E) All of the Above

On my drive to work today, I encountered horizontally blowing snow up in Sverresborg where we live, then rain as I headed down the hill, and then hail as I made my way to the marine station.  This occurred all in the span of 5 min. on the road.  The weather forecasters must have a special forecast here called "E) all of the above."  Actually, today was a half sun/cloud day in the local forecast (yr.no) because at some point the sun was expected to peak out.  Mr. Sun did in fact show his lovely visage for moments between the rain/snow/hail and we had yummy cupcakes downtown. 

I've shown you lots of pictures from the hills around town, but today I wanted to share some from a particularly lovely day we had last month.  These are what I like to think of as "album cover shots" for Annaliese -- should she ever decide to become a rock musician.   This is lovely Trondheim -- Norway's third largest city (population ~180,000+3 blonde, crazy Americans) as it should be seen more often.  Yes, I offer  this to the weather gods in hopes that the future holds more album cover days. 

We went up in the tower on the right today, great view, and felt a little seasick as it slowly rotated

Please God Make it Stop

I started to snap last thursday at work.  Normally, the glass half full gal, the one who always finds a silver lining, the one who "likes" winter snow, actually sunk into despair.  My colleagues were alarmed.  The optimist has cracked.  No, no, no...  no more rain, please. 

For those of you who don't tune into Trondheim weather regularly, we have had so much rain that the girls and I are starting to mildew.  Yes, it is true.  Everything is damp.  Everything is gray.  When it isn't directly raining, the air is a constant mist of rain.   The statistics for March are not in yet, but the average precipitation in Feb. is normally 50 mm and we got 130 mm!  March is going to be way higher.  The unseasonably warm temperature, and combined rain and snow melt has increased water levels in rivers and stream to levels flood levels.  They project that this could be the worst flooding in 50 years.   At least the words in Norwegian sound better than English, "Flomtoppen" means flood peak and it sounds like a yummy dessert icing.

Record flooding is a serious deja vous of Rhode Island a few years back, but fortunately the power stations don't seem to be built on the banks of major rivers here and I'm hoping to get through this one without resorting to a camping stove.   You would think I am a magnet for floods or something.  What next locust?  But, climate change models suggest that wet areas will get wetter and dry areas drier.  So, people of Trondheim do not blame me personally for your troubles.  However, I'm fine with you blaming the american populace, their gas guzzling SUVs and carbon intensive lifestyle.

But seriously, this drizzle lifestyle sucks.  To make matters worse, the forecast continues for the next foreseeable future.  Here is the next week in my piece of paradise:

 The girls grandmother Colleen is visiting now (yeah!) and I sincerely hope we get to show her some of the beauty here without drizzle.  I hope the gray turns to blue.  I hope my drains start draining again.  I hope the heavens stop weeping on us.  I promise to be nicer, kinder, better in every way, just make it stop already.

Equality and Air Brushing

If Americans defend the concept of "Freedom" above all, then Norwegians defend the concept of "Equality."   I suppose it is difficult to define what "equality" means exactly, but the idea is to minimize the difference between the 'haves' and 'have nots', to make sure that everyone has a good education, decent working wages, healthcare, and in american suburban terms "a wife, dog and 2.2 blonde children."    

This idea permeates in the schools where all children have the same education system regardless of the neighborhood (unlike the U.S. where more income means more money for schools).  It translates to teaching where the culture strives to empower all children and does not single out students for special awards based on academic achievement. 

Children do start to get graded until Year 9, which is the point when schooling apparently starts to get hard and every grade counts for admission to the higher academics.  There is no grading "warm up" or trial run, although I'm told you can translate the smile on the happy face drawn on your assignments prior to Year 9 into a loose grading system.  The Norwegian emoticon grading system where ;-) means an A, :-) means a B, etc...

All children must also take the same Norwegian curriculum through Year 11 which includes courses in religion, music, and gym.   Your performance in music and gym are judged equally with other subjects like math and science.  "I'm sorry you can't get into Harvard, because you sing off pitch and your skiing is too slow."

