Norse News and Notables

Our family enjoyed Norwegian language and cultural camp last summer (recall Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4?) so much that we decided to go again this summer!  Preparing for that has me in a Norwegian frame of mind, so I thought I'd share some recent Norse news and informational tidbits with you:

Catablogue: My Little Norway

My Little Norway: Discover the Kingdom of the North

Faithful readers of Pensive? No, Just Thinking know that my Scandinavian heritage is important to me--honoring it, learning more about it, promoting it, sharing it with our children, etc. It was an online search for Norwegian recipes, in fact, that brought me to My Little Norway, a blog kept by an Australian woman who married a Norwegian man and moved with him to Norway to raise their family. As she learns about Norway through daily life in the country, she writes about her perspective as an outsider becoming an insider. I find it fascinating!

Some highlights of her blog:

• She is required to learn the Norwegian language; and as she studies the language, she posts the lessons on the blog for us to study, too. She even enlists her husband's aid in turning the lessons into podcasts so that readers can also hear the language spoken by an authentic Norwegian.
• She writes about Norwegian food, which I appreciate because I have been endeavoring to cook Scandinavian foods weekly. She shares photos of food and describes when, how, and why a Norwegian might prepare and eat that dish a certain way.
• Speaking of photos, she posts a lot of them to show what life in Norway looks like: the beautiful scenery, wildlife, architecture, art, holidays, clothing, decor, etc.
• She is currently pregnant, so an unusual feature of her blog is the insight that she shares into the Norwegian medical system as it relates to prenatal care.

If you have Norwegian heritage yourself but are not a citizen of Norway, you'll likely enjoy seeing the country through her eyes and experiencing it vicariously through her. If for no other reason, check it out just for the beautiful photography.

Bonus blog: Sons of Norway Blog

I discovered this blog after we joined the Sons of Norway last fall. Each post offers tidbits of interest to people with Norwegian heritage: Norwegian cultural events happening around the U.S., current events and arts and politics in Norway, mini-lessons on Norwegian history and language and culture, etc. This blog has even directed me to TV shows, movies, and other Web sites with Norwegian themes. If you find My Little Norway interesting, be sure to check out Sons of Norway Blog, too.

(What is a catablogue?)

Committee Service, Memorial Service, and Alcohol Service

The Sons of Norway District IV convention (remember?) officially begins tomorrow, but I had to be here today because I agreed to serve on a committee for the Board of Directors, and the committees' work is done the day before the convention.  So, although this is just my second year of Sons of Norway membership and my first time at a district convention, I was put to work considering and responding to resolutions to be brought forth on the floor during the convention tomorrow and Saturday.  Trial by fire!

Sons of Norway District IV Convention, Day 1

After doing committee work yesterday and attending opening events last night (remember?), I was ready to begin serving as a lodge delegate during the convention's business sessions starting this morning.  Since this is my first Sons of Norway convention, I didn't know quite what to expect, so it was a day of "Oh, that's how they run this" moments for me.  For Susan (who, as an alternate, simply sit in the back of the room and observed), it was a day of working on her latest Hardanger project.  And for the girls, whom we signed up for the children's activities offered by convention organizers, it was a day of fun in Missoula.

Sons of Norway Has Sucked Us In!

1.5 years ago, our family attended a lutefisk supper served by the local lodge of the Sons of Norway, a fraternal organization dedicated to preserving and promoting Scandinavian heritage and culture.  On a whim, I signed us up for membership; and the very next summer, we attended our first Norwegian language and culture camp (Camp Trollfjorden) at Lake Metigoshe on the border of ND and MB.  Last fall, the lodge recruited Susan, Suzanna, and me to serve as officers.  Just a few days ago, we returned from our second summer at Camp Trollfjorden, after which I was asked to serve on its board of directors.  And today we drove to Missoula, MT because our lodge elected me as one of its delegates (and Susan as an alternate) to the Sons of Norway convention for District IV (which includes ND, MT, SK, and AB).  All this in just 1.5 years!!

Old-Time Lunch in the Afternoon

Faithful readers will recall our adventures at last month's lutefisk supper and the surge of cultural pride afterward that led to my signing us all up for membership in the Sons of Norway. (The Mobergs now belong to the Hardanger Lodge of Dickinson.) Not long afterward I received a welcoming e-mail from the lodge's membership secretary inviting us to the next regular meeting, which was today at 2:00 P.M.

Susan and I had no idea what to expect. Would it be an intimidatingly huge group? an intimidatingly small group? Would we be looked at suspiciously? expected to do something? recruited to serve as officers or on committees? Still, it being a ND Scandinavian organization, I was relatively certain that there would be food served, so we screwed our courage to the sticking place, left the girls at home, and attended the meeting.

It was held at the Elks Lodge, the parking lot of which was . . . let us say "not full" when we arrived just a few minutes before 2:00 P.M. We walked in with an elderly gentleman who said, "You must be Norwegians." Ah, a fellow Son of Norway! We followed him in and did what he did, signing in at a table near the entrance to the room where the meeting was held. We were greeted at the door by the membership secretary, who was sincerely delighted to see us there. It was a happy surprise for her to have been notified by "the office in Minneapolis" that we had signed up on-line for membership; they don't get many new members who haven't been coaxed and cajoled by a current member into joining during a membership drive.

She was also looking forward to meeting us, however, because she recognized our last name. She is from Columbus, ND, a town about 30 miles from where I grew up, so she knows my relatives and, in fact, once played accordion with my dad at some event, which she said was "a real honor" for her (and a nice compliment to my dad, who is well known in northwestern ND for his accordion playing skills). Later when she introduced us during the meeting, she mentioned our connection via Dad and told the group about our having become members after the lutefisk supper. The other Sons of Norway "Awww"ed approvingly at the thought of our inculcating our daughters in the ways of lutefisk.

There were about two dozen people in attendance, only one of which (besides Susan and me) looked young enough not to have grandchildren yet. But they were a welcoming bunch. Almost everybody there knew Susan's grandparents or parents, and several already knew us because of being members, too, of our church. One woman used to live in Tioga, where I attended school while growing up, so she knew my parents and said that she still reads about me from time to time in the Tioga Tribune (which runs columns telling the goings-on in the community, such as who was home for the weekend visiting whom--"Kevin and Susan and girls were out to the farm this past weekend to help celebrate the birthday of . . .").

The business meeting started with the pledge of allegiance followed by the singing of the national anthems of Canada, Norway, and the United States of America. Then there were minutes to read, old business to review, a treasurer's report to hear, new business to discuss, and a report to hear of a recent Sons of Norway conference in Grand Forks. When we voted on a motion, we didn't say "aye" or "nay"; instead we were supposed to indicate our assent by using a hand signal that has meaning to the lodge but that is a mystery to me. (The president afterward promised to explain it, saying that the symbolism in it is significant. I'll reserve judgment.)

This was all followed by "lunch" at 3:00 P.M. Where I'm from, "lunch" means a light snack served between meals (the main three meals being breakfast in the morning, dinner at noon, and supper in the evening). City folk, however, often call dinner "lunch," call supper "dinner," and don't eat anything at all that they would call "supper." This can result in confusion. Once when I was a child and our out-of-state relatives came for a visit, my mom invited them over for dinner, but they didn't show up until suppertime; they thought they were right on time, but we had long since finished the meal and cleaned up. There's a lesson in that for you, Dear Reader: Not using the correct term for your meal can leave you hungry.

