Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Arla's Golden Cow - part 1

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Last week, I was invited to a fancy event hosted by Arla Foods, the largest dairy company in all of Europe. (And certainly the major one in Sweden - I've grown up seeing their logo on the milk cartons.) The event is called "Arla's Guldko", which translates to "Arla's Golden Cow" - the cow being their most prominent logo. This is an awards program, to reward some of the food-related businesses in Sweden. The categories were - roughly translated - best school kitchen, best senior restaurant, best food store, best fast food store and best environmental work. (You can read more about it, and all the winners, here.) I was especially excited for the winners of the school kitchen award - they were so happy and jumped up and down on the stage. Farsta Gymnasium - congratulations!

Me, and Dagmar, arrived just in time for coffee. Which was very lucky indeed! They had ordinary coffee, but they had also brought up four of the best baristas in Sweden to make latte and espresso for everyone. Daniel Remheden from Lund (who came in second this year in Barista Cup) made my espresso, but I'm not sure of the name of the latte artist - he was really good, anyway.

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There were, as you can see in the picture, plenty to eat. The highlight was the blueberry crème brûlée, but the passionfruit and mango smoothie was great too, as was the rhubarb jelly topped with crumbs and vanilla sauce. Additionally, there were tiny versions of classic Swedish cookies, and a very cute - and tasty - miniature swiss roll with fresh raspberries. I'm not sure if it was Sweden's Pastry Chef of the Year who was responsible, but I suspect as much. (He did dessert, later on.)

We then got to listen to Mattias Klum, who is a world-famous photographer. He works for National Geographic, and his photos are absolutely wonderful. He told of about his travels to India and Borneo. He's as great a storyteller and entertainer as he is a photographer, so that should tell you something about how much fun we had!

In the next part, I'll tell you about the fabulous dinner we had. It was really amazing! (Sadly, my photos are not - but hopefully Dagmar's are a bit better!)

2 comments:

Pille said...

Lucky you, for being invited to all those PR events!!

Anonymous said...

Anne, Thanks again that you invited me :-) My photos are rather bad but I'll see what I can do in photoshop :-) I'm really busy at work with a lot of extra hours but I'll try to post during the weekend.

Right now (hungry and still working) I would love to have all those desserts again :-)