Thursday, May 15, 2008

Eileen will love the food in Iceland?

For those of you who know Eileen's dislike for fish you probably wonder what she is going to eat in Iceland. It even gets better when you read what I just found out is the cuisine of Iceland.

"Iceland offers wide varieties of traditional cuisine. Þorramatur (food of the þorri) is the Icelandic national food. Nowadays þorramatur is mostly eaten during the ancient Nordic month of þorri, in January and February, as a tribute to old culture. Þorramatur consists of many different types of food. These are mostly offal dishes like pickled ram's testicles, putrefied shark, singed sheep heads, singed sheep head jam, blood pudding, liver sausage (similar to Scottish haggis) and dried fish (often cod or haddock) with butter.

Much of the cuisine centres around Iceland's fishing industry. Traditional dishes include Hákarl (putrefied shark), graflax (salmon marinated in salt and dill), hangikjöt (smoked lamb), hrútspungar (pickled ram's testicles), and slátur (sausages made from sheep entrails). A popular food is skyr made of cultured skim milk, in the summer time it may be served with bilberries as a dessert."

We had a hard time with the food in Romania - this is going to be even more interesting.

4 comments:

Heather said...

Yikes! I guess Eileen will probably lose even more weight than she did on the first mission. It's safe to say I probably will not be visiting you. Randy, However, is still on board for some reason.

p.s. my brother had blood pudding by accident on his mission and he still says it is the worst thing he has ever tasted. (they tell the missionaries not to eat it)

TStevens said...

You either call it BLACK pudding or BLOOD sausage; either way it is the same thing. I have had it (including on my mission) and it was pretty good. Haggis is also pretty good as well.

When I was with my parents this week we watched Anthony Bourdain's travel/food show (it is at Austin Public library on DVD guys) and on one episode he visits Iceland. The really out there products are historical, eaten once per year at the festival, and can take upwards of six months to prepare. After eating the shark, and you must remember I have seen Bourdain eat a lot of freaky stuff on his show, he stated "I can honestly say that was the nasty thing I have ever had." He did like the pickled sheep testicles though.

Also they are a lot like Alaska when it comes to daylight hours in the winter, usually about four hours. And I remember from my youth that they do have American military bases there as well, so that should bring some home comforts.

Probably not important, but on average Icelandic women tend to be very pretty on average.

Nessa said...

All I have to say is that Cade is going to LOVE hearing about the food!

Darron said...

Twenty years ago the food in Icelandic still mostly came from Iceland and you couldn't even find peanut butter. Nowadays in Iceland you can find any food you want. The prices for some things are pretty expensive though. I was a missionary there 22 years ago and was there again a few weeks ago.