Food - a fundamental right to pleasure!

I had a wonderful food experience with friends yesterday eating grilled garlic artichoke paste, home made cumin crackers and tender pork cheeks. We enjoyed a wide range of cheeses, champagne, great wine, rum and blueberry chocolate pie for nine hours. It is fantastic what great food and company can do to your spirit and Marlene (the cook!)really made an effort. Do you know how difficult it is to get a pork head nowadays? You have to find a butcher who is willing to sell you one (or in our case nine!) and then you have to take the time to get the meat out of the cheeks, marinate, cook and serve. You need time and a will.

In the old days farmers used everything on a pig and nothing was put to waste. I guess the effort of taking out the meat you find in pork cheeks is not worth the time it actually takes to handle it and so it is put to waste or sold off as animal food. In the current debate around food consumption, transportation of food, the well being of animals and the discussion of good or natural food I see an increasing relationship between food and culture or how we let the enjoyment of food effect our cultural behaviour.

I come from a family with a strong cooking and dinner tradition. As both my parents and my sister always enjoyed spending time in the kitchen and making great food I became good at enjoying it. With 3 people cooking I did not really start cooking myself until I left home. I remember being called a catastrophe in the kitchen by my father once at the age of 16 or 17 (which probably was a true statement at the time). When I finished high school I got a book on healthy eating as an award for best female sport student. The reason for the book choice was the fact that I gained 10 kilos during my year as an exchange student in Canada and the gym teacher made it her mission to get me back in shape. I have always enjoyed good food!

Dinners at my parent’s house were not only about eating nice food but about sharing something enjoyable in the company of others. Eating in front of the TV was never allowed and that rule applies here as well. Food is about so much more than staying alive. I bet a lot of people have associations to a place or a special moment when they eat certain things. Each culture has its own typical food and as we try it and explore new food we take in a small piece of that culture. When someone makes the effort to make a nice dinner or even when enjoying a small snack among friends it’s a way of communicating with each other. You talk, you experience something together and you enjoy!

In many cultures food has a dominant position but in Sweden we never used to brag about our culinary traditions. I think this might be changing. There are many nice dishes in the Swedish and Scandinavian kitchen and as more and more international influences reaches us more people take the time to make really special dinners and to reinvent old recipes. We might not be a the level of France or Italy jet but we are moving towards slow food and away from fast food (or maybe I just like to believe that we are?)

Yesterday’s dinner included a blend of excellent cooking with tastes from Scandinavia, Italy, Portugal, Britain, France and maybe some more countries. How often do you sit down for nine hours in full enjoyment! Marlene, you should be a chef at a fancy restaurant with all your talents and hospitality.

If culture is defined by its people, how important is food to the development of a culture?

An innovative approach to development

I am off to Malmö tomorrow to receive an award from the European Social Funds (ESF) being handed over by the Swedish Minister for Local Government and Financial Markets Mats Odell. It is an award for the best marketing idea of the ESF and the reason that the price is being handed over in Malmö has to do with the informal ministerial meeting on eGovernment which is taking place.

eGovernment is about using new technology to make authorities more efficient and to facilitate contact between agencies, citizens and companies. Being invited to accept an award in this context make it sound as if I have invented something out of the ordinary. As if my idea is really new and will change society forever. Unfortuneately this is not the case. My idea is based on three principals – keeping it simple, at a low budget and to make use of new technologies in a better or more efficiant way. Does an idea or a winning concept have to be new or innovative to be good? Probably not but I do believe that to change the world (even if you do it in very small steps) it has to be innovative.

Currently I am in a period of wanting to develop a new concept, a new way of working where we in Sweden make better use of EUs different cooperation programs not only to get financial support but to be part of more innvative, creative environment. I bore Jochem to death with all my theories and ideas but think that I am on to something. This weekend I read the The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson which I can recommend to anyone in search of new creative ideas. The books message is that we have the greatest chance of innovating at the intersection of different disciplines or cultures. If we want to be part of innovative processes (in a project framework) in order to learn and develop we need to put together a team, which reaches the so-called intersection. The intersection is a place where ideas from different field and cultures meet, leading to an explosion of ideas and possibilities. I would like to achieve this in this region and using EU subsidies as a tool. I have a vision of a team with a variety of skills, people of different backgrounds and interests who brought together can work on long-term development issues in a bridge building perspective. However, this is a lot easier said than done and I am still not sure how this would exactly look like and function. It is a fun challenge and it’s filling my head.

Why is this interesting or valuable? Well, Sweden in general is not very good at coming up with new concepts for EU collaboration, we do not send in as many proposals as we could and we do not lead very many international projects. In other words - there is room for improvement. EU funding is not about receiving external financing but about finding new solutions and improving the world we live in. It might sound exaggerated but I like to think that by collaborating in different fields, with different cultures and with different kind of people we can do more than if we try to solve the problems ourselves.

And now I am off to bed after spending a romantic weekend with Jochem in Gothenburg. Tomorrow it is precisely 13 years since we first met at a volleyball tournament in Lund. None of us were top talents when it comes to volleyball and I don’t remember who won the tournament, but I know that we were the real winners in the end!

Ulrika

A sleepover / Halloween party to remember!

We celebrated Elsa’s 9th birthday yesterday with a sleepover/ Halloween party keeping 7 kids busy for 20 hours. As I have spent the last 12 days in 4 countries Jochem helped out with the preparations and Ingrid and Elsa spent two days baking, cooking and preparing all the activities. They even made a timetable for each activity and decorated the house in a real Halloween sphere. Jochem bought the biggest pumpkin they had a the supermarket and together we cut out a scary face and made an inviting entrance for the witches, ghosts, knights, monsters and other scary visitors. I was a really nice party where we had ghost cake, made scary pizzas, did trick or treat, created our own key rings, grilled marshmallows and watched a not so scary movie. At eleven the house was quiet and Jochem and I felt so creative that we then started making a memory/ reading game for Nils (no idea where the creativity came from :)?)

Every time we start planning a birthday party for one of the kids I think that we have done it all but somehow new ideas always pup up. By now we have had treasure hunts, cooking with a real chef, adventures in the forests, crafts parties, masquerade, working with mosaic (my personal favorite), horseback riding etc. Luckily there is Internet and a world full of parents happy to give advice on how to make the ultimate party at different budget scales, at any location and with all types of games for young and old, for individuals or in a group. However, this time Elsa knew very well what she wanted and my sister Hanna helped with lots of Halloween crafts tips and creative Halloween food. All Jochem and I had to do was to facilitate! (which is fun but also quite demanding!)

Today Jochem is off to Italy again and I am looking forward to a month of normal working hours and more time with the kids. Jochem has his birthday on Wednesday but is not home until Friday but then a champagne party is on the agenda. After spending so much time at work the past month (handing in two EU proposals, visiting Scotland looking at how they work with youth in exclusion, visiting the NL, spending 4 days in Brussels with a leadership group from Ulricehamn etc.) I enjoy getting busy at home, filling the house with candles, baking cakes with the kids and making a smart system for all my magazines and books (an ever reoccurring challenge). Winter is around the corner and it is getting colder by the day! Snow is on the wish list!

Wishing you all a wonderful Sunday!