Flaky Kringle with Almond and Raisins (For Grandma, with Love)
She would have turned 104 this month. So in honor of Grandma Agny, today I’m sharing my recipe for kringle, a flaky pretzel-shaped Danish pastry filled with almond and raisins. As I’ve written about in the past, I was getting…
Going deeper with those we love (and how food helps)
Each of us has an ache, I suspect–a longing for deeper connection. If you’ve been following Outside Oslo for a while, you may know part of the story of how I began writing about Scandinavian food over ten years ago. It was…
10 Years of Outside Oslo
A bit of a milestone passed by unobserved here a few months ago: the 10-year anniversary of Outside Oslo. I still remember clicking "publish" on that first post on September 1, 2009, and how the blog became a powerful tool…
Norwegian Christmas Cookies: Fattigmann
Gathering the dough into a ball, I inhaled the scent of the cardamom and butter, warm in my hands. Like all those memories from my childhood, the feelings stirring in my heart filled me with a sense of love, a security…
Norwegian Rømmegrøt (Sour Cream Porridge)
My bookshelves sag with stories—literature in the form of recipes, memories formed between batter-spattered handwritten lines. I’ve said for a long time that I care so much about Scandinavian food because of the people. My grandparents loved me with medisterkaker…
Old-School Norwegian Prune Porridge (Sviskegrøt)
I can’t help but feel like a detective or a historian when I go digging into traditional Scandinavian recipes, trying to find clues to help me understand my heritage and family history better. The way my story goes, my grandma–the…
Cardamom-scented Fastelavnsboller and other recently-published recipes
A few weeks ago I pounded so much cardamom in the mortar and pestle that I must have sneezed about ten times in the half hour that followed, whispers of the spice hovering around me and clinging to my hair. I…
Cardamom-Almond Custard with Blueberries
They were just photos of landscapes. Muscular earth covered in green. A pair of cantilever bridges rising and falling, meandering through a snowy fishing village. Placid fjords reflecting their surroundings as they swallowed the light into their depths. Yet the…
Great-Grandma Josephine’s Norwegian Waffles (Vaffler)
As I sat next to her yesterday on the aubergine leather sofa, the water of Puget Sound placid outside the window behind her, I studied how the afternoon light fell across her profile and how the shadows formed where age has…
New Potatoes and Chanterelles with Lemon and Dill
As a Seattle-born Norwegian-American, a woman once removed from the country of her father, my way back to my heritage has been through its food. I’ve always loved being Norwegian. Dressing up in a child-sized bunad for Syttende Mai parades…
