Annie Dillard where she got her students to start creating by describing what they brought in their lunches to school. She said that this exercise always got everyone talking and better still, everyone writing. It’s a great idea and for the record, I brought my brown paper bag to school with either a peanut butter and jelly or chipped beef sandwich. I would also have a snack like Cheetos or Fritos and an orange or apple and sometimes a dessert like a Hostess Twinkie or cupcake. And on Fridays, I would always get the cafeteria lunch because it was pizza day. This routine was the same for years, except for in my younger days when I brought my Snoopy lunch box instead of the brown bag.
Without having a child, I’m not so sure what the average Swedish kid brings for her lunch, but I can be pretty sure that it is not a PB&J sandwich – peanut butter is just not done here. But when you are out for lunch in Stockholm as an adult, you can usually count on the dagens meny or today’s menu. At most places, you get about three or four choices and no matter the place, you can usually count on there being a Caesar salad, as well as some sort of salmon, some sort of shrimp such as a salad with mini shrimp, hard-boiled egg and a slice of lemon to squeeze on it and also lasagna. There are also usually sandwiches, which tend to also be the same: one slice of ham and one slice of cheese with one piece of lettuce and one slice of peppper or paprika.
The across-the-board similarity of the dagens meny is rather comforting on those days when I think: I really want to have a Caesar salad today. It’s kind of like being back in grade school. But other days I feel like I could scream. I am not in grade school any more – I want variety! How about a nice bowl of soup or a salad besides a Caesar? Is that too much to ask out of the dagens meny?
By the way, at an average lunch place in the city, you will be relieved of between 75 or 125 SEK or $10-18 in the US for your daily fare. Of course, you can always pay a little more or less depending on the restaurant!
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I don’t really get why people aren’t into peanut butter, and I don’t mean because it’s so yummy. I mean because you can find Skippy even at the tiny little store in the next village over. Why do they stock it if no one buys it? So obviously it’s not just me buying it!
I don’t know what the standard lunch box lunch is for Swedish children either, but I know that when I was growing up rye bread with cream cheese was often to be found, or rye bread with paté and sliced tomato (open sandwiches of course), both of which were certainly different from the jam sandwiches and vegemite sandwiches that other kids brought to school! I know that when they were still living in Sweden my sister used to have Roquefort on her sandwiches…not a choice for most people in Australia considering it can cost up to $100 a kilo here!
Swedish children do not take their lunch to school. It is provided, free of charge, at least up to the 9th grade.
There are still restaurants (like the one at my office) who follow the old lunch tradition of serving split pea soup and pancakes with jam and whipped cream on Thursdays (in the olden days it was also served with the sweet liqueur punsch) and alternate on Tuesdays between thick slabs of bacon and brown beans, and thick slabs of bacon and potato cakes with lingon jam. Other popular lunches from the olden days include salmon pudding, skomakarlådan, and pannbiff with onion au jus.
I more or less ate a peanut butter sandwich almost every school day! Not even jelly. Sometimes a tuna sandwich found it’s way into my Barbie lunchbox. And nothing ended the meal better than a Hostess butterscotch crumpet!
Interesting stuff, Christian. I think I can safely say that I did not see any of my fellow students in the US with roquefort sandwiches!
Sharon, Thanks for the update on Swedish school kids. It makes sense that it is provided. I don’t think I would have been happy with the Swedish daily lunch of many years ago, by the way!
And long live peanut butter sandwiches!
Antropologa, It is true that you can usually find a jar of peanut butter in a store. Maybe all Swedes just say that they don’t eat it?
Actually, my Swedish husband loves peanut butter. My half and half kids, do not. We always bring huge jars of Skippy home from the US. The Swedish stores may stock it, but I’ll be darned if I’m paying those prices for it!
That’s great Sharon. And I agree that the prices are way too high for peanut butter here! Thanks to my Aussie hubby, I have learned to eat Vegemite, by the way.
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