Ok, cereal isn’t really one of my top ten favorite things, but I decided to write about it because I overheard a conversation about cereal in the library a few weeks ago. A couple of undergrads (I don’t really know if they were undergrads but this is what grad students do) were sharing thoughts on different types of cereals. I realized that cereal is actually a really fascinating topic because most of us have tried many of the thirty or forty cereals that line the breakfast aisle at the grocery store.

Take Rice Krispies for instance—good in theory, but not in real life.  They get soggy way too fast and don’t fill you up. They’re so bland that we have to mix them with melted butter and marshmallows. If it weren’t for Rice Krispie Treats, I don’t think the cereal would still be with us.

Or Kix. Remember Kix? I was always under the impression that Kix was the only decent tasting cereal that was healthy. Maybe that’s just because Kix was the only mainstream cereal that my mom would buy.

My sister’s favorite cereal was Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which I think is pretty good , but I was always a little freaked out by how the cinnamon would make the milk turn light brown. These details matter when your mother yells at you for dumping the extra milk into the sink.

My brother and I went crazy for Reeses Puffs in our late childhood. My dad would buy a box and we would each have three bowls at a time, be late for school that morning, and the box would be empty in less than a day. My guess is that we were crazy for the stuff because we were actually yearning for Reeses peanut butter cups.

I only had Lucky Charms a couple of times at home growing up. My boyfriend grew up in a house where the sky was the limit in terms of sugary cereals. So he’s had it all. He couldn’t believe I didn’t eat Lucky Charms while growing up, so he encouraged me to try it. I did, and I have been buying it since. Yesterday I bought Marshmallow Oaties from Whole Foods. Haven’t tried them yet.

I was never into Captain Crunch so I don’t know what’s going on there. I know people were into it like a religion. The boxes always looked hokey to me.

When it comes to Frosted Flakes and Life I think we all know what’s going on there. You eat it, you get strong. And there was never much debate about which was better: Frosted Flakes or Corn Flakes

What do you know about cereal?

Especially Cheetos. Leave me alone with any size bag of Cheetos and I will eat the whole thing, even to the point of feeling sick.

My parents kept very little junk food in our house growing up. In hindsight this sounds like a good idea, but as a kid I was always resentful of the fact.

I have awful memories of reaching into my brown lunch bag and pulling out a plastic bag full of red pepper slices.

As soon as the spicy scent reached the noses of the ten other elementary school kids sitting around me, everyone would grab hold of their noses and yell, “Ew, what’s that smell?” I would quietly slip the bag of peppers back into my lunch bag, pretending I didn’t know what was happening. Sometimes I would try to eat the pepper slices from inside the paper bag, but the comments returned when the spicy smell escaped from the space in between the paper bag and my mouth.

I didn’t think it was weird to eat bell peppers for lunch. If I were at home I would eat them and nobody would complain. But it wasn’t just the bell peppers. It was the cheese sandwiches too. Sometimes my mom would send a cheese sandwich in my lunch—nothing but cheese, butter, and two slices of bread. This was never odd to me because my parents always did and still do buy nice cheese and nice bread. Any adult knows that that you don’t need much more than good cheese and good bread.

But during lunch at school I would try to eat the cheese sandwich as quietly and as quickly as possible. I knew from past experiences that I couldn’t eat this kind of sandwich without receiving some commentary. Without fail, if the sandwich became visible someone would turn to me and the following exchange would ensue:

“What’s that?”

“A cheese sandwich.”

“Just cheese?”

“Yeah.”

“Ew.”

These comments were annoying. Nobody likes to be told that what they are eating is disgusting.

But the activity of trading lunch items made me even more self-conscious about my family’s eating habits. At least once during every 15-minute lunch period, at least one kid would pick up an item from their lunch and swing it in the air, yelling, “Who wants to trade?”

I was always amazed at the things that people would offer up for trading—Gushers, chips, candy bars. If I had any of these things in my lunch, I wouldn’t even think about trading it. I would just eat it.

But of course these kids wouldn’t trade their Gushers for just anything. It had to be in exchange for something of equal or greater value, so of course I never had anything to offer. Once in a while, though, the kid who must have been sick of junk food would throw their bag of Gushers up into the air and yell, “Up for grabs!” Most of the time my reflexes were too slow to grab the free Gushers, but these incidents left me with at least a little hope of tasting some real junk food someday.