I'm told the idea of equality permeates to the college level where students try not to really stand out in any one thing or to outperform the others.  My daughter Melita is a natural for this type of society, since she doesn't like to be singled out for anything and never wants anyone to feel bad if she passes them on swim team or whatever.  Maybe equality is hard-wired in the Scandinavian brain, but I think not.  Damn it, I like to win.  I like the feel of blue ribbons and trophies...oooohhhh... (although not as much as my oldest sister who is pathological about winning games :-)

The Norwegian idea of equality is so high here that they have an official Director of Equality, actually to be specific, the Minister of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion.  Ironically, he looks like a Norwegian version of my young nephew Max (see below) and isn't exactly the emblem of social inclusion that I would naturally pick for this position (the 'pale male syndrome' is pretty prevalent here).

The Equality Minister's latest campaign is to put warning labels on images of airbrushed supermodels. “This advertisement has been altered and presents an inaccurate image of how this model really looks.”  I'm sure my nephew would also present such important legislation for equality and do all the necessary research involved in putting forth this bill.  We can all agree that our children must be protected at all costs and supermodels should be fleshy.

But on to serious matters, Norway is also in the news for introducing laws to break the glass ceiling for females in the boardroom and even in academic institutions-- although good things but hard to legislate with quotas.   This has led to such headlines as "In Norway, a woman's place is in the boardroom."  Right on sisters!   Sign me up, if I get to serve with the Equality Minister.  I promise I won't air brush.

Country Roads, Take me Home -- to Norway?

Just a mere 10 minutes from our house, a large juicy event took place this evening -- World cup Ski Jumping.  Yes, I have repeatedly eyed that huge jump tucked into the hillside and have been waiting patiently for this day since we got here.  Not too many places in the world have ski jumping right down the road from your house.  Sometimes at night we see the little guys practicing on the small jumps near our house without fear late into the evening. But, tonight we got to see the big dogs ... the kahunas of ski jumping -- the Anders (lots of those from Norway, Germany, Switzerland) and the now-dominant Japanese fliers. The newspaper said "Dette var helt Fantastisk"  and it was festive.  Here is a photo from the newspaper with the girls and I circled in black (annaliese in hot pink hat/jacket combo)

The jumpers broke the track record for distance, note the "kjempe bra" which means awesome:

the crowds were rowdy, and I definitely think a 12,000 strong Norwegian crowd singing  John Denver counts as rowdy

Smoke filled the air, crowds hollered,

 We had wide eyes, hot cocoa, fireworks, a full moon and some green aurora to top it off.

Now that is some sport to talk about around the water cooler at work tomorrow.  "Did you see the hopp last night?"

The food issue

Woke up this morning to the sound of Toto and the classic 80's hit song Africa --"I bless the rains down in Africa."  This was followed by an unknown folk singer with a tune called "Perfect Storm."  And, yes it is raining/snowing this morning.    While I (and most Norwegians) spend a great deal of time discussing weather, today I turn to the much tastier subject of food. 

Knowing my penchant for fine foods, my friend Craig emailed me a recipe he developed called "the Porkster" which lists the first ingredients as:

Heirloom breed porterhouse pork chop – pounded flat

Roasted leak, fennel, and carrot chopped medium fine

Lobster parboiled.  Shell turned into stock with butter, vermouth, black pepper.

and apparently ends with a fancy lobster, pork roll wrapped in smoked bacon and grilled.  I'm sorry but anything wrapped in bacon has got to be good.

However, to make such a dish could perhaps be challenging here in Norway where there are only a few common brands for everything.  As far as I can tell, pork or "svinekjøtt" (sveena-shit) is only sold wrapped in plastic and produced by either Gilde or Norwegian Fjord -- the two companies that provide nearly all meat "products" found at the store.  I'm not sure their brand of meat would qualify as "heirloom."  But, I'm pretty sure reindeer meat would still qualify as "heirloom" and you don't find that anywhere in the U.S. but Alaska - so score a half point for Norway.

