Typisk norsk mat- Typical Norwegian food!

         - Brunost: This translates to “brown cheese” in English. Brunost has a bit of an acquired flavor. It’s less like a cheese (although it is a cheese) and has a bit of a sweet taste. It is a hard cheese but has a different consistency than other cheeses. I’ve obviously done a really good job of describing it but guess you’ll just have to come to Norway and try it youself! It is generally eaten on bread plain or with jelly (really good with raspberry jelly!).

-          -Potatoes: Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes every night!! I mean really I think that if Norway were to have a potato shortage everybody would starve to death… However, boiled potatoes (that you skin at the table after they’re cooked) are the general choice but sometimes French fries or a different potato dish is prepared. They’re probably so popular because potatoes are easy to grow in the harsh cold here in Norway (not that I know anything about growing potatoes I just kind of assumed there).

-          -Bread: So. Much. Bread. Bread for breakfast, bread for lunch, bread for snacks. Basically they eat a lot of bread in Norway. Usually eaten with meat, jam/jelly, egg, leverpostei, and/or cheese. Sometimes a few slices of cucumber and/or red bell pepper are placed on top, too. I’ve been told it’s because it’s fast and easy to make for breakfast and to bring to school for lunch. The bread is usually eaten as an open-faced sandwich (one piece at a time) and people think it’s really weird that we eat peanut butter and jelly in the states.

-          -Food in tubes: An odd thing that I was not at all (and really I’m still not) accustomed to is food in tubes. They have kaviar, bacon and cheese (in a paste… in a tube…), ham and cheese, etc and it is eaten on bread (I guess if you don’t want to eat actual ham and cheese). I haven’t quite gotten the nerve to taste it (I know, I know gotta try everything) but I just have this strong feeling that food in a tube should solely be eaten by astronauts in space that have access to nothing but…

-          -Kebab: This is a dish commonly eaten when out to dinner. Not the same at the American “food on a stick” kebab but rather it’s a pita bread with some kind of meat (I prefer chicken but I think beef is more popular) in some kind of sauce with a garlic sauce over it. You can, however, opt to get a kebab plate instead where the meat is on top of some little pieces of pita bread and you get salad and French fries too (my personal favorite)!!!

-          -Pizza: Pizza (especially of the Grandiosa variety) is very popular here. Grandiosa is frozen pizza that young people in Norway seem to eat a lot of! It’s not too expensive (by Norway standards... pretty expensive by American standards) and easy to get. They have many kinds but I think the original one has ham on it (Norwegians also eat A LOT of ham) but you can get them with all kinds of meat on them. Here in Norway they always have lotsss of meat on their pizza... At least two or three kinds on each pizza. They also put sauces on their pizza when they go out (either a bernaise or garlic sauce generally) and the garlic sauce is actually quite tasty!

-          -Fiskepudding: Yes this actually means fish pudding in English and no you don’t eat a bowl full of chocolate pudding-textured, fish-flavored pudding. It comes in a block of a firmer “pudding” (think more like flan…except not really at all). Anyways, I would recommend that you don’t eat this before it is cooked because then it tastes disgusting and exactly how you would imagine a block of blended fish to taste like. However when you fry this stuff up in some butter it’s not half bad! If you ever find yourself in Norway I would recommend trying this.

-          -Lutefisk: I’m not sure if this has a translation to English but most of you have probably heard horror stories of that fish cured in lye in order to preserve it and then being brought back by water. This is that. Now I have to admit that I have not yet tried this yet but I will be this Saturday if all goes as planned! I would say about 95% of the people my age that I’ve asked don’t like lutefisk but most of the parent/grandparent generation does I believe. I have been told that it’s not the taste that makes it so horrible but rather its extremely gelatinous consistency. I’ll report back to you guys in the next blog post, though!!

-          -Vaffel: Translates to waffle (as I’m sure most of you could figure out through super critical thinking!!). These aren’t the super thick Belgium-esque waffles we eat in the states but rather thin soft waffles generally eaten with brunost, sugar, jam, or jam and sour cream. Filed under: Really good food.

-          -Risengrynsgrøt: Also don’t know what this translates to exactly but it’s something along the lines of gritty rice porridge (or something like that). The translation makes it sound gross but it’s actually really good! If made from scratch it’s kind of an all-day cooking deal. First you cook rice in some water and then you add way more milk than you think will actually cook into it. For a few hours it looks like it will just be rice in a bath of milk but it finally all cooks together and is essentially rice porridge (not gritty, though). You serve it in a bowl and make a little indentation in the middle in which you put butter. Once the butter melts into a pool of fatty melty goodness you use your spoon to drizzle it over the whole thing, put lots of sugar and cinnamon, and voila you have risengrynsgrøt! Because my host mom’s boyfriend here is a farmer we have this every Saturday when we stay with him. Which brings me to….

-          -Butter!!: Now this doesn’t mean we eat butter by the spoonful (although I have seen my little kid cousin here do that...) but butter is pretty much a staple in Norwegian food and cooking. You cook your meat in it, put it on bread and sandwiches, and pretty much add it to anything. The big difference from the states and here is that here you would eat a sandwich of butter, ham, and cheese! Sounds gross but is actually quite tasty. And last but not least...

-          -Tacos: Now these aren’t the tacos we eat at home in the states and are not (by any means) traditional tacos but they are, however, very tasty! I think that most people use the soft shells (my personal favorite) and you eat it with meat, sour cream, a little salsa (a lot for the American), lettuce, cucumber, red bell pepper, corn, and cheese. It sounds kind of odd but is actually very tasty. I know the AFS-ers from Mexico and such may disagree, though but these are definitely very Norwegian-esque tacos.

That’s just a bit of a look at some typical Norwegian food I’ve eaten/eat while here! There’s tons of stuff I didn’t mention (because I didn’t want a ten page paper about food AND because I don’t know how to spell half of it) but thought I’d just give you guys a little glimpse at day-to-day life here. I’m going to try to do a series of posts about typical day-to-day life here but since I’m not very good at keeping up with this blog you’ll have to wait for another day when the school internet goes out for an hour…

Until next time!

Rachael