My recent project was to make Mexican food for dinner for the Swedes. This was considerably harder than I had thought (and I suspected that it would be pretty tough to begin with). I think I went to half the grocery stores in Uppsala trying to find all the stuff. Things like cheddar cheese, refried beans and enchilada sauce were minor miracles to find. No corn tortillas though, whether they were out or I just didn't look hard enough, I can't be sure. I felt rather foolish when I finally found the cheese, though, since in Europe cheddar is white. Which probably means it was in all the stores I couldn't find it in.
I went quite out of my way to ICA Maxi, the giant hub of the near monopolistic grocery chain ICA (note: you don't spell the letters out, it's pronounced "eeka"). I now love that store and I've only been there once. It's like a real supermarket, but instead of just having food they have department store items too. It's like a Target. I felt the euphoria one must have felt when big stores like that first opened: I can actually buy it all in one store! Screw Netto, (a smaller chain that sells foreign foods) they only had stuff you could get anywhere else so there isn't much point in having it as a place for foreigners to get their culture's food. Anyway, after five months without a big store like that it was so wonderful to find nearly anything I wanted. As long as they don't turn into Wal-Mart I'll be fine, but then again, the Swedes seem to have a thing for monopolies so they might not mind.
But I digress, the dinner turned out nicely, though I was a little behind schedule thanks to recipes in Swedish even the Swedes couldn't understand. It was also the first time any of them had seen, heard of or tasted refried beans, I have now corrected this culture gap. I have to say the best part of the evening was watching the Swedes try to eat a taco; once they realized that their vaunted silverware would be ineffective they began to figure out at what angle one eats tacos. But the food was good and everyone liked it, though I thought it was rather odd that a supposed vegetarian ate tacos when I had vegetarian enchiladas. I guess they're a bit more flexible than they are back home.

On an unrelated note: I don't care if it's snowing or not, I would *kill* for an eegee's right now.