"Uff Da! Let's Visit a Scandinavian Kitchen"

Are you... ...a lutefisk lover?



Not me. Never tried the stuff.


But that's about to change.

What is lutefisk, you ask?

It's slimy...
...slippery...

...salty...saturated with water...soaked in lye...steamed whitefish.

Which, unimaginably, people are supposed to eat.

Scandinavian people. Which I am not.

But...

...my dad wanted...

...our whole family together for a big lutefisk feed at a local church.

So we did.

There were a lot of cute ladies

in Norwegian sweaters.

They serve 1000 people 900 pounds of lutefisk at this event.

Can you imagine?

Now it's my turn to go through the line.


"Really?"

"That much?"

"That's better."


"Would you like butter sauce...

...or cream sauce," this little cutie asked.

I went with cream. The better to mask the flavor with, I hoped.

Then...

... she gave me some good advice:

Sprinkle...

liberally with allspice.


Fortunately...

...there were lots of other goodies like, lefse, mashed potatoes carrots and Swedish meatballs.

Don't the meatballs look tasty? It took a dozen people to make 3000 meatballs.

The meatballs sold out. The lutefisk did not.

Yes, that is pickled herring in the top left of the photo.

The mashed rutabaga looks good. There's also pickled beets and coleslaw....

And if it sounds like I'm stalling, I am.

Okay, okay...

...I'll try....

...the lutefisk.

Uff Da is right! It's not the flavor so much as the texture.

You know, I could go my whole life and never eat that again and be okay.

But it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

And everything else really was delicious.

And...how could...
...all these Scandinavians be wrong?