August 12, 2002
MarkBernstein.org
 

Cooking

Media scholar Torill Mortensen is hard at work in the kitchen, introducing visiting Greek students to Norway's summer food. She writes about the vegetables that grow in Norway's blonde nights, of venison with fresh chanterelles, of fenalår. I'm already hungry.

"In desperation I started baking cakes. No Norwegian housewife can endure having her cakes rejected, that is the final test of your skill in the kitchen: to be able to make a light, tasty, elegantly presented and irresistable cake. Finally, I found something they could endure. So the girls here have, for 9 days now, been living on bread, lefse and cakes - chocolate cake, apple cake, cream cake, a progression of cakes which they never sit down to eat. They eat on the run: grab a packed meal and then spurn any healthy looking food we might have packed for them, and clean out the cakes.

I've got to get an invitation to Norway, one of these days.