Keep on keepin' on. And some scrapbooking.

That's right, folks. It's been a year. I can no longer say I am new to this business of living abroad. I thought about The Anniversary of Our Moving (well, my moving, since G came here two months before I did) and considered doing a long, insightful post that day. I decided against it. Not because I didn't think it would be cathartic and maybe even funny. Because I had to do _______ instead. Or was it _______?

That is often what happens when I think to myself, "hey, I should blog today." Something else comes up that I end up doing. Sometimes it's important like getting my residence permit renewed. Sometimes it's something equally important but maybe doesn't sound as important. Like sitting on the couch watching an episode (or three) of Friday Night Lights, even though it's been canceled from television. That? That's important, trust me. I can't explain why, but move abroad and then we'll talk.

So, two important points here:

1. I have not given up on blogging.
2. I just checked a year as an expat off my list.

What else have I been doing? Lots, but I'll keep it to just a few things. We celebrated G's birthday last week. Instead of going out, he requested a homemade meal of this and this and this. And something kind of like this but not. Oh, and caviar with crème fraîche, blinis, and some sparkling wine to start. It was good, man. It was really, really good.

I created a scrapbook for his birthday documenting our first year in Oslo - that's the cover you see above. I tried to simplify it and along the way finally did some digital scrapbooking (well, really hybrid scrapbooking, but I digress). Thanks to digital layout templates I had from online classes I took with the amazing Cathy Z through Big Picture Classes, it was pretty easy. The layouts were in Photoshop which I loved playing with. I also discovered the world of digital scrapbook elements, especially those by Ali Edwards. I used a bunch of her overlays in the album, and I love how they turned out. I plan on doing more of that in the future.

I did a monthly synopsis layout for each month and also individual layouts for each trip we took in the past year. Here's what one of the monthly layouts looks like:

Here's one of the travel layouts:

Sorry about the glare. This is about as much sun as you can get on a cloudy day in Oslo in November!

I really loved making this book. All my photos are organized chronologically in iPhoto, which I also use to rate and assign keywords to photos. I'd like to take credit for my mad photo organizational skills, but it's all due to Stacy Julian and her wonderful Library of Memories (LOM) concept. I also used the four major divisions of LOM to organize my text for the monthly pages. I could go on for pages about LOM, but I won't. In short, it is life-changing. If you want to know more, ask me or check out this link to the 2010 LOM class at Big Picture Classes. I'd call it a teaser description. (And no, neither Stacy nor BPC is paying me for endorsements. It is a safe bet to say they probably have no idea who I am!)

I am excited about feeling creative again. About feeling like I want to start so many new creative projects. Christmas cards. The December Daily project. Project Life in 2012. I like having my mojo back. It's just taken a year to get there, I guess.

Happy fall to all. We'll talk soon. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go do __________.

It's chanterelle season. And there's a tool for that.

And...I’m back. Last Friday marked the end of Miss Holly's two week visit, and she and I pretty much exhausted the list of things you can do in and around Oslo. We also had time to - gasp! - relax on her vacation. And go to Sweden! (More on Sweden soon. That was entertaining to say the least.) I guess that’s the benefit of a long vacation in a not-so-large city (only ~600,000 residents) as well as staying with the ‘locals’ (um, that would be us): see a little, chill a little, repeat.

One of the things we did while Holly was here was go mushroom hunting. You may be thinking that, since I am originally from the rainy, wet Pacific Northwest, I am a regular mushroom collector. I am not. In fact, the extent of my past mushroom collecting involved visiting the produce section of the local grocery store. So, when some German friends of ours invited us to go hunt for chanterelles (or kantareller, in Norwegian), we said, yes, yes we can. There were nine of us that went which seemed a little crazy at first, but we quickly spread out near Songsvann, a nearby lake, and hunted.

Now, I cook. A lot. So, I was pretty sure what a chanterelle looked like. Pretty, soft, and kinda orangey-yellow. I am here to tell you that’s the grocery store experience. In the forest, all bets were off. They call it hunting for a reason. In the first hour, I had seen so many mushrooms and had no idea what they were, but none of them were chanterelles. Which was pretty much okay with me because of the awesome wild blueberries and raspberries.


For example, this is not a chanterelle:

These, however, are wild raspberries (I was blurry with excitement.):

And then I spied a slew of mushrooms on an arid hillside. Could it be? Yes it could. It turned out I had found the elusive chanterelles!

After that, people began to find a bunch, but I only found a few more. For me, tromping through the woods was just as enjoyable. It was so quiet and peaceful, and really made me miss hiking in the Cascades. I will assume G felt the same way, although I swear he was also hunting for trolls.

After a few more hours we headed back to our friends' house where we cleaned and sorted the mushrooms and drank some wine while two of the guys made dinner – quiche and crepes:

They took their crepe making very seriously, which was fun to watch.

Note to self: this is a rødskrubb. Turns blue when cut. Edible when cooked. Funky. Check for worms first.

It was a long day, but the end result was great. We had a tasty dinner with friends, good conversation, and a fun story to add to our Norwegian adventures. 

A few days later, I paid tribute to our fun outing by shopping, of course. Seriously, what would a new culinary pursuit be without adding a new tool to the toolbox? Come on, did you really expect me to pass up the opportunity to own a mushroom knife, complete with brush and metric ruler? I think not.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have kale.

