I Drank What?

One of my favourite parts of traveling and seeing new parts of the world is seeing how people deal with common human functions like eating and procuring food.    Most of the time it is not only interesting and delicious, but I think it truly reveals the inner "character" of a nation or region.   Food is like a national costume for the inside but I think in a deeper and more meaningful way.    For example, anyone can don a kimono or a serape and sombrero, but to eat and enjoy sashimi  or jalapenos is another thing.

It is in the alien-ness of food stuffs do we find the edges and differences in our cultures so a trip to the grocery store or market where the locals shop is the most revealing.  Here you see what foods they consider important (staples), what meats they consider acceptable (proteins) and what their primary carbohydrate (starch) is.    In some countries the meat department alone is worth the price of admission, being a real life freakshow where you see things like whole birds (beaks and claws too), hooves, heads, entrails, every variety of mollusc, reptiles and amphibians, echinoderms, rodents, monkeys, and the most monstrous fish from the ocean depths.   What you might call inedible, rest assured someone in the world considers it a delicacy.

Immediately, probably the two most "shocking" meats here in Norway are reindeer and whale.    Gasp!   It's not like they are a staple of their diet here, but both are available in the meat department right alongside beef, pork, and chicken.   I guess it is more palatable if you just call it venison, and try not to think of Dasher, Donner or Blitzen (or Rudolph for that matter).   As for whale, I still reserve my judgement on it.  As an interested scientist, I find whales fascinating and wonderous and would not support unnecessary or opportunistic killing of whales (even for food) especially the endangered species.   But I generally feel the same way about any living creature (and not just the cute ones), and yet I don't feel a need to protest beef ranchers or oyster farmers.   I don't think it is evil for a wolf to hunt and kill an elk.   Animals including humans do what they have to do to sustain themselves in different ways around the world.   If you don't happen to like horsemeat, sheep testicles, beetle grubs, or monitor lizard, feel free to opt out.

When you first walk into a food market, the first thing that you notice that many of them are set up like a one-way maze.   The way that American stores put dairy or meat in the back so that you have to walk down the aisles to get to them, the Norwegians arrange their stores/shoppes like a single long circuit (much like Ikea is) so that there is one entrance, and then you must run the entire gauntlet of the shoppe to get to the exit and check out even if you are running in to get one item.  I suppose there is also a security benefit as one must get past the staffed check out point.

Shopping baskets and trolleys here are great!    The rigid hand baskets have a convenient fold out handle and wheels so that you do not have to lug the entire weight of the basket around the store.   The shopping carts (or trolleys) here are equipped with 4-way wheels so that they can maneuver deftly in any direction at any moment.  Oh, and they seem to have a good solution to the shopping cart theft thing (not that homelessness is a problem here) and simultaneously the leaving of shopping carts willy nilly around the parking lot, the shopping carts are all locked together, and in order to get one, you must put a 10 kroner coin (about fifty cents) into the lock itself to unlock it.   Once you are done shopping you can go get your 10 kroner back by locking it back up to the other carts.   It is an incentive to bring the cart back to the cart dispensary area or for someone to bring it back for you if you happen to be in a hurry (sure! I'll walk a cart back into the store for fifty cents).

Somewhere in every store there is a recycling station and a bottle deposit refund station.   It is bascially a hole in the wall with a sophisticated scanner that counts the number of empty beverage containers that you bring back.  I say sophisticated because it recognises and chastises you if you put the bottle in the wrong way.  It also recognizes non-deposit items and items from foreign regions!    After you are done there is a convenient station to wash and disinfect your hands.   I am talking about some wipe dispenser but a full running water sink with disinfectant soap and reels of cloth towels.

