Swedish Thursday ritual
A nice thing we have in Sweden is dagens lunch (today’s lunch).
It’s basically a good weekday deal most restaurants offer. You pick from a couple of dishes, usually meat, fish or vegetarian, and you get a beverage, salad buffet, bread, coffee and sometimes even dessert.
I’m at such a place right now. They have ten dishes to choose from, a handful of drinks, bread and about twenty salad options. The price is 130 Swedish kronor, roughly 13 dollars.
Usually there’s apple pie with vanilla sauce for dessert, but not today. Why? Because it’s Thursday, and Thursdays belong to pea soup and pancakes.
That’s right. It’s an old Swedish tradition. Normally I would say “don’t ask me why”, but today I actually looked it up.
Turns out it began as a practical habit before Friday fasting. People wanted a hearty meal to keep them going, and pea soup was cheap, filling and easy to cook in large batches. When the soup ran out, pancakes were made from the leftover milk, adding a small sense of celebration before the fast.
Even though the fasting tradition faded, the habit stayed. I’d write more about it, but I have a tasty Thursday ritual to look after…