Well, It's Summer. What DID You Expect?
I know that the first day of summer is coming up, but really, summer's already here, which, as the Gnosis Blog points out, is why the first day of summer is midsummer. So it's been all visitors, all the time, for a while.
We had the Norwegian cousins here first, which was lots of fun, but they should be home by now, in time for their own Midsummer celebrations, which involve staying up all night on the fjords with bonfires. The night's short, anyway, even down in Mandal, which is where my people come from.
When I went to visit these cousins, though, they were living up above the arctic circle, and I went to stay with them for a week at the New Year's, cause I wanted to see the Noonday Dark (which seemed to me much more interesting than the Midnight Sun). The Noonday Dark was lovely, a sort of pearlescent gray at noon. I had the time of my life. We drove over the river -- I mean the river, really, not a bridge; in the winter the ice provides a shortcut; I saw the Northern Lights, lots; they put the baby out in his pram in the snow every afternoon for his nap, which went far towards explaining the hardiness of the Norwegians; they took me to visit Sami friends, who fed me ceremonial boiled reindeer inside a reindeer tent (this was followed by strawberry creamcake, inside the warm house -- and where did those strawberries come from? never did find out); they fed me salmon and reindeer every day; it was the finest vacation EVER.
We didn't provide nearly as much excitement for the cousins when they came here, alas, though they did go to Kennywood, and they loved Bear's Retreat (this is a European house! they said), and they wrote down recipes for everything we fed them.
The cornbread was especially interesting to them. Cooking with cornmeal: who'd a thunk it.
And I'll admit that I gave my cousin Ellen the recipe for lavender pound cake, the specialty of Bear's Retreat, the only recipe I won't share. With anybody. But I gave it to Ellen.
After all, though, she's in Norway. It's not like she's going to provide much competition.
And as she points out, I kept it in the family.
We had the Norwegian cousins here first, which was lots of fun, but they should be home by now, in time for their own Midsummer celebrations, which involve staying up all night on the fjords with bonfires. The night's short, anyway, even down in Mandal, which is where my people come from.
When I went to visit these cousins, though, they were living up above the arctic circle, and I went to stay with them for a week at the New Year's, cause I wanted to see the Noonday Dark (which seemed to me much more interesting than the Midnight Sun). The Noonday Dark was lovely, a sort of pearlescent gray at noon. I had the time of my life. We drove over the river -- I mean the river, really, not a bridge; in the winter the ice provides a shortcut; I saw the Northern Lights, lots; they put the baby out in his pram in the snow every afternoon for his nap, which went far towards explaining the hardiness of the Norwegians; they took me to visit Sami friends, who fed me ceremonial boiled reindeer inside a reindeer tent (this was followed by strawberry creamcake, inside the warm house -- and where did those strawberries come from? never did find out); they fed me salmon and reindeer every day; it was the finest vacation EVER.
We didn't provide nearly as much excitement for the cousins when they came here, alas, though they did go to Kennywood, and they loved Bear's Retreat (this is a European house! they said), and they wrote down recipes for everything we fed them.
The cornbread was especially interesting to them. Cooking with cornmeal: who'd a thunk it.
And I'll admit that I gave my cousin Ellen the recipe for lavender pound cake, the specialty of Bear's Retreat, the only recipe I won't share. With anybody. But I gave it to Ellen.
After all, though, she's in Norway. It's not like she's going to provide much competition.
And as she points out, I kept it in the family.
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