Back in the Kjøkken Again

Yep, back in the kjøkken ["kitchen"] for Scandinavian Saturday again, at long last! After several weeks of other Saturday night plans (remember?), last night I was at the stove again, this time with recipes from Kitchen of Light: New Scandinavian Cooking by Norwegian chef, cooking show host, and culinary writer Andreas Viestad. I selected three items from the book but, because I was running out of time (Abigail had a classmate's Christmas party to get to), I made only two last night for supper and the third today for dinner (served alongside some tasty leftovers).

At the top of the plate is a bowl of fresh pears and apples simply because the pears on the counter were ready to be eaten--nothing Scandinavian about it! The lefse at the upper left of the plate is from a batch that we bought a few weeks ago from the ladies at church. To the right is seibiff med karamelliserte løk, and at the bottom is stekt poteter med laurbærblad, pancetta, og sopp, both of which are described below.

We had started eating before we thought of photographic documentation of the gustatory experience, so Susan's plate (above) doesn't look quite as it did when first dished up. But at least you get a visual aid to go along with the descriptions:

seibiff med karamelliserte løk [seared pollock fillets with caramelized onions]-- Pollock is a fish so common and easy to catch in Norway that it was for years regarded with apathy until a Norwegian chef won a prestigious world cooking championship with a pollock dish ten years ago. Now, according to Mr. Viestad, Norwegians take pride in their traditional, rustic dishes featuring pollock, including this one. I caramelized the onions (but left out the sugar and cloves that the recipe called for, and we found the onions sweet enough on their own), dredged the fish in flour and salt and pepper, fried it, and served my family a platter of flaky, mild fish atop beautifully golden yellow onions.

stekt poteter med laurbærblad, pancetta, og sopp [pan-fried potatoes with bay leaves, pancetta, and mushrooms] -- Mr. Viestad writes that "potatoes have been a staple food in Norway for three centuries and the cornerstone of almost every traditional Norwegian meal." His modern Norwegian cuisine includes potatoes, too, with some updates. For this dish I diced and fried pancetta and then set it aside. I cubed some russet potatoes and fried them in the pancetta drippings with salt, pepper, and crushed bay leaves. Later I sliced and fried portobello mushrooms in olive oil and thyme and then tossed everything together: golden potatoes, juicy mushrooms, and crispy pancetta.

The girls drank milk with the meal, and Susan and I enjoyed some Zinfandel. For dessert we had Christmas cookies made by my colleague Suzanne.

This was supposed to be part of last night's meal but was a side dish for today's dinner instead: grønne erter puré med asparges og scallions, described below.

grønne erter puré med asparges og scallions [green pea purée with asparagus and scallions] -- I boiled asparagus spears and scallions in salt water for just a few minutes before plunging them in cold water. Then I boiled peas in chicken stock and puréed them in a blender with some butter. I sautéed the asparagus and scallions in some butter to reheat them and then dished it up: the pea purée sprinkled with pistachios and drizzled with toasted sesame oil and topped with the sautéed vegetables. Simple flavors in an unusual combination. It went quite well with our leftovers: roast beef, baked sweet potato, and last night's mushroom/potato/pancetta dish.

It was Susan's turn to be my helper in the kjøkken, but she and the girls had rehearsal yesterday and this morning for this evening's Sunday school Christmas program (of which Susan, as Sunday school director, is in charge), so I worked alone and let her tend to more pressing items. Stay tuned for a debrief--coming soon!--on the Christmas program.

The Play's the Thing . . . that I Need from You

This afternoon I attended a meeting of the organizers of Sneak Pique, a new community theatre group in Dickinson (remember my having written about them recently?). Susan and I had been invited to participate from the outset, but we declined to add one more thing to our weekly schedules this semester, instead supporting Sneak Pique in spirit . . . and, of course, by attending their premiere performance a couple weeks ago.

Well, last week I decided to show up at one of the group's meetings to remind them of the Mobergs' support and continued interest and to become informed of the group's current and future projects. I kept my mouth shut throughout the meeting lest anyone should discover that the Mobergs have not only an interest in theatre but also experience in it, because that would be a sure way to get pressured into directing a play or auditioning for one--and again, free time does not exist for us as it is.

