Denmark is Good Eats

Hi All,

I got a head start on feasting season with an epic Thursday-Friday doubleheader this past week. Considering my usual three meal rotation of rice and beans, noodle stir-fry and lentil stew, I was pumped for something a bit more substantial, and Denmark delivered.

On Thursday, the Fulbright Commission invited all the scholars to an (early) Thanksgiving dinner at their new Copenhagen offices. It was great to see everybody again after being scattered around the country for the past two and a half months. I was reminded again how diverse are projects are: iron-age swordsmaking, modern digital xylophone, Kierkegaard's concept of love and torture in the contemporary context, just to name a few.

The dinner featured 3 turkeys (albeit smaller than normal) as well as staples such as stuffing, green beans, and potato casserole. We also had more Danish fare such as tuna cakes, salmon and rye bread.

On Friday, all the students in my department at the university had a "Julefrokost," which literally translates to "Christmas Lunch." Julefrokost is a big Danish tradition and one has many of them throughout the Christmas season with different groups of friends and finally one's family. The "lunch" is a classically large meal with many courses that can last several hours.

Our Julefrokost featured several salads, breads, cheeses, herring, frikadeller (Danish meatballs), red cabbage, falafel (?) and one of the best pork tenderloins I have ever had. The eating and talking was broken up on numerous occasions by schnapps toasts and the singing of traditional Danish songs that I couldn't understand a word of. After thoroughly stuffing ourselves, I expected some equivalent of the post-Thanksgiving dinner ritual known as falling asleep while watching football. Nope. Turns out the post Julefrokost tradition (at least among university students) is to dance wildly to Euro-pop.

I'm back to cereal and PB&J for the time being, but here's hoping I get invited to more splendid meals in the near future. I'm off to the Netherlands (Leiden and Amsterdam) next weekend so next blog post should have reports and pictures from my first extra-Danish exploration.

Daniel