So the holiday didn’t come as such a surprise, and when my friend Kathryn strong-armed me into taking a day off to help her prepare a proper Thanksgiving dinner, I willingly acquiesced. Besides, Kathryn is a pretty good cook, and somehow I’ve made it through my entire “adult” life without having ever cooked a Thanksgiving dinner.

How did that happen? In retrospect, the first few years on my own the idea of prepping a large dinner wasn’t really a high priority. I do remember one Thanksgiving spent in n Austin, when our project at work was under pressure, and anyone who didn’t already have plans to leave town was tasked with working over the holiday. That year, I spent Thanksgiving Day at my desk, nursing a terrible cold! And not long after we moved to Beijing and began life as ex-pats.

While it’s traditionally an American holiday (especially since the Canadians all celebrate a month early), in the ex-pat community, Thanksgiving tends to take on a very international flavor. In Beijing, we managed to get all the ex-pats at work together for a Saturday Thanksgiving (no Thanksgiving Thursday/Black Friday holidays in the international community) that included Brits, Indians, Vietnamese, Chinese, Turks, and even a few actual Americans. Here in Norway, the ex-pat community is better integrated, so Thanksgiving tends to pass under the radar even more.

And so, fate and coincidence have intervened to keep me from ever needing to know how to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Until now.

Kathryn convinced me to take the day off with her, and together we made a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. It was mostly Kathryn cooking, and me hanging out, drinking wine, and assisting with a few hard-to-screw-up tasks like tearing up bread for stuffing and mixing up green bean casserole.

Lucas should be leaving work soon, and he and Dee will come to join us. Two pies are baked, the turkey is in the oven, and the rest is all lined up to finish before dinner. The only thing that would make dinner better is if we didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow. Some people get up early to hit the Black Friday sales, but we have to drag ourselves away from the turkey coma to show up at the office.

Adobe Photoshop Cook from Lait Noir on Vimeo.

I have decided that today is the day to start the new feature, and so I present some kind of licorice candy that just showed up next to the pick-a-mix bulk candy bins.  I’ve seen these things for sale at other shops, but I’ve never tried them.  I have, however, tried a smaller version of the red strawberry variety that sometimes finds its way into our candy mix at the cinema, and I admit that I kind of like it.

So today when Jørn expressed an interest in trying the multi-colored and ominously-named Tutti Frutti variety, I offered to give it a try.  Taking advantage of the 3 for Kr 25,- offer, I also selected the promising Jordbær (strawberry) and disturbing blue Blåbær (blueberry) varieties.  (The blue in the photo doesn’t really do justice to this candy, which is more of a 70s-denim-jeans blue.)

Our first sample was of the multi-colored mixed fruit flavor, which was as synthetic and unfortunate as we expected it to be.  There seems to be a general rule that the more unnatural a food’s color is, the worst it tends to taste.  This definitely held true in this case.

Our second taste was the blueberry rope, which was surprisingly even worse than the multi-colored version!  While the rainbow rope was at least sweet and vaguely fruity, the blueberry somehow tasted more like a sour vegetable doused in a faint synthetic blueberry flavoring.  In fact, I have rarely tasted a candy so foul.

Less surprisingly, the strawberry was the most tolerable of the three.  Though it wasn’t as good as the miniature variety you find in the cinema candy bins, I can at least take a bite of it without grimacing.  However, I think I definitely need a large class of delicious Oslo tap water to wash away the aftertaste of this failed experiment.

I definitely won’t be trying the dozen other flavors Rema 1000 has to offer!

The creators used regional foods to recreate the flags of the countries participating in the festival.  What a wonderful idea, and some of them were very well executed.  Here are a few of my favorites:

India is my favorite, and no, not because I’m biased!  It’s made of two of my favorite curries that work together perfectly to create the stripes of the flag.  And the little papadum is priceless!  This is so clever that I may have to copy the idea and serve it sometime!

I think Italy is also very well done.  Like India’s it uses iconic ingredients and looks mouth-watering!  If India’s flag didn’t have me headed out for curry tonight, I’d have to think about making pasta.

