Sunday, June 25, 2017

#Food

Hi! Sorry it's been so long, it has been a busy week! So I'm just going to post a bunch in a row and write about a lot of different topics here to try to get caught up. 

First and foremost, so none of you are concerned, I need to tell you that I have been eating just fine. The traditional Icelandic food is a little unusual by my standards, but I told myself that I would try every single thing offered to me. And it has only led me astray once when I tried the beer our host dad gave to Megan and I. Beer is gross. 

Weird food #1: Lamb. 

Take all of that beef that Americans eat and replace it with lamb, take all of the fruit, vegetables, and carbs we eat and replace them with just potatoes, take all the cheese we eat and replace it with butter, and wellah!...you have the typical Icelandic diet. 

Icelanders eat SO much lamb. I thought that fish was going to be the predominant meat that I would be eating, but I was way off. My first experience with lamb was way back in Keflavik, where the airport is, on Day 2. I wasn't a huge fan of it then, nor was I a fan the second, third, and fourth times I had lamb at Solheimar for dinner back to back to back nights. It was squishy. 

But THEN for dinner on the very first night with my host family, Christian whips out this huge tray with what looked like a lamb thigh on it. Based on past experiences with lamb (a small but significant number), my only thought was "Well s***. " It was already awkward by nature of Megan and me being strangers in their country and home, and now I was going to have to choke down the food they gave me also. I put my fork in my hand and buckled down for the long haul. I'll give you the play-by-play of my thoughts: 

Bite one: "Okay this isn't so bad..."
Bite two: "Wait this is actually kinda good..."
Bite three: "...Really good!"
Bite four: "OH MY GOSH THIS IS SO GOOD"
Bite five: "IT'S LIKE HEAVEN IN MAH MOUTH WOO!"
Bite six and up: "mmmmmmmmmmmm"

So