Lilu wants to join Pappa in making snow angels.  She dives face first into the snow – doh!

Not to worry, she has three more months of snow to get it right.

And licking off the snow is just as fun!

People always complain about how expensive Norway is, especially Norwegians.  However, Norway really knows how to put on a sale.  I have never seen things cheaper on sale than in Norway.  In fact, we rarely need to buy clothes full price.  There is always a sales clothes-rack with 50-70% off somewhere in each store.  Quite often you get a great find.  Today I bought a little black cocktail dress for 90% off.  It fits like a glove.  Boy, did I walk out of that store beaming!

Every university has bike racks to allow students to save both the environment and their money. But what do you do when the snow is three feet deep and riding your bike suddenly seems less desirable? Tromsø University had a simple solution: Install a ski rack. This one at the entrance to the Medical faculty is always filled to capacity during the winter months.

Reindeer is synonymous with Sami culture and life but the Norsemen have certainly cottoned onto the goodness of reindeer cuisine.  A dish that is an icon of Norwegian culture is finnbiff or reindeer stew.  This rustic meal is perfect for cold Winter nights and packs you with energy for the next day of playing in the snow.

The dish has some unusual methods to create its earthy flavour.  No onions or garlic are used (or needed) to enhance the flavour, nor any stock.  The one-pot stew cooks fast and doesn’t need thickening.

To make finnbiff, Norwegians use thin reindeer shavings.  This can be bought in the frozen food section of the supermarket all year round.  You can also get fresh reindeer during the slaughter season in Autumn.  Reindeer is also sold as roasts or dried/cured meat off the bone but not as steak.  This is because game meat can get a little tough when cooked on a grill.

People often think that fresh is best rather than freezing meat, however, finnbiff needs to be frozen to get such thin shavings.  If you buy a fresh leg or roast, freeze it and then shave off slices from the frozen meat.  These thin shavings will defrost quickly ready to cook.

The reindeer shavings (defrosted), chopped bacon and mushrooms are browned in a pot.  Then water is added – to the boil and simmer.  This process actually creates a natural stock from the reindeer meat.

Crushed juniper berries, sour cream, milk, thyme, and brown goats cheese is added.  The juniper berries gives the freshness of the dish and enhances the earthy flavour of the meat.

The brown cheese adds a caramel flavour.  The cheese and cream melt to make a thin sauce with the natural stock.  There is no need to simmer this dish for hours to get the reindeer tender.  This is why the reindeer is shaved thinly – to make this quick!

The meat stew is usually served with mash potatoes and green vegetables – brussel sprouts, beans, peas, broccoli, etc.  The stew is naturally a little more runny than normal as there are no thickeners added but it gets soaked up by the mash.  It is also served with a sweet cowberry sauce (fresh cowberries and sugar – enough to take out the sourness of the berries).

Finnbiff / Reindeer Stew Recipe

500g reindeer shavings
100g bacon
100g fresh mushroom (or more to taste)
butter for browning
2dl water
3 dl sour cream
1 dl milk
3 slices of brown cheese (with goats milk)
5 cruched juniper berries
1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
Brown the meat, bacon and mushroom on a high heat in the pot.  Add water and bring to boil.  Simmer for 10 minutes.  Add the rest of ingredients and simmer for five minutes.  Serve with mash potatoes and green vegetables.

Some birds don’t migrate and as Oslo has taken away many natural bird homes to make way for ‘progress’, Oslo has certainly taken on responsibility to rehouse their birds.

I wonder how the birds feel about having to live in apartment blocks?

It’s Australia Day today.  I did all I could to spread the Australia Day cheer.  I couldn’t let my friends and family here in Norway be completely oblivious.  I got questions like ‘what do you do’ (answer: we go to the beach!) and ‘what happened on this day’ (answer: the First Fleet (11 convict ships from England) landed in Australia (to start a convict settlement).  For the first time, the reason why Aussies commemorated this day seemed rather odd.  Aussies like to laugh about how silly the English were giving up a tropical island with sun, sand and surf to convicts instead of immigrating themselves.

It was really hard to celebrate today when nobody knew about Australia Day.  I felt like I was having a party and I was the only one invited.  There are about 10 other Aussies living in Tromsø at any one time (according to the 2006 Tromsø immigrant stats) but as most of them only stay for a school term it is hard to keep track.  I realised today that if I want to keep my Australian traditions I am the one to remember and make things happen in our family.  It would be too easy not to celebrate my traditions.  If I want my kids to grow up half Australian then I can’t let laziness get in the way.  So even though today wasn’t beach weather (in fact, there was a coastal storm big enough to be named ‘Ask’ – after the Norse ‘Adam’ from Adam and Eve) I decided to make Aussie comfort food.  With a bit of adjustment to Norwegian ingredients, the food didn’t turn out half bad.