Back to lunch: Morning lunch consists of a cookie or bar and a cup of coffee; afternoon lunch involves baked goods but might also include a sandwich or some potato salad left over from dinner (the noon meal, that is). And where I'm from, if company comes in the evening, there will be lunch served again at night, perhaps around 9:00 or 9:30 P.M., and it will include sandwiches, salads, potato chips, pickles, cake and sweets, Kool-Aid, and coffee. I love lunch in all its forms.

And apparently being Scandinavian is the tie that binds lunch-eaters, no matter what part of the state they're in and no matter their status as farmers or city slickers. Today's lunch included a tray of black olives, pickled okra, and raw carrots, cauliflower, and radishes; ham sandwiches with lettuce and Miracle Whip, some on white buns and some on wheat; an assortment of cookies; pitchers of water; and a large dispenser of coffee. Business being done, it was time to sit down in the middle of the afternoon with a plate full of food over which to visit. Just like my childhood.

We made arrangements to get Sons of Norway memberships for the girls, too, and official name badges for all five of us. I also bought from the president/fundraiser two jars of lingonberry jam, which we plan to sample tonight over vanilla ice cream. We had come a bit nervous, not knowing just what to expect, but we left feeling assured that this is a good group of people in an organization with lots to offer in terms of staying connected to our heritage. We also couldn't help but notice everyone's palpable excitement at having such young members (and that's not just our daughters--they consider Susan and me to be "young"!) join the fold. I wonder how long until that novelty wears off and we're expected to start doing something to earn our keep!

Sons of Norway District IV Convention, Day 2 . . . and Hillary's Birthday!

It was a big day today: the convention (and my work as a delegate, a committee member, and an election teller) came to a close; our daughters enjoyed another full day of adventures without their parents in Missoula; and Hillary celebrated her ninth birthday with gifts in the morning and a painful earache in the evening.

Sweet 16, Part III: Ethnic Festival

(If you have not already read "Sweet 16, Part I: Beautiful Music" and "Sweet 16, Part II: Enchanted Highway," please do so before reading this post.)

I had told Susan awhile ago that I would make her supper for our anniversary (last Friday)--but then the handbell concert at church got added to our calendar, and I knew we wouldn't be able to enjoy a leisurely meal at home beforehand. Therefore, I decided to prepare that anniversary supper for us the next night instead.

I usually prepare a Scandinavian-themed meal for supper each Saturday, but I felt free to make something non-Nordic this past weekend since we spent most of our day eating Northern European foods at the Northern Plains Ethnic Festival held at the Prairie Outpost Park in Dickinson. This was our first year attending that event. The local Sons of Norway lodge participates each year and asked us, as new members, to help out in several ways:

(1) Would we bring baked goods for the lodge to sell at the Norwegian food booth? Yes, we would. You may recall that Susan borrowed sandbakkel tins from another lodge member so that Susan and Suzanna could bake those cookies last weekend. Susan brought five dozen sandbakkeler to be sold at the ethnic food booth manned by the Sons of Norway.

(2) Would we be flag bearers during the opening ceremony? Yes, we would. Flags from each of the countries represented at the festival are brought into the Prairie Outpost Park's church building and displayed at the front. We Mobergs brought in the flags of Norway (Susan), Denmark (Suzanna), Finland (Abigail), Iceland (Hillary), and Sweden (moi).

The opening ceremony was held in the park's church building. Next to the American flag are the flags of the Ukraine, Germany, and the Czech Republic. On the other side are the flags of the five Scandinavian countries, brought in by our family.

At the end of the day, we were asked--after having spent five hours outside in the wind--to return to the church to pose. Somebody plans to use photos of us for publicity for next year's event. I'm so glad we were all looking our best . . . aargh!

(3) Would we teach Norwegian folk dancing as part of the day's entertainment? Yes, we would. We learned a few dances at Norwegian camp in June and taught them to others at a family reunion in July, so we figured we could do it again. Our time slot was 1:00-1:30 P.M. with the first few minutes eaten up by the removal of equipment from the entertainers before us and the last few minutes taken away by the early start of the next event . . . which was fine by us! People there were more interested in watching than participating, but the folk dances that we know require groups of people to perform. Two little kids jumped up to join us, and we convinced two other Sons of Norway members to participate. They plus the girls and I (Susan stayed at the microphone to give instructions for each dance) made for an awfully small group, and I can't imagine how uninteresting that must have been to watch. But we survived.

Between the opening ceremony and the folk dancing, we had several hours to sample a little bit at each of the ethnic food booths and to look around the various buildings that comprise the Prairie Outpost Park. We have been to that park several times before but never when the individual buildings have been open. It would be well worth a return trip! Some of the buildings housed festival-related events while others were just open for the day for viewing, and we looked in all of them. Volunteers were stationed in several to tell us about the history behind the buildings and to explain the artifacts inside and the time period represented therein.

For example, the volunteer in the Northern Pacific Railroad depot retired from a career on the railroad, so he knew what every piece of equipment had been used for and shared several stories about operating trains in the mountains of Montana. While we stood outside the pioneer house, a man in a golf cart drove up to us and told us that it had been his grandfather's home! A minute later, three women who had been neighbors of that man's grandfather approached us and joined in the conversation. Those four plus the tour guide inside the house told us a great deal that we never would have learned just from reading the placard posted near the sidewalk.

Susan and the girls pose on the steps outside the pioneer house.

While wandering around, we saw many friends, neighbors, and colleagues with whom we chatted between stops inside the park's many buildings. The visiting and the history lessons were bonuses of the day, but our main priority was to try the food at each of the ethnic food booths! (We even purchased their Northern Plains Ethnic Cookbook.) Here are the gustatory highlights:

• Germans from Russia settled throughout southwest ND, and the group's food was served at the summer kitchen outside the stone house (which, by the way, housed humans at one end and horses at the other so that they all could share body heat . . . and, I'd imagine, odors!). We tried bratwürst (a tangy homemade sausage on a stick) and smutskuechle (a cinnamon-and-sugar-covered round of deep-fried dough).
• At the Česka radnice ["Czech town hall"] we ate knudlova polivka (thin homemade noodles in chicken broth), rohliky (a warm dinner roll), and kolače (basically a rohliky with a sweetened poppy seed filling).
• Scandinavian food was served at the stabbur ["storehouse"], and it included prepackaged delicacies as well as fløtekake (a white cake layered with fruit and whipped cream) by the slice and freshly made lefse (a soft flatbread made from potatoes) hot off the griddle. We didn't eat anything there, but we did buy two loaves of bread: Danish rugbrød ["rye bread"], a pumpernickel with caraway seeds; and Swedish limpa ["loaf"], a rye bread flavored with orange and anise. Oh, and one woman working there overheard Susan's telling someone else that she (Susan) has her mom's irons for making rosettes (thin cookies made by dipping decoratively shaped irons first in the batter and then into hot oil to deep-fry; the cookies are then sprinkled with sugar). The woman asked Susan if she has ever made rosettes (which Susan has not) and then offered to come to our house to help Susan whenever she's ready to try it for the first time. The woman gave us her name and told us where she lives so that we can find her in the phone book. How nice (and so typical of this region)!
• From the kitchen of the Heritage Pavilion, we bought Ukrainian varenyky/pyrohy (flour dumplings), which were available filled with potato, cottage cheese, or sauerkraut ["pickled cabbage"] and were served with sour cream for dipping. We tried all three kinds.
• I don't know why the Sons of Norway weren't sharing the Scandinavian booth, but they weren't. Instead they were set up in the general store and post office, where one could buy a sandbakkel or krumkake (both explained here) or a cup of søtsuppe ["sweet soup," a cold fruit soup] or some Hardanger lefse (soft flatbread made not from potatoes but from flour, flavored with cardamom and vanilla, and served with butter, cinnamon, and sugar). The Hardanger lefse had a different appearance from that which we had at Norwegian camp, so we tried some of that.

