norwegians scare me

[tacoofdoom]

do they scare you? and whats with that lutefisk stuff?

[counterattack]

what have you got against the norwegians? =)

I just got back from a few weeks in Norway. The only things scary about Norway are the cost of things in the stores, and how little sun they get in winter.

And if you think lutefisk is scary, try rakfisk! http://home.online.no/~kjelle/rakfisk.htm

I had it for x-mas eve. It isn't half bad either, just don't let them scare you with descriptions of how it is made.

Also, I fenced there this summer in the Sommercup help be Oslo Fekteklub. The epee competition was decent and the fencers were very friendly.

[Swordsman]

Zelda, if you don't mind?

[MikeHarm]

Ha! Try good ole traditional Finnish Rotten shark, that has both of them beat. Eating food after its been buried in the ground for a while is just wrong.

[The0ne]

and norweigens have funny accents!!

[pkt]

Originally posted by The0ne
and norweigens have funny accents!!

Don't forget, to the Norwegians, YOU are the one who has the accent.

I found this delightful opiece on Google.

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/ic/lutefisk.html
"...the Favorite Dish: the plate, cup, or bowl of whatever stuff my hosts consider most representative of the regions virtues. As I just finished a week's work in Oslo, this dish was of course lutefisk.

"The Norwegians are remarkably single-minded in their attachment to the stuff. Every one of them would launch themselves into a hydrophobic frenzy of praise on the mere mention of the word. Though these panegyrics were as varied as they were fulsome, they shared one element in common. Every testimonial to the recondite deliciousness of cod soaked in lye ended with the phrase "...but I only eat it once a year." "

"The moment every traveller lives for is the native dinner where, throwing caution to the wind and plunging into a local delicacy which ought by rights to be disgusting, one discovers that it is not only delicious but that it also contradicts a previously held prejudice about food, that it expands ones culinary horizons to include surprising new smells, tastes, and textures.

"Lutefisk is not such a dish.

"Lutefisk is instead pretty much what you'd expect of jellied cod; it is a foul and odiferous goo, whose gelatinous texture and rancid oily taste are locked in spirited competition to see which can be the more responsible for rendering the whole completely inedble.

"How to describe that first bite? Its a bit like describing passing a kidneystone to the uninitiated. If you are talking to someone else who has lived through the experience, a nod will suffice to acknowledge your shared pain, but to explain it to the person who has not been there, mere words seem inadequate to the task. So it is with lutefisk. One could bandy about the time honored phrases like "nauseating sordid gunk", "unimaginably horrific", "lasting psychological damage", but these seem hollow when applied to the task at hand. I will have to resort to a recipe for a kind of metaphorical lutefisk, to describe the experience. Take marshmallows made without sugar, blend them together with overcooked Japanese noodles, and then bathe the whole liberally in acetone. Let it marinate in cod liver oil for several days at room temprature. When it has achieved the appropriate consistency (though the word "appropriate" is somewhat problematic here), heat it to just above lukewarm, sprinkle in thousands of tiny, sharp, invisible fish bones, and serve.

"The waitress, returning to clear our plates, surveyed the half-eaten goo I had left.

"She nodded conspiritorially at me, said something to my host, and left.

""What'd she say?, I asked.

""Oh, she said 'I never eat lutefisk either. It tastes like python.'" "

This is very funny.

Was it Prince Charles who said he has only one stomachs to give England when he had to eat all these "delightful" local cusines on his visits to the various parts of the former Empire.

PK

[pkt]

this one calls itself
"The UNOfficial website of lutefisk."

http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/3227/

PK

[pkt]

Try some of the stuff Chinese people, esp. southerners like the Cantonese eat.

The northerners have always accused us southerners of eating everything that:
is four-legged that's not a table or chair;
swims in the sea that's not a submarine, a ship or a boat;
flies in the sky that's not a 'plane or rocket...

That said, most stuff Chinese people eat are cooked...

Live monkey brain was a Manchu dish...
A special table has a hole in the middle where one puts the monkey with only its head protruding. With the monkey still very much alive, part of the skull is removed and the raw brain is spooned and eaten.
This was the Manchu-Han Special feast. It's been banned for a long, long time.
http://www.sportsonline.com.cn/GB/ch...712/21030.html
Sorry this is only in Chinese.
[The Manchus tried to get the Han Chinese into sharing the blame by naming it "Manchu-Han ..."]
[this is my translation of the menu.]

The 134 hot and 48 cold dishes include "8 mountain treasures", "8 land treasures", "8 sea treasures".

The "8 Mountain treasures" inlcude bear paws, monkey brain, "dragon Flies", tiger kidney, musk deer, ginseng, bracken, etc.;
"The 8 land treasures" include assorted frogs, camelback, mouth mushroom, Jade Emperor mushroom, the phoenix grasp mushroom, corn treasure, Sha Fengji [a kind of fowl], loose chicken;
"The 8 sea treasures" are shark fin, trepang, fresh shells, purple abalone, turtle eggs, fish stomach, dried shark skin, etc...

If you have to ask how much this costs...etc. As you can see some of the items are now in the entinct, endagered or protected categories... Whether it is the Chinese who ate them to extinction or the brink of extinction is arguable. But we know that the big fishes like marlins, sharks, tuna, etc. are at the edge of extinction.

PK

[Iwant2bafencer]

Why Do Norweigens scare you? I'm actually part Norweigen. Do I scare you?

[Inquartata]

Er, it's that Viking past. The raids which prompted the prayer "From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, protect us" lives on in the collected memories of those of European extraction...

That, and the fish-slapping dance.

[a517dogg]

norweigians can't stand lutefisk. they farm it off to tourists because they have too much of the stuff. If you go to Norway you should ask for lefsa, not lutefisk.

[Iwant2bafencer]

Lefsa is really good. Spread a little butter on it, and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar. Very nice dessert.

[laughingduelist]

I am sicilian. However I have blue eyes and light skin, which means that I have norman in me. The Norman's were from northern france, decendants of norsemen. Which makes me part norweigan. Is that scary enough? How norweigen do I need to be in order to scare you?

[fencing teen]

oh yeah, scared are you? Well you should be, cause we are soooo tough. And almost forgot, we are cool as well

Yep, very

[Tireur]

The "8 Mountain treasures" inlcude bear paws

It was the pads of the bear paws, if I remember right. One of the most expensive meals in the world.

[Tireur]

If you go to Norway you should ask for lefsa, not lutefisk

If you don't have a lefse iron (I think they call it an iron) Byerly's in Minneapolis used to have pretty good "bought" lefse.