I'm Loving: All things Swedish ( alternative title the best $4 I ever spent)

When John and I are having a we are moving to Canada week ( as is typically the case approximately every other week in our house) I like to distract myself from the reality of this possible situation by dreaming about furniture. In my fantasy cross continental shift we abandon all our possessions and I re-kit out life at Ikea. I am no design snob, Ikea would do it for me all the way.

Ikea trip number one on our first trip back to Canada in 2008, Ben was just about to turn 4!

One of my most anticipated shopping expeditions pre any Canada trip is  always the one to Ikea, preparation involves familiarizing myself with the contents of the catalogue, online perusing and filing it under remember this when you are there every time I read some clever re-purpose of a $2 Ikea spice rack on one blog or another.


On our trip this time I had a wonderful day at the Swedish mega store, Millie and I were dropped off with a few hours of furniture fawning in our future. It is a slightly sadistic kind of shopping trip though, as you walk your way past the sofas, the shelving units, the kitchens! and try not to acknowledge them, after all there is no room for any of those in a suitcase.

The rest of the shopping trip is an exercise in careful calculation, as you pick up a desired item, try to ascertain it's weight and how it will fit into the packing schema, generally there is a lot of picking up, putting down and sometimes picking up again. There is ALWAYS at least one thing you will spend the next six months thinking if only I had bought that pillow, packet of serviettes, plastic spoon, but you didn't.


I am very pleased with my purchases this trip, some new pillow cases to re-cover my pillows that Nana Canada lovingly stuffed in her suitcase on a trip out here in 2006 and have sat atop my couch ever since. A cheap and cheerful eiderdown, that usually lies on the end of my bed injecting the room with some color but also doubles as the perfect snuggly when the sofa gets transformed into a communal sick bed. There is a magnetic knife rack that is still waiting to be hung and I had better not forget my Ikea zip lock bags, that make me smile and think of Canada every time I pack one of the children's food into them.

That blanket and cushions  came in very handy last week when we had a little girl with slapped cheek virus.

But, the piece de resistance just simply has to be my four dollar apple slicer. Recently I made John sit through Mega Factories Ikea on the Discovery channel ( he loved it) and it was fascinating to see how much technology and testing goes into each product. I can believe it,  my apple corer/slicer is an ode to design, so simple yet so efficient. It makes short work of a bag of cooking apples turning them into lunch box fodder in record time.

These muffins were my attempt to replicate those apple muffins you can buy in a six pack at 

Countdown, you know the ones you buy when you are on the way to some thing or another and you realize you forgot to make any morning tea. Those delicious ones that your kids always love so much but leave you with a sense of unease when you eat them because you know they are mainly comprised of crap.

2 cups of self raising flour

1 cup of flour

100 grams of melted butter

1 cup of milk

1 large egg ( or 2 small ones)

1 tsp of vanilla bean paste

Mix the dry ingredients and wet ingredients in a seperate bow, make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the wet, mix gently just to combine being careful not to over mix.

In a lined muffin tray add enough mixture to fill the bottom of the muffin cup, the layer a generous tablespoon of stewed apple ( the pot you prepared earlier) the another generous tablespoon of muffin mixture to cover the stewed fruit. On the top of the muffin sprinkle some crumble mixture. ( I usually have a bag of frozen crumble mixture in my freezer, I like to make up a large batch using the recipe from the Free Range Cook, but any random mixture of oats, sugar, flour and butter will do)

Bake @ 180 celsius for 15-20 minutes.

Even if I do say so myself they were much better than the Countdown ones and less guilt involved too, win win! 

A two year old Jack discovers the delights of the Ikea dining room

And no shop at Ikea is complete without lunch in the cafeteria and some swedish meatballs. There is a wonderful cooking blog I follow, The Life She Made and she recently published a recipe on Essential Kids for Swedish meatballs, a la Ikea. I have made them twice now and they are the real deal and delicious, the first time I made them I followed the recipe exactly as they were a new food to our family and I wanted to ensure their deliciousness for my finicky eater, but the second time I cooked them I could not live with the idea of ladening my families arteries with that much saturated fat, so switched out the butter for rice bran spread and the cream for 97% fat free evaporated milk and no one knew the difference. I am sure they are going to be a permanent fixture on our menu plan, and every time we eat them I will transported right back to my Swedish happy place.