The Scandinavian flags were on display outdoors, too, near the entrance to the stabbur.

On our way back to the vehicle, I had the girls (left to right: Abigail, Suzanna, and Hillary) pose on the petrified wood display at the west side of the Prairie Outpost Park.

We returned home after the day's events ended around 2:00 P.M. Then I went shopping for groceries for our belated anniversary supper. The ladies did the laundry and other chores downstairs while I commandeered the kitchen to make pork Marsala with pasta and a side dish of sautéed vegetables.

I sliced a pork tenderloin into medallions that I flattened, breaded, and seared in olive oil. To the drippings I added butter, and I browned sliced portobello mushrooms, scallions, and garlic. I added Marsalla wine, vegetable stock, and crumbled bacon, thickening the sauce with flour. I tossed the pasta in the sauce and plated the pork atop the pasta, sprinkling the dish with chopped fresh parsley and grating a hunk of Parmesan cheese over everything.

I sautéed thin slices of zucchini, yellow squash, and carrot in olive oil and minced garlic. After just a couple minutes, I tossed in steamed peas and chopped fresh parsley for a simple, sweet, crunchy, delicious side dish. To complete the meal, Susan and I drank a tasty West Coast Riesling.

I have no photos of the dessert, but it was good, too. Left over from my birthday were a little bit of pound cake, some lemon pie filling, and half a lemon. In the fridge was a package of fresh blueberries. So I boiled the blueberries with the juice from the lemon, some white sugar, and some vanilla extract until the berries had released most of their juice and the sauce had begun to thicken. I refrigerated the sauce for a couple hours. When it was time to plate each dessert, I put a dollop of lemon custard on a slice of cake and drizzled blueberry sauce over it all. Easy and refreshing!

Saturday's supper concluded our two days of anniversary events. The busy weekend didn't slow down, though, until yesterday. After church Sunday morning, we ate brunch at the Elks Club. It was listed as part of the Northern Plains Ethnic Festival's weekend of events, but I can't tell what made it an "ethnic brunch" (as it was advertised). However, it was so-o-o-o delicious! They served a variety of pastries, warm caramel rolls, fresh fruit, English muffins, pancakes, French toast, hashbrowns, American fries, sausage, ham, scrambled eggs, and the tastiest egg bake I have had at a restaurant.

When we returned home, we got Susan and the girls packed into the vehicle, and I sent them on their way. They are spending this week at Detroit Lakes, MN with Susan's sister Cassie, her husband Nick, and their new baby Davis, who have flown up from their SC home to stay with Nick's family at Detroit Lakes. I remained here for work this week, but I'll join them all in Fargo this weekend for a family wedding at which I'll get to meet Davis myself. It has been awfully quiet around the house with everybody gone--quite an abrupt change after such an eventful week (my birthday, Abigail's birthday, our anniversary, and all the related activities)!

Turkey with Norwegians

We attended our second Sons of Norway meeting this afternoon, and it doubled as the lodge's Thanksgiving meal. It was only the second meeting that we have attended (or been members for--remember?), so we didn't know quite what to expect. Neither did our daughters, who attended the meeting with us. The first part of the event was similar to last month's regular meeting: an agenda, parliamentary procedure, reports, old and new business, etc. The girls enjoyed the singing of the national anthems (Canada, Norway, and the United States of America) that opened the meeting and then sat patiently throughout the rest, but the dry content and the very leisurely pace did not give our daughters a thrilling first impression of being new Sons of Norway members.

However, the meeting was followed by an absolutely delicious meal: thick slices of juicy, savory turkey (perhaps the tastiest I have ever eaten), dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, side dishes and salads and crudités--the works. We were all seated at round tables and invited one table at a time to go through the buffet line, and for once at such an event we managed to sit at the table that was selected to go first! (I think having our kids at the table is what got us chosen. A roomful of grandparents and great-grandparents isn't going to make the youngsters sit right beside the food and wait!)

There was coffee and pumpkin pie for dessert, and as we finished our meals, some members went to the stage area to sing and play music for us on the accordion, violin, and guitar. There was one other child (well, a junior high school-aged student) in attendance, and her mom invited Susan and the girls over to their table to see the Norwegian knitting that the daughter was learning (the mom is the lodge member in charge of programming for children and was thrilled to learn that we, with our children, had joined). I enjoyed visiting with an in-their-seventies couple seated at our table and kept conversing with the wife even after the husband left us to go play accordion with the other musicians.

The December meeting will double as the lodge's Christmas meal, and the children's programmer, knowing that we'll be there, plans to have Norwegian Christmas craft projects available for the girls to work on with her daughter. We're looking forward to another delicious meal. It would be nice, too, if some Norwegian foods were included. Today's meal was fantastic, but it was prepared by the kitchen staff at the Elk's Lodge (where the Sons of Norway meetings are held)--no Norwegian foods in sight. I wonder if members will supplement the meal by bringing homemade Norwegian Christmas baking . . . or if, in the future, the lodge ever sponsors potluck meals to which members bring Norwegian dishes to eat. I mean, the Norwegian music and cultural events and craft projects and so on are great, but isn't Scandinavian food really the main point of joining this organization? (Ha!)

Norwegian Camp, Day 1

Our whole family is at summer camp!

As relatively new members of the Sons of Norway, our family has spent the past many months getting to know the organization by participating in our local lodge's activities: lutefisk supper, monthly meetings, Syttende Mai celebration, and so forth. When we found out that the Sons of Norway sponsors summertime Norwegian language and cultural camps, we did some research to find out where the nearest camp is, thinking that we might send the girls. We found two about the same distance from Dickinson: outside Red Lodge, MT and outside Bottineau, ND on Lake Metigoshe. We brought up the topic at a monthly meeting, hoping to find out if other members knew about either camp and could recommend one or the other.

Well, it turns out that our lodge has sent children to Camp Trollfjorden ["the troll inlet"] at Lake Metigoshe in the past and even pays kids' camp fees! Furthermore, we found out that Sons of Norway camps are for people of all ages: littluns, teens, parents, grandparents--whoever wants to learn more about Norwegian culture. So, of course, we signed up to go together as a family.


View Larger Map

Because we had a bit of a drive ahead of us, we left early enough this morning to allow time for a stop in Minot for a restroom break, more fuel for the vehicle, and dinner (at the Captain's Cove, a ripoff of Long John Silver's). Just a couple hours later, we found the Metigoshe Ministries Lakeside Christian Center and checked in for camp.

Velkommen til Trollfjorden ["Welcome to Trollfjorden"] plus many little Norwegian flags placed strategically around the grounds greeted us when we arrived.

