The Transplanted Baker

Butter

I know, I know. I'm all talk. I said I was back in the blogosphere and then I up and disappeared for another month. I hate to blame the kid, but he is mostly to blame. First strept throat, then his giant diaper butt sitting on and breaking the internet modem, thus not having the net for over a week. Talk about drama. But I've forgiven him and we're back now. Read on...

 

The theme of my November was rain. Well, rain and seasonal depression, really. Thank God November is over and advent in Scandinvia has begun. Thank God for the light therapy lamp that Santa has promised to bring. And thank God for butter. 

Dark as it may be, the entire month of December in Norway is dedicated to all things cozy. Candles, gløgg, slippers, warm blankets, a crackling fire, advent calendars for the kids, and lots of lots of baking. Baking of cookies. Baking of cakes. Baking of bread. Baking with butter. 

That is....until there becomes a butter shortage!!!

A combination of a poor summer for the dairy farms and the (scary!) rise in populartity of the low-carb diet has created a massive shortage of butter throughout much of the country. The local bakery might have to stop their usual production, since they only have 3- 1/2 kilo packages of butter left in their industrial fridges. There's even talk of importing butter from some of the EU countries (gasp! unheard of! will it have the same, sweet, sweet taste of butter from our beloved Norwegian dairy cows?) What kind of a Christmas will this be?!

Enter, my husband.

A man who is weak when it comes to remembering to buy flowers for the mother of his child, but who makes up for the fact with a gift of butter. Several kilos of pure and perfect butter. The gift of butter for a girl who lives on butter. What more could one want in the weeks leading up to Christmas?

What shall I make with all this butter, you ask? 

Lots, really. But sadly, not a whole lot of new recipes. Christmas is NOT the time to start breaking into the unknown. It is a time for the familiar and good. The cookies of childhood and breads of the season. For kakemenn and peparkaker. For boller and kringler and julekake and perhaps some rice pudding (must. share.recipe!)

 

I promised Lasse some kakemenn this weekend, so that's where we started. It put a little dent in my butter supply. Let's hope we won't have to look to Germany or Denmark before Christmas is over. 

Farsdag

Today was the Norwegian Father's Day. 

I don't think Norwegian wives and children go quite as far as their American counterparts when it comes to father's day. Bakeries advertized father's day marzipan cakes for sale (as if a dad would want any other kind), and clothing stores had semi-obnoxious sales campaigns on tv for a couple of days making sure that we pick up a pair of boxer briefs and socks for all the fathers in our lives (exactly what I want to buy my dad). But other than that, it was a basic November day. 

With a sunrise at 8:37 am, and a sunset at 4:03 (and we're loosing half an hour of daylight every following week until Christmas), it was a dark and gloomy November day. Good thing I had a cute pic of Lasse and his Bappa from a few months ago to fill in for the horribly dark and over-flashed photos of the two of them from today. 

Lasse and I made coffee and a batch of blueberry muffins using this recipe (both boys had 3!) while pappa slept in, then the day continued with some cartoons, Duplo-tower building, books about tractors and other things that same "brrooooooom!", and a walk down the road to visit our favorite horses (I think the friendly grey fjord has a bun in the oven!). Productivity was not the word of the day. I think coziness was. 

We forgot Pappa's card, so for the sake of embarassment, I'll write what we would have written in it to him here, instead:

Pappa- We love you a lot. You are the best pappa at many things, like; tucking, scratching us with your beard, making our favorite snacks, being patient, and showing that you care. Love, Lasse and Mamma

...and I'm back

Some of you have sent emails, wondering where I've been.

That's sweet, really it is. I hope you haven't been worried. To be honest, I haven't really been doing anything fun or groundbreaking. The blog's just been doing a bit of hibernating. Yes, hibernating. Which is really just as crucial to the life of a blogger, as it is to a grizzly cub or mamma black bear. 

Before writing this post, I did check up on all of you. I found out that I still have a good number of daily visits on this old site. This confirmed my hope that maybe it's not just my mom who's been waiting for the next TB post these past two months, after all. Let's hope so.

 

But if you have been feeling left out, I'm happy to fill you in here and now. Here’s what you’ve missed:

- a kid's first hair cut (in the bathtub, with a pair of scissors regularly used to trim pappa's beard, while he stayed preoccupied with his tug boat)

- a lot of coffee drinking (yea, like 5 cups a day- it's mandatory if you work in a Norwegian barnehage)

- a fever every-other-week (the standard during one's first year in barnehage)

- my going from "country blonde" (aka: dishwater with a couple of natural summer highlights) to "whoa, that lady's got funky white hair!" blonde. A girl needs a change once in a while, you feel me?

- there's been some baking going on too, be sure of that. Including a new cookie recipe that includes all of 5 ingredients, none of which are; all-purpose flour, sugar, eggs, butter, or vanilla extract!

- my first Norwegian (or anywhere, for that matter) radio interview (and presumably my last). As it turns out, I’m a celebrity in town since I’m from this far away land that celebrates a mysterious holiday every year on the last day of October. The Norwegian people just had to know how much candy a typical American kid collects in his pillow case and is it true that not just children dress up? Really, adults too?

- the end of fall on the west coast of Norway. Truly. A total of four leaves are left on all of the trees in town and the grocery stores are stocking Christmas everything (Christmas cookies, Christmas bread, Christmas sausage, Christmas yogurt, and Christmas beer).

 

So that’s the gist of it, friends. The hibernation is (hopefully) over, I’m gearing up for some holiday baking in the weeks to come, and if you play your cards right, I’ll share that new cookie recipe one of these days. 

Kisses from me until next time,

-SiRi

Our "Bounty"

And by "bounty", I mean- slim pickings.

I guess a half-assed attempt at growing vegetables yields a half-assed harvest. 

 

The stats:

- 4 lbs. potatoes (is that enough for a peck?)

- 4 cucumbers for making what just might be Norway's only jar of dill pickles

- 1 bunt of REALLY TINY carrots (that's what happens when you leave the country for a month and your husband mistakes your perfect row of carrots for weeds and takes the mower to them)

- a surpluss of lettuce that has rocketed into the sky

- more oregano, chives, and mint that one could ever need or wish for (I'm thinking dry it all?)

It could have been a better crop and it could have been worse. Better planning and more effort next year.

Late Summer Dusk

 

I keep trying to deny it, but the fact is, fall starts about a month and a half earlier in Norway than in Minnesota. Just because the calendar says August, doesn't mean you can wear shorts and grill out. Dew covers the ground in the morning, I don't think twice to grab a jacket on my way out the door, and you can pretty much guarentee that the ski season is just two months away. Yikes. 

Pics from our neighbor's rooftop. The same one I've been convetting ever since I laid eyes on it and all its wild flower and weedy glory. The amount of growth gives a pretty good reading of what month it is. Facinating, no?