text and images britt-arnhild
I am sitting here writing a list for grocery shopping. We will have friends over for dinner tomorrow, and I will make bacalao. Not at all a traditional Christmas dinner, at least not in our family. So I am reading recipes, trying to decide which one to use. Hopefully the clipfish will not be too salty, I have it in water now, for 24+ hours.
Food traditions are important over the Christmas holidays.
For our family it starts on lillejulaften, the night before Christmas Eve. Then we fill the diningroom with friends, and serve lutefisk. Though most of the guests have been from Norway, over the years we´ve had guests from the US, New Zealand, Australia and Italy. All of them have tried the special dish, and even a few of them liked it :-) I love lutefisk, and when my family gathered for halibut and I had to stay behind, I ate the lutefisk leftovers.
On Christmas Eve we have rice porridge for lunch. In it there is a hidden almond, and the one who gets it, win a huge marzipan pig.
The Christmas Eve dinner is the main meal.
Different parts of the country used to have different traditions. In our family we eat pinnekjøtt.
The meal is cooked for hours during the day, letting the fragrance of Christmas fill every nook of the house.
My flu/cold this year has taken away all the smells and fragrances of Christmas. I couldn´t even smell the pinnekjøtt.
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Here is a link to Visit Norway´s site about traditional Christmas food.
Now I would like to hear about your Christmas food traditions :-)