We were asked to select, from lists that they provided, Norwegian names for ourselves to use for the weekend. Then each of us told that Norwegian name to a man seated at another table, and he used a wood-burning tool to write the name on a thin disk cut from the trunk of a birch tree. He tied a string through pre-cut holes in the bark-fringed disk, added a laminated card containing the lyrics to the Norwegian national anthem, and voilà: a rustic name tag to be hung from around the neck. Here are our names for the weekend:

• Kevin = Karsten
• Susan = Hilde
• Suzanna = Signe
• Abigail = Sonja
• Hillary = Kaia

A woman showed us to our rooms, and then we hauled in our stuff from the vehicle. The girls are in the farthest-away-from-us wing with all the other girls here at camp. Signe og Sonja are roommates, and Kaia is in the room next to them with a roommate with whom she became fast friends within seconds of meeting her. There are bunkbeds in each small bedroom, and their rooms are on a floor above a game room with a kitchenette and restrooms with showers.

At the other end of the retreat center, the adult females are sharing a couple bedrooms separated from the adult males' bedroom by a room reserved for the boys here at camp this weekend (yes, there are more girls than boys). So Hilde and I don't get to share a room, but we're sleeping just across the hall from one another. There's nothing fancy about our sleeping rooms or the built-in bunk beds (we'll sleep in our sleeping bags atop the plastic mattresses); but there are modern restrooms with showers just outside our bedrooms, so we're definitely not "roughing it."

We took a tour of the grounds (complete with posing and photograph-taking) before joining the large group for kveldsmat ["supper"] in the spisestue ["dining room"]. Tonight's delicious meal included lapskaus ["stew," this one containing ham, summersausage, potatoes, carrots, and rutabaga], salat ["salad," with not only mixed salad greens but also peas, yellow peppers, fresh cauliflower, and other vegetable delights], boller ["buns"], flatbrød ["flatbread"], lefse [a soft potato flatbread], smør ["butter"], melk ["milk"], lemonade ["lemonade"], kaffe ["coffee"], and sitron kake ["lemon cake"].

Together we sang this table prayer before the meal ["O You, who feeds the little bird, bless our food, O God"].

And we sang this one after the meal ["For health, happiness, daily bread, we thank You, O God"].

Before each meal, the names of two adults and two children will be drawn for KP duty after the meal (and another adult and child to clean tables and vaccuum the spisestue). Guess who got KP duty after kveldsmat? Kaia! Yep, there was little Kaia in the kjøkken ["kitchen"] with the industrial dishwasher pushing out stacks of steaming-hot plates and flatware toward her! She was game to help out however she was told to, but I think they assigned her light tasks and kept her away from the dishwasher (whew!).

Kaia is in the kjøkken ready for KP duty!

Kveldsmat was followed by an introduction of the camp staff and an overview of the camp's schedule, activities, and procedures. Everybody will be taking Norwegian language classes the next couple days, so we signed up for the level of class that we felt reflected our abilities (all five of us are in the "beginner" class). We'll all be learning a craft, too, and there were several options from which to choose. To help us out, they gave us a tour of each craft so that we could see what would be involved in learning it before we made our decisions. Kaia and Sonja both signed up for "small crafts" (a hodge-podge of drawing and painting; because they're both younger than 10, their options were limited); Signe and Hilde both signed up for strikke ["knitting"]; and I signed up for karveskurd ["chip carving"].

Afterward we gathered outside for the nightly lowering of the Norwegian flag and sang Aftensolen ["The Evening Sun"] . . . which you can listen to if you click on "Segment 3" of this A Prairie Home Companion program. Then we gathered inside where we learned several Norwegian folk dances and danced off our little Norwegian-American rumper ["butts"] until bedtime, children and adults alike! Camp Trollfjorden is veldig moro ["very fun"] so far!

Can you spot Signe in the yellow pants and Hilde in the purple striped shirt, both with partners near the camera? This particular dance required regular changes of partners; at certain points (synchronized with the music), the partners inside the circle move backward to join whoever's on the outside of the circle behind them.

No Cooking for Us Today!

Immediately after church this morning, we zipped out to the vehicle and jetted off to Medora, braving the ridonculously strong winds while maintaining a brisk pace because we had to get the girls to the Medora Community Center on time for them to sing. Badlands Ministries, which runs the summer Bible camps that our girls attend (remember?) at its site on the Little Missouri River south of Medora, holds an annual fundraiser dinner and auction each fall preceded by a community church service. The camp director asked the children's choir from our church to sing at this year's service, so we had to get the girls (and a couple other kids whom we gave a ride) there straightaway after Sunday school.

There were a few choir members who didn't make it, but the small group did a fine job. The music overall was terrific. The pianist played every hymn at an appropriately vibrant tempo (not the funereal dirge-like tempo preferred by so many church organists); and for her prelude and postlude, she played "old time" hymns and religious songs from memory, rolling her nimble fingers up and down the keyboard in dramatic glissandi and arpeggios that made me think she would be an ideal addition to an office party, stationed at an upright piano in the corner with a brandy snifter on top stuffed with greenbacks from appreciative partygoers.

Can you spot the Mobergs? (Hint: They're blondes.)

After church we got in line for the dinner that followed, admiring the Community Center's facilities as we waited (and thinking more and more that Medora might just make for an idea site for a family reunion the next time that it's our branch's turn to host--family, whaddya think?). We entered the de Mores Hall to enjoy chicken made by the men of First Lutheran Church in Beach. It was served with potato salad, cole slaw, baked beans, buns, and ice cream cups for dessert. We were greasy-fingered and -faced little piggies, but it was a delicious meal. We didn't stay for the fundraising auction that followed, though, because we had to get back to Dickinson for our next meal--I mean, event.

Our Sons of Norway lodge served its annual lutefisk ["lye fish"] supper this afternoon/evening at the Elks Lodge in Dickinson. Faithful readers will recall that our attending last year's lutefisk supper is what prompted me to sign our family up for membership in the Sons of Norway (remember?). So this marks one year of membership for the Mobergs! I don't know how we got out of having to do any duties at this year's supper (e.g., serving, cleaning, refilling beverages), but we did.

However, Susan and the girls did volunteer to be part of the cultural skills demonstrations done at the membership booth throughout the event (so that attendees could see some of the cultural skills taught by the lodge and perhaps be enticed to sign up for membership themselves). At Norwegian camp this past summer (remember?), Susan and Suzanna learned to knit, and they have attended weekly cultural skills meetings ever since at which they learn new knitting skills progressively from a mentor (one of our lodge members who is truly multi-talented). Hillary and Abigail have attended those meetings intermittently, so they, too, know the basics of knitting.

Susan, however, has achieved special recognition for her knitting abilities. The Sons of Norway has a Cultural Skills Program with guidelines for how to demonstrate competency in several areas of Norwegian culture (e.g., cooking, needlework, woodwork, music), and Susan earned a pin for showing that she can do the knitting skills required for Level 1 of the Hand Knitting category (remember the afghan that she knitted for our nephew Davis?).

The round metal pin (made to look as though it has been rosemaled) is the indicator of participation in the Cultural Skills Program. Each cultural area has its own bar, and you see that Susan has one now for "Knitting." Under that is a bar indicating the level of achievement for that cultural skill, so under "Knitting" is a bar with one white line for Level 1. When she reaches Level 2, she will get another bar that has two white lines on it. Should she try another cultural area, she will get a bar with the name of that cultural skill on it and start hanging level bars underneath it; but they will all hang from this one round metal pin, forming perhaps a rather lengthy column of metal hanging from Susan's chest someday!

