A Month Without a Microwave
And other fun eating challenges in Denmark
When we booked the AirBNB outside of Copenhagen and I breathed a sigh of relief, I didn’t yet realize several important things*:
There was no microwave. (Hoooow?!)
There was only one restaurant near us and it was closed for summer for half our stay.
While we could easily take the train to get groceries, it cost money every time we went. Not the end of the world and much cheaper than renting a car, but not free either.
So, eating for our month in Denmark was more challenging than expected, but we persevered. My biggest takeaway is that I have much greater appreciation for a) the amount of time/work/energy past generations expended to make meals from scratch and b) the place that convenience has in our modern lives! I like cooking, but not when it’s every. single. meal. and mostly from scratch. (Even prepped ingredients like chopped onion and minced garlic would’ve been helpful.) And not when you can only shop for about two days’ worth of groceries because that’s all you can take home at a time.
Okay, obviously we did buy some pre-prepared food at the grocery store, though not as much as we might have otherwise because we had no microwave in which to heat it. (Also, the amount of prepared food is vastly smaller in Denmark—at least where we were—compared to the US and other countries we’ve been in.) That means that anything we wanted to heat up, including leftovers, had to go into the oven. This resulted in a domino effect of extra dirty dishes (because Tupperware can’t go into the oven and then you can’t eat out of an oven-heated dish, so must put it on plates or in bowls). Also, it heated the kitchen up and the house didn’t have A/C. Fortunately, we only had a handful of truly warm (for Denmark) days that made the house unbearably warm, but still. Also, when you have a hangry tween and teen (but especially a tween) who needs food NOW, having a combo of no microwave and food that mostly needs to be made from scratch means you’re basically always on the precipice of big emotions. Good times.
Meal planning, prep, and cleanup took up a lot of time. On top of the challenges already outlined, I started cutting foods out of my diet in an effort to start cleaning up some issues I was dealing with. So no alcohol, no processed sugar, as little flour and pasta as possible (trying to be mostly gluten free), and only one cup of coffee in the morning.
It was a lot.
Having a microwave would’ve been a massive help; it would’ve saved time and dishes, not to mention sanity. How do people live without them?! Plus also, what if your coffee or tea get cold? You can’t reheat them! (The horror, I know.)
Here’s what a typical day of feeding ourselves sans microwave and processed food looked like:
First, coffee for me. There was a Nespresso machine, but I made my daily coffee in my Aeropress so I could have mostly coffee with a tiny bit of milk rather than the other way around since I had no easy way to heat milk. This only dirtied one coffee mug; heating milk would’ve required dirtying a pot.
Make oatmeal or some sort of quick bread to serve as both breakfast and a snack later in the day. I was able to find almond flour and gluten-free oats, so I made a variety of gf/paleo options depending on the day, including chocolate zucchini bread and pb banana chocolate chip bread. I also made stone fruit crisp with some plums we picked locally. We paired these options with plain Greek yogurt or scrambled or hard-boiled eggs. Making the quick breads dirtied 1-2 bowls, plus a stirring utensil or two and the pan it baked in, plus maybe also a cutting board or grater. Then we had the dishes from eating. Add a spatula and pan to scrub if I cooked eggs, plus the grater from grating the cheese. Sometimes the girls ate eggs and/or ground beef with Chris.** We only had the one skillet, so we constantly had to clean it so we could share.
Lunch was challenging because I often didn’t want to cook again. If we had pre-made food or leftovers, the girls would put it in the oven or, on several occasions, they made pasta or ramen for themselves, which dirtied a pot and several more dishes. Even heating food in the oven dirtied a tray. I started making smoothie bowls, usually with a combination of frozen fruit, banana, and coconut milk; I topped them with coconut and some pumpkin seeds. That only dirtied the blender, bowl/s, and spoons. On a few occasions I made soup, like broccoli-potato with cheddar cheese or cheddar apple butternut squash. That dirtied a pot, cutting board, and knife, plus blender, bowls, and spoons. One day I was ambitious and made zucchini-crust pizza. It took some time but only dirtied a bowl, the grater, a cutting board, a knife, and the garlic press, plus the plates we ate on and the silverware we used to eat the pizza (because it wasn’t really finger food). If we had had a microwave, we could’ve popped something premade in and eaten it straight from the original tray, dirtying only utensils.
