Arctic Christmas

When your inner genius presents itself, surrender your creativity and let it flourish! I only bring light to this inspiring piece of advise because as I sit and ponder what to write about, I am indulging in my avant-garde dessert creation: The Norwegian S'more. Like I said in my previous post, food is now at the fore-front of my thoughts again, and this my friends is euphoric.

The Norwegian S'more consists of two slices of a Norwegian waffle, a roasted marshmallow and brown cheese to substitute for chocolate. And now we hear the crowd gasp in disgust thinking of putting cheese with a marshmallow, I know at least half of you had a reaction to that. Brown cheese is not really cheese, must I repeat myself?! It's sweet so it works splendidly with a marshmallow. Today's lesson: never rein in that little genius, you never know what may come from it.

Clearly all I want to do is tell you about food, but back to the stories of my life abroad.

To slowly ease into travel stories from food, I did catch dinner the other night! Dinner and then some...The healthy sized cod I managed to lure onto my hook was literally right in the middle of dinner himself. In pulling the hook out I also pulled out a crab, and another crab, and another; these crabs just kept falling out of his mouth! Later I found even more in his gut. At least he died with a fully belly, and that to me is important.

When on and Island...

Last time I recorded my thoughts into the internet I was alone on an island dreaming of a white Christmas. I repeat myself but this year was my first non-white Christmas! Exciting but opposite of the assumption that there would be snow in December in Norway north of the Arctic Circle, now that is a story to tell!

My dearest Napoleon was kind enough to leave a surprise early Christmas gift for me this year. A broken window! Huzza! Our handsome ram was challenging his reflection in the middle of the night when nobody was around to chase him off, but good news is, he won! I was not thrilled...

The First Gift of Christmas!

When I asked him if he had broken the window he sassed me! Call me crazy. This ram came over to check on me while I was cleaning up his mess and his response to "You s** of a b**** did you do this to the window?!" was smirking, cocking his head to one side, turning and strutting away. HE STRUTTED AWAY AFTER INSPECTING THE FRUITS OF HIS DISASTROUS LABOR! I GOT SASSED BY A RAM! This is my life right now...and it's fantastic :) Follow-up: he's still walking around the island all proud of himself for defeating his reflection...PoundSignRamPride

The look you get when you ask your ram if he had anything to do with the broken window

A very nice family (the woman who cooked meals for the guests we had when I first arrived) had me over for a traditional Norwegian Christmas Eve dinner. We had stick meat, which is the rib of a sheep that has been salted and boiled, and for dessert molte berries and cream. The molte is THE Norwegian berry; it is almost like a blackberry but orange and a fresher tart taste. It was a Viking-like dinner!

I brought some of my own traditions to share; some makeshift pizzelles (the Italian Christmas cookies) and after dining and drinking we sat down and watched the Polar Express, a Koepke tradition. I stayed ashore that night and spent the better part of Christmas Day with them relaxing, reading and watching the local wildlife. I was gifted a silver necklace of Steigen fish that morning which they said signified I am now part of the community! I cried (on the inside!) receiving it :')

Get artsy at Christmas

This will be a Christmas I will forever remember. The hospitality I was given filled the homesick slot I would have otherwise felt being away from my family. As much as I thought Christmas would be hard away from home, it was not. My weekend was filled with so much joy and good company that I felt at home here; I am connected to these Norwegian people and I share in their lifestyle. But I am still baffled by the lack of snow.

To top off my arctic Christmas, there was a full evening of an aurora show. The most resplendent Christmas lights in the world :)

Christmas lights on Manshausen 

A storm is brewing in the north. The for-runners of the stampede of wind and hail have already arrived and I pray that my tie-down jobs will hold everything to the island.

But now all I can do is wait out the rage, this time with hot chocolate for comfort and Mark Twain for guidance and hoping the sheep will find good shelter tonight.

Two of my favorite things: my sheep and the aurora