I'm sitting here eating a second helping of warm apple pie with ice cream, which I would say is second best after pumpkin pie when it comes to thanksgiving food. I was planning on making pumpkin pie for my host family, but it never occured to me that they don't eat pumpkin here. There was none to be found in either of the two grocery stores; plenty of canned fish and meatballs, but no canned pumpkin. The pie turned out amazing, the crust was a bit of a patchwork, but I still remembered how to make pie. Thanks Grandma!
It was the first time my host family had used their pie pan, and they'd never had apple pie before!
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| Yummm..... Before I forget, I'm going to jump back in time a few weeks. Our art class took a trip to a fabric/clothing company here called Oleana. They make knitted women's clothing, and we got to tour the factory. Apparently Michelle Obama has some of their clothing. We had a presentation, and I was surprised how much I could understand. I guess I was just having a good language day, but it seems if I keep myself from tuning out the language as background noise, it starts to make sense. I didn't take any pictures, but I'll post a few from the website. It's all really expensive, but I liked the patterns.   Last weekend Emma and Susanne came over, and brought some norwegian food they bought at the grocery store:  The chocolate cookies in the middle aren't norwegian, they're my recipe from home. The other stuff, going clockwise: -Grandiosa pizza, norwegian frozen pizza. It tasted like, well, pizza, although it was made with Jarlsberg cheese. Some people put ketchup on it. It seems to be Norway's kraft dinner; cheap and easy to make. -Bottom: Mormor's sjokoladeflarn, basically buttery cookies with chocolate in the middle. SO good dipped in coffee. -Top: Lefse. Some kind of soft flat bread with a fake butter/cinnamon filling. I wasn't such a fan. -Tom and Jerry's crackers, basically animal crackers. Yumm -Norwegian chocolate milk. Way better than the slightly chocolate flavoured milk we get for our school breakfasts ( not that I'm complaining!) I don't think you can go wrong with chocolate milk. -Candy :) - A bag full of little cinnamon buns On the topic of Norwegian food, I guess i better mention Fårikål. On Thursday we went to Helene's brother's house in Bergen for dinner, and that was the second time I've had the dish here. It's basically lamb boiled with cabbage and peppercorns, served with, guess what...potatoes. It's actually surprisingly good. It's pretty hit and miss trying to fish what you want out of the giant pot, without getting a giant hunk of bone or half a cabbage though.  This is what came up when I googled fårikål...poor lamb!  ...but it actually looks like this, it does taste better than it looks! On Friday our class went in to the city, visited 2 museums, and went to some of the famous historical sites. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and Bergen is amazing when the weather is nice. I didn't follow everything that went on; I was having a "zone out norwegian" type day, but it was fun, and neat to see some of the more famous places in the city.  One of three churches in Bergen from the middle ages  Wandering through the streets  In between the old houses in Bryggen  Front of Bryggen  A history of rats...  TROLL!!  Dried fish hanging from the ceiling of a building in Bryggen, from what I understood they were used for oil.  Beautiful Bergen Today I slept in, went for a run, then came home and ate another amazing weekend breakfast. I made the pie and put it in the fridge, then went "ut på tur" with my host family. We drove about 15 minutes towards Espeland, and then went up a narrow paved road, only wide enough for one car, through some farms. We came to a parking lot PACKED with cars, and there were cars parked all along the road as well. I never would've imagined seeing so many people out for a sunday hike! It was INSANE. I don't know why I found it that amazing, but I'm so used to trailheads with 5-10 cars parked there, and nearly empty trails, so this was a bit of a shock. We walked for about an hour, above the treeline, along a trail that was more like a road, to a cabin. I don't know how to describe it, but it felt different than hiking in Canada, and not just because of all the people. Everything just looked more...norwegian. More tights, pants tucked into socks, blonde hair, and Bergans ( a brand here) clothes. They sold hot drinks at the cabin, nothing cold, because the water there had to be boiled. I had a cup of hot juice, not the most refreshing when you've just been hiking uphill, but it was good once it cooled off. They also sold what they call pancakes here. They're basically the same thing that I would call a crepe. The fall colours were beautiful, and I think it's time for more pictures:  You can't really tell in this picture...but all the glints way off in the background are parked cars      Host parents and I  Going down Now that I look at these pictures, there's not really THAT many people. But it still felt like it! And now, subject change.... In the past couple weeks I've started really noticing how confusing it is to try and learn a dialect in norwegian. The written language is simple enough as far as bokmål goes, but it's really strange to write something so different from how you say it. For example, I learned this week that here they say "dere", a plural form of "you" as "dokarr"..or something like that. Do you see any connection? I don't. I keep finding out examples like that, where google translate is totally useless. Sometimes it varies from person to person too, some people will say "mye" ( much) as it's written, and some will say it the nynorsk way, "mykje". This makes it really confusing to try and imitate the way people say things, as there's no standard way. I find it fascinating though, how you can cross a bridge and have people speaking with a different accent. I can't imagine driving to Castlegar and having people speak differently, or barely being able to understand people from Vancouver, but that's how it seems to be here, because different areas used to be so isolated from eachother. Well, that brings me up to the present, my bowl of apple pie and ice cream is long gone, and my coffee cup is empty now. I think this was one of my longer posts, although I don't think any could rival my first one about flying here... I have the next week off school, for høstferie (fall break), and my laptop is getting really overheated and I'm way too warm now, so I think it's a good time to stop rambling. Happy Thanksgiving Canadians! Eat some pumpkin pie for me! |
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