In Australia we have the famous meat pie – ground beef in a gravy sauce wrapped in a pastry shell.  It is very common to have mushy peas on top or mashed potato, and of course, dead horse (tomato sauce).  They don’t actually have pies in Norway.  The only real pastries are Danish custard pastries but other than that pastry isn’t really used in Norwegian cuisine.  So, I had to make do and Norwegianise our Aussie dinner.  The result – and open meat pie with a loose puff pastry hat, and mash potato and mushy peas on the side.  For desert was cream filled lamington cakes – vanilla cake coated in a chocolate sauce and rolled in desiccated coconut.  How Australian can you get!

This tree on the farm was my favourite.  During the Summer, squirrels played in its branches.  In the Winter the branches collected the falling snow.  In the Autumn the leaves turned a magnificent yellow.

But as the seasons change, so do farms.  The tree was gone when we visited last Autumn.  It will be missed but now the Summer sun can come through the window and light up the house.

As an Australian, it is common courtesy to bring a gift to give to the person or family you are visiting.  You never visit empty handed.  However, in Norway this custom is not recognised unless it has been pre-arranged for a party or event.  This has put me in an unusual position.  I want to follow my traditions (as they ‘die-hard’) but I also don’t want my Norwegian family to feel uncomfortable about me giving them unexpected gifts every time I see them.  So a compromise was necessary and a new tradition born.

When I first met Farmor I found out that walnuts are her favourite.  She always has a tub of walnuts on the kitchen table and often her salads and cakes are dressed with walnuts.  Walnuts – they are inexpensive, small, and don’t impose!  So the next time I saw Farmor I gave her a ‘visiting gift’ – walnuts.  They were a hit!  Ever since I’ve had great fun finding different varieties of walnut products to give to Farmor – walnuts in honey, walnut oil, walnut candy and chocolates, walnut bread, walnuts from different countries, etc.  Whenever I see a new walnut product I get all excited and know how much Farmor will just love them.

Still when I give my walnut visiting gifts they are always unexpected, but they are very much appreciated.  It’s fun to see Farmor’s smile when she is presented with a new unordinary walnut gift.

Today, 21st January, is soldagen (the sun day) when the sun officially returns to Tromsø (for about 2mins over the mountains).  It can be seen from the centre of town, on the top of the island and on the south shore.  If the sun can’t be seen due to clouds then the celebrations are held off until the first clear sky.

Tromsø celebrates the return of the sun by leaving their schools, businesses or what ever they are doing to go out and watch the sun rise over the mountains.  Kindergartens and schools sing songs to welcome the sun back.  They often wear costumes or make papers suns.

An iconic symbol on this day is the ’solbolle’ or sunbun.  This is a yellow coloured sweet bread with a custard centre.  This bolle is only found in the shops or at cafés in the few days leading to and after the return of the sun.  However, it is much better making them yourself!:

Solboller

150-200g butter
500mls milk
100g fresh yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon of turmeric for colouring (optional)
150-200g sugar
1 kg wheat flour
thick custard

1 egg to glaze
icing sugar to dust

It also tastes good with a teaspoon of cardamum, but this is optional.

Method

Melt the butter.  Add milk and heat to 37oC.  (Any hotter than that the yeast will die.)  Mix in the yeast.  Mix the dry ingredients together and add in the milk mixture.  Mix til a smooth dough.

Leave to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Cut dough into 30 pieces and roll each into a round bun.  Make a hollow in the centre for the custard.  Put the buns on a cooking sheet, hollow up, and put a table spoon of custard in.  Let the buns rise for another 30 minutes.  Glaze the buns with beaten egg and bake them at 250oC for 8 minutes or until brown.  Allow to cool and dust with icing sugar.

Happy sun-day!

Firstly, I’d like to say, how wonderful the UiT danseklubb performers were last night.  The dancers were beginner-amateurs of Swing and have only had a handful of Swing lessons before signing up to be performers.  Even though they weren’t professional dancers, the audience was none-the-wiser.

Being a trained/educated stage manager, I tend to have very high expectations.  Even for small productions, if it is created as a professional venture, then it should be professional.  I won’t say much about the organising of the Opening of TIFF for it’s 20th anniversary (as that is another dumbfounding story) but I will say a little about the Opening Night, as a stage manager.

The Opening of TIFF was only a 30min ‘professional production’ and I couldn’t believe how unprofessional the event was.  From the moment it started until the start of the opening film it was safety hazard, after sloppy cueing, after incorrect information, after bad directing.  This was largely because a film crew was putting on a theatre production.