Simple, chic, and artistic.  All characteristics of Japanese food presentation.

I love the little sprig standing in for the tree on the Lebanese flag.

Check out the original article for more.  There are also a few that aren’t in the photos but appear in the video on the festival director’s blog.

Now I want to come up with something for Norway!

Ouch.  Compared to the cost of TsingTao back in Beijing: Double Ouch.

Just another friendly reminder from the Norwegian cost of living.

Since Purdue didn’t offer a course in Beer Appreciation, my knowledge of øl is a bit lacking, and I often find beer selection a little overwhelming.  Especially at places that give me over a hundred options.  (And especially since I’m a Libra.)  Last night was no exception, and after sending the waiter away once while I pored over the drinks menu.  I flipped to the less daunting page of draft beers (fat-øl in Norwegian, which always sounds funny to me).  I happened to make a comment about how odd it was that Budweiser was one of the few draft choices, and boy am I glad I did!

My beer-savvy friends explained to me that in Europe, Budweiser often refers to Budvar, a Czech beer brewed in the town formerly known as Budweiser.  The Budweiser.  Years ago, in an act of capitalist imperialism, the US Budweiser actually tried to buy out the Czech brewery in order to claim the trademark in Europe, but they failed.  The naming laws vary slightly, so in some European countries, the US Budweiser can’t use the name Budweiser and has to call itself Bud or Anheuser-Busch.  Similarly, the Czech beer is blocked from the name in the US, thanks to Budweiser’s long-standing trademark, but a few years ago Anheuser-Busch arranged for Budvar to be imported under the name Czechvar.

So all this time, I’d been mistakenly thinking that Lorry was wasting a tap on a non-descript American beer!  And thankfully my decision was made.  Of course I had to try the original Budweiser!

My opinion?  It definitely has a lot more flavor than the Budweiser I’m familiar with!  It’s good, and I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure it’s to my taste.  It has some of that “pine” taste that I’m not particularly fond of.  I’m sure someone with more beer knowledge can explain to me what that is.  But I certainly wouldn’t turn down another pint!

It’s not often that I see amusing English translations around here, since Norwegians seem to speak better English than I do!

However, I have been notice a few oddities around our canteen lately. Usually it’s just little things that are a bit off, and even when they’re fairly bizarre, you can still get the idea of what the dish is supposed to be. Today required a bit more effort:

Today’s Soup: Steinsoppsuppe, translated “edible boletus soup.”

First of all, the fact that anything in the canteen needs to be explicitly described as edible is highly amusing!

Second, not being a biology major or Latin student, I was a little stumped on boletus.  Thanks to my rudimentary grocery-store-survival Norwegian skills, I recognized sopp as mushroom.  That knowledge, combined with my olfactory senses, led me to conclude that it was indeed some kind of mushroom soup.

In this case my Norwegian was actually better than my English, because I couldn’t make any sense of “edible boletus soup” (thus underscoring my original statement that Norwegians speak better English than I do).  Of course, no one else in the canteen had any idea what boletus meant either!

I was pretty sure this was a literal or dictionary translation of steinsopp gone horribly wrong.  And sure enough, according to Merriam-Webster:
boletus -  any of a genus (Boletus) of boletes (as a porcini) some of which are poisonous and others edible

There you go.  Edible boletus soup.  As opposed to poisonous boletus soup.

(I made life easy and just had the 2 asagane.)

When we moved to China, we quickly learned that ice cream snacks and popsicles were the staple sweet snack among the locals.  A few times at Silk Market, we even heard the bargaining technique of “Just 10 kuai more?  Then I can buy an ice cream!”  And we often ended lunch by grabbing an ice lolly from the shop in our building before heading back up to the office.  No matter the season, it was always a time for ice cream, even if it was freezing cold out!

Here in Norway, the mentality is similar, and every corner shop has a freezer of ice cream bars.  The fruity popsicle variety is less popular than actual ice cream, and I’m not surprised given that the most popular ice cream brand Diplom-Is is a child of milk giant Tine.  Although ice cream bars are eaten year-round as in China, the variety does expand once the summer weather begins to creep in.  On warm sunny days, our afternoon trips to the store for soda and snacks often end with everyone finishing off ice cream bars as we walk back to the office.

