World traveler has quite a lot cooking
Nigerian geoscientist’s latest project is cookbook with international flair
Evenings at Juliette Haegglund’s Montrose home usually include some delicious meal she has prepared from a recipe she’s gleaned from her world travels.
After the last bite is taken, her husband takes to the piano to rock out in song. He plays Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” as their 3-year-old son strums his play guitar. Haegglund dances away.
“This is us,” said the Nigerian native who works as a geoscientist for an oil and gas company.
Their home feels a lot like a sweet scene from ABC’s hit drama “This Is Us,” without all the drama.
But Haegglund’s own story is as international as the “Dr. Zhivago” novel she so loves. She speaks six languages, including Russian. Her Swedish husband speaks four.
Haegglund was born in Nigeria in a family of seven children. Her diplomat father moved the family to Cuba when she was an infant, then to the Netherlands when she was 2.
Haegglund remembers a life at home filled with food and entertainment; lavish dinner parties were a regular occurrence.
“In Holland, we had a dining room that could seat 40 people. I always remember seeing all the people in their dress clothes and Mother in her traditional Nigerian clothing, which is so extravagant,” she said.
The family moved back to Nigeria when she was 7. By 18, Haegglund was headed to college in Russia on a full scholarship.
It was a culture shock in many ways, from the weather to the clothes.
“I got to Russia in September, and there was snow on the ground. I studied in a small town three hours from Moscow. I didn’t speak Russian, there were no grocery stores, and it would be so cold,” she said of the minus35-degree temperatures. “It’s hard to prepare for weather like that, but all of the young women wore heels, even in the ice and snow.”
Haegglund stood out, she said, “in the country of extremes, where the people either really love you or they hate you.”
Strangers would often pull or touch her long braids, and a professor once told her that he didn’t like “her kind.”
Nevertheless, Haegglund was determined to learn the language and finish her studies. She graduated with honors, fluent in Russian, and was hired as a field engineer at a company in Russia; then she worked in Nigeria and Brazil. She was often the only woman on the offshore oil rigs.
She met her husband at a party while on vacation in Singapore. He eventually moved to Brazil to be close to her. When she moved to France to pursue a master’s degree in geoscience and engineering at the French Institute of Petroleum near Paris, he followed.
With every move to a different land, Haegglund said, her fashion choices evolved.
“In Brazil, fashion is very laid back with shorts and sundresses. People there go to the bank wearing a Speedo. Brazilian women don’t even wear a one-piece swimsuit after age 2. But when I got to Paris, I had to go shopping. The women there can wear jeans, a sweater and scarf and look so elegant. I realized they wear the same sweater all week and just change the scarves.”
The couple married in Barbados in 2010, then lived in Australia before relocating to Houston.
In 2012, they took a year off from their careers and traveled even more, taking in South America and Asia. At each stop, Haegglund experimented with the native dishes and compiled recipes. She has turned her travels into a series of cookbooks, “World Cuisine,” and now offers cooking classes. (The book features the Swedish spelling of her name, Hägglund.)
“Food is a way for people to share with family and friends,” she said. “A lot of the places we traveled, they spend a lot of time enjoying the meal. I enjoy cooking for my friends and family. It’s a personal way to show how much I love them.”