IKEA Food Addict Day 6: I Did Not Plan For Enough Herring

Much of my experience in this week-long IKEA eating challenge has been one of abundance. However, as the week draws to a close, I find myself unexpectedly short of one crucial ingredient: herring.

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Today’s menu sees me skipping the meatballs (I planned so that I would have those on alternating days), but every other element of the menu is now familiar. Breakfast, as ever, is a cinnamon scroll and a cheese pie, accompanied by coffee. Dinner (fairly late because of a farewell event for a colleague) was the other half of the pizza which I started on back on Day 2. As you can see from the photo above, there was a generous and potentially waist-expanding quantity of that on offer.

Lunch was also a repeat from Day 2: four crispbreads, two with herring and dill, two with lingonberry jam and cheese. However, while I still have plenty of jam and cheese, it turned out that one jar of herring isn’t really enough to cover four crispbreads. The quantity available was definitely on the mean side. (Apologies there isn’t a picture — I was very hungry by the time I hit lunch and didn’t remember to snap one until my gullet was already stuffed).

That’s hardly the end of the world; after all, there were plenty of spare crispbreads if I’d felt really peckish. What it reinforces is that working with new and unfamiliar ingredients always makes meal planning a little unpredictable. From that perspective, repetition is not a bad thing.

Bonus geek note: I actually wrote this post at IKEA Tempe, where I’m having breakfast for the final day. On Monday I’ll wrap up and offer some useful lessons for everyone from the experience (this is Lifehacker, after all).