I always enjoy trying all the different varieties, but the traditional ice cream sandwich is still my favorite.  Well…  it was my favorite.  The other day was one of the sunny pleasant early-summer days and I decided to grab an ice cream bar to eat on my way home from the supermarket.  Our local Meny stocks the Norwegian ice cream brand Hennig-Olsen as well as Diplom-Is, and I discovered a wonderful creation!  Like so many ice cream companies, Hennig-Olsen makes ice cream sandwiches, but they make a few different varieties.  I’d seen their strawberry variant before, but this was the first time I’d ever seen the greatest ice cream creation ever:  The pistachio ice cream sandwich!  Pistachio is one of my favorite ice cream flavors, so to have a combination of pistachio ice cream and ice cream sandwich?  I’m in heaven!

So as the weather warms up (the forecast is 28°C tomorrow), I’m looking forward to a great summer of grilling in the park, swimming in the fjord, and pistachio ice cream sandwiches!

I started laughing and nearly spit out a mouthful of soda!  Ironically, that was exactly against what the label instructed:  “Warning:  Drink Then Swallow.”

I have no idea how to explain this!  What does it even mean?  Why is it printed only in English on a Norwegian product label?  It seems to be a strictly Norwegian warning, since my Google search returned only a few results, all of which were in Norwegian, and none of which was particularly helpful.  Apparently a few Norwegians have noticed this particular warning as well, but they all just seem annoyed at the increasing number of common sense product warnings in general.

“Drink then Swallow?”  As opposed to what?!  Swallow first, then drink?  Drink then spit it out on the ground?

So far, the most popular theory is that one should not run around with a mouthful of Pepsi Max, since you might choke if you tripped.  First of all, who does that?  Second, if the warning is targeted at small children who might do that, what are the chances they read English?

Also, why is this warning not on any other soda bottle?  I’m honestly a little freaked out!  Maybe Pepsi Max has a higher acidity and is more likely to damage my teeth?  Who knows?!  I wish the stupid warning had a few more details, because honestly I’m now a bit wary about Pepsi Max and might just switch to Coke Zero or Coke Light.  Especially if I’m in the mood to run around with a mouthful of cola!

I know that meatballs and mashed potatoes probably don’t sound all that spectacular, but everyone in our office was in heaven.  New visitors to our office will probably think that our cafeteria is very lacking compared to the spreads they have in other places (the center south of Paris has a fantastic lunch selection).  But to those of us who’ve worked here for some time, the improvement is dramatic.

Since there are no restaurants around our office (not that we can afford to eat out in Norway anyway), we’re completely at the mercy of our office lunch options.  For the first year I was here, I didn’t really mind our daily routine of salad and cold cuts.  The height of our lunchtime excitement was waffles on Fridays or orange soup (usually you could determine the tastiness of a soup just by its color).  Variety meant opting for liver paste or smoked salmon on your sandwich one day instead of going for your usual roast beef or sliced turkey.  For an entire year I was satisfied with my daily lunch of a small dry salad (I don’t like Thousand Island dressing, the only choice) and half a sandwich.

Sometime during my second year, I finally hit the inevitable wall of culinary boredom.  It happens to everyone, and I was just glad my indifference held out as long as it did.  But eventually I reached the breaking point, longing for something different.

So last year the company leased out a lot of extra space on the first floor of our building, and part of it was allocated to building a new cafeteria with a full kitchen.  We had a party there yesterday afternoon, and today it was open for lunch.  Our hot food selection was meatballs and mashed potatoes with sauce.  There were blueberry smoothies.  There were over half a dozen salad dressings (including sundried tomato pesto).  And we have a milk machine to go along with our old juice machine and our shiny new corporate Nespresso machine.

But as happy as I am with all the new lunch choices, I’m glad that I had two years of the old canteen, so that I can better appreciate the new one.