sticking to my promise

Tomorrow’s bento is a bit more interesting than the last few lunches that I’ve had. We had Japanese curry chicken with congo blue potatoes, carrots, peas, corn and sweet bell peppers on Tuesday night. So I took the leftover and mixed it with some spaghetti since there wasn’t enough rice for both of us. The rice was used in the Spam-wannabe musubi. I was originally not going to take anything in the top tier but then I remembered that we have waffles. It came out of the freezer so I’m letting it thaw naturally by itself. The remaining space will be filled with sliced bananas which I will put in tomorrow morning.

mmm mystery meat

I’ve never actually had Spam. But I did grow up eating luncheon meat. In Hong Kong, luncheon meat is like a breakfast meat. My dad used to make luncheon meat and eggs on Sunday mornings or put a slice of pan fried luncheon meat in our instant noodle.

You can imagine my excitement when I found luncheon meat at the Middle Eastern supermarket in Jakobsberg. Unfortunately it was not the usual pork luncheon meat we used to get from the Chinese supermarkets. They only offered beef or chicken luncheon meat. Pretty understandable since most of their customers are Muslims.

On Saturday morning, Fredrik and I had a breakfast of luncheon meat, double sunny side up eggs and a slice of toast. I think I prefer the pork version more but this is better than nothing.

Tonight I made Spam-wannabe musubi with the remainder of the luncheon meat. I encountered the Spam musubi when I was in Oahu but I never ended up trying it. Apparently it’s quite popular there. My dad had one. He didn’t offer any comments on it. I marinaded the remainder luncheon meat in teriyaki sauce and pan fried it. I bought a Spam musubi rice mold while I was in Oahu and tonight I used it for the first time. It’s pretty handy, just put some rice in and squish it till it’s the right shape.

I didn’t sample my experiment because it’s actually part of our lunches tomorrow. I’ll comment on it tomorrow.

worries and disappointments

I called my mom last night and she asked me how my Swedish was coming along.

That’s one question I hear a lot from people who know I’m trying to learn Swedish.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I am getting better at Swedish or not. There are many moments when I feel like I will never learn the language no matter how hard I work. Fredrik reassures me that I’m progressing quite a bit but then again I doubt he would me that I suck and that I’m a big idiot.

I really don’t know what I will do if I don’t learn this language. I cannot imagine living here without being fluent in the language. I don’t want to be one those people who has lived here for 10+ years but know next to nothing in the language. Maybe it’s this fear of failure that makes me feel bad about my progress.

It really doesn’t help that the program that I had such high expectations for is turning into quite a disappointment. Class is slow and really disorganized. Not to mention the fact that it could really use more class time. I’m looking into taking a summer intensive course at Folkuniversitet. Hopefully there will be enough people interested so that there will be a class. I know that if I slack off during the summer months, I will definitely forget much of what I’ve learned.