Crazy in Candyland

Boy the Swedes take their candy seriously. Did you know Swedes eat the most loose candy in the world? Pretty sure I've posted about the Swedish Candy Obsession in one of my earlier posts but it bears repeating. If there's one thing that's relatively cheap here in this country, it's candy.

Every grocery store has a wall of candy bins. The idea is to take a bag and fill up on loose candy from said bins, everything from Swedish fish to chocolate, gummies and more. The stuff's delicious I gotta say. The germs, with so many hands reaching in and out, are overlooked. Especially on Saturdays. Known as "Lördagsgodis" (Candy Saturdays), it's the day of the week set aside for kids (and their parents) to indulge guilt-free.

Candy is typically priced at around 79 SEK / kg (Thanks to Thomas for the correction in measurement). I've seen it on sale for 49. Well, today, they were celebrating something at our local supermarket. On a neighbour's referral, we took a trip for some shopping, pony rides and face painting (though Little Man decided at the last minute the make-up wasn't for him). Cheap Saturday entertainment. Little did I know that as part of the celebration, candy was on sale for a record 29.20 SEK/ kg. This is big folks.

People were swarming the candy bins, multiple bags in hand. Shuffling quickly back and forth between the scale to ensure they weren't over the 5kg limit per household. Staff were trying to keep supply in line with demand. It was insanity. Ok, insanity as far as a candy sale is concerned. Certainly not on the riotous scale of the recent sale at Target for some brand name that I think begins with the letter "M". But it was chaos as far as orderly Sweden is concerned.

Karamell Kungen (Candy King) is the name of arguably the best loose candy company here in Sweden. Actually, looks like this phenomena isn't a Sweden-only thing. I see the company also operates in Ireland, the UK and other Scandinavian countries.

Well time to pick some more plastiky goodness out of my teeth.

Glad Godis Lordag!

Goody it's Saturday

Food for thought. Why is it that one of the first questions people ask me about the new countries I frequent or reside is, "What's the food like?"

Montenegro was all meat, fish and potatoes. Rich and delicious and all natural. But every restaurant serves the same damn thing and it got so boring after a while. And they really have no concept of sauces over there. Meat is served as is.

Then we came to Sweden where it's also a lot of meat, fish and potatoes. But here it's all about the sauces. Everything's smothered in something it seems. And hey, I'm not complaining. Sure the food is highly processed, sprayed with God knows what and chemically enhanced but the sauce hides all that ickiness.

And then there's the candy. Every grocery store, corner store and even store, stores have rows and rows of candy. Sweet, sour, salty, chocolaty, hard, soft, sticky, crunchy C-A-N-D-Y. It's no wonder the Swedish word for candy is "Goodis". Swedes love their candy and you'd think they'd all be porkers for it. I guess all that bike-riding keeps the natives slim. Plus, there's a phenomena I've just discovered: Candy is bought and eaten ravenously on Saturdays.

On Saturday you see the kids of all ages lining up to fill their empty Goodis bags with candy from each of the rows of candy-filled buckets. They march to the check-out loaded down and pay whatever it is they charge per kilo. They rush home to fill their special candy bowls, also marked "Goodis" and pig out until it's all gone. Then the wait is on again...7 more sleeps till more Goodies.