Sweden 1 - Blood Pudding???

Who knew???

Blood Pudding is a staple of Sweden.

I never put ABBA, Ikea, Volvo and Blood Pudding in the same picture before. Now, after only 12 hours in Sweden, and a trip to the local supermarket with my Swedish mate TMW (Tuna Man's Wife, wife of course, of Tuna Man - a couple I met back in March on Easter Island), I know better.

As was explained to me by TMW, Blood Pudding is a great cheap meal - full of blood, so nice and healthy, and is an old old traditional meal here. I bought almost 1kg of Blood Pudding for 5SOK (Swedish Krona) which is about 90cents in our money!!! Now, that's a BARGAIN!

We took it home (along with a basket full of other Swedish goodies, which no doubt will appear later on this blog) for my first Swedish lunch, and what better than the oh-so-traditional Blood Pudding with Cabbage and Lingonberry Jam! Wowsers!!

TMW did her Swedish magic - sliced the black pudding into thin slices, fried them up in butter - they need to be well cooked, all the way through, I sliced up the cabbage and wacked it in a bowl, then we had our already prepared Lingonberry Jam on hand.

And up above, you can see it all happening, just as it did only an hour ago right here in TMW's kitchen in Marsta, just 30 mins out of Stockholm. OH YEAH BABY!!!!

And how did it taste???? Well I'm a big fan of blood pudding/blood sausage, always have been, my Mum used to fry it up when I was a kid. And this stuff was pretty damn YUM - I wasn't so sure about the whole raw cabbage and lingonbery jam thing - but it sorta worked, the crunchy freshness of the cabbage with the sweetness of the jam mixed with the silkiness of the blood pudding (which sorta reminded me of the texture of foie gras)...it was GREATTTTTTTTTTTTTT.

Sigh...I love hanging with the locals, especially foodie locals!

PS. The last picture there wasn't dessert...oh no no no...that was what greeted me when I arrived here at the Tuna Palace last night - TMW had been baking sweet buns and cinnamon rolls. Yep, tough gig!

PPS. We're off now to a famous Swedish chocolate shop. Double tough gig!

PPPS(written 4 hours later). We just got back from aforementioned Swedish chocolate shop in the cutest town of Sigtuna where the last pic there, the Chocolate Eclair was devoured with Swedish gusto! Quadruple tough gig!!