Får i Kål Day

(This week's article is a rerun from a few years ago...)

September 25^th is national “Får i Kål” (“lamb in cabbage”) Day in Norway.  Får i Kål is considered their “national dish.”  A lot of people eat Får i Kål on September 25^th, and on Sundays, and maybe every time they have company.  The Norskies love that stuff.  It’s as Norsk as Norsk gets, so the Norwegian government felt like they needed to set aside a special day every year to acknowledge it. 

All the stores have the two ingredients used to make it on sale starting in early September.  And if a person didn’t already own a pot big enough to cook it in, they go on sale, too.  The newspapers all print the recipe -  just in case someone might have lost theirs.  I’m so thankful, because if someone would have just TOLD me how to make it, I’m not sure I could have remembered - just kidding. 

I caved under the pressure of the day when we were living there, and made it for dinner.  Kory said it was almost as good as his Mama used to make.  How could it taste any different?  It has just two ingredients.

To make it, place some water in the bottom of a pot, layer cabbage leaves with chunks of a poor baby lamb …that gave it’s very life for sustaining the people of Norway and their traditional dish, and keep layering cabbage leaves and lamb until there is no more. 

Pour in enough water to cover the ingredients, add some salt and pepper, put a lid on the pot and bring it to a boil.  When it boils, simmer it for a few hours and then it’s done.  Be sure to serve it with boiled potatoes and boiled carrots on the side for a genuine Norwegian experience.

Kory and Kaleb love it – but they are WAY more Norwegian than I.  I felt like I had done my part in making it, so I opted out of eating it.  My birth name is “Mary” so it is just too heartbreaking for me to actually eat “a little lamb.”  Instead, I ate the latest “National Dish of Norway” - based on call-in votes to a radio station – frozen pizza.

The only problem during dinner was that I still had to smell what Kory and Kaleb were eating.  My Norwegian teacher recommended I set a bowl of vinegar next to the pan of Får i Kål while it was cooking so it wouldn’t stink up the house so much – but I dumped it out when the cooking was over, not thinking I’d need it to get through dinner, too.  The things I do for love.