Tag Archives: food

Norway

Norwegian Food (norsk mat): Det sunneste man kan spise

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I recently read an article on NRK.no about the five healthiest foods you can get in Norway. (here – Google Chrome should give you a translation option if you want to read it in English)Fifth place went to milk.

Fourth was blueberries.

In third, oatmeal.

Second place was mackerel in tomato sauce.

And first place? Carrots.

There were other foods on the list, but these were the five that the nutritionists seemed to agree on the most. All seem to be quite popular here. And you can typically find all five in our kitchen, as you can see from this picture taken today. I’ll write a bit about each of these in the coming weeks, including availability, how they are used and what we think of them.

Norway

Norwegian Food: The series

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I’ve recently had people ask for more posts about food here. So over the next weeks I will be introducing you to some of the food. You’ll see that some things are quite different from American food, but others are very much the same.Mat
(noun) Food.

Used in a sentence
Jeg lager mat til middag.
(I’m making dinner.)


Related Words
måltid – meal
tilberede – to prepare (food)
oppskrift – recipe
smak – taste
frokost – breakfast
lunsj – lunch
middag – dinner
kveldsmat – a light evening meal

Travel

Budapest: Dove family Top Ten

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We had a great time in Budapest. As we normally do, we looked for ways to make the most of our time without spending a lot of money. So we didn’t pay to go in a lot of places (only the cave church, and it was a nominal fee). But you can see and do a lot for free!I thought I would share some of our favorites from our time there (in no particular order).

  1. Castle Hill – we explored the area twice, once in the daylight, and another time as the sun was setting. Our walk down the winding paths at sunset was especially enjoyable, with so many spots to stop for a great view of the city and the Danube.

     

     

     

     

  2. Matthias Church – we only saw it from the outside but it was beautiful.
  3. Bridges (the bridges across the Danube between Buda and Pest) – we walked across Margaret Bridge, Chain Bridge and Liberty bridge. The best was walking Chain Bridge at night.

     

     

     

     

  4. St. Stephens Basilica – only saw it from the outside but it was pretty and there was a nice Christmas market just outside.

     

  5. Mexican restaurants – our favorite kind of food, and we have no Mexican restaurants in Norway. We enjoyed the food at Iguana. But we kept finding ourselves going back to Arriba Taqueria (similar to Moe’s or Chipotle).
  6. Central Market Hall busy, crowded, and lots of interesting smells! But a great place to purchase souvenirs, including paprika and goose liver pate. And be sure to stop at Fakanal for goulash (we tried the stew and the soup).

     

     

     

  7. The Gellért Cave Church – heated by the thermal springs in Gellért Hill

     

  8. Memento Park – a ‘statue graveyard’ of Communist monuments

     

     

     

     

     

  9. Váci utca- a great pedestrian street with shopping, restaurants, and so much to see

     

     

  10. City Park and Heroes’ Square – a large park that is home to a circus, zoo, ice skating arena, thermal bath, and a Transylvanian castle. And Heroes Square reminded me a little bit of Independence Square in Kyiv (Ukraine).

     

     

     

Day-to-Day, memorable eats

Sushi, anyone?

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One of our (Zack’s and my) favorite Christmas gifts this year was a DIY sushi kit. Our family loves sushi, and now we can make dinner into a fun family night event!We’ve made it twice now, and I’m excited to continue learning and experimenting.

 

Here is the sushi kit we use for our rolls: http://www.amazon.com/Sushiquik-Sushi-Making-Kit-Easy/dp/B008YWRTB4

 

cross-cultural living, Day-to-Day, memorable eats

A Passion… for Pizza!

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Deep-dish pizza – delicious!

On most any Friday evening you can find us at home, eating pizza and watching a movie. It’s become somewhat of a tradition for Familie Dove.

We often give the boys the choice: pick up Grandis from the grocery store (Grandiosa, Norway’s most popular frozen pizza), get takeout from Balkan (our favorite to-go pizza in Sandefjord), or homemade. And most Fridays, they opt for one made from scratch.

Last night, we tried something new. Instead of our traditional rectangular pizza, we experimented with Chicago-style deep dish pizza. And while the boys still prefer the traditional style, Zack and I loved this new version!

I found the recipe HERE. I followed it for the most part. Ground sausage isn’t something I’ve been able to find in Norway, so I improvised with ground chicken and pizza seasoning (improvise is a word I often use when attempting American recipes here!). And I used pizza cheese for both layers of cheese, instead of the final parmesan layer. This was my first experience doing something like this with a springform pan, and I was very pleased with the results – well, once Zack managed to pry the sides off the pan!

Do you make homemade pizza? What type does your family prefer? What are your favorite toppings?

Our typical homemade pizza
No matter the season – we think pizza is good any time of year!
Sometimes we get a little creative – this was
a salmon & pesto pizza

 

From time to time, we go out for pizza.
Pizza almost always produces smiles!
Day-to-Day

Where does the time go?

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I could make excuses for my lack of blogging, but I’ll just sayI’m back!

Well, for now at least.

Life has been hectic. Mostly good stuff, but hectic all the same. Between lots of language study, meetings, and daily routine stuff, I simply let my writing slip. But I really do hope to get back to it now. We’ll see how it goes!

