A Roll in the Universe

A little musing and sharing via eleven questions thought up by Lisa and found via Paula . 1) Socks? Love them or hate them? Handknitted socks a co-worker made for Secret Santa. And I won them! They keep my feet toasty in rubber boots. — I have cold feet. Socks, please, and they have to cover my ankles. I've chosen to get different patterns and stuff, inspired by a co-worker wearing a pair of bright orange ones. That's when I realized that colorful socks are important. IMPORTANT. Nobody ever sees mine since I wear bootlets at work. 2) Is there a God? — Paula starts off with "I wonder why peeps are so obsessed with this question." Since I have constantly asked myself this question, I don't find the obsession weird. The answer is yes, by the way. The real question is: What is God? 3) Is a pizza a pizza without cheese? I like Paula's answer (must have cheese!), but since pizza is one of those incredibly flexible dishes, it can also lack chee...

There is one thing I will never flaunt, and that is my cooking skills. I am grateful if I enjoy what I made, because that's not a given. I'm about to declutter my kitchen and I think a number of spices will disappear when I do. I never use them. I don't know how to use them. And no, I'm not interested in learning. I can't learn. My mother and her mother (and her mother) are/were all good cooks. Not fancy cooks, but the kind of cooks who can put together ingredients in a way to make a nourishing and tasty meal, and they can do that every day. (I do remember Grandma saying the biggest challenge to cooking was coming up what to make. Her tomato meatloaf was divine, by the way.) I did not inherit this talent from them. You know how some things are interesting enough to make you want to find out more? I'm like that with computers or astrology, but not with cooking. I don't even watch cooking shows. I may as well be watching a quantum physics lecture for quantum...

The great national holiday in Norway, on May 17th, is a far more involved and formal event than the equivalent celebration in the US, on July 4th. There are also a lot of traditions and traditional food associated with the day. This year, I'm going to partake in a 17th of May breakfast in town. In some ways, Constitution Day in Norway, is not exactly a Sunday or religious holiday. It's a day off but buses run on Saturday schedules and restaurants are open. Some Constitution Day ribbons that people wear on the day  A bunch of us got Norwegian citizenship during 2017 and have decided to go All Norwegian the only way foreigners can. So we've decided to have the 17th of May breakfast buffet, which is a tradition. It includes rømmegrøt (sour cream porridge) and that's all I need to know (although cured meats and smoked salmon with scrambled eggs are also traditional fare). I've booked a table that should also offer a fantastic view of the parade(s). There are thre...

Spaghetti was always my favorite food growing up. I had to give it up when I went low-carb. Last night I had it again, with buckwheat noodles. Tomato sauce, broccoli florets, chicken meatballs and lots of cheese. Yummy! This morning I did my 1-minute wake-up routine of doing steps on my ottoman while lifting with barbells. And I felt absolutely great doing it. Nothing hurt, nothing creaked, I didn't have to keep catching my balance. I didn't even get winded. Is there really more to comfort food or favorite foods than just taste or emotional balm? Hmmm…

As healthy and as long-lived as Norwegians are, they are plagued by one baffling disease: Osteoporosis. As a woman who has lived here for part of her childhood and all of her adulthood, this is something to be concerned about. Is it genetic? Is it dietary? We may have the answer, finally. Good dietary habits when I was a child in Norway included a tablespoon of cod liver oil. As a child, I actually liked the stuff. Didn't like fish, but I didn't mind that spoonful of omega 3's and vitamin D, intended to compensate for the lack of sunshine. (The rule is to take cod liver oil or "tran" in all months with an R in it. There is also the rule not to fish in months without an R in it, so those two rules dovetail nicely.) As an adult I can't stand straight "tran" any more and get my fish oil in capsule form. In the years since, Norwegian researchers trying to understand the national epidemic of broken hips have proposed many theories: Sedentary lifestyle, n...

Coughing so hard, I can hardly breathe. Coughing so hard, I start to feel twinges I shouldn't. This is what I had in February, and for a while I thought I had the flu. I didn't. Instead, my body has decided that some foods are not good for me. The baffling thing was the fever. But if my esophagus was inflamed from all the tummy upsets, then a fever would be understandable. I was out sick a second time with the same thing in March. This time my doctor gave me an antacid, which I think helped my esophagus. But what is triggering all this? Prior to this, I'd had a lot of overtime work and dinners that were easy solutions, including pizza. I knew that wheat was a problem. I'd been struggling with a red, flaky forehead during Christmas, when I consumed a lot of food made from flour (including my beloved pumpkin pie). When I avoided wheat, the skin irritation went away. But just avoiding wheat wasn't enough. I found that eating oats was giving me sinus trouble. So I di...

I've never eaten at McDonald's as much I have in Norway. Ironically. You'd think I'd be a regular when I lived in California, but no. Meanwhile, in Norway, McDonald's has been vote Best Employer for 2016. If Burger King had moved into my local mall some 20 years ago, I'd be eating Whoppers. But it was a McDonald's, and Quarter Pounders. And I am now admitting my guilty pleasure: I do eat McDonald's stuff often—up to once a week. One reason is that the place itself fascinates me. There are five cash registers, but rarely are there lines in front of them. Because the registers move at different paces, and people don't remain at them to wait for their food, people don't line up in front of them. Instead, they hang back in a loose group and wait for an employee to call out "Next customer" (actually, they call "Available register"). Whoever was first (as defined by everyone else literally watching each others back) moves to that ...

