Lutefisk: the Worst and Best Meal

Lutefisk: the Worst and Best Meal

I have never really considered food to be an important factor in my life. The only importance that I had ever seen in food was survival. I never really saw any cultural impact of eating a Poptart every morning for breakfast or having chicken for dinner. This changed when I began to try to identify more with my heritage and the culture of my heritage. Being what my dad lovingly refers to as a “European mutt”, it’s always been difficult to feel connected any one culture or country. Visiting my friend on St. Patrick’s Day, which is the biggest celebration of the year for her very Irish family, always made me feel kind of jealous that my family didn’t really do anything special. Her siblings would come home from different places in the city and in the country for just this one day.  Her mom would prepare corned beef and cabbage and Irish soda bread and everyone would eat it. It was one of the most important things that they did that day and I never really understood why. That changed one Christmas that my family spent in Denver a few years ago.

 Being only a quarter Norwegian, I never really thought much about the culture. We never celebrated being Norwegian; I didn’t even know I was Norwegian until I was twelve. However, I was soon in for a real treat at my cousin’s Christmas dinner which had one of the traditional Norwegian Christmas meals: lutefisk. Now to say that lutefisk isn’t the most appealing food is a bit of an understatement. It’s cod that has been soaked in lye for a week and then cooked.  Now while this may sound harmless, the best description that I have been able to come up for it is gelatinous milky fish. The fish looked perfectly harmless, but then my cousin accidentally bumped the table which caused the fish to start dancing like a bowl of Jell-O.  Imagine my horror when my grandma told me that I had to eat it because it was tradition. Since I had never eaten this before that hardly seemed like an adequate reason, but you don’t argue with grandma who helpfully spooned some on my plate as I gagged at the toxic smell that wafted up to me. As I was debating feigning sickness while we sat around the table, my grandma began to talk about the history of lutefisk and why we eat it during Christmas. She talked about how the way that lutefisk was prepared allowed our ancestors to store the fish in the cold and provided a delightful Christmas meal. She then talked about how her own mother and father had travelled from Norway to the United States to provide for their family. As she talked about our family’s history, I hate to admit that I wasn’t paying complete attention. My attention had been claimed by my four year-old cousin who had spent the entire discussion trying to blow out the candles on the table. Then all of a sudden it was time to eat. Luckily my cousins who had suffered through this meal before had developed a way to eat the lutefisk. It involves a very large piece of lefse, a rather tasty Norwegian flatbread, topped with a heaping pile of mashed potatoes, some ham and then just enough lutefisk to make grandma happy. The meal actually wasn’t that bad and I really enjoyed spending this time with my family.

It wasn’t until the next year when the promise of lutefisk was looming over my head that I discovered that I was actually looking forward to it. I was surprised because I cringed at just remembering the pungent odor of the fish. However, I grew to understand that even though lutefisk has to be one of the foulest things that I have ever eaten, it has helped me grow closer to my family and to my heritage. I discovered that I was more curious about my heritage and my culture. I learned a few Norwegian phrases that I could use and I did one of my school research projects on Norwegian culture. I also felt closer to the side of my family that I never have been able to see that often. The next Christmas I saw how my family came together to prepare the lutefisk, with all of my relatives contributing except the kids that stayed as far away from the smell as possible. And this year I listened as my grandma told the history of lutefisk and of our family and I felt even more connected to relatives that have been long gone, but have still contributed to who I am today. We ate the lutefisk together as a family, laughing at those who were eating it for the first time, enjoying the company of some close friends that came along and point blank refused to eat it, and having contests to see who was brave enough to eat the most lutefisk. It seems almost impossible that such a simple thing could bring people together so easily. Now I am beginning to understand the importance that food can have on a person. I also understand the closeness that my friend’s family felt when preparing their traditional Irish meal on St. Patrick’s Day. Food has the undeniable, yet not fully understood, quality of bringing people together.