I have mentioned before that cheese and dairy are really big here, often with a special walk-in cold room filled with all the dairy and cheeses.   The cheese selection is outstanding.   Too many to count.  Meats and cheeses are sold by the gram of course.   Having very little practical experience in dealing with metric (like drug dealing) it took me a while to get a feel for what a gram or a kilo is, but generally one wants to purchase about 500 grams of meat or cheese for preparing a dinner meal for two.   If you order 100 kg of cheese, you'll get a wheel the size of a Hummer tire.

Barbecue or more technically "grilling" is very big here.   It seems to be a part of the national Norwegian self-image of being outdoorsy and sort of rustic.    Almost every home has a gas grill of somekind on the veranda and for those that don't there are convenient little foil charcoal sets available at the grocery stores.   This includes a little foil pan of quick lighting charcoal brickettes and a crude mesh screen suitable for grilling up a meal on the go.   These foil barbecue kits are seen all over the city parks and grassy lawns.   Ready-to-grill barbecue foods are readily available in the food stores, burgers, hot dogs, ribs, kebabs, chicken.  BTW, grilling tomatoes seems to be a thing here, at least from the advertising that I've seen.   Also, Norwegians seem to eschew beans as if it were infected with plague.   I slow cooked a whole pot of ranch-style barbecue beans for a recent family barbecue and no one touched a bite except me.   Beans (legumes) just do not appear in the Northern European diet.

Mayonaise and other condiment come in tubes, like toothpaste, which is very convenient for picnics.   Sauces are categorized by ethnicity mostly, and the world is well represented in Norwegian stores.  Thai, Mexican, Chinese, French, and, yes, American are well represented. Things like American barbecue sauce or American hamburger sauce.   The name of American cities are often used to market food products too... like Dallas ribs, or Chicago steaks... and New York sauce..... ???.  

The preferred local starch seems to be wheat (flour and bread), although there are lots of people who have embraced potatoes and rice too.  Bread seems to be the thing in Europe.   Big loaves of bread are delivered daily to all the stores, and consumers put the loaves into these mechanical slicers just before purchase.    Seems like a great system.  Most of the breads here are the wheaty, whole-grainy variety reminescent of the Middle Ages.  They are good and hearty.   I do miss many of those exotic sandwich breads available in California... ciabatta, asiago foccacia, dutch crunch, San Francisco sourdough.

When eating homemade sandwiches in Norway, be forewarned that they very thoughtfully place little pieces of waxed paper between their wet sandwich layers so that, for example, one's tomato does not soak the adjacent bread.   The only problem is when the Norwegian host does not inform the oblivious foreigner about the aforementioned paper and the oblivious foreigner consumes the paper, thinking that "this sandwich has an odd fibrous consistency... hmmm".     

I say this whenever I travel outside of California, but in general, the world is used to a very different standard of what is considered a "fresh" vegetable or fruit.    I will not complain.   I just realized that I have  been lucky all my life to have enjoyed such fresh, crispy, pristine produce in vast abundance while growing up in California.   They do seem to have all the basics though, mostly imported from places like South America.

The most outstanding food I've eaten here so far was this really lovely seafood soup at this old waterfront hotel in Brekstad, near the mouth of the fjord.   It was a cream and sherry based soup with leeks, bits of salmon, shrimp, and lobster.   If I understood the menu correctly, it had been served there since the 1920s.   It was easily the most delicious, delicate and complex repast that I have had the pleasure to enjoy here in Norway.   A solid 9 out of 10 on the Yummy Scale.

McDonald's and Burger King are here in town, and there is a TGI Friday's opening here soon also.   I have been enjoying the great sidewalk cafes here... very European... hehe.   My favourite here is called Dromedar and is located in an old historic department store building with a huge dome and cupola on the roof.   I have also visited the local "community" pub, which is run by a staff of volunteers, a group of University students in their spare time.   It is essentially the ground floor of a small home, jam packed with perhaps 80 to 100 people, plus live bands.   It is a place to hang out, have a drink, listen to some music and socialize, and though I am not a drinker, I must say, I had a splendid time.   Given the dangerous over-crowded condition, it is ironically called "The Fire House".