My own egg cups The thing about growing up with a Norwegian grandfather is that you assume everybody has a cheese slicer and egg cups. Turns out that one of the things American immigrants left behind in Europe were egg cups. I was reading an article on Lifehacker about how Americans eat soft-boiled eggs, seeing as how there is no such thing as an egg cup in the US. It was only then that I realized why a British friend who lives in Hawaii asked if I could get egg cups for him. In every hotel I've been in in Europe, they serve soft-boiled eggs for breakfast. That is to say, they serve a hot egg that is still nearly raw, or a hot egg that is nearly hard. I therefore rarely eat soft-boiled eggs in hotels. But they do have egg cups (and teaspoons) for the eggs. And I have egg cups at home. Any complete set of dishes also includes egg cups here in Europe. 60's fashion: Coffee cup and egg cup from my childhood Now for some etiquette on eating a soft-boiled egg: I learned b...

Wordless Wednesday

Unlike what other people I know experienced, 2012 was a laid-back year for me. I entered the new one, ready for action. Today, I got a taste of what might be in store: I've been asked to stand for election to my co-op's steering committee, an office that is for two years at a time. Right away, I think about Saturn transitting Scorpio during that time frame - in my house of community, groups and friends. I won't know for sure, one way or the other, until later this spring, but the fact that I've gotten this sort of attention tells me I'm no longer at rest; I'm on the move again. In other news, I've finally become an adult. I'm finally starting to understand this business of taking care of home and stomach on a regular basis. At the age of 52, I'm cooking every day for myself (or reheating leftovers from an earlier meal), and my home is fairly tidy (next step: get it fairly clean). I even try to dress like a grown-up, trying to class up my usual swea...

…then eat! Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

10 days in a bus can still teach one a thing or two. Like how asphalt will tent in extreme heat, blocking the whole autobahn. Or how upsetting Norwegians find dealing with older German tourists who speak fondly of their time in Norway back in the 40's (I'm sure some US GI's have made the same faux pas when visiting Europe). Or that whatever may be going on financially, the Germans and Austrians still manage to keep the sides of their roads manicured. Or that words like "cup" and "large" don't translate at all. It's "large cup" in English, "grosse Tasse" (more or less) in German and "stor kopp" in Norwegian. My German was terribly rusty, but I did manage to use it. And I discovered that German-speakers have something in common with the French: They love that you try to use their language. So, this year's summer vacation was a bit early for me, and it feels like I didn't actually have a vacation. Still, I...

Wordless Wednesday

These last 18 months have led me down paths I wasn't expecting to travel. I'm basically challenging my own paradigms. Here are my thoughts about food: I have come to realize that no one can live well and healthy without animals, not even vegans. According to everything I've been reading and hearing about nutrition since I went low-carb in August of 2010, we need agriculture to continue to feed ourselves, but what we don't need is industrialized or petroleum-based agriculture. That type of farming is destroying our soil (which adds to global warming) and our health (lack of omega-3 in meat, for example, and lack of nutrients in vegetables). Organic agriculture preserves soil, plant and animal health, and in turn, our health. Humans are not in competition with animals for food. The logic that vegetarians (I used to be one) buy into is that it's better to give the grain directly to people, rather than feed it to cattle because it takes 6 (or 10 or 18 or even just 2...

Wordless Wednesday

OK, yesterday's post came out of the blue. For you. For me, it was the result of a Friday at work full of carbs: Bread, fruit juice and two kinds of cake. And that was breakfast at work. Still under the influence of all the carbs, I let myself take some leftovers home with me. I had tasted the carrot cake and it was yummy, and chocolate cake has always gone down well, too. But this, my dear reader, is what has changed and why I wrote yesterday : I have absolutely no desire for the leftover cake. I find myself having to talk myself into eating it so that I don't have to throw it out. I woke up this morning laying out strategies for how to get to a point where I would want cake. My current plan is to have my two pieces in lieu of dinner; dinner itself will be eaten mid-afternoonish. I was never a carbaholic, but I used to buy donuts, Danish, carrot cake, chocolate cake, brownies, etc., on a regular basis (i.e. 1–2 times a week). I would happily buy some cake to have at hom...

So I've heard of the wonders of kale (called "green cabbage" in Norway) and this time of year our supermarkets carry it. The plant is perfect for temperate climates because a bit of frost makes it taste better. It can be used in anything you would use (cooked) spinach in and has about the same nutrients. I'd heard of kale chips and made a batch. They came out all brown because the recipe said 10 minutes (very crispy they were!). I tried again today. I tore the leaves into bite-sized pieces, dribbled olive oil over followed by a sprinkle of tasty BBQ-type spice mix ("grillkrydder"). I let them bake for 7 minutes at 150 degrees Celsius. For my oven, that was perfect. The kale chips were still green but now crunchy. I ate the whole tray in one sitting, and I've realized that if you make kale chips just right, they're like all those other chips: You can't stop after just a few. These melt in your mouth! For that reason, I'm not sure I'll ...

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday