Category: Travel

Food Travel Stories - from four unlikely European cities

6/4/2017

On a recent trip to Europe I ate in four unlikely cities:

Longyearbyen, Norway
Budapest, Hungary
Helsinki, Finland
Gothenburg, Sweden

I spent five weeks traveling in total, and aside from a few days in my mom’s kitchen in Finland, I was, for the duration of my travels, without a stove. Being so far away from my knife set and my tri-ply pots and pans, I was forced to look outside the kitchen for good food and good stories. Here are a few of those stories. Enjoy!

Café storefront at Katajanokka, Helsinki, Finland

2 Comments

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault - and a tale about food security

5/1/2017

2 Comments

In April I was fortunate to have been invited on a scientific expedition to the Arctic waters off the coast of the Norwegian island of Svalbard. Having flown 1 ½ hours due North from Tromso, a city at the very northern end of mainland Norway, I emerged from the plane straight onto a frozen tarmac. It was mid-April and it was 15 below. The purpose of the visit was to work alongside researchers and gather valuable field data about Arctic sea ice. My attention was focused on work, but just outside the airport something caught my eye that made me stop and think about something else entirely. On the steep flanks of a windswept mountain, a solitary concrete wedge stood out prominently against the snow: the entrance to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Me loitering outside the concrete door-stop structure that marks the entrance to Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The structure is designed to make you stop and think. And as my Russian driver informed me on the ride from the airport, it's about all a visitor like me was permitted to do. Entry to this facility is prohibited for the general public. Which only served to heighten my interest in this mysterious concrete aberration. And so during my three-week stay in Svalbard I was inspired to learn as much as I could about it. This post tells the story of what I learned about the Svalbard Global Seed Bank.

2 Comments

Author

I'm Erik, the Burnt Chef. I'm a Finnish-born Newfoundlander living in Norway. I have a passion for cooking and a deep fascination for the culinary history of the North. Simplicity guides my cooking. Time, place, and history guide my storytelling. This is my personal blog about food.

burnt chef

Food Travel Stories - from four unlikely European cities

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault - and a tale about food security

Author

Archives

Categories