January 12, 2006

Italian and Swedish goodies

I mentioned my brother´s Christmas gift to me, bought at Arabusta in my home town Värnamo in south Sweden. Here it is - doesn´t it look nice? Now I have unwrapped it to further explore the contents which is:

  • Lemon olive oil from a small scale producer in Italy. Now he has run out of lemons so we all have to wait until this autumn to get more of this oil...
  • Two herb mixes, one for chicken, "Pollo" and one "Spagghetata". Both very nice-looking, the pollo one is green and the spaghettata seems to contains quite a few chillies
  • A small packet of "Nero di Peppia", that is octopus ink! I am very excited to try this, but also absolutely clueless. How do I use it? In what? Does it taste anything special? Enlighten me, please!
  • A big bag of whole spelt wheat, which I learned some weeks ago is called Farro in Italy. But this is not Italian - the wheat is grown in south-east Sweden by Hargodlarna and comes with a recipe for a salad with wheat, carrots, onions and some more things

I am thrilled to find such a place in Värnamo! The clothes and shoe shopping is already excellent there and now you also can go food shopping! I urge you all to go there with your wallet ready. I sure will next time I am visiting my family!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, this is your brother. I´m glad u liked the gift. Also thanx for those homemade biscotti, they´re delicious, though u have to soak them in coffee to prevent teeth. Mom bought Tuscanian biscotti at Arabusta but they tasted too much of eggs. Hooray for your biscottis! Ciao/Pelle

Clivia said...

Next time I come home we must go there for a sandwich and an espresso! And I will try to make some more biscotti for you. There was a lot of eggs in mine too but I guess with all that fruit and nuts and lemon zest you couldn´t taste it so much.

Ilva said...

You can use the squid ink for a nice risotto for example or if you make your own pasta you can colour it black with the ink!