One member, Karen, seems to be the de facto leader of the group and asked, at last week's meeting, if anyone was interested in being in a play reading group. I immediately pictured a gathering of a few people to read and discuss plays--like a book group, but for dramatic literature instead--and thought, "Why not?" That wouldn't take much time, and it would be fun, so I raised my hand.

Well, I later found out that Karen's intent was for that group to read plays and then return to the large group with recommendations for which plays Sneak Pique should produce/perform in the future! And she was hoping for us to bring some recommendations to today's meeting so that a play could be selected for this upcoming spring! Yikes!!

Another person in the play reading group, Suzanne, had had the same understanding as I of what the group would entail (i.e., we were both wrong), and we confessed as much by way of explaining why, at today's meeting, we had no play recommendations to offer. However, Karen liked our idea, too, and asked if we'd be willing to organize a play reading get-together for January. So I did end up getting wrangled into something, but at least it's not committing to several weeks of nightly blocks of time spent directing or acting in a play. This is low-key enough that I can probably handle it amongst my other obligations.

So, Faithful Readers, any recommendations for the first play to be read by our play reading group?

Food + Friends = Fun

Last Night
Our friends/neighbors Chuck and Reba and their kids Madeline and Jack came over for supper last night. We had Madeline and Jack over to play and eat supper with us a while ago to free their parents to attend parent/teacher conferences at school; and when Chuck and Reba came by to pick them up again afterwards, we decided that it had been too long since we'd all had a get-together, so we scheduled Friday's supper.

Susan and Abigail prepared a layout of crudités: radishes, cucumbers, celery, carrots, red peppers, yellow peppers, and orange peppers with ranch dip; and sliced pears and apples with caramel dip. Susan also made three huge pizzas, and the kids drank fruity beverages while the adults drank beer and wine. Susan made brownies for dessert and served them heaped with Schwan's vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup.

The food was terrific; the kids had a great time playing together, as always; and the adults enjoyed visiting and joking (Chuck and Reba are hilarious). However, I had been under-the-weather all week as well as under-rested due to my staying up extremely late each night in an effort to get all my work done for school. My body must have decided that "enough was enough" by the time last night rolled around--at one point in the evening, I could barely keep my eyes open any more! When the host disappears for a span of time and his daughter reports that he's sleeping on his bed, the keen guest takes that as a clue that it's time to gather the kids and head home. I don't think I exhibited great hosting right there--how embarrassing. Thank goodness they're such close friends!

Tonight
Susan and I had supper with another set of friends, Deana and Jim. They invited us and several others over for their second annual pre-Thanksgiving deep-fried turkey potluck supper (remember last year's event?). Susan and I were the first to arrive, so we got to sample some homemade blueberry wine that Deana opened to share with us. After everyone got there with their dishes for the spread, we ate: turkey, ham, tossed salad, vegetable salad, coleslaw, cranberry fruit salad, fresh grapes, li'l' smokies in barbecue sauce, cheese cake, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and blueberry coffee cake (you just never know what all will show up on the table at a potluck).

A lot of the other attendees are our friends by virtue of their being my coworkers, and several of them were involved in the recent community theatre production that Susan and I attended (remember?)--so we had plenty to visit about throughout the evening. They're an educated and humorous crowd; the topics that we covered in our conversation ranged from which English translation of Homer's Greek epic The Odyssey is the best to which male movie stars qualify as "hot" to which comes first in a relationship: friendship or love. An evening spent with those friends is always an interesting one.

Farewell, Happy Birthday, and Good Night

We are a little bit sad, a little bit happy, and a whole lot full! We attended two social events this evening: one farewell supper for our friends Jason and Miranda and one birthday party for my colleague Suzanne. Jason has accepted a job at Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, WY, so they're moving tomorrow and hosted a final get-together for their friends this evening. Of course it was sad to say goodbye, but it's always exciting to think of new beginnings in better jobs. We wish them all the best!