So the Moberg ladies spent some time at the membership booth, their knitting needles click-clacking away while patrons came in to eat lutefisk. When their time at the booth was up, we went in to eat. Before last year's supper, the girls had never eaten lutefisk, and Susan and I took perverse delight in keeping them in the dark and letting them experience "eating lutefisk" for themselves without any preconceptions to color their reactions. It was priceless (remember?). However, there can be only one "first time" with lutefisk, and the girls went in today knowing full well what they were in for.

They were willing to fulfill their ethnic duty to take some lutefisk along with the other items being served, but they were not about to repeat last year's mistake of assuming that lutefisk was real fish and, thus, leaving it for last to "enjoy" after all the potatoes and meatballs were already gone from their plates. This year they screwed their courage to the sticking place and faced the lutefisk head-on right away, pushing it down into their cups of melted butter to soak while they buttered their lefse. After a few minutes of marination, out came the lutefisk and into their mouths and down their hatches, and they were done and ready to start the real meal of cooked vegetables, boiled potatoes, meatballs and gravy, lefse, pickles and crudités, and riskrem ["rice cream"].

Cooked peas and carrots, boiled potatoes, meatballs in gravy, and . . . lutefisk!!

You know, it doesn't really look all that gross here, does it? Until you have to dig into that heap of gelatinous blobs and try to get some portion to stop wobbling long enough to stay on the spoon and then transport it precariously to your plate and find a spot to set it and watch it start to decompose and ooze into the nooks and crannies of your other food items, spreading like goo instead of sitting where you put it as a real chunk of fish ought to. That's when you know that something just ain't right about lutefisk.

Guess what Suzanna has stuffed into her cheeks?!

Their riskrem looks pretty good, but it really wasn't. We have had good riskrem (remember?), and this did not compare. The rice was undercooked, and the cream did not seem real. It was a nice thought, though. And the lefse was truly delicious (made just two days earlier by members of our lodge)!!

It was a busy day, but it was busy with fun activities. And we had two meals that others cooked for us, so we felt very pampered!

Foster Grandmother with Nordic Generosity

We attended a Sons of Norway meeting this afternoon followed by our lodge's Christmas supper at the Elks Lodge. I've probably written before about how excited the lodge members were when we joined a year ago, bringing in not only three children but also two adults young enough to be the children ourselves of any of the other members there. They : us :: sharks : chum. New blood! New ideas! And if we joined, maybe other young families would join and keep the lodge going.

We have worked on recruitment of some of our friends-with-young-children, and they have expressed interest. Meanwhile, the lodge has worked on us, making me the vice president, Susan the newsletter editor and youth director, and Suzanna the musician (remember?). And we have enjoyed getting to know the lodge members and taking advantage of some of the benefits of Sons of Norway membership, including attending Norwegian camp last summer and receiving the terrific Viking magazine.

One of the members of our lodge is Monica, a woman in her late 60s/early 70s whom our daughters first met last year. Susan's aunt Kathy runs a business allowing people to hire her to help the elderly or infirm with their daily living tasks. Monica's mobility is reduced, so she hires Kathy to get her around town for various events. One time when Kathy was babysitting our daughters, she took them with her to run an errand for Monica, and that was the start of a great relationship between the girls and Monica, a "foster grandmother" of sorts to them. Monica even has Kathy take her to the girls' school music programs.

Well, Monica did something very generous at tonight's Sons of Norway lodge meeting. The current officers had been planning to buy a keyboard for the lodge musician to use at our meetings (there is no piano in our meeting room at the Elks Lodge). Monica knew that and knows, too, that Suzanna will be taking over as the musician starting next month or February (I can't remember which). She also remembers fondly when Kathy took the girls to visit Monica's dying husband in the hospital, and they got on so well with him, too. When a motion was made tonight to allocate a sum of money for the purchase of a new keyboard, Monica offered to pay for the keyboard herself and donate it to the lodge in memory of her husband. The president was so moved that he couldn't speak for a moment, and there were many tears all around, especially since long-time lodge members knew Monica's husband as a lodge member himself for years.

Isn't that a generous thing for Monica to have done? She's a terrific lady, so sincerely nice and perpetually pleasant. She'll be at Suzanna's school music concert tomorrow night and the girls' Sunday school Christmas program next Sunday evening, too. And she has offered to have the girls over any time that we need someone to watch them. She is even planning to host them for a night of pizza and homemade fudge! (Remember when the girls went Christmas caroling at Monica's apartment last year?) We're blessed to have her in our lives.

We Do Solemnly Swear

To review:

1. We joined the local lodge of the Sons of Norway in 2008 (remember?).


2. As a family, we attended a Sons of Norway language and cultural camp last summer (remember?). There, Susan and Suzanna learned the basics of a new-to-them craft: knitting.


3. Afterwards they both started attending weekly cultural skills nights here in Dickinson hosted by our local lodge, meeting with other knitters, learning new stitches, getting ideas for new projects, etc.


4. Eventually Susan met the requirements for earning a Level 1 pin in the category of Hand Knitting in the Sons of Norway's Cultural Skills Program, and she was awarded that pin at one of our monthly lodge meetings last fall (remember?).

Well, there is a Youth Cultural Skills Program, too, and Suzanna completed the Hand Knitting unit for that, earning herself a recognition pin, too. That was awarded to her at our local lodge meeting today. Congratulations, Suzanna! Here's the proud Norske knitter and her pin:

A part of today's meeting was the installation of lodge officers for the year, so there was a little ceremony "transferring power" to us new officers. We had to pledge to uphold the constitution or its by-laws or some such thing and to carry out our duties with honor or some other virtue--I'm not really sure. But I solemnly swore to do so. I'm the vice president now; Susan is both the youth director and the newsletter editor; and Suzanna is the musician. A lodge member donated money for a keyboard to be purchased for use by the musician at lodge activities (remember?), so a couple members did some shopping and got one on loan from a music store to try out before deciding whether to purchase it. That keyboard is now at our house for Suzanna to practice on.

The newsletter archives are at our house now, too, in the form of a ginormous plastic tub full of papers. That will make for some entertaining reading for Susan, I'm sure, as she prepares to assemble her first lodge newsletter for next month. I have already suggested a new column: "Kevin's Kjøkken" [kjøkken = "kitchen"], in which I would share recipes from my weekly exploration of Scandinavian cuisine. Maybe she has too many ideas of her own to fit mine into the newsletter . . . we'll see.

Bonus: After the meeting ended, we gave a ride home to our friend Monica, the girls' "foster grandmother" (also, incidently, the keyboard-donating lodge member mentioned above), who invited us in for soda, treats, and visiting. She sent us home each with a juicy honeybell (a cross between a tangerine and a grapefruit--delicious but in season only in January) and all with an appointment to return in a couple weeks for supper. How great is that?

I'm a Superstar

As members of the Sons of Norway, we receive a monthly magazine called Viking, which we like a lot.  The June issue arrived in our mailbox today, and look what I discovered on the page dedicated to news about events from our particular district:

What's that?  You don't see anything particularly notable?  Well, let me zoom in for you:

Uff Da! A Lutefisk Supper!

(Don't "get" the title of this post? Read this and this.)

When I was growing up, it was a common occurrence for my parents to put our family in the car and drive us to lutefisk suppers. (Never heard of lutefisk? Read this for the facts and this for the humor [funny because it, too, is pretty darned factual!].) A lutefisk supper is an annual event held generally at a Lutheran church as a fundraiser, attracting die-hard Scandinavians who travel sometimes literally hundreds of miles and pay good money to fill the tables in a small church basement and ingest platters of air-dried, lye-soaked cod that has been boiled to a gelatinous translucence and drenched in melted butter.

