DOWN SOUTH…IN KRISTIANSAND…EATING AND EATING
There was that most pleasurable rainy ride from Stavanger shared in all of those raindrop photos—leading up to the best possible time in Kristiansand. My family here includes Tone, Simon, Oda and Erland. Tone is the daughter of my second-cousin, Gurine, whom I first met in 1985. I liked her so much; she and I agreed back then that if only we lived closer to each other we would become such good friends. We did write a few times and spent a nice but too-short time together in 2005. With the easier communication possibilities like Facebook available now I’m sure we would have managed a fine friendship.
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- Tone and Simon.
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- Erland and Oda.
But now there’s Gurine’s exceptional daughter Tone as family and friend. What make it all even better are her husband Simon and those charming grown children. Simon feels like a great comrade as well and I love the fact that Oda and Erland treat me like a familiar and somewhat interesting adult aunt/cousin and not some doddering distant relative who’s accidentally wandered onto the premises. If the world can just hang on until people like them (and my grandchildren of course) are ready to run things, we’ll be okay. These individuals are each involved in their own interesting lives, Tone and Simon are university and energy administrators, Oda is in marketing for an international corporation and Erland studies in a master’s program in IT.
Considering my Norwegian cousins along, with my Swedish, Minnesota and South Dakota cousins, wonderful folks and friends all, I realize how fortunate I am. I should send them all thank you cards for sharing their DNA with me. Since I’m so bad with those gracious kinds of gestures, please consider this your thank you. Here are a few first and most casual family and food photos before I start on the remarkable road trip to which I was treated yesterday.
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- Oda and Erland prepared Norwegian nachos for dinner.
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- Nachos are sort of the same as New Mexican nachos…
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- except for the excellent corn-based topping and having butter on the table just in case.
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- Norwegian open-faced sandwich, absolutely delicious with butter on heavy beautiful bread and some mayo on top of the freshest of shrimp. I’m not adept at this shrimp beheading, betailing and shelling so got a little help from my friends.
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- The next day Simon and Tone had coffee and waffles with butter and brown cheese along for the road.
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- It’s not possible too have too many waffles and brown cheese.
you make Norway sound like the center of the food universe….and it may well be. Such delicious photos…in all ways. What nice folks…but of course they are, they are from Norway!