Sonrise Magazine

Lutefisk Anyone?

The beautiful season of Christmas evokes memories and traditions like no other time of the year. Nativity scenes and singing carols. Lights and decorations. Gifts, greeting cards, and parties. There’s a store in Leavenworth that sells Christmas decorations of every kind all year long! Oh, and don’t forget the cookies! We love it all, don’t we.

And I believe that every one of us could happily recite all the wonderful foods that your family usually enjoyed at Christmastime. Sometimes the dish wasn’t really so unusual, but somehow it had become a Christmas specialty in your family. Foods that had become traditional in your nationality or part of the world your family came from. Like eating oysters for Christmas in France, or fried chicken for Christmas in Japan! In South Africa families prepare a roasted suckling pig, and snails are the delicacy enjoyed for Christmas in Czech Republic. In Iceland smoked Lamb and Fermented Skate (a fish like a stingray) is usually on the Christmas menu, and in Germany families might sit down to a Christmas dinner of roasted goose legs, red cabbage, and dumplings. In Portugal families enjoy boiled cod or octopus and boiled potatoes for their Christmas Eve dinner. Such amazing variety of traditions.

Growing up in a Norwegian family, we often enjoyed the traditional meatballs (usually made with beef in the absence of reindeer meat!), with plenty of gravy or butter for the mashed potatoes. In place of bread for holiday meals, Norwegians love Lefse, a thin potato-dough flatbread spread with butter, sugar and cinnamon, and rolled into a delicious morsel.

There is a traditional Norwegian food that is definitely in the “love it or hate it” category. Lutefisk – the lye-soaked codfish with its unique flavor, boiled and served swimming in butter. It has been said half the Norwegians who immigrated to America came to escape the hated lutefisk, and the other half came to spread the gospel of its wonderfulness! That same love-hate relationship is alive and well today. I am actually in the “like it” category. My mother used to make a casserole dish of lutefisk, rice, eggs, cream and, of course, butter. Very tasty – if you like Lutefisk!

If you do much Scandinavian cooking, you will find that the main ingredients in many dishes are cream, flour and butter. Those were the staples of a Norwegian kitchen and the foundation for many recipes. I enjoy making a cream pudding (or porridge) called Rommegrot. I remember receiving a bowl of Rommegrot when my great-aunt Beata came to visit me when my daughter was born. “Good nourishment for a new mother”, she told me. Here is an easy-to-make microwave recipe, if you’d like to try it.

Microwave Rommegrot (Norwegian Cream Pudding)

3 cups milk

1 cup flour

2 cups half & half cream

1 tsp salt

¾ cup sugar

Scald milk and half & half. Set aside.

Melt butter in large bowl in microwave. Stir in flour, sugar, salt, and milk.

Cook in microwave until smooth and thick – 1 to 2 minutes.

Serve hot or cold topped with cinnamon and sugar and melted butter if desired.

My great-grandparents on both my mother’s and father’s side of the family immigrated to America from Norway and settled in central Minnesota. My mother’s father, my dear grandfather Syver Johnson, spent his whole life raising his family and farming the land near the small central Minnesota community of Brooten. He always remembered to offer thanks back to God for his family’s bountiful harvest and good life. One of the special ways he showed his thanks was to place a bundle of grain up in a tree on Christmas Eve to share his harvest with God’s other creatures.

This Christmas, let us each ask God how we can “share our harvest” – or part of the bounty with which we have been blessed by God, with others.

And whatever traditional Christmas foods you and your family enjoy – Bon Appetit!

Picture credit: The Norwegian Kitchen, Published by Svein Gran, Kristiansund, Norway.

Copyright KOM Forlag A/S

Page 43 – typical Norwegian Christmas tree

Pages 82-83 – children eating Rommegrot