Arrived to Fjällbacka yesterday. Yes it does exist. A lot of my international readers don't understand that it's an actual place, they think it's made up!
www.fjallbacka.com <http://www.fjallbacka.com/>
But I was born in Fjällbacka in 1974 and my mother still lives here. It is set on the west coast of Sweden and used to be a fishing village, but now it depends more on tourism. So as a result Fjällbacka has 1000 inhabitants in ten months of the year- and in the summer months, around 20.000, something that creates quite a schizofrenic society. And the relationships with the tourists that come here is also a bit complicated. We are dependent of them - but we don't like the fact that we are...
I'm here for a week now to work on a second cookbook. I'm doing it together with Christian Hellberg, one of Sweden's best chefs, and also a childhood friend from Fjällbacka. He was in the class above me and I actually thought he was quite a pain in the..... But he grew up to become a great chef and a great guy and now we're on our second book together!

I have brought my two elder kids (6 and 8) with me here, and they are enjoying being with their grandmother. It's strange. For some reason all the rules that I had to live by when I was a child - seems to have gone out the window now with the grandkids... What happened to "no you can't stay up late" or "no you can only have candy on Saturday"? For my kids it's like every day is Christmas Eve with grandma... And I get to be the evil one who tries to keep a little bit of a lid on the madness... But when I say things like "no ice cream before dinner" - not only the kids give me the evil eye - my mother does too.....
So this week is gonna be filled with cookies and candy for my kids - and a LOT of good food for me..... :-)