Får i Kål Day

September 25th 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 25th, 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 mid-September, and if a person didn’t already own a pot big enough to cook it in, they go on sale, too. The newspapers 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 it’s done. It’s served with potatoes and carrots on the side. Kory and Kaleb love it (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 Norsk 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.

Word Associations

Oops - I forgot to post this last week!  Sorry.

We had several lessons on Norwegian foods in my Norwegian class during a week The Good Teacher Inga was gone and we had a substitute. The substitute teacher taught us that certain foods last longer than others and that’s why so many fresh produce items aren’t available in Norway – because they won’t survive the trip so far north (like I hadn’t figured that one out already.) She also told us about some foods that become poisonous after awhile. Of course she was talking only in Norwegian (not ever sneaking in an English word here and there to help our comprehension, like The Good Teacher Inga did), and I heard the substitute say a word that she used a few days earlier when she was talking about families (we had to learn the names of family members on that particular day.) The word that caught my attention was “gift” (pronounced “yift.”) It’s the Norwegian word for “married,” but as we all learned during our food lesson, it’s also the Norwegian word for “poison.”




I brought up the irony of “gift” being used for both “married” and “poison” and asked the substitute why that would be. I got her to think a minute, but she was not able to answer my question. There were several Spanish speaking students in our class too, so I also pointed out that the Spanish word “esposa” means “wife,” but it also means “handcuffs.” I don’t like those associations one little bit, but I must say, it makes certain words easier to remember – like the English word “but” is “men” in Norwegian.



There are so many things to remember with a new language, I must do what I can to help the process. But why a “child” is called “barn” in Norwegian, I have no idea. I know as a kid, my mom used to ask me if I was “born in a barn” when I left the door open, so maybe there’s something there -- she is full blooded Norwegian, after all.



We studied weather words that week too, and if it’s cloudy they say in Norwegian it’s “skyet” (pronounced “she-it”). Here all these years I thought my mom was swearing when she’d say a certain word in a particular kind of way, but as it turns out, it seems, she was just talking about the weather.

Ambiance

My husband, Kory, retired two weeks before our son was born, so for over ten years we had no schedule, no alarm clock, no rushing out of the house in the morning. Most every day we’d sit at our dining room table, look out over the Skagit Valley while leisurely drinking a cup of coffee and talk about what the day would bring. Sometimes when Kaleb and I homeschooled, we’d stay in our pajamas all day. Our lives in Norway were everything BUT that. Everything had to be planned out ahead of time. I had to double check to see if we had clean clothes for the next day and enough food to make lunches. I had to put a clock in every room because I had to catch a bus and Kaleb had to get to school on time. Kory even had to go back to work to off-set the high cost of living there, so two days a week he was a carpenter again. We were on a schedule with very little time to relax.



One day soon after starting work, Kory discovered they don’t have sani-cans on the job sites in Norway – so he had to drive all the way home to use the toilet. He said his co-workers just head for the nearest bushes, which is OK under certain circumstances, but it wasn’t going to work too well for him that particular day.


About the same time Kory was rushing home to use the bathroom, my Norwegian class was heading off to a concert by Ålesund’s finest string quartet. Norwegians are very much into “culture” and ambiance. Each morning my school day was started off with a little soft music to settle everyone down. There were always blooming flowers in our classroom and little doilies with candles on the tables in our break room.


In America we often associate candles, flowers and music with relaxation and romance, but in Norway, it’s an everyday thing, even in the workplace. At least in office jobs, anyway. My bus passed by several office buildings and I always saw employees sitting in their break room – complete with flowers, table clothes, candles burning, and I imagine, music softly playing in the background.


At his job, I don’t know that Kory would have cared so much about the ambiance of candles, flowers or music, as much as he would have just liked a toilet to sit on every now and then.

Bullies

My son, Kaleb, made friends right away with Victoria, a girl in his class from America. She was the only one who could speak English on the playground so the two were inseparable. Within a few weeks of school starting, Kaleb informed me there was a kid in another class that must really be in love with Victoria. He was sure the kid was jealous of him and his friendship with her because he looked for every opportunity to beat Kaleb up. Apparently the kid (already sporting a red cast on his swinging arm) hadn’t landed one on Kaleb because of how clever Kaleb had been in escaping the attempted blows using his “Avatar” moves. He said it wasn’t so easy one time when the kid brought his friend (who had a black eye) along and they cornered him in the changing room. Victoria came to his rescue and he managed to escape without injury.




Kaleb told his teacher about these bullies a few times, but apparently the boys are well known as the school trouble makers (hence the black eye and broken arm) and all the teacher did was talk to them. Kaleb wasn’t the least bit upset in retelling the tale - he kind of had a glimmer in his eye and a smirk on his lips as he felt the whole thing was rather entertaining, but that’s of course, because no one had yet landed a punch. He lost the glimmer and smirk the day he actually got nailed. Ironically, it was on the day he brought home an “anti-bullying” contract from the principal that was sent home for all children and parents to sign. The contract clearly stated the school has ZERO tolerance for any kind of “mobbing” (bullying) or violence, but it failed to say what the consequences of such behavior would be. As it turned out, the worst possible punishment in Norwegian schools for violence is a stern “talking to,” so “mobbing” became a huge part of Kaleb’s life at school. One kid in Kaleb’s class, Morton, had an “impulse control problem,” and unfortunately, his impulses often landed on my sweet boy’s face. I’m sure having Morton and his pals sign a piece of paper is exactly what was needed to change their behavior.

(The photo is of Kaleb and his best friend, Toban.)