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 Since the rise of the New Nordic Cuisine, ideas relating to local, seasonal, traditional and sustainable food has permeated parts of the Swedish restaurant sector, including inspiration from past preservation and storage practices. However, there is little knowledge of how preservation and long-term storage in general is practiced within restaurants’ daily operations. The aim of the article is therefore to explore if and how preservation and storage practices in restaurants, as emphasized by the NNC movement, could be scaled up to support a transition towards a more resilient and sustainable hospitality industry. By identifying opportunities and challenges through interviews with restaurant professionals and wholesalers, it seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of the role these practices can play in enhancing food security and resilience in the Nordic gastronomy. While restaurants use preservation methods in line with their gastronomic philosophy to create specific flavors and meal experiences, there are many constraints to expand such practices further. These challenges are located within the restaurant practice, i.e. “doing restaurant”, more specifically material and social constraints vis-à-vis storage space, economy, recruitment of skilled staff, the risks associated with fermentation and the perceived relevancy of preserving and storing food for long-term use. We argue that with skilled restaurant personnel and access to food, the restaurant could become an important actor for maintaining a more resilient food system at the local scale. With the right incentives, the restaurant sector could ensure that the relevant skills are maintained if preservation once again should become a necessity.

Den svenska vintern blir allt varmare och snösäsongen allt kortare. I de södra landsdelarna är den meteorologiska vintern inte längre garanterad. En ny årstid har därför föreslagits: ovinter. I denna artikel följer vi användningen av ordet ovinter i svenskt mediematerial 2008–2024 med syftet att undersöka ovinter som kulturellt fenomen. Genom att förstå årstider som kulturella konstruktioner och med avstamp i frånvaro och närvaro som analytiska redskap, undersöker vi hur ovintern ges mening. I det analyserade materialet framstår ovintern som formad av meteorologer och journalister. Ordet används för att beskriva en årstid som inte följer statistiska, vetenskapliga eller kalendariska definitioner av vinter. Ovinter kan förstås som ett sätt att skapa mening och ordna det årstidskaos som klimatförändringarna föranleder. Under ovintern är snö och kyla frånvarande. Den frånvarande vintern lämnar spår i form av minnen, oanvända saker, och förlustkänslor. Denna förlust kan beskrivas i termer av vintersorg eller snösorg. I vinterns frånvaro framträder nya former av närvaro, sådant som gråhet och mörker, men också ett soligt och varmt väder med blommor och djur oväntade för årstiden. Mot bakgrund av klimatförändringar utmanar ovintern årstidskopplade aktiviteter och verksamheter. Vi menar att genom att undersöka o-vinter så synliggörs det som kan bli närvarande i en varmare framtid. Därmed kommer vi närmare en förståelse för de kulturella konsekvenser som vinterns frånvaro kan ha för människors vardagsliv i ett varmare Sverige.

Little is known about restaurant professionals’ views on wine sustainability and how these beliefs are embedded in cultural norms of wine quality. Using wine spaces as an entry point, this ethnographic study sought to explore the norms and practices that guide restaurant professionals in their assessment of wine quality and sustainability. The article depicts wine spaces as emblems mediating a particular wine culture with its own norms which guide such assessment. These spaces provide professionals with a setting to accumulate culinary capital as curators, and so wine spaces can be understood as the realm of experts. The results show that incorporating sustainability in wine assessment is challenging for restaurant professionals. First, there are inherent conflicts between environmental and sociocultural sustainability. Second, some norms and practices ingrained in heritage and tradition act as barriers to the adoption of, for example, more sustainable packaging. Third, the perceived sensory attributes of more sustainable wines are sometimes considered detrimental to wine quality. However, we argue that in their role as curators and intermediaries, restaurant professionals can use their expert status to challenge norms and give sustainability the same importance as other parameters such as acidity, tannins, and overall balance.

Would you share your freezer with your neighbours? Today, most Swedish households have access to a home freezer, but in the middle of the 20th century, collective freezer lockers offered affordable access to modern technology. Geographers have suggested that encouraging collective cooling practices could reduce environmental impact. The aim of this article is to investigate collective freezer lockers as a cultural phenomenon, and thereby getting closer to collective cooling practices, and to discuss the conditions for (re-introducing) collective freezer practices. Through personal narratives and media material, I trace meanings, norms, and discourses that formed part of these practices. The lockers were involved in daily practices of food, managing distances and social relations, and declined when home freezers became depicted as more affordable and rational. I conclude with discussing the possibilities and implications of a potential upscaling or revitalising of the practice of collective freezing.

Kan du tänka dig att dela din frys med dina grannar? Idag har de flesta hushåll i Sverige tillgång till en frys i hemmet, men i mitten av 1900-talet erbjöd kollektiva frysfacksanläggningar ett ekonomiskt alternativ till modern teknik. Forskare i geografi har föreslaget att uppmuntrande av kollektiva kylningspraktiker kan minska klimat- och miljöpåverkan. Syftet med denna artikel är att undersöka kollektiva frysfack som kulturellt fenomen och därmed komma närmre kollektiva kylningspraktiker, samt att diskutera förutsättningarna för (återinförandet av) kollektiva fryspraktiker. Genom personliga berättelser och mediematerial följer jag meningar, normer och diskurser som är del av dessa kollektiva och vardagliga praktiker. Frysfacken var del av vardagliga praktiker gällande mat, hantera avstånd och sociala relationer. När hemfrysen framställdes som mer överkomlig och rationell minskade antalet frysfack. Avslutningsvis diskuterar jag möjligheter och implikationer av en potentiell uppskalning eller revitalisering av den kollektiva fryspraktiken.

How and why do people store food? What norms, skills and items are involved in practices of stocking up and keeping food in pantries, refrigerators, and freezers? Despite an increasing interest in everyday food practices within food studies, research on domestic food storage practices is limited. In this article I depart from a practice theoretical framework to explore how food storage practices are made meaningful and involve certain competences and materials, with focus on preparedness. I draw on findings from a study on food storage in Sweden using an open-ended questionnaire and popular consumer magazines. The findings show that storing food is a concrete way of managing daily food work, time, social obligations, and potential societal crises. Households’ food storage practices are attempts to manage and control everyday life with its routines and disruptions, and the immediate, distant, or imagined future. However, societal advice for of long-term storage, for example for crises, is challenged by normalized storage spaces, skills, and values attached to food and food storage. I conclude by proposing that a new rationale relating to storage economy may influence the meaning, competences, and materials of food storage practices in favor of household preparedness.

Guest editors' introduction to the theme "Cold and freezing".

Måltidskulturer påverkar alla situationer där lagande, ätande och drickande förekommer. Trots detta tas måltidskulturella aspekter sällan i beaktande i det praktiska arbetet med professionella måltider i Sverige. Med en ökad kunskap om måltidskultur är det möjligt att designa måltider som tilltalar och skänker mening till gäster med olika bakgrund, ideal och preferenser. Det finns därför en stor potential i att arbeta medvetet med måltidskulturella perspektiv. Denna text ger en introduktion till studiet av måltidskultur och synliggör hur måltidskulturen är närvarande och av betydelse för professioner som arbetar med måltider. Texten riktar sig främst till dig som studerar en måltidsinriktad utbildning, men vi hoppas att den ska vara användbar även i andra utbildningar och för alla som arbetar praktiskt med måltider och måltidsutveckling.

In recent years, references to “old-fashioned pantries” and “classic root cellars” have regularly popped up in real estate ads across Sweden as a potential selling point for people seeking new homes. The use of the words “classic” and “old-fashioned” indicates a shift in the thinking about traditional food storage spaces. In this article, we explore the recontextualisation and emotionalisation of traditional food storage spaces in Swedish society. We base our analysis on an open-ended questionnaire on food storage, preservation, and household preparedness directed to Swedish households. We investigate how our respondents have recounted and shaped embodied memories in the act of writing about past food storage: the different spaces, times, people, practices, emotions, and objects. Viewing these acts of remembering and writing about past food storage as emotional practices has led to an understanding of how emotional experience in the past is reinterpreted in the present. Seeing these acts as emotional practices illustrates the relational nature of emotions, where longing for past food storage spaces is one way to reflexively deal with contemporary issues by managing everyday life. Finally, we argue that reflexive nostalgia helps to create and interpret emotions – making past and present food storage meaningful.