Kaleb has always loved to cook – he says it’s just like science – you mix things together and you never know what you’re going to get. He’s declared that once a week he wants to make a special soup he calls “High Five.” You take five of any and all kinds of ingredients (carrots, onions, potatoes, celery, red pepper, mushrooms, garlic cloves… whatever) and you cut it up and add it to the pot. At home, Kory used to make a mean chicken broth after we baked an organic chicken in a clay pot, but here, we have to settle for bullion cubes til our kitchen things arrive. Kaleb made High Five Soup last night using some root vegetables he picked out at the grocery store that we’d never seen before. We have no idea what you call the veggie he is holding in this photo (it substituted nicely for a sword, however) but it sure tasted good in the soup (he only used half of it). He also added rutabagas, but didn’t hold to the FIVE rule on that one as they sell them the size of cantaloupes here so he just cut five big pieces off the thing and put it in. And it’s always so good, we give him a High Five when we eat it! He’s pretty funny about the “five” rule… five different spices (five shakes each), stir the soup in one direction five times, then reverse directions for five stirs, then repeat for five times. Nothing is ever easy with this boy. But he invited Sabina over to taste it so she stayed for dinner and asked Kory where the meat was in the soup, as they always have lots of meat in their soup. Kory explained it was vegetable soup, but the concept was lost on her. Kaleb said grace (in Norwegian) and she was a bit confused by the whole thing so last night Kaleb and I prayed for her.
Today we spent another five hours driving around looking for little things to help us get settled. We don’t know what things are called so it takes forever to find them. Asking a store employee is worthless since they don’t fully understand our poor descriptions of things, so we just do our best. And in most cases we are trying to describe things they have never seen or heard of - like a night light? Yesterday, I spent a good twenty minutes trying to find vanilla and baking soda. I had no less than four people try to help me. I’m going to assume they call baking soda “natron” for now, as I bought some and will try it out. But when I asked the employee if I can use it not just for cooking but to brush my teeth, clean things with it, etc., I got a most definite “NO.” So either they aren’t hip to the many great uses for baking soda, or I got the wrong thing. I’ll soon find out. And as for the vanilla… finally, a customer in the store overheard my repeated description (“black water” was the best I could come up with in my limited Norwegian vocabulary) and she handed me a container with some kind of powder in it, clearly marked “vanila” and wondered what my problem was. I spoke again in Norwegian, saying “no, black water” and then she told me (in Norwegian) that her daughter-in-law was from Australia and she had the same problem – she wasn’t used to cooking with the vanilla powder, but that’s all they have here in Norway. Go figure. She also told me her daughter-in-law only lasted five years here and then went back home. “Too many differences,” she said. I don’t know if she was referring to the marriage, or the vanilla.