Snacks were tricky. Sometimes we had fruit with peanut butter, yogurt, cheddar cheese, or hard-boiled eggs. Here and there I bought chocolate-coated rice cakes to which I added pb, and I made a batch of energy bites. Sometimes I made a smoothie. If we were on the go I’d take a bag of walnuts with me. Once I grabbed some leftover roasted potatoes and threw them in a ziplock bag.
Dinner, well, that required time and effort on top of that which had already been expended up to that point in the day, unless we were piggybacking off of the steaks or fish Chris was making for himself.** This marinade for flank steak ended up being yummy but it required making the marinade early enough in the day to get the flavor going; we paired it with roasted potatoes or yams and a salad or some sliced bell pepper and avocado. We ate lots of variations on stir fry with chicken, including Sweet and Spicy Gochujang Chicken Bowls and Sweet and Sour Pineapple Broccoli Chicken Stir Fry. We also tried this chicken tikka masala recipe, which I adapted for the stovetop since we had no slow cooker; it was quite good. And since we had no rice cooker (not expected in Scandinavia, of course), I baked a lot of our rice both to free up stovetop space and have a hands-off way of making it. (Two parts salted water or broth to one part rice, in a shallow baking dish covered with foil; bake at 350F/180C till done and fluff with a fork.) There were always a plethora of dishes after dinner, and for sure we ran the dishwasher every night. I’m so glad we had one or I would’ve lost my marbles!
Dessert mostly disappeared from our diets, save for a square of dark chocolate here and there.
We did eat some meals out here and there in Copenhagen, but we tried to minimize this because it was expensive. For example, I took the girls to brunch one day toward the end of our stay and we spent about $90 USD on three entrees and three drinks! (That was on the high end for sure; we went there specifically because they had gf options.) Yowzers. While groceries weren’t cheap either, they stretched a LOT farther than restaurant food.
Having access to a car would’ve opened up our eating options, but it would’ve been cost prohibitive. (It was at least ~$500 USD/week not including gas; I looked.) Having good bikes with cargo capacity would’ve been game changing, as well. The ones we borrowed didn’t serve us well, unfortunately, so we mostly didn’t use them. Staying closer to or right in Copenhagen also would’ve opened our eating options; of course, that would’ve required booking farther in advance, LOL. Having food or grocery delivery would’ve been a game changer. Being located closer to a grocery store or market or some cafes the girls could’ve walked to on their own would’ve also relieved the challenge of feeding ourselves. But, we made do and rose to the challenge.
That said, the Denmark location was definitely one of the trickiest places we stayed in across our travels for feeding ourselves. One of the places we stayed in Buenos Aires was also tricky (no car and a 20-minute walk to/from the grocery store, but we were only there for about a week), and Salobreña, Spain would’ve been impossible without our rental car. (It almost was impossible with the rental, LOL!) Just about everywhere else we stayed over the last nine months was easier—groceries were more accessible and/or cafes and restaurants were more accessible. The easiest by far was Kuala Lumpur! We lived on top of a mall with a grocery store and tons of restaurants, including a sushi place and a Brazilian steakhouse. (We won’t talk about the “Mexican” place that clearly had no idea what Mexican food really is, LOL.) And it was connected to another mall with more restaurants and grocery stores. Talk about ease and convenience!
I’m curious: Of all the places you’ve stayed, which was the trickiest for feeding yourself/family and why?
*There were no blackout blinds in the bedrooms and no window coverings at all in the main part of the house. The only way to cool the house was to open the windows, which had no screens. This was problematic, especially for Chris, who got bitten many times by mosquitoes. But, that’s a post for a different day and, overall, the house did mostly serve us well. I mean, it made it into our Top 5 Favorite AirBNBs Around the World. As with most things in life, rarely is anything all good or all bad; there’s a sliding scale of gray in between.
**Chris started experimenting with a carnivore diet when we were in Argentina, so was doing his own food thing. Unfortunately, none of us ate much fish while in Denmark because it was challenging to find wild caught fish; much of what we found was farmed.