Lutefisk is pretty flavorless, and the butter doesn't exactly add any zip or zing to the experience. In fact, it only heightens the snot-like texture of the fish that has been reduced to a rubbery, jiggly pudding from the combination of chemical destruction (the lye soak) and over-boiling (zealous Lutheran church cooks). In Norwegian-American cuisine, however, the extent of a cook's daring for spice is salt and pepper, so there isn't much one can do to "doctor up" lutefisk. It is what it is.

Still, faithful Lutherans and proud Norskes belly up to the table and slop it down at church supper after church supper, weekend after weekend each fall. I remember going to towns we otherwise never had the occasion to travel to and finding churches we had never been to otherwise in order to pay, get a number, and then sit in the pews upstairs until enough people had cleared out of the overstuffed basement to allow another batch of people downstairs for their meal. The standard procedure is to be seated on either side of a series of long tables scootched end to end and set with placemats and flatware, pots of coffee and pitchers of water, bowls of melted butter, and platters of lefse pre-buttered and accompanied by sugar bowls. (Never heard of lefse? Read this and this.)

At some suppers the food is served family-style; church workers emerge from the kitchen with serving bowls and platters and pass food around continuously, noting who is just arriving and who is about ready to leave. Other times one might have to go through the serving line at the counter between the kitchen and the dining area, dishing up one's own food. The saving grace of a lutefisk supper is that the "fish" is but one of many items served. A good lutefisk supper also has hearty meatballs and gravy on the menu, which means that children, Norske-by-marriage spouses, and sane Scandinavians have something to eat, too. That's in addition to mashed potatoes, corn, coleslaw, dill pickles, and any number of other side dishes to complete the meal.


It had been years since I had been to a lutefisk supper . . . until tonight. The local Sons of Norway lodge serves a lutefisk supper on the last Sunday of each September (it's a requisite of maintaining their charter, I think), and when I saw that announced recently, something Scandinavian stirred in my blond-haired, blue-eyed soul. I looked at my blond-haired, blue-eyed wife and daughters and announced, "To this supper we must go." And go we did . . . without telling our children anything about it in advance.

The supper began at 4:30 P.M., and we arrived not long after to find the dining area already full. The Elks Lodge was the site of this non-church-related event, and it was filled with diners of all denominations. After paying, we entered the dining room and immediately lowered the median age of those in attendance to a much younger 65 years old. We went to the serving line and dished up raw vegetables, black olives, coleslaw, cooked peas and carrots, boiled potatoes in melted herb butter, meatballs in gravy, lefse, and . . . lu-te-fisk! When the girls saw the opaque Jell-O-like blocks (with a see-through quality to them somewhere between that of a jellyfish and an X-ray) wobbling in their metal tray, they asked what it was. I lied, "It's just fish" and scooped some onto their plates. The unsuspecting girlies just continued on their way, and we found ourselves a table amidst the sea of bluehairs.

The lutefisk was every bit as delicious as I remembered, and I wisely alternated bites of it with samples of the other food on my plate. In no time the lutefisk was in my stomach, and what remained on my plate was the majority of every other food item to enjoy. Whew. The girls? They were not so lucky. Abigail and Suzanna, in particular, started with the non-lutefisk food and, enjoying it, continued to eat it, leaving them with mostly lutefisk and little of anything else left on the plate before I noticed what they were doing. "No!!" I screamed, but it was too late. They were faced with room-temperature-and-cooling lutefisk blocks sitting in hardening butter and no meatballs to wash it down.

Still, there is no sympathy to be shown when it comes to lutefisk. I told them to take a bite, and they tried, but it was a struggle even to coax the fish gelatin onto a fork or spoon. That was their first clue. Suspiciously, they looked at me over the tops of their glasses and said a hesitant "Da-a-a-ad?" I held firm and urged them onward. Each girl got some lutefisk into her mouth, and then the entertainment began (well, for Susan and me--not for them). There was the initial chewing followed by the suspended animation of the jaw muscles while the tongue tentatively poked at the cod pudding coating it. Then the taste buds were activated and, in concert with the nerve endings that register a food's texture, they sent a message to the brain to eliminate this potentially poisonous substance immediately.

Knowing better than to spit out "perfectly good food" in my presence, however, the girls instead froze and let their facial expressions do the talking. "Grimace" is an appropriate word for what I saw. They looked at me with eyes that seemed to say, "Dad, you cannot possibly understand what is happening inside my mouth right now. I don't mean to be rude, but something has gone horribly wrong in the preparation of this food. This is unlike any fish I have ever eaten--and I love fish. How do I get rid of this crap without making a scene?"

I hardened my heart and shot them a look that definitely said, "Look, for 15 or so years, I regularly forced that crap into my gullet in the name of honoring my heritage, and, by God, so can you!" Just to be clear that they understood the message, I told them outright that we don't eat lutefisk because it's good; we eat it because it's something that North Dakotan Norwegians do. Oh, sure, some people may try to boost their image in others' eyes and lie by saying that they actually like lutefisk, but nobody ever buys that. We all understand that to back down from the cultural dare that is lutefisk is to lose face in the eyes of your people and to have your commitment to your Scandinavian heritage called into question. We can be honest about the stink of boiling lutefisk and the gag-inducing texture of it in the mouth, but we can not refuse to eat it.


So eat it we did. Each bite for the girls was like another mile marker in a marathon; and each time that their lutefisk-stuffed chipmunk cheeks emptied again, I knew that they were one bite closer to claiming triumph. Klingon honor is to be found on the battlefield; Norske honor is to be found on a buttery dinner plate flaked with the rubbery detritus of a finished lutefisk supper. The reward tonight was a trip to the dessert table, featuring sandbakkels, rosettes, krumkake, sugar cookies, gingersnaps, almond cookies, and brownies. We were disappointed that somebody in the local Sons of Norway lodge is under the mistaken impression that a shaker of store-bought cinnamon-and-sugar blend is a suitable substitute for bowls of white and brown sugar as toppings for buttered lefse, but beneath that foreign cinnamon flavor, the lefse was tender and could have been truly delicious.

(In this community, however, cinnamon is a primary ingredient in homemade chicken noodle soup, too. Somewhere along the line, every spice except cinnamon must have been jostled out of some immigrants' covered wagons on the bumpy trails into the Badlands. How else to explain its inappropriate inclusion in a savory food like chicken broth or a bland food like buttered lefse with white sugar? It's a mystery.)

With any lutefisk supper, one of the most important parts is to see and be seen (to prove, I suppose, that you have actually stood up to the challenge and to be held in esteem by your equally brave and virtuous Scandinavian neighbors), and we saw and visited with several people whom we recognized. I also spent some time at the informational stand that the Sons of Norway lodge had set up near the entrance to provide details on what membership in the organization has to offer. The lutefisk experience activated something inside me, and when we got home, I signed us up. Yes, we're now Sons of Norway, too, with all the benefits to be derived from membership thereof.


Keep your eyes peeled, Faithful Reader. Next autumn you just may be reading about the Mobergs' working our shift in the kitchen for the annual lutefisk supper . . . and, afterwards, burning our clothes and washing the smell out of our hair with canned tomato juice.

So proud to be Scandinavian! Ya, you betcha!

