Stranger in a Plains Land ~ 3

Of all the things I have discovered here, the magic of frozen fog is my favorite.

As I was leaving my office one evening last winter, it was foggy, but the temperature was well below freezing. It was probably -20 degrees Fahrenheit. As the fog hit my face, it felt like teeny tiny ice petals brushing across my skin. The fog was frozen. It was such a strange sensation. The next morning was my initiation to the magic of frost.

The picture above was taken at my favorite playground in town--Sherlock Playground. It's all wood and castle-like. Very Scandinavian.

A friend of mine told me that what you see in these pictures is hoar frost, but I think some of it may actually be rime frost.

I am no meteorologist--though I am obsessed with weather--so I can't reliably tell the difference in types of frost. I do know that it's beautiful.

I can tolerate day after day of freezing weather to be rewarded with this. These pictures were all taken last year, but we had a pretty good frost day a few days ago. I just couldn't find my camera...

When the frost visited us a few days ago, I told the boy that the frost faerie had painted all the trees.

He asked, where did she go? Can we see her?

I said she was very tiny and maybe even invisible and probably very tired from all the frosting she had done.

I said we should be thankful that she visited us. 

We can add the frost faerie to the other lies I've been delighted to tell him.

Although these pictures are beautiful, they do not do the frost justice. I wish I had a better camera, or better editing skills. I always feel like I'm cheating if I mess with the image too much...

...so I feel compelled to confess that I played around with the color on the picture below. It was actually taken right outside of the Psychology building.

The picture below is one of the trees in our front yard. I think it's some kind of crab apple and the berries stay on through the entire winter. It's nice to have that little splash of color when you are surrounded by winter.

Admittedly, I feel lucky because we get many blue sky days and sunshine. Those clear, sunny days mess with my head because it looks warm and inviting inside, and then when I walk outside, the air screams GOTCHA and laughs.

I'd like to learn how to cook something with this fruit. It makes a terrible mess in the spring.
The berries litter the sidewalks, and then the tree blooms again.

Frost fingers...

Stranger in a Plains Land ~ 2

Here are some more terms I've become familiar with since moving to the Nodak:

Lutefisk ~ "It is said that about half the Norwegians who immigrated to America came in order to escape the hated lutefisk, and the other half came to spread the gospel of lutefisk's wonderfulness." I haven't tried the stuff because I've yet to encounter it. I'd try it if given the "opportunity" to do so.

Dinner vs. Supper ~ Dinner is the meal that you eat in the middle of the day. Supper is what you eat in the early evening. Where I come from, you eat lunch mid-day and dinner in the evening. My mother is from the South, so I knew these meals were called dinner and supper in the South, but didn't realize it applied to the Midwest as well.

Church Supper ~ increasingly less common, sadly, from what I hear. Here's a nice article from the 1940s. I might be an atheist, but I'm still a big fan bringing big groups of people together, especially over food.

Lefse ~ It's like a potato tortilla. In fact, I prefer to use these as tortillas rather than the things that pass as tortillas, but they are spendy--about $1 each. I'm going to have to learn to make tortillas. I think if I could do that, lefse would soon follow.

Hotdish ~ Hotdish is pretty much anything that you mix in an oven-safe dish and bake. It typically contains some kind of starchy food, some kind of protein, some kind of vegetable, and it's mixed together with a sauce, i.e. canned soup.

What's that you say? You say that the thing I have described is called a casserole? Oh no--you are mistaken. A casserole is the dish you cook stuff in. Hotdish is the food in the dish. 

The most ubiquitous of the hotdishes (or at least the one I keep hearing about) is tater tot hotdish. Mmmm. You had me at tater tots.

Stranger in a Plains Land ~ 1

I'm going to do a series of posts about terms, foods, and objects I had either never heard of or knew nothing about prior to moving to North Dakota. Here's the first few:

Uff da ~ All purpose expression of Norwegian origin. Can be used as a substitute for any number of words that I am no longer allowed to say because my son will repeat them at school.

Round bacon ~ Also known as cottage bacon. The only bacon I'd ever known as "bacon" is the super-fatty strips of stuff that comes in plastic packages in the grocery store. That bacon comes from pork belly. I discovered round bacon at my local butcher shop. Round bacon is made from pork shoulder and is far more lean.  It is not the same thing as Canadian bacon, despite our proximity to the border. Round bacon is what ham slices wish they could be. It's like the other bacon, but better, because it's easier to cook, slightly healthier, and is perfectly sized for BLT sandwiches

Buffalo berries ~ According to Lewis and Clark: "A berry resembling a currant except double the size" with fruit that was "deliciously flavored and makes delightful tarts". I have not had the pleasure of eating Buffalo berries fresh, but I have tasted jam and wine made from this fruit.

Choke cherries ~ Choke cherry is the official fruit of North Dakota (as of 2007)! I think I might have heard of these before, but I'd never tasted them. I had the, ahem, opportunity to taste a "ripe" chokecherry right off of the bush last summer. It was sweet, but then it lived up to its name. It was the most astringent thing I have ever put in my mouth and the pucker response in my throat made it feel like my throat was closing off. Hence the "choke" part of the name. It was worth the experience for sure, but in the future I'll stick to things like chokecherry wine, syrup, and jam.