Things are going well here. Fall is here. We are getting a lot of rain. But we really shouldn’t complain after the last few months of beautiful weather. It hasn’t been very cold yet. We had one chilly morning with a little snow, but it only lasted an hour or two and was replaced by more rain.

William finished another football season. We were very proud of him for his effort. And apparently his progress impressed the coaches as well. He got one of the three awards given out at the end of each year: Best fremgang (best progress).

William with one of his coaches at their year-end party
Daniel is continuing with art lessons and is doing a great job! We attended an art show that his teacher was in, and really enjoyed seeing what she creates.
In fact, we liked her work so much that we bought several pieces. This one is now hanging in our kitchen. The photo doesn’t do it justice.
We’ve also had the opportunity to meet friends and colleagues for coffee, go to a couple of birthday parties, attend a costume party at the boys’ school, attend a musical, meet with friends for meals and other events, host a small Halloween party, and attend some seminars and conferences. Here are a few pictures from the past few weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

memorable eats

Is/Eis/Ice Cream/мороженое

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It’s a word we have learned in many languages. How can you order it if you don’t know how to say it?And it’s especially good to know how to order ice cream in Germany: theirs is not only delicious, but also really cheap! So we ate a LOT of Eis (pronounced a lot like ice) during our time in Dusseldorf and Hamburg.

 

 

 

 

cross-cultural living, memorable eats

Pinterest, and a few of our favorite things

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Sometimes the blog becomes my spot for confession.You may recall that in the past I’ve shared my strong attraction to things like

  • Coffee (read that here. and here.)
  • Pizza (read about that here. and here.)
  • Chocolate (read about that here)
And now it’s time to admit one more. I’m here to share that I am addicted to really like Pinterest. A lot.
Pinterest has been our source for a lot of new meals, home remedies, restaurant copycat recipes, and homemade versions of things I can’t find in Norway. I’ve learned to improvise on things we miss from the states, and find healthy alternatives to some of our favorites. And of course, the occasional guilty pleasure is included as well!
One of my Pinterest boards is entitled Pinterest Success, where I save all the things that have received positive reviews from some pretty tough critics…
I thought I’d share a few of of our favorites, and ask if you have any Pinterest success stories to share.
Our Top Five Favorite Pinterest Finds, in no particular order
  1. Avocado Chicken Burgers: we all love avocados. And chicken. So this was a no-brainer. I didn’t have any breadcrumbs so I made some using a couple of slices of my homemade bread (see item #3 below). These were great!
  2. No-mayo Tuna Salad: Zack and I like tuna, but we don’t like mayo. Because of this, we’d never made tuna salad. But thanks to this great recipe, we make it often and really enjoy it!
  3. Peasant Bread: like I’ve talked about in a previous post (here), I make most of our bread from scratch these days. And peasant bread is my go-to recipe. I bake it in a bread pan instead of a bowl, and I change up the types of flour or throw in some seeds or herbs, depending on what’s on hand.
  4. No-yeast No-rise Cinnamon Rolls: here’s one of those guilty pleasures I mentioned. These are not at all healthy (although I do replace some of the white flour with whole wheat). But they are incredible!
  5. Sloppy Joes on Cornbread Waffles: I’m now learning there are lots of non-traditional ways to use your waffle iron. But our first adventure was a HUGE hit with the whole family. I made a healthy sloppy joe mix, with lots of diced veggies and ground chicken. Then we put that on top of waffles made with corn bread batter. Delicious!
What are some of your favorites – or maybe even disasters – from Pinterest?
Here are a just few Pinterest-inspired projects and recipes we’ve tried over the last couple of years…
Easter bunnies & Easter chicks
Coffee filter snowflakes
Paper chain Christmas trees
Peanut butter & jelly muffins
Grinch Christmas cookies
Homemade black bean burgers on
homemade wholewheat buns
Cranberry Sauce
Oven-grilled burgers on homemade buns
No-yeast No-rise cinnamon rolls
Peasant bread
cross-cultural living, Norway

Norwegian Strawberries: what do you think?

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It’s that time of year again. The stands are popping up all over the city. Just in front of the mall, in fact, you can find two set up right next to each other.
A price war in the making, perhaps?
Yes, it’s time for Norwegian strawberries again. And people here seem to be quite serious about them. Countless times, we’ve been told of the far-superior berries grown in Norway.
Don’t get me wrong: they are good. Maybe it’s just my inexperienced palette – but I can’t really taste a difference between them and the strawberries we can buy at the grocery stores.
So while many around us are snatching up local berries for 35 – 50 kroner per basket (prices are continuing to drop as supply has greatly increased the last few days), we were happy to buy the Belgian berries at our local Kiwi last week for 18 kroner for a basket.
So to our friends who live in Norway…
What do you think? Can you taste a big difference? Do you spend a little more to get the Norwegian fruit? Are we missing out?
Day-to-Day

Pizza. Summer. Life is good.

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We made pizza for dinner tonight.

That’s not so unusual. We do that a lot. Really. A LOT. Yeah, we love pizza.
You know what made it even better? Check out what I’m wearing: shorts and no sleeves! Summer has arrived and the weather has been great. It reached around 26 C / 79 F today! We’ve even had a number of afternoon showers and thunder storms, much like we would have in Georgia.
Only a week and a half of school stands between us and our official start to summer, we are ready!