Jason, Arabella, and Miranda

Suzanne's birthday isn't until Wednesday, but our friend Michelle invited her over to her home for supper this evening and then surprised her with cake . . . and with other guests! We popped over after supper with Jason and Miranda and enjoyed visiting with Suzanne and the others, drinking wine, and eating cake (lemon poppyseed with cream cheese frosting, made by another colleague, Paul).

Our daughters were reminded in advance of the dictum, "Children should be seen and not heard." Yet at both locations, they flouted it! Which was just fine, actually. They played with Jason and Miranda's two-year-old daughter, allowing the adults to visit rather than keep an eye on her; and at Michelle's, they visited with the adults seated near them and kept them amused, I think, with their stories and vocabulary. These girls just can't resist an opportunity to visit! They wouldn't have gotten by well in Victorian England.

Suzanna, Lab Rat

A colleague in my department at the university teaches a course for which her students do psychology experiments, which amount to various interviews with willing participants. Her students needed access to children recently for a series of questions designed to reveal something about a child's mental stage of development. Abigail was enlisted by her friend's mom, who is a student in the course, to be a participant, and she just had to sit for some questions . . . and then she got to play with her friend!

My colleague has one student, Lilian, from Kenya who has no "connections" to local people who have children, so Lilian was having trouble locating a participant for her study. My colleague asked if I'd give permission for Lilian to interview one of our girls, and I volunteered Suzanna, thinking she'd probably be more diplomatic than Hillary when asking Lilian to repeat sentences (Lilian's accent is rather heavy).

It was kind of a rigmarole to arrange a meeting between Lilian and Suzanna, working around Suzanna's many after-school activities and Lilian's class and work schedule and trying to help Lilian videotape the experiment (she didn't know where to go for a camera, how to get a disk for recording the session, how to operate the camera, etc.). Finally we arranged for me to get Suzanna to campus today to sit for Lilian's questions, which Lilian had a friend videotape for her. Here is what it was like to be the topic of a psychology experiment, in Suzanna's words:

"I got into the room and Lilian, my questioner, got her things together for the first question, which was something about two clay balls. She asked me if they were the same size, and I said yes; and then she asked me if, when she put them in two different glasses of water, the level of the water would rise, and I said yes.

Then she got the second question ready. She put slips of paper on two sheets of paper, and they took up the same amount of space on each. Then on one sheet of paper she moved the slips all over, and she asked if they still took up the same amount of space, and I said yes.

Then she got the third question ready, and it was with two more clay balls. She asked me if, when she changed the shape of one of the clay balls, the water level would rise more than with just the regular clay ball, and I said yes; she asked me why, and I said because it's taking up more space on the bottom of the cup, so the water needs someplace to go.

Then she thanked me, and there was a guy who videotaped me, and he shut off the video camera, and then I left."

If you were Lilian, what would you conclude about Suzanna based on this experiment?

Asian Night in SW ND

The university where I work is presenting its production of The Good Woman of Setzuan this weekend, and Susan and I went to see it along with several friends from the university. Beforehand we all gathered for supper at China Doll, a local Chinese restaurant, to socialize in a locale befitting the play itself (which is set in China). We had a great meal and a nice visit with several people whom I don't see regularly.

There weren't many people in the audience, and there were even fewer remaining after intermission. Do you know the play? It's a parable, heavy on the symbolism and metaphor. Some audience members might have been put off by the stylized masks that everyone wore throughout, by the heavy accents of the many international students in the cast, by the mix of surreal elements with realistic plot, by the occasional songs that characters would stop the action for and grab a microphone to perform directly to the audience, by the three-hour running time, by the frigid temperature in the theater, by the play's demand that we consider the effects of capitalism and consumerism on a society's morality (and the director explicitly pointed out the connection to recent economic events and swindling investors in America), etc.

As for myself, I quite enjoyed the work of several performers in particular and laughed out loud at some jokes that caused no reaction whatsoever from other audience members. There were some fun group scenes, well staged as is characteristic of this director's work. And I'm often pleasantly surprised by the technical elements, including the simple but effective way that changes of setting were shown by moving a wooden doorway from one area of the stage to another. All in all, it was a fun themed night out with my wife and some of our friends.

