New comparisons coming soon!

Sunset this evening

Today I biked over to the big Coop Forum in Stenhagen for some shopping variety and for a nice bike ride. I rode carefully, as there is a thick layer of frost coating the pavement in the shady areas. It almost looks like snow, it's so thick. The past few days have continued to be beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky, with beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Someday I should go somewhere to get a good picture of the sunset, but you can see the pink skies from our balcony. Temperatures have been hovering between 0°C and 5°C for the past week, but combined with the sun it's not too bad. Yesterday evening I biked over to a new evening gympa class in about 0°C. At home, this would seem ludicrous. Here, it seems natural. It's either bike (free and easy), run (which takes a lot longer and I'm on a break now) or take the bus (which costs money). I find that if I bike with tights under my jeans and my windproof jacket, it is plenty warm.

On my excursion, I picked up some new holiday items.

As always, you can click on the picture to enlarge it.

I got two types of pepparkakor and two types of julöl in order to make comparisons. I know nothing about the beers, other than what I can see on the labels. Both are low alcohol, since I bought them in the grocery store. Three Hearts Jul Svagdricka claims it's "Den Klassiska Juldrycken". It was 8.90kr for a 50cl bottle, 2.2%. Uppsala Julöl is 3.5%, 50cl and was 19.90kr. It also looks like I paid 13.50kr for the glass... huh? Did I pay for 15 bottles? Did a Swede try to cheat me? Has the world gone completely mad? At that price, it better be significantly better than its counterpart. And the glass better be edible.

Yes, I had to buy a special sponge for Ross because the cheap ones aren't abrasive enough.

Some of you back in the States will probably recognize one of the pepparkakor brands - Annas cookies are sold back home. Oddly enough, the only store that I know carries them are the Christmas Tree Shops. But I think that Shaws and Stop and Shop do, too. The other brand is Göteborgs, I'm assuming named after the city. Buying the container with only the heart shaped cookies was 23kr, which was 4kr cheaper than the variety pack with people and star shapes. The box of Annas was only 15kr, although it only has 300g of cookies, while Göteborgs is 425g. I think a smaller box is good when it's only Ross and I eating the cookies. Last weekend we did buy a different brand - Swits - but since we ate them all in one day, I don't have any left over to do a side by side comparison. All I can say about those is that they were quite good :)

We ate them all without thought of saving any for comparison later on.

This time, it's only Ross and I eating the cookies because our roommate Boris has gone back to the States for adventures back home. He'll hopefully be returning again this spring (along with many other visitors I hope!), but while he's gone we're going to enjoy lots of fish, olives and mushrooms. :) For example, tonight's dinner is one of my favorites: Hungarian Mushroom Soup. Before, after and during the dinner I will be carefully sampling and evaluating these items and will enlist Ross after he returns from intervals.