As someone living in a house where 90% of the furniture is IKEA-based, I find the quality varies vastly from item to item. Some things are, as you say, cheaply made. A $50 set of shelves or a $30 end table isn’t going to be super durable. But then there’s things like my Jerker desk, which is legendary for its quality and durability and will probably outlive me.
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Belgian chocolate is South American, I guess, and spaghetti is Chinese.
Just because something came from somewhere else doesn’t mean people can’t put their imprint on it.
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he came packing the recipes for cabbage rolls, meatballs and, god love him, introduced Turkey’s national love for strong, hot coffee to the Swedish people.
This is my biggest grammatical-error pet peeve. It should be “recipes for cabbage rolls AND meatballs”, not “recipes for cabbage rolls, meatballs”.
Fucking conjunctions, how do they work?
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That the best you can do?
Its going to take more than that to ruin Ikea meatballs for me.
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Cultural appropriation! /s
Taking pasta from the great and distant Empire of China, is like Promethean cookery. (Probably including the part about the liver.)
Trying to make pseudo-authentic burritos in Portland is BurritoGate!
It’s complicated.
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Yeah yeah yeah, but they pretty much had to call them Swedish Meatballs.
“Turkish Balls” conjured an entirely unappetizing mental image for all but a few in ye olde Swedish society.
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As a person who loves tacos, I feel your pain:
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And the truth would drive him mad to know, so… 
I recently had Swedish meatballs. In Sweden. But not from IKEA. They were delicious.
I am not even mad that they aren’t actually Swedish.
(I also learned about the Thursday pancake and pea soup tradition and Swedish fika. Sweden is my kind of country. 12 out of 10. Would go back.)
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Hah, wait until you find out what it is made of…
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I’d take horse meat over pork on any day.
In fact, I quite often do, it is delicious.
Of course, it is simply an act of criminal fraud to sell it as something else.
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Or that lait de poule* isn’t actually chicken milk!
*eggnog in French
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“Forcemeat”, or finely chopped meat with spices and binders, made into shapes, is at least as old as the Roman Empire and shows up in cuisine pretty much anywhere they had been. It was a popular prep because it was a way to use up scraps, but since very labor intensive, still fancy enough to serve to guests.
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Balls made by Swedes, then.
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Is it horse? It’s horse, isn’t it?
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I didn’t remember that, thank you
Swede-y balls? (No one can resist them!)
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They are, but I contest the beef ones are delicious too.
That said, I ordered “meatball” at a restaurant in Cologne, Germany recently. It was a single meatball the approximate size and shape of a beef burger, had no sauce or other accompaniment, but was absolutely divine.
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Did you mean a “german meatball” or are you taking sides, you piç? People get offended by things like that. That’s how this whole thing started!
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The veggie ones are wonderful. My 20 month old grandson loves them.