Firstly, the house was full above capacity.  In a 500 seat cinema, the stairs leading to the front screen/stage had a person standing on every step.  Some were from the media with big cameras on tripods blocking the stairs.  This not only breaks building code/law of how many people were allowed in the cinema, the people were obstructions to safety.  Stairs must be clear to allow people safe access to exits in case of an emergency such as fire.

For the start the lights went down – the audience sat in complete darkness while the announcer said her opening speech in three different languages – Norwegian, English and Russian.  Her shaky competence in English and Russia made her speak very, very slowly.  For me, it was unnerving standing in pitch black  listening to the announcer struggle through.  It must have been over a minute before any light came on – which was on the screen.  In theatre you only go to darkness if it serves the story.  Blackouts should be no more than 3 seconds unless there is a special story concept in which the audience is generally informed.  This is about safety and the pre-warning is courtesy to the audience.  In any case, there needs to be adequate light for the audience at all times so they can move from/to their seat or in case of emergency.  In an orchestral concert, it is custom to have the house lights (the lights over the audience) up at least 20-30% so they can read their programs.  It was obvious that the director of the opening was directing a film not an opening ceremony.

There was a short film presentation orientating the audience to the 20th anniversary of TIFF.  The first half of the film was a little nostalgic as we got to see the old cinema and TIFF over the years.  Halfway through the film changed and a dancer and I looked at each other.  Clips of non-Norwegian films were made into a slide-show.  It seems these might have been films that were shown a TIFF previously but having films like Run Lola Run and actors like Liev Schreiber downplayed the nostalgic beginning.

The director wanted the dancers to escort the speakers to the podium and back again.  This was a noble idea until the tech crew just couldn’t get it together.  As I was there for the rehearsals and knew what was meant to be, I was a little gob-smacked at the kufuffle.  In theatre, after the director has finished directing, it is the stage managers show.  Therefore, anything that goes wrong is the stage managers fault.  At this opening, it seemed that the tech crew went rogue but, unfortunately, that is still the stage managers fault.  The first thing that went wrong, as mentioned above, was the people blocking the stairs.  It took four times longer to navigate through the people and down to the podium.  This left the audience watch the dignatries and important people clumsily shuffle up and down the stairs for about two minutes each way.  Not only that, the stage manager waited until the people were seated before progressing the show.  In theatre, overlapping boring movement takes out the bore and makes for a smooth, punchy production.  In rehearsal, I demanded for my dancers to have glow tape on the stairs, as the stairs were black and there was no light during the movements.  As they had no glow tape it was organised to have a moving light to light the way.  This sufficed, however, the lighting guy did not light the stairs during the show.  (It might have been because all the ‘illegal’ people on the stairs but the stage manager should have put safety first and raised the house lights).  As a result, the dignatries slowed down, (slowing the show down), as they were stumbling to find the next step.  It just so happened that the last speakers – the festival Director and a Russian Film star from the movie Hispster, plus four dancer-escorts, had to make their way up the stairs through the stair-people with no light, as the tech crew lowered the stage lights too soon and didn’t have the film cued, therefore the cinema was in complete darkness.  I couldn’t see it (as it was dark), but I heard the Festival Director trip.  From rehearsal, I know that for these movements music was meant to be played – music played only half the time.

The speeches were a bit of a downer.  The Culture Minister spoke to everyone like babies.  The City Mayor just read from a paper, head down.  The Festival Director decided to ‘wing it’ in English and her speech wasn’t really worth anything, except trying to get the Russian star to dance like he did in the movie.  She did say how professional the Opening of Tiff is.  The nail in the coffin for me was when she said ‘And thank you to the Tromsø Swing Klubb’.  The dancers are certainly NOT from this club – they are from the university dance club called UiT danseklubb.

Because there were no press kits, because the media didn’t ask, and because the Festival Director didn’t even know who was performing at her 20th Anniversary Grand Opening, the next day ALL the news papers and web editions had great pictures of the UiT danseklubb dancers, stating they were from the Swing club.  (Retractions in an obscure little corner of the paper never suffice!)

It’s unfortunate to say, but Norway doesn’t have the standards I am used to, when it comes to professional productions.  If Norway ever joins the EU, you can kiss theatre production good-bye as they just won’t meet the EU standards of safety and regulations.

I must say, the UiT danseklubb performance rocked!  Bar the fact that we had to wait for the Mayor to stumble trip up the stairs as the director didn’t conceive the entrances/exits well.  (We could have gone down the other stairs, but as a professional in the theatre business, you do what you are told.)  I gave the signal to cue the music and we danced our little hearts out!  Great applause at the end.  The stage manager asked a dancer what we were getting for putting in all the hard work of rehearsals and a full day of production.  Nothing.  (We were hoping for good advertisement but that has certainly gone to our competitors.)  She said she will have to do something about that, but we will see if she does.