Saturday Miscellany

Well, the late nights and lack of sleep took their toll on Suzanna: she woke up today with a nasty case of tonsillitis. Susan took her to the doctor and got her some medicine, and we've got tentative plans for her tonsillectomy over Christmas break (per Suzanna's own request). There were two more performances of Seussical in her future (tonight and tomorrow afternoon), and the show must go on; so Suzanna steeled herself for the challenge, started her meds, and napped throughout most of the day.

En route to the doctor with Suzanna, Susan dropped off Abigail and Hillary at the riding arena on DSU's campus. A friend of the girls had invited them to join him for a trick roping class held by an expert, Felix Lopez, who was on campus this weekend for a rodeo event. So the girls donned their cowboy boots (yes, they have cowboy boots--we're in Dickinson), joined their friend and a bunch of other kids, and tried their hand at roping.

Here's the whole gang of youngsters being taught trick roping by the expert (the gentleman in the black hat, blue vest, and green shirt in the back) and his son (the boy in the red coat and black hat on the left). Can't find the Mobergs? Abigail is in a brown shirt on the left, Hillary is in a blue shirt in the front, and Suzanna is in a green coat on the right (and on her way out the door to the doctor's).

Hillary and her friend Sam, who invited the girls.

Abigail the trick roper!

Mr. Lopez's son, showing the other kids how it's done.

And where was I, you might wonder, during all this fun? On the floor in the laundry room installing the pedestals for the washer and dryer. There were supposed to have arrived weeks ago with the rest of our new appliances, but they took another week to get here, and I took yet another week to finally remove them from their boxes and read to find out what was involved in installing them. Just pick up the washer and dryer, slide the pedestals underneath, and set down the appliances on top of them? Nope. I had to disconnect both the washer and dryer, drain the washer, lay them both on their backs, bolt the pedestals to the bottoms, get the washer and dryer upright again and back into place, level them, and reconnect them. Good times. But they look snazzy, they make both appliances easier to access, and they offer convenient storage in their drawers.

My department colleagues and their families attended Seussical tonight, and beforehand we all met at Sanford's for supper together. It was a crowded table, and the Mobergs had to eat in shifts (we had to get Abigail and Suzanna fed and off to the theater before the others even arrived, but Susan, Hillary, and I waited to eat with everyone else), but it was fun to spend time with them.

The show started approximately 25 minutes late because people were lined up out the front door and onto the street outside waiting for tickets! Yes, it was sold out. Tomorrow's show is predicted to be the same, and Thursday's show had a full house, too. (Friday's wasn't completely full, but it was Halloween night, after all.) The audiences have included people of all ages: a good number of university students, lots of families with small children, parents and grandparents of the cast members, adults from the community and from the faculty and staff, etc. How nice to see the arts so well supported in this community!

Surgery and Four Other Important Items

So much to tell! This post has gotta have a checklist (in rhyme, for your edification):

1. school shopping
2. birthday greeting
3. skin chopping
4. outdoor eating
5. classroom hopping/teacher meeting

Yesterday Hillary had a medical appointment in Bismarck (more on that in a moment), so we left early enough to spend the morning there shopping for school supplies (1) and a li'l' home decor (photo frames). Then we met the girls' aunt Cheryl and cousin Arron for dinner at T.G.I. Friday's; it was also Cheryl's birthday yesterday (2), so I allowed her to sit directly across from me as a special birthday treat for her. I'm nice that way. That Arron just keeps maturing--he looks years older every time I see him! The girls just love him, and he's so tolerant of their hugging and hanging on and storytelling, etc.

We love the kinds of expressions we get from subjects when we make them pose with the sun shining directly into their eyeballs. Left to right: Hillary, Cheryl, Abigail, Arron, and Suzanna outside T.G.I. Friday's.

Afterward we went shoe shopping for the girls, and even I got a new pair! (I'm suddenly picturing myself at a craps table, blowing on the dice: "Come on! Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!" I'm weird.) Then it was on to Hillary's appointment.

