Guess Where I'm Wandering 5?

So you figured out I'm in Oslo, Norway. This is one of my favorite spots that my cousin took me to on my first visit 15 years ago.

Guess Where I'm Wandering 4?

Am I making these too hard? This one should be very easy? A major international award is presented each year at the city hall building here.



Today, my cousin and I went to a festival on the waterfront in front of city hall. Panjabi MC was performing on stage when we arrived so it was packed! I ate Pakistani Lahore fish (lovely spices) and chicken tikka and a chickpea kebab wrapped inside naan, finished off with a mango lassi.

Guess Where I'm Wandering 3?

After four visits to this country, I finally got to see this area.

The day after I got into town, my cousin suggested that we leave that very evening since the weather today isn't supposed to be as bad as it's forecast for the next few weeks. I saw tons of waterfalls and cute towns, and about 10 minutes before the boat was about to dock, rain gushed down. Just in time!

Guess where I am now?

IKEA - Covina

I meant to publish this when I started posting about Stockholm - Sweden months ago. As with so many pictures, they got lost in the queue and posting this now seems like suddenly laughing a full minute after someone told a joke.

In the midst of blogging about my adventures in Sweden, I had wanted to include something about the cuisine. Except, I mainly dined at ethnic restaurants and I didn't take photos of the few Scandinavian dishes I did eat. So what's a food blogger to do except dine at everyone's favorite Swedish furniture store. :)

I Ate Rudolph and Got Myself a Firklover

My Norwegian cousin and her friend came to visit for a few weeks. She brought me fun food from Norway!

My beloved chocolate Firklover (Four leaf clover? Really? Not hazelnut lover's?). My fiiirkloooover (Say it as Carrie did when talking about her Russian. Hehe.) is studded with chunks of crunchy hazelnuts ie. filberts (Oregon's state nut ya know!) in a smooth, creamy base. I've gravitated toward dark chocolate these days, but will always make an exception for the extra creaminess of Norwegian chocolates. The Kvikk Lunsj (quick lunch) is like a KitKat. And the FruktNott (fruit and nut) is hazelnuts and raisins.


This extra-large bar of Melkesjokolade (milk chocolate) is from my brother's trip last year but I had the photo sitting around so I thought I'd post it as well.

Lil' sis asked for a box of After Eight mint chocolates. I've mentioned receiving these chocolates as a gift after a meal of nem nuong (Vietnamese grilled pork patties).

Anyway, after parceling them out amongst my many cousins, there's only a few bars of already opened FruktNott and one Firklover left. Oh! Everyone wants a Firklover!

And because of I was thinking of ya'll, I asked my cousin to bring me some fun food. She brought me smoked salmon (I keep telling them we have salmon in the states...), brown cheese, reindeer salami, and caviar in a tube.


On her last day, I made a Spanish potato omelet and served it with the smoked salmon. She thought it was excellent.

She told me to eat the brown cheese with waffles. But I wasn't in the mood to cook. Norwegian waffles are really soft, not like the crunchy American kind. I didn't think my hemp and flax seed frozen waffles would go well with brown cheese anyway. So I grabbed some Triscuits (they're lil' sis's, I'm not a cracker person), squirted out some caviar from the tube and gave it a shot. The caviar tasted like salty salmon mousse. Not bad. I remember it tasting really fishy when I had it in Norway, but this wasn't bad at all.

Rudolph tasted like the elk meat my dad gets made into salami. A little bit gamey than normal salami, but not too pungent.

The brown cheese tasted a bit like smoked gouda.

So I piled the cheese and reindeer salami onto the caviar-topped Triscuit and ate it all together. Not bad at all.

The brown cheese will probably end up in cold cut sandwiches. My cousin says the reindeer meat is like jerky and to just snack on it. As for the caviar, I think I'll make canapes or something with it.

Anyway, thought ya'll would like seeing some of my Norwegian goodies. You know how much I love fun foods.