15th July 2016. En route to Norway. Stopover at Köpmanholmen, Sweden.
Darren had a job that needed to be finished so I carried on blogging (still WAY behind with that) and as it was a sunny day I caught up with all the washing and took more photographs.
We cycled into town in the afternoon for a late lunch at a restaurant which looked very snazzy on its website, so snazzy in fact that Darren phoned to book a table and check that they had something vegetarian on their menu. They told him he didn’t need to book and that they had something called Oumph! for vegetarians. The way she spoke about it it sounded like a traditional Swedish dish.
The restaurant wasn’t quite what we were expecting, it was a smart café. The food was home cooked but it wasn’t at all like the photos on the website. Darren ordered a burger and I had the Oumph! which when it arrived looked remarkably like chicken. I’ve been fed chicken so many times over the years by people who think fish and chicken are part of a vegetarian diet that I thought I’d make absolutely sure that it wasn’t (on one occasion my Aunty Maisie gave me what I thought was mushroom soup and, after I’d eaten it, she said ‘innocently’, “You do eat chicken, don’t you?”, I reckon the answer at that moment was “So it seems!” On another occasion we were having a meal with a group of friends where we all contributed a dish. I said I’d bring a pudding and a vegetarian main dish to save anyone going to any trouble but Mary insisted on making a meat main dish and a vegetarian dish and Sue said she’d make some side dishes that would be fine for us all, Jane chose to make stilton and broccoli soup as a starter. After we’d eaten the soup I complimented her on how tasty it was and I caught the shocked look on Mary and Sue’s faces as Jane cheerfully said, “Yes the secret is in the chicken stock” D’oh! None of us ever let on to Jane that chicken stock isn’t vegetarian friendly).
Anyway, yet again I digress! I asked the waitress whether it was kyckling (ooh, I know two Swedish words) and she assured me it wasn’t. Between us we finally came to the conclusion that it was made from soya. Later when we were in the supermarket I saw a bag of Oumph! in the vegetarian section, apparently it comes in many different sauces or without a sauce like Quorn, definitely not traditional Swedish food.
We sat outside on the veranda and watched the little red ferry come into the jetty, we didn’t realise the pretty red boat moored opposite us in the marina was the local ferry.
We cycled back to the van pretty quickly after we’d eaten because there were some ominous black clouds looming overhead. It’s never a good thing to cycle up hill after you’ve eaten a heavy meal but it’s amazing how determined you can be when there’s a threat of a soaking hanging over you. We made it back to the van just in time, put the bikes away and took in the washing and then it started raining. It’s been great since we’d been in Sweden, it may rain but in the evening the sun comes out again, which it did and we sat outside with a drink and a book until bedtime.
