I'm a 31 year old American expat living in Oslo, Norway, with my bulldog, Ada, and my husband, Johannes. My interests include interaction design, especially information architecture, philosophy of mind and ethics, cognitive psychology, sociobiology, feminism, yoga, fat acceptance, knitting, pottery, and cooking.
A penguin was just born at Bergen Aquarium. This is exciting because the aquarium is one of my favorite places to visit in Bergen. Well, aquariums are my favorite places to visit anywhere. 
It’s springtime in Norway now, and all the trees are trying madly to reproduce, spraying pollen everywhere. We haven’t got screens here, and all our hot-weather climate control comes from opening up all the windows in the house. This results in a major amount of pollen settling on every horizontal surface imaginable within an hour of my opening the windows. Check it out:
Seriously, that’s from the window being open for one hour.
This, combined with the dust from our renovations in the hall, the mess from the water damage caused by the 5th floor tenants, and the facade masonry work on the building across the street, means that the house is a dusty pit. It’s probably not fit for habitation, and we’re most likely going to both die of miner’s lung. That or lead poisoning from inhaling the dust from the removal of the 110+ year old lead-based paint in the hall. All the grit is driving me nuts. I won’t be able to do a thorough spring cleaning until all four of those issues are resolved. I can hardly stand it.
Last night I made some fabulous chicken strips. Chicken strips were the last thing on my list of foods I missed from the US but wasn’t able to recreate here. These things rivalled KFC. Here they are:
Here is the recipe:
Since a make a lot of chinese food involving deep-frying chicken, it’s hard for me to write specific directions for this recipe. Woks work better for deep frying because they maximize the oil’s surface area while minimizing the volume of oil required. The oil wil heat better if the wok is covered. It’s imperative to get the oil as hot as possibe for the second frying and to remove the chicken before the oil gets too cold. Oil that’s too cold results in soggy, oil-logged breading. The breading seasonings can be adjusted as desired. I used 1t of table salt in the breading, but I felt that I could easily have used more. I’ll also use more garlic salt and black papper the next time I make this dish. Finally, don’t be afraid of deep-frying! It’s not as dangerous as you fear, either health-wise, fire-wise, or burn-wise.
I’m in the midst of developing a new design for the blog now, so things might look a little wonky at times. Forgive me–it oughtta be done sometime soon, as I actually have some motivation these days.
- Testet ikke drikken på lam - Aftenposten.no
Especially after all the lamby goodness from the other day.
Just to translate quickly, a new drink for lambs (”Lammedrikk Pluss”, or “The Lamb Drink Plus”) was put out on the market recently by Tine, the company who also produces most of Norway’s dairy products. The lamb drink wasn’t thoroughly tested since the demand for it was so high–they only tested it out on baby goats and not lambs. It turned out to kill the poor lambs! They got so full of gas their bellies blew up like balloons, and it took them a long time to die. It’s been taken off the market, and the producer is compensating the farmers with 350,- NOK, about 60 USD, for each lamb that died from imbibing this product.
Such a sad little piece of news. Poor lambs. This is not good press for Tine.
At least one of my readers here knows about my discomfiture at my husband Johannes’s decision to “boycott” the US since the US-VISIT program went into effect. Half Changed World linked today to a really good post on Decomposition. The author the the post manages to concisely state a lot of the ideas I’ve had running around in my head about Johannes’s kind of “activism”.
Does a company do something you don’t like? Go ahead and boycott, but don’t bother organizing or informing the public or even taking the five minutes to write the company and tell them why you’re boycotting. In effect, of course, you’ve completely disempowered yourself, because the company will have no idea why you’re not buying their goods and is just as likely to determine that it’s because their ads don’t feature enough young naked women. All of the effective boycotts in history have been large, well-organized and public. Boycotting a store or product by itself may be an important expression of our personal values, but it will not effect social or political change.
These statements are relevant to a lot of what we call “activism” today. I’m guilty of this kind of laziness, too.
It’s a little too early for me to be posting now; I hope to post a more well-thought out discussion of my thoughts on this subject. For now, though, thanks to Athena Dreaming for this bit of inspiration.
