I will avoid going into a long ramble on why I feel I have near-zero connection to my genetic ancestry. I'll leave it to say I was digging for humor items about being Norwegian in an attempt to find a properly self-depreciating t-shirt logo. During such research I stumbled upon something silly enough I felt I should share it:
The moment every traveller lives for is the native dinner where,
throwing caution to the wind and plunging into a local delicacy
which ought by rights to be disgusting, one discovers that it is
not only delicious but that it also contradicts a previously held
prejudice about food, that it expands ones culinary horizons to
include surprising new smells, tastes, and textures. Lutefisk is
not such a dish. Lutefisk is instead pretty much what you'd
expect of jellied cod; it is a foul and odiferous goo, whose
glutaneous texture and rancid oily taste are locked in spirited
competition to see which can be the more responsible for
rendering the whole completely inedble. How to describe that
first bite? Its a bit like describing passing a kidneystone to the
uninitiated. If you are talking to someone else who has lived
through the experience, a nod will suffice to acknowledge your
shared pain, but to explain it to the person who has not been
there, mere words seem inadequate to the task.
This is one of the many reasons I think I'd never quite fit in with my Norwegian ancestors. :)
The moment every traveller lives for is the native dinner where,
throwing caution to the wind and plunging into a local delicacy
which ought by rights to be disgusting, one discovers that it is
not only delicious but that it also contradicts a previously held
prejudice about food, that it expands ones culinary horizons to
include surprising new smells, tastes, and textures. Lutefisk is
not such a dish. Lutefisk is instead pretty much what you'd
expect of jellied cod; it is a foul and odiferous goo, whose
glutaneous texture and rancid oily taste are locked in spirited
competition to see which can be the more responsible for
rendering the whole completely inedble. How to describe that
first bite? Its a bit like describing passing a kidneystone to the
uninitiated. If you are talking to someone else who has lived
through the experience, a nod will suffice to acknowledge your
shared pain, but to explain it to the person who has not been
there, mere words seem inadequate to the task.
This is one of the many reasons I think I'd never quite fit in with my Norwegian ancestors. :)
no subject
Date: 2002-04-22 05:06 pm (UTC)Nothing to forgive the bagpipes for, though.
no subject
Date: 2002-04-22 08:51 pm (UTC)Beeg Seester
no subject
Date: 2002-04-22 09:23 pm (UTC)