Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

A handful of Anya potatoes.
Photo for CMC by: Jan-Erik Nilsson © 2009.

We were first introduced to these distinctly thumb-shaped potatoes at a recent food fair in Gothenburg, Passion för mat, where author and potato expert Dan Berntsson was on location to give en empassioned talk about these Anya potatoes, which he calls “GI-potatoes”. These potatoes grow finer than the normal household variety and the firmness of their flesh helps with the GI-Index in our bodies after a meal.

A project of the Scottish Research Institute and Lord Sainsbury’s gardener, Anya potatoes were originally grown in Scotland in 1995 as a cross between the Pink Fur Apple and Desiree potatoes. It gets its characteristic knobbly features from one of its parent, the Pink Fur Apple.

While one could buy 10 kg boxes of Anya potatoes readily availble at the grocers in the UK, this variety of potatoes has only recently been introduced into the Swedish market by Dan Berntsson, and is currently only sold to restaurants. We were lucky enough to get our hands on a 1 kg pack of these potatoes only because we were at the food fair in Gothenburg, that opened up a wonderful gamut of delicatesse food items for us to explore and bring home. Continue reading “Anya potatoes, a potato lover’s nubbly delight!” →

Oatmeal, havregröt or havregrynsgröt, with almonds, walnuts, flax seeds and milk.
Photo for CMC by: Cheryl Marie Cordeiro © 2009.

As a child, I was never a fan of oatmeal because I was fed oatmeal served with sweetened condensed milk only when I was ill. Tasteless and watery, the consistency of the oatmeal served meant that it could be swallowed and digested more easily. Back then, because of my lacklustre association to oatmeal, I remember staring at a friend in horror when he told that his father ate plain cooked oatmeal everyday for breakfast, without added sugar. I asked him in all earnestness, “Why does your father do that?”

After more than fifteen years of not touching oatmeal and after a shift in continents, I began rediscovering this simple grain that in no matter what form you have it, takes less than ten minutes to cook.

A popular breakfast in Sweden, oatmeal in its most basic form is often cooked with a pinch of salt and served with apple sauce, milk and a dash of cinnamon powder on top. From this, I began experimenting with fruit, slicing bananas into the mixture or adding dried raisins to the mixture, taking away the apple sauce but keeping the dash of cinnamon. I’ve also tried frozen fruit such as frozen strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and mangoes. Fruit in general seems to go splendidly with oatmeal!

Beyond fruits, I began eating oatmeal with all kinds of nuts – hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts and brazil nuts. Or seeds such as flax seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds. These also seem to complement oatmeal to a large extent and I began to enjoy having oatmeal at breakfast.

Today, with a repertoire of oatmeal recipes at hand, I find oatmeal to be one of the most cost efficient, healthy and interesting meals one could whip together in no time. Everyone from atheletes to those with high blood pressure and diabetes would benefit from eating at least one serving of oatmeal a day.

As for my association of oatmeal and illlnesses, it’s pretty much gone now. In fact, I’m just as happy settling for oatmeal with sweetened condensed milk as I am with oatmeal with fruits and nuts. The latter, preferably without added sugar.