We Decided to Czech It Out

This morning the girls had Sunday school at our church, and then Susan swiftly drove them to Medora so that they (and other children's choir members from our church) could sing for the church service there that precedes the annual fundraising dinner and auction for Badlands Ministries, which runs the summer Bible camp that the girls attend.  Then she zipped them back to Dickinson so that we could make it to our Sons of Norway lodge's monthly meeting, one of two interesting ethnic events from our day.

Recitals and Rhubarb

It was another busy weekend for the Mobergs. Saturday morning, the university held its commencement ceremony (for the largest graduating class in its history), so I was robed in my academic garb for that and spent some time afterward shaking hands with and hugging graduates. Then I had just enough time afterward to mow the lawn before the girls' dance recital in the afternoon.

It was held in an auditorium at the university but put on by the girls' dance studio, Academy of Dance. The program was called "Back to the '80s" [which was misspelled "80's," but who am I to judge?]. Suzanna and Abigail's Ballet IV class danced to the theme song from the movie Chariots of Fire, and their Tap IV class danced to the theme song from the TV series Rags to Riches.

Abigail is front and center, and Suzanna is to Abigail's left. This is their Ballet IV class.

Hillary's Ballet III class danced to "Menuet Célèbre" performed by the Zagreb Philharmonic Chamber Studio [although what that song has to do with the 1980s, I don't know], and her Tap III class danced to the theme song from the TV show Pound Puppies.

Here is Hillary dancing with her Ballet III class.

When we got home, I cleaned up the grill and the fire pit, and for supper we had grilled brats (well, turkey sausages, but we ate them covered with sauerkraut and brown mustard, so it was like bratwurst) on the veranda while a fire crackled in the fire pit on the ground behind us. Then we roasted marshmallows over the fire for dessert. Summer has begun!

This morning Suzanna and Abigail's choir sang for church, and Susan joined the adult choir. After dinner at home, we went driving in search of Vang Lutheran Church to join their local Sons of Norway lodge for a Syttende Mai celebration! Yes, the 17th of May ("Syttende Mai" in Norwegian) is Norway's Constitution Day (read this, this, and this), similar to our Independence Day on July 4th. Sons of Norway lodges around the world celebrate the holiday in recognition of our Norske heritage. The Vang Lodge of Dunn County invited the Hardanger Lodge of Dickinson to join them for a celebration today, and we were game. Their lodge meets at a Norwegian church out in the country, so the first step was to find it! We used these directions to drive just north of Manning and then east several miles on rather well maintained gravel roads, and we found the church on the top of a hill.

It was overcast and windy today. The sky made for a pretty backdrop for all our photos of the church (I'll spare you the entire collection), but it was chilly outside, and we nearly blew off the hilltop when we weren't inside the building or the vehicle! Cute detail: When we first arrived, Hillary opened the van door, stepped outside, closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and said, "Mmmmm, smells like Tioga." She meant my dad's farm between McGregor and Battleview (north of Tioga); she was recalling and appreciating the smell of fresh air out in the country. Atta girl!

As it turns out, members from our lodge far outnumbered members from the host lodge! We even held our business meeting, conducted by our lodge president, while their members quietly observed. Then it was time to dance around the maypole! Some Vang and Hardanger lodge members had built and decorated a maypole, which they set up in the back of the church because it was too windy outdoors. Our lodge president asked the girls to sing with him during the maypole dance, but they wanted to be dancers instead. They were the first three to volunteer . . . and then it was like pulling teeth to get adults to grab a ribbon from the maypole and join them! (Susan and I declined; she was taking photos, and I was videotaping.)

"Pretty-please won't some adults join us for the maypole dance?"

The dance was pretty much a disaster. People didn't "get" the instructions for how to weave around one another while dancing in order to make the ribbons wrap around the pole in a pretty pattern. In no time, the ribbons were tangled, people were out of order and going the wrong direction, and the maypole looked like someone had attacked it with Silly String. They unwrapped the maypole and tried the dance a second time with better results, but they weren't winning any maypole dancing contests, that's for sure. It was the thought that counted.

Pretty altar, huh?

The maypole itself was a carpet roll that the Vang Lodge president had spent hours and hours wrapping in green twine. She also decorated an umbrella with plastic flowers for the top. Our lodge president built the wooden base.

Here's the crew "dancing" around the maypole . . . rather like bumper cars driven by alcoholics. Notice the ribbons entangled in midair above the woman in white slacks. Yeah, just getting the ribbons to touch the maypole itself was a challenge.

The maypole dancers.

Afterward we regathered in the church basement for a potluck meal (at about 3:30 or 4:00 P.M.!). It was absolutely delicious, just like the potlucks that I was used to attending while growing up. There were several homemade salads (including a potato salad that tasted just like my mom's), baked chicken with a savory onion sauce over it, a crock pot of baked beans with huge chunks of bacon, and a great selection of desserts, including Norwegian waffle cookies, sandbakkels, and a rhubarb dessert with a lemon and whipped cream topping. The church has no running water, so we drank bottled water and coffee made from water that the ladies had hauled in. (When our daughters learned that the bathroom there was an outhouse, they all three suddenly needed to use the restroom. Suzanna came back and announced that she had used two pumps of hand sanitizer to clean the toilet seat before she sat down.)

They drew names throughout the afternoon for various door prizes. There were potted plants on the tables in pots decorated with Norwegian flags. A woman next to us who won one of those potted plants gave it to us since she lives in an apartment and had no place to plant it. The really big prize was a lawnmower that one Vang Lodge member bought and donated. He said, "Something just told me that I should do this, so I did." And aren't we glad he did because . . . I won it! When mowing the lawn yesterday, I thought to myself, "This mower is 13 years old; I wonder when it'll need to be replaced." And lo and behold, today I won a replacement!

How in the world was I supposed to get a lawnmower home from a rural church about 40 miles away when driving a minivan stuffed with children? I got the rear seat forward far enough to accommodate the dimensions of the lawnmower's base, and we folded down the handle so that it fit just fine in the back of the van. The gentleman had even filled it with oil and gasoline and started it before bringing it to the church; he wanted to make sure that it worked. Awesome!

Afterward we took a scenic route home, driving north to Dunn Center and then west from there past Lake Ilo to Killdeer and then south through Manning again to Dickinson. I had never been to Dunn Center, and it was so close; and Lake Ilo is the likely site for our lodge's midsummer picnic, so I wanted to know where it was. And we still had enough time to stop at home to clean up before heading to the next obligation: the girls' piano recital.

Here is the girls' piano teacher, Mrs. Vold, posing with the little pianists.

Here is Hillary performing "Firefly."

Here is Abigail performing "Pirate of the North Sea."

And here is Suzanna performing "Warrior Brave."

The girls each did a fine job, as did Mrs. Vold's other students. Afterwards we gathered in the fellowship hall of the church where the recital was held (the church where Mrs. Vold's husband is pastor) and had treats and punch and coffee. When we got home, everyone was quite ready for bed! Aren't weekends supposed to be relaxing?!

Sankthansaften at the Lake

Today was our Sons of Norway lodge's celebration of Sankthansaften or St. Hans Aften ["St. John's Eve"] or Jonsok ["John's Wake"], all ways to refer to the Scandinavian celebration of Midsummer's Eve.  The summer solstice is June 21, but Norwegians celebrate it on June 23 (and our lodge waited until today to take advantage of the weekend).  Like many holidays, Sankthansaften has pagan roots but became a Christian holiday that, by now, is mostly a secular event: an annual excuse for Norwegians to party.  They go to beaches or rivers to fish and play in the water, they barbecue pølser ["sausages" or hot dogs] and roast marshmallows and drink alcohol, and they light bonfires and enjoy the evening sun.