Second, bacon??  Norwegian bacon, what there is, is sadly sad.  It cannot come close to the crackling thick-sliced strips of hardwood smoked bacon....oh stop, I'm drooling.  That reminds be of my many  months on a Norwegian ship called the Polar Duke where we toured the frigid Southern Ocean eating meals cooked by a delightful clog-wearing Norwegian chef.  For my first few weeks, I wondered why the chef would not clean out his skillet after cooking fish the night before because the bacon had a distinctly fishy overtone.  Then, I found out that the bacon came from Chile and Chileans feed their pigs fish...Aha, you are what you eat apparently.  Should we ever have to go cannabalistic, I'm sure Norwegian flesh has King Oscar sardine overtones...  But back to bacon, I also spent some time recently on the Big Island of Hawaii searchinig for that perfect local wild boar that feast on macademia nuts and have succulent sweet meat.   Ok, I'm drooling again...

There are no really deli counters here.  The cheese is a bit bland and rubbery Jarlsberg and Gulost (literally "yellow cheese"), similar to some of the common U.S. varietals.  Oddly enough, fresh fish is not all the easy to get or common here except at restaurants and the fish market downtown.  Before Christmas, however, we got this 90 kg Halibut at the Marine Station from some local fisherman and my fabulous colleagues filleted it up expertly.

Local Trondheim roasted halibut with tomato capers and saffron risotto

Filleting the halibut

The Norwegian spice section is filled with the standard fare of spices and some with names that seem oddly unfamiliar.  We spent some time at lunch figuring out that "turmeric" is called "gurkemei" here in Norway, which is apparently a derivative of the latin Genus name "Curcuma."  I also discovered my favorite "spice" capers.  Yes, I searched the entire store for capers the other day.  I checked every pickle jar from cornichon to olives and even the refrigerated smoked salmon section. Finally, I asked the grocer and sure enough, a jar of pickels was found under "C" in spices.  The "Caper" whole in vinegar is apparently considered a spice here...who knew???  Another major food company Toro conveniently makes "Kanel og Sukker" a perfect blending of cinammon and sugar, as well as packets of every kind of sauce and hamburger-helper style mixture to be added to meat. 


Norwegian stores and choice, however, are changing fast.  The T.V. is rampant with shows like Masterchef (with the Britain, Australian, and U.S. versions), Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, and some other British dude who is really really goofy.   They are fast becoming foodies.  Think about how bleak the U.S. food scene was in the 70's, for example, where the only choices were wonderbread, Folgers coffee, and green jello (a nod to my fellow Minnesotan readers ;). 

The Norwegians are already excellent bakers and their supermarket bread is delicious, far surpassing the standard supermarket variety in the U.S., as well as their bolle, and marsipan cakes....mmmm

We are producing an International Cookbook at the girls school this year as a fundraiser and I submitted some "American" recipes including Mango Tango Salsa and Kid-licious Chocolate Banana Bread.   As a nodd to Norway, I added a few tablespoons of Norwegian crunchy Nugatti (their version of Nutella) and some cardamom to the banana bread recipe. 
 
The local food movement is gaining steam fast here and I'm sure the food diversity will increase exponentially as Norwegians expand from prepackaged Fiskekaker, Karbonade, and Kjøttkaker (this is the Norwegian meatball and literally pronounced "Shit kaka" -- really, I'm not kidding).  When purchased from Gilde or Norwegian Fjord, the girls and I have decided that all three of the above strangely taste alike even though made with fish, pork, and beef.

I've recently found some local salami and ham from a neighboring town Helgeroa that is delicious. The local garlic liver pate' is yummy.  I picked up an terrific British cheddar recently.  Can't wait for lunchtime.  Seek and ye shall find.  I implore the Norwegian "Foodies" to stand up and unite for change!