So here I am sitting\u00a0in my kitchen\u00a0on a crisp, fall, Minnesota evening drinking a German beer and cooking pumpkin soup.\u00a0 October in Minnesota is quite spectacular with leaves brilliant shades of orange, red and yellow.\u00a0 We enjoy autumn with warm\u00a0bowls of soup, hot apple cider, and great big orange pumpkins that we carve into memorable faces.\u00a0 Traditionally, instead of Halloween, Germans celebrate basically the entire month of October and they call it Oktoberfest (actually, this is the exact same way one would spell ‘October party’ in Norwegian).\u00a0\u00a0 During Oktoberfest, Germans drink\u00a0copious\u00a0amounts\u00a0of beer and they eat a lot of bratwursts.\u00a0 Bratwursts are typically smothered with saurkraut and hot mustard and wrapped up in a piece of hearty German bread or in a sliced roll, much like the American hot dog bun.<\/p>\n
Is your mouth watering yet?\u00a0 Mine is, as I sit patiently waiting for my pumpkin soup to mature, wondering where the meat and potatoes are…well, in Norway all the hype is about p\u00f8lser<\/em>.<\/strong> P\u00f8lser<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/span> <\/span>are Norwegian hot dogs (very similar to American hotdogs and nothing like German bratwursts) wrapped in a lo<\/strong>mpe<\/strong>–<\/em>which is essentially lefse<\/em><\/strong>, a flatbread made of potatoes, butter, cream, and flour.\u00a0 <\/strong>Lefse<\/strong> <\/em>is\u00a0perhaps the most common Norwegian-American Christmas food.\u00a0 When most Americans think of lefse<\/em><\/strong>, they think of warm potato flatbread with butter and sugar wrapped up inside.\u00a0 The p\u00f8lse<\/strong> <\/em>uses the warm potato bread, but\u00a0creates an entirely new culinary delight.\u00a0\u00a0 Norwegians eat p\u00f8lse<\/em> <\/strong>wrapped up in lompe<\/em><\/strong> with ketchup and mustard aplenty, and perhaps even some mashed potatoes shoved into the mix.\u00a0 P\u00f8lser <\/em>can be found throughout Norway at street vendors, gas stations, cafeterias, and even some restaurants!\u00a0 They can be enjoyed as a late breakfast, a quick lunch during a study break, a snack before you hop on the t-bane <\/em>(Norwegian semi-underground subway system), or a late night treat after a night on the town.\u00a0 The point is that p\u00f8lser <\/em>are enjoyed daily by Norwegians.<\/p>\n My soup is ready now and it tastes fantastic.\u00a0 However, my mouth is salivating for\u00a0a warm, juicy, p\u00f8lse <\/em>fresh out of the 711 I passed every day when I\u00a0went to university in Oslo.\u00a0 My boyfriend is a hog farmer, so you’d think I’d be more satisfied with fresh smoked bratwursts, but my tummy yearns for those Norwegian p\u00f8lser. <\/em><\/p>\n Stay tuned this winter for more on lefse…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So here I am sitting\u00a0in my kitchen\u00a0on a crisp, fall, Minnesota evening drinking a German beer and cooking pumpkin soup.\u00a0 October in Minnesota is quite spectacular with leaves brilliant shades of orange, red and yellow.\u00a0 We enjoy autumn with warm\u00a0bowls of soup, hot apple cider, and great big orange pumpkins that we carve into memorable…<\/p>\n