Hillary has a good-sized congenital nevus (mole present at birth) on her left side, and in recent months two darkish spots have appeared near its center. We had her doctor in Dickinson look at it, and he referred us to a dermatologist in Bismarck. The dermatologist (Dr. Cornatzer) recommended removing it--not only for cosmetic reasons (which aren't on Hillary's mind now but which will become important to her as she ages) but also to prevent the risk of its becoming malignant in the future, especially in light of the recent changes to its appearance. We were in and out of his office in a half-hour, and before we left, he had arranged an appointment for us later that very day with a plastic surgeon!

We did a little clothes shopping for Susan between appointments and then met the plastic surgeon (Dr. Paulson), who concurred with the dermatologist and then set about seeing when there would be openings in the Bismarck hospitals for him to perform Hillary's surgery (3). The earliest option: Thursday! of this week! that's tomorrow! That's the first day of the school year in Dickinson, and Susan cannot miss opening day at her new job; so I'll accompany Hillary tomorrow.

Missing the first day of the new school year is not bothering Hillary. Nor is the prospect of going under the knife. When the dermatologist left the room to phone the plastic surgeon, Hillary did cry, but for a very different reason: she's going to miss her birthmark. It's something that she and she alone has; it makes her different from her sisters, whom she is alike in so many other ways, and it certainly makes her different from most other kids. In conversations later last night and today, she anthropomorphized the mole, telling me that "he" is always with her, that she enjoys seeing him and washing him in the shower or the bathtub, etc.

Susan and I were thinking as Future Hillary might: that, if she has to have a lesion surgically removed, at least it's a plastic surgeon doing it whose skill will leave minimal evidence of the mole. However we suddenly found ourselves trying to comfort Hillary instead with the thought that, although the birthmark will be gone, at least she'll always have a scar to remind her of happier days with her mole. It's such a sweet perspective that she has toward the nevus . . . and undeniably odd, too.

All this has been in the midst of preparations for the start of another school year. We left Bismarck Tuesday right after the appointment with the plastic surgeon and made it back in time to attend (Susan and I; her dad, Roger, came to our house to stay with the girls) a pre-semester social (4) at the home of DSU's new president and his wife. Their back yard was elegantly appointed with numerous tables set with linens and summery decorations. Three food stations were situated beneath tents around the yard: a beverage table, an appetizer table, and tables for the entrées (toward the end of the evening, the appetizer table was reset with desserts). The food was fantastic, the weather was perfect, and we enjoyed visiting with the other faculty and staff members in attendance.

Tonight we attended (as a family this time--kids were invited to this one) a barbecue at the home of the chair of my department. He and his wife had all departmental faculty members and their families over for hamburgers and bratwursts made on the grill, and everybody who came brought a salad or dessert so that there was quite a feast laid out for us! It was my first social occasion with my new colleagues, and again, Susan and I had a good time getting to know people. One professor new to our department is new to the state, too, so she, her husband, and their son had the opportunity tonight to meet new people, get some questions answered (e.g., "What bank do you recommend?"), and start to feel a little more at home in Dickinson.

Before the barbecue, however, we went to the girls' elementary school for an open house (5). All the teachers were in their rooms ready to meet the students, show them to their desks, and answer any questions that kids or parents might have about the start of school tomorrow. Hillary's second-grade teacher was also Abigail's, so we knew her already when we stopped by with Hillary's school supplies (and with the news that Hillary will miss the first day due to her surgery). Abigail's fourth-grade teacher was also Suzanna's, and Suzanna's fifth-grade teacher was also Susan's sister Cassie's many a year ago . . . so, again, no new faces to meet for either our kids or their teachers. Still it's exciting to get the notebooks and pencils into the desks, the name tags on top of the desks, the lockers assigned, the friends in the hallways hugged after weeks or months of not having seen them, etc. The girls are all very excited for school to start!

Hillary agrees with the "School is fun" motto pasted on her second-grade classroom door.

Abigail is all smiles in anticipation of her fourth-grade year!

This might be Suzanna's teacher's final year after a long career in the district, so Suzanna might have the distinction of being in her final class. Only spring will tell . . .