Beklager for my absence. My friend Holly C is visiting for a couple of weeks from Seattle and I am giving her the full Norwegian experience (well, as much as an ex-pat in Norway can). For me, that includes visiting several grocery stores and ogling the plastic-wrapped produce and shelves of Leverpostei. Normally these days I buy the vast majority of our fruits and vegetables at the local ethnic food markets like this one:

But I made an exception today. Why? Because as Holly and I were wandering through the produce section I found this:

This, my friends, is what I believe to be kale. If you remember from this post, I could not find chard. I should have also posted that I couldn't find kale, but I kind of lump them in together. I love chard. I mean, if you've had chard enchiladas, you would love chard too. I will accept kale in place of chard for now. Holly will attest that, upon seeing this in the produce aisle, I gasped and snatched it off the shelf as though it was the last Elmo doll and it was 1998. Seriously excited.

I don't know what we'll make with it right now, but I don't care. I have it in my fridge and that's what matters. Happy day.

Where's the squash? And the Reece's..and the...

Thank you Darcey! (One of our care packages from home.)

Five months and dozens of trips to the grocery store later, I have come to the realization that some foods and food products are just not going to be found in Norway. I am trying to accept this, really. But in a country that probably imports 90% of its food and food product anyway, would it be so hard to throw a few butternut squashes on that container ship?

I know some of you out there are thinking tsk, tsk. Embrace your new culinary climate, already! And I am all for that. (Well, to a degree. I won't be trying the lutefisk any time soon.) I've made some cod and we've had our fair share of potatoes (they do grow potatoes here). But I like to make some of our favorite dishes from pre-Norway days as well. And it's hard to make Moroccan couscous without butternut squash, or pancake breakfast without Bisquick.

For you Norway-bound folks, I usually go to Meny and sometimes Centra, which seems to have a larger selection of ethnic foods. I've also been across town to Jacob's, a high-end specialty grocery. (For you Seattleites, I'd equate Jacob's to a small Larry's Market. Remember Larry's? Those were the days.) I have also visited many of the various 'Turkish markets' in Oslo (small ethnic shops that sell a lot of Asian, Turkish, and Greek groceries, less expensive and sometimes varied produce, as well as dried herbs, spices, couscous, and other items). 

 

One of the 'Turkish markets' I frequent near Youngstorget.

Despite all my scouring for grocery items, there are some things I just haven't been able to locate. So, in honor of all things found in my hometown grocery stores and farmers markets, I give you the List of Food Items Colleen Has Not Been Able to Find in Norway:

• Reece's peanut butter cups
• York peppermint patties
• Peeps
• Dark chocolate candy bars
• Kraft macaroni and cheese

• Butternut squash
• Heck, any kind of squash (there was a rare sighting of a sugar pumpkin in early November, but that was it)
• Chard
• Fresh sage (I've only found fresh rosemary, mint, basil, sage, cilantro, and citron. Everything else, you're out of luck)
• Large baking potatoes
• Dried cherries
• Dried currants
• Dried kaffir lime leaves

• Sunflower seeds
• Millet
• Wheat flour (Wait. What? Yes. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough.)
• Dried yeast (We have fresh yeast in little cubes. I question their freshness.)
• Bulk foods
• Brown rice (except Uncle Ben's in a bag you throw in boiling water)
• Cornbread mix
• Cornmeal
• Sourdough anything 
• Good pancake mix (they have a mix that really just makes thick crepes)
• Mini bagels

• Pam cooking spray
• Crisco (for my mom's excellent pie crust recipe)
• Real vanilla extract
• Most any extract
• Sesame oil
• Rice wine vinegar
• Black bean sauce
• Light coconut milk
• Sweetened shredded coconut

• Fresh clams!
• Canned clams
• Heck, just clams
• Fresh lump crab meat (except in cans. Yuck)
• Black cod (totally different than Norwegian cod)

• Light dairy products (except milk)
• Good energy bars 
• Graham crackers
• Cheerios
• Almond butter

• Pancetta
• Ground turkey
• Turkey in general (okay, there's some turkey, but it's not as easy to come by)
• Decent deli meat (read: I really don't want to eat square deli meat, but thanks for trying)
• Cut-up, bone-in chicken (there are rows and rows of very processed chicken breasts by one company, but nary a package of bone-in thighs to be found)

• Decaf coffee
• Decaf green tea
• Good herbal tea in tea bags

• Canned chicken or vegetable broth (they have it in tiny glass jars for exorbitant amounts of money, or in a boxed concentrate I have yet to figure out)
• Canned soup (powdered soup abounds, and after trying it a few times, I've pretty much sworn it off)

I've never missed Whole Foods and Central Market so much. A girl can dream, can't she?

As American as...

Apologies for the somewhat blurry photo; I think my hands were trembling with anticipation. Sometimes you just need a little slice of heaven. Truly, one of the best decisions I made was taking all of our cookbooks (over 30) and recipe binders (three so far) with us to Norway. Limited storage be damned! Sure, I probably won't be able to find half of the ingredients needed for the recipes, but it is completely worth it even if it means finding one that knocks your socks off. Case in point: Martha Stewart's Classic Apple Pie from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. Baked at 8:00 p.m. last night. First slice at 9:30 p.m. Half gone at 9:00 a.m. today. Ja, baby.