The routine stuff...

Nothing new, except the routine stuff. I have now fairly settled down to a routine in Sweden, and counting the weeks for the return to India. As usual, the thing I miss the most is the food. However, with a good supply of masalas and spices from India, at least there is the good fortune of cooking several things Indian.

The usual disasters happened: In a non-English-speaking country, such things are bound to happen. It was difficult to know one thing from the other in the supermarkets / grocery stores. Luckily, we learn by experience...so the mistakes are not repeated. At this stage, it seems that the thing I need most is "besan" (gram flour), "rava" (semolina), and "sabudana". These things could have added more variety to the things one can prepare.

The very first mistake was in the choice of milk. It was not very clear what was milk, since in the milk section, most products included "mjölk" (pronounced, "myolk") in the name of the products. So, there was "Filmjölk", "Mellanmjölk", "Mjölk", etc. I chose "Filmjölk" by just a random guess. It turned out to be something else.

The next challenge was to get curds (also known as "yogurt" in some parts). Purchased something that was labelled an "yogurt", but turned out that it was not suitable for cooking. It wasn't the Indian curd that we are used to. It had a very thin texture, and felt very slimy like mucous.

The very recent mistake included buying 2 packets of something that looked like rawa. Since "vit" was included in the name, it somehow conveyed the feeling that it was something from wheat. Wrong choice. Turned out that "vitlök pulverized" is "garlic power". While I tried preparing "upma" from it, the result was a very salty thing that resembled upma, but tasted of nothing but strong garlic. No wonder it was kept in the spices section.

The best thing to do is probably to ask around, but not many locals would know what "gram flour" is, and while we did take advice from the locals about curds, it turned out to be not what we were used to in India.