Ahh, sustenance

As my time in Sweden draws to a close, I think it's fitting to summarize a few things. My US compatriots, which is all of you reading this blog, often ask about the food over here. Well, in many ways, Swedish cuisine is the same as American. For students, the only affordable staple is pasta and anything you can mix with it. I'm a pretty parsimonious person at my core, so I have been eating a lot of pasta to save a few crowns here and there. But I've also ventured into the more traditional Swedish food. And when you go out to lunch at work you can't really avoid it. This includes all the stereotypes:  meatballs, moose stew, pickled herring. But to get a taste of what the everyday Swede eats, you have to go to a Pizza/Kebab/Saladbar Restaurant. These are everywhere, and they are the closest thing to American fast food that you can find in Sweden. It's equal parts Pizza Hut, late night Falafel/Gyro stand you would find on any European street corner, and McDonald's. This basically means that they serve all of those varieties of food (pizza, kebab, burger) at one location. It would be pretty preposterous for any American restaurant to do this, but somehow it works here.
I've previously shown this picture of kebab pizza, yum:

Eat with knife and fork.

Gyro med brod (Gyro with bread). Simple, delicious:

Pile of meat obscured by lettuce. This is probably the best bang for your buck at any restaurant.

Ahh, that's better. Excellent drunk food in Stockholm.

I've been particularly impressed with the Swedish interpretation of salad. Here, if you have any concoction of more than two cold ingredients mixed into a bowl it can be considered a salad. In that sense, leftover nachos = salad.
Take this for example, a pastry covered with a lingonberry-based relish, Swedish meatballs, and pickles. This is served cold and deemed salad - nice.

Perfect workday lunch.

And then there's the Swedish sweets that are served with coffee, like the aptly named Chokladboll:

Gotta love that large grain sugar too.

Finally, these 4 pics should tell their own story:

Huh?

'Brandy pickled herring'

No! Wait, you don't have to do this!

Ooof. 

Those pictures were taken over 6 weeks ago. I haven't really touched that herring since then.

To sum, Swedish food is eclectic and generally pretty good. Sometimes you long for a taste of home though:

Yes, this is a Corona, scrambled eggs, and sliced apple with peanut butter. Some people never grow up.

Okay, maybe that's not really a taste of home.

Skål!