What Norwegian-American wouldn't want to add this to his/her calendar?!

The White Meal

"White on white" was the theme for this meal . . . yes, it tasted as exciting as it sounds.

That photo is a mere foretaste of the feast to come. But first: some words about the daughters.

They've been s' social this weekend! After swimming at the Community Center Thursday, the girls waited in the lobby for me to finish my shower and come out of the locker room. I found Suzanna seated next to Andrea, a friend with whom she wanted to spend the night. On the telephone later that night, though, Andrea reported that she had since learned from her parents about a planned weekend outing at the lake, so that put the kibosh on a sleepover. For Suzanna, at least.

On Friday Hillary's friend Lexi phoned to invite Hillary over to spend the night. Then Abigail's friend Cailie phoned to invite Abigail to spend the night. So Suzanna had a quiet Friday evening at home with her parents, but then on Saturday her friend Sheena phoned to invite Suzanna over to play in the afternoon. Suzanna rode her bike over there and, a short while later, Sheena's little brother Reese phoned to invite Hillary over to play with him. Sheena and Reese's dad picked up Hillary while Abigail spend a quiet Saturday afternoon at home with her parents, and then Hillary and Suzanna came home together (Hillary on foot, Suzanna on her bike).

Got all that?

Besides Sheena and Reese's dad, Susan did most of the hauling to and fro; but Suzanna and I did pick up Abigail from Cailie's yesterday, and then I took them both grocery shopping for last night's Scandinavian Saturday meal. It was Susan's turn in the rotation to be my cooking partner, and she agreed to my proposal: to cook an all-white meal.

That's what often comes to mind anyway when people think of Scandinavian cuisine: bland colors (mostly white, except for the browns of bread, coffee, and cooked meat and the faded-by-boiling colors of cooked vegetables) and a bland palate (although salt is usually paired with its spicy partner: ground black pepper!!). It suits the stereotype of the Nordic appearance: pale skin, light eyes, blond hair.

Now, just as there are brunettes and people of all skin colors in Northern Europe, there are also some fantastic flavors in Scandinavian food. But for last night's supper, I was inspired by a few recipes that seemed to perpetuate the stereotype, and Susan played along.

appetizer

røkesild ["red herring" or kippers]

Susan has been told that, as a wee tyke accompanying her parents to the grocery store, she used to request kippers as a snack (whereas most children might ask for a cookie or a candy bar). She doesn't remember that, but I thought we'd have kippers for an appetizer in honor of Susan's being my co-chef last night. Kippers are salted, cold-smoked herring that have been cleaned and canned. Susan removed them from their tin and served them on whole-wheat crackers. Tasty! (The brown tones don't strictly adhere to the white theme--but brown is about as exciting a food color as white, so we went with it.)

main course

blomkål med reker ["cauliflower with shrimp"]

torsk i fløtesaus ["cod in cream sauce"]

Susan cleaned and steamed the cauliflower while I cleaned and chopped the shrimp. Then I made the sauce, which consisted of such bold flavors as flour and butter, cream and vegetable stock, and salt and white pepper. This dish could have been even whiter had I boiled the pink out of the shrimp and used fish stock instead of vegetable stock (fish stock is not available in our grocery stores, and I wasn't about to make it from scratch--get real!). But I love that the recipe itself called for white pepper--wouldn't want diners to be shocked by the presence of black flecks in their creamed cauliflower!

The cod recipe called for the fish to be poached and then covered in what amounted to a Béchamel sauce. Susan microwaved the cod instead and then set to work on the sauce, which required lots of stirring until brought to a slow boil. The sauce ingredients even sound "white": butter, flour, oil, white wine, white onion, milk, white pepper, and salt. The non-white ingredients were nutmeg and "a very small dash of cayenne pepper" (I love the sense of caution that tempers the addition of such a daring ingredient!). The recipe suggested giving the sauce "extra zip" by adding chopped green onion or chives (both of them quite bold flavors, no?), so that explains the vibrant green floating atop the bowl of otherwise white cream sauce. The cod is in there, too . . . it's just submerged beneath an ocean of sauce. The recipe made approximately 37 times the amount of sauce necessary for the portion of fish that it was meant to accompany.

This photo will allow you to appreciate the sight of the grayish-white cod in its cream sauce, the white cauliflower in its pale sauce, and the brown kippers and crackers, all on a white plate, of course:

The only real stand-out flavor in the meal came from the smoky kippers. Everything else had flavors that were, shall we say, on the "subtle" side. The fish was good, and the wine and onions were distinct flavors in the sauce. The cauliflower was fine, and the shrimp tasted like shrimp. And it was all predominantly white, so let's call it a success.

dessert

sandbakkeler med honningost ["sandbakkels with honey cheese"]

Next Saturday, August 15, our family will participate as Sons of Norway members in the Northern Plains Heritage Festival (called the "Northern Plains Ethnic Festival" by the local newspaper--hmmm). Members of our local Sons of Norway lodge have been asked to bake and bring either sandbakkeler or krumkaker to be sold at a booth of Scandinavian treats. A krumkake ["curved cake"] is a thin cookie made in a hot specialty iron (that presses a delicate design into it) and then rolled up onto a dowel to cool into something that resembles a waffle cone. Recipes vary, but butter, white sugar, eggs, flour, cream, vanilla extract, salt, and cardamom are typical ingredients. Time-consuming but not difficult to make so long as you have the requisite krumkake iron, which we don't.

A sandbakkel ["sand tart"] is a thicker cookie pressed into a fluted tin to come out, once baked, as a star or diamond or any number of other shapes. Again, recipes vary, but it's essentially a buttery sugar cookie with almond flavoring (either almond extract or almond flour), although sometimes I've had sandbakkeler with cardamom in them. Again, time-consuming but not a difficult cookie to make so long as you have a set of sandbakkel tins, which we don't.

However, another member of our Sons of Norway lodge offered to lend Susan some of her own multiple sets of sandbakkel tins! So yesterday morning Susan and Suzanna baked about six dozen sandbakkeler--and they turned out just like my grandmothers' and my mom's used to. Susan set aside several to serve as last night's dessert.

A sandbakkel is not frosted or powdered with sugar or decorated with sprinkles or any such thing; and, although it is cup-shaped, it is not filled with anything, either. It's just served plain with black coffee (which, in many Scandinavian-American homes--and certainly in most Lutheran churches in this region--amounts to brown hot water with just a hint of coffee flavor). But I had to jazz things up while still retaining the whiteness of the overall meal. I made a filling by whipping together mascarpone, honey, vanilla extract, cream, and white sugar and added a dollop to each sandbakkel. I made coffee for Susan and me (using an appropriate amount of grounds--my coffee tastes like coffee, thank you very much) but whitened it by adding Irish cream to each cup.

Should we ever wish to repeat the "White Meal" theme for a future Scandinavian Saturday, I'm certain that we could find numerous other options from the cookbooks of my Norse ancestors (and the abundant resources of the Interwebs). But, as expected, last night's supper wasn't bursting with flavor--and we're a family who enjoys a flavorful meal. Still, it was an interesting chapter in our weekly ethnic food experiment. And next Saturday (as mentioned above): The ethnic/heritage festival! Stay tuned!