If You Call A Moose A Mouse

With 25,000 miles of coastline, it is natural that Norwegians eat a lot of fish. More impressive, however, were the other uses they found for fish products. One such example was drinking fish oil. The traditional dark green of the Møllers bottle resembled the shade my face turned when I tried it. The real experience though was eating fresh cooked liver during a fish dinner. This special oil was served as a dressing for potatoes and the liver itself was offered as a delicacy. Norwegians reminded me that it is very healthy, but also very rich. Like most other things they told me, this was an understatement. The closest comparison I could make was if you condensed a cup of olive oil and five egg yolks together into a bite the size of your thumb. Fish eggs were another delicacy that I first experienced in Norway. I was amazed to find that caviar was like ketchup in more ways than just price. It came in tubes that looked somewhat like toothpaste and in about 20 flavors. I developed a taste for the grocery store caviar, but it took six months before I tried the real rogn. The two floating buoys that looked something like lungs in a pot of boiling water did not resemble caviar at all. I’m sure my expression was priceless as I confirmed that those did actually come out of a fish and that we were going to eat them. Mild with the slight texture of sand was as closely as I could describe the taste. I found out that I liked roe and the Norwegian diet in general. However, ‘liver pate’ or ‘liver paste’ was the only Norwegian food that despite trying several times I did not enjoy. One of my house mates, knowing my palatal aversions, prided himself on making two, white bread, leverpostei, and pickle sandwiches to take with him on his way to school. He would take a huge bite, looking straight at me, with a smile in his eyes.