So now, as an adult, if you give me a large bag of Cheetos, I will eat the whole thing. My whole family is this way. The last time I was home my brother and I decided to run to the store to get some beers to accompany our night of card games. Along with the beers, I brought home a large bag of Cheetos. Halfway through our game session, my parents came home, sat down, started to drink beer and finished off the whole bag of Cheetos.

At our last Thanksgiving, my mom decided to serve chips as an hors d’oeuvre because she had been accused of not having enough hors d’oeuvres the previous year. So she set out a couple bowls of chips, and not surprisingly, my brother, dad, mom, and I stood around the chips, grabbing a greasy handful every once in a while. My aunt noticed, and  called us “chip-deprived.”

Yes, I will eat a whole bag of chips, but this doesn’t mean I go to the store and buy a bunch of junk food. I hardly ever buy any. I eat a lot of vegetables, fruit, and dairy, and I subscribe to Cooking Light magazine. I wholeheartedly believe in eating healthy. But when it comes to making bag lunches for my kids, I’m not sure what I will do.

The fanciest coffee drink I order is a vanilla latte. Since starting at OSU, though, I’ve also tried the frozen vanilla latte. It’s pretty delicious.

At the two campus coffee shops I frequent, hardly anyone orders plain coffee. I’m not opposed to the latte, mocha, cappuccino, or other varieties, but I’ve been surprised by how many people order the more dessert-like drinks.

At all hours of the day, early morning to late evening, people order large chocolate-y fruity frozen coffee drinks with whipped cream, sprinkles, and all kinds of syrup on top. They use two hands to cart the drink over to the napkins and spoons to stick  a large plastic straw through the McDonalds-esque clear cover and bring the drink on their way to class or study session.

I honestly think these meal-like drinks have to change the experience of drinking coffee. Something happens when two people sit down with two cups of steamy coffee. It’s almost as though they have to start talking to each other. Maybe it’s because people feel like they have to talk to fill the silences between sips. Maybe it’s just relaxing to drink something so slowly and with such attention. It makes for the best conversation.

Yes. Really. Come on. It’s not that bad. Put some clothes on.

The Swedes have a saying that goes, “There is no poor weather, only poorly dressed people.” And i stand by this. Maybe it’s also because I love sweaters. And scarves.

Living in Ohio has made me love winter even more. I miss the crisp Wisconsin and Swedish winter.

I appreciate the changes that winter forces me to make in my lifestyle. I am always thankful when it’s totally okay for me to close myself in my apartment and do nothing but drink coffee and stare out the window. I think it’s healthy to have to fight to get where you’re going every once in a while. It makes things more worthwhile. I think my dad put it well today when he said, “I mean California is nice but it’s so crowded, unless you like that sun beating down on your head all the time. I would just wonder, ‘When will it go away?’”

My parents are visitng me this weekend.

All that’s missing is my brother

And my sister

These look like some pretty successful seedlings for a first-time grower, huh? I think so. They’re pea plants. The problem is that I have five pea plants that look awesome like this one. But then I have other seedlings that look only mediocre like this tomato plant.

And then I have ones that look like this sad eggplant sprout. 

I wish I could show you all of them. They all look so different. During the first week, it seemed like magic was happening. Almost everything grew at a really fast pace. Now it seems like things are either not growing at all but still feeling good, losing steam but still standing, or disappearing altogether.

Looks like I’m going to have a lot of peas this summer. Peas anyone?

Berries are really important in Swedish culture, especially the ones that are unique to the country (like the lingon berries and cloud berries shown above).

I never thought there was anything weird about the importance of berries in Sweden. In fact I was fascinated by the activity of berry picking. My grandmother would lead me and my mom to a specific spot deep in the middle of a forest that she had remembered by the arrangement of trees. We would spend hours squatting low to the ground grabbing handfuls of blueberries from low bushes, trying not to crush them in our fingers before we got them into the bucket.

My grandmother would throw the berries into a pot as soon as we got home and divide the sugary melted berries into dozens of old jars. Blueberry jam was good, but it wasn’t as valuable as the most prized Swedish berry: the cloud berry, otherwise known as “hjortron” (hyoo-tron).

Using a baby food spoon, my grandmother would drop tiny spoonfuls of hjortron into a dessert dish, placing it in the middle of table for us to share as topping to our vanilla ice cream. She got her yearly supply of hjortron from my uncle, who lives far north enough in Sweden that the supply of hjortron is not an issue. We would finish the hjortron before finishing all our vanilla ice cream, scraping the remaining berry juice from the bowl.

I bought these two jars of Swedish berries from Ikea almost six months ago and haven’t opened them yet. I tell myself that they are for a special occasion. It’s true that I don’t get to Ikea very often and they are pretty pricey ($5 each), but there’s something about fixing up a bowl of vanilla ice cream with a warm helping of hjortron that just doesn’t feel the same in the U.S. I tried serving the dessert to some friends once and they complained about the crunchiness of the berries (same thing happened when my mom served Swedish pancakes instead of American pancakes at one of my childhood sleepovers—I was devastated).

I really realized the importance of berries in Swedish culture when I opened the cover of the second-level Swedish language textbook that I used in college. Inside the cover of the first book in the series were maps of the country. Pretty typical. Inside the second book, though, were pictures of all the berries and their Swedish names, neatly categorized by color, size, and similarity. We didn’t take much time to talk about the berries in class, but I thought it was the most important lesson in the book. If you want to learn anything about Sweden, you have to learn the berries. Start now. Lingon. Hjortron.

…also known as the “cheese plane.” The cheese slicer is an object I once thought no one lived without.

I grew up eating a lot of cheese, and so naturally, I used a cheese slicer. My family would eat Scandinavian-style open faced sandwiches with two or three thin slices of cheese underneath cucumber or bell pepper slices.

While cooking with a friend in her parents’ kitchen in high school, I was given the task of slicing the cheese. Naturally I started rummaging through their drawer of small kitchen tools. When I wasn’t finding the shiny slicer i was looking for, I turned to my friend’s father and asked, “Where’s your cheese slicer?”

“Cheese slicer?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Like something to slice the cheese with.”

He started laughing and my friend told me they didn’t have one.

“Why not?” I asked.

He started laughing even harder. I didn’t understand. i thought everyone had a cheese slicer.

“How do you cut cheese?” I asked.

My friend pulled a knife out from the drawer and held it up for me to see.

“With a knife,” she said.

She took the knife to the cheese and started to cut slices of cheese that to me looked entirely too thick and helplessly short.

Her father was still laughing, but I didn’t get the joke. Later that night her parents explained to me that a cheese plane is not a typical kitchen tool. They hinted that the question, “Where is your cheese slicer?” even suggests a bit of snobbery.

I went home that night feeling bad for doing something that was perceived as pretentious that I didn’t even mean to do. When I got home, I told my parents about the incident, hoping they would give me some insight into why it was such an uncomfortable experience.

“Well what do they use to slice cheese?” they said.

“A knife,” I said.

They laughed.

Strawberries aren’t my favorite fruit, but I had to start my Favorite Things series with this picture because of the stories behind it. I like fruit, but my relationship to it goes far beyond a simple liking.

I grew up with a mother who sees nothing wrong with answering my dad’s question, “Do we have anything for dessert?” by saying, “We have fruit!’ and grabbing a shiny orange from the fruit bowl to reveal its glory in better lighting.

She would sit at the dinner table, swinging her crossed leg as she peeled the orange in no more than two swooping tears. My brother and dad would quickly return to their engaging discussion of something political, forgetting the entire prospect of dessert.

I would watch my mom as she pushed each thick orange slice (sometimes more than one at a time) into her mouth, smiling after each slice.

After finishing half the orange, she would offer me the other half. Most of the time I wouldn’t take it, so she would continue her routine of devouring a slice then smiling until the orange was gone, preparing her for the post-dinner clean up.

In the last few years I started taking the half-orange when my mom offered it to me. I was never a huge fan of oranges, but I began to share my mom’s love of a refreshing citrus dessert. She would explain to me, “It’s nice because it doesn’t fill you up but it’s sweet.”

For most of my childhood, though, I thought it was pretty embarrassing that my mom liked to  have fruit for dessert.

Everything changed, though, when my brother, dad, and I were making small talk with a girl my age who lived on our block and we happened to ask her what they were having for dessert. She replied, “Green peppers.”