Join Helena Elm and her family on an excursion to the ramson forest and Stora Rör.
Spring has come with notice to Öland and we have already enjoyed temperatures of over 20 degrees! Just such a sunny spring day the other week we took the opportunity to go on an excursion to Stora Rör to have coffee and pick wild garlic in the surrounding area.
At the bottom of the water in Stora Rör in a red stall is Mormors Stenugnsbageri and coffee house , which is open all year round. Here you can buy sourdough bread and drink really nice cappuccino, but what the place is best known for is undoubtedly its cardamom and cinnamon buns.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that these cardamom buns are the tastiest I've eaten in my entire life. Warm and freshly baked, and with that buttery crunch that floats out a little under the buns and hardens... Sometimes I eat two buns by myself.
Here we watch as Anita, who runs the café, brushes the buns. The café is called Mormors as a tribute to Anita's grandmother, because it was with her grandmother in Stora Rör that Anita spent her childhood summers. Before the Öland Bridge was built in 1972, it was between Stora Rör and Revsudden that the ferry traffic went, and Anita worked in the kiosk in Stora Rör during the summer when she was a teenager.
Although there was plenty of space between the tables on the outdoor terrace, we wanted to sit down by the jetty to look at the water and hear the waves lapping against the boat that was moored at the jetty.
Freshly baked buns and coffee in the glorious spring sun on a jetty on Öland, what more could you want?
Full after coffee we then went on to Rönnerum to pick ramsons.
If you have never picked wild garlic before, you may wonder how you really know that it is wild garlic? The leaves resemble lily of the valley, which is poisonous, but there is no risk of being mistaken – the wild garlic has a scent that convinces, and it smells like a mixture of chives and garlic. And of wild garlic and lily of the valley, the wild garlic usually comes the earliest.
You can eat both leaves and stems, and the wild garlic can also be frozen. Personally, I usually freeze it in florets of about 20 grams each, as it is a good amount for a batch of ramson pesto or ramson aioli.
When the wild garlic grows at its best, so do the wood anemones, and the girls each picked a bouquet.
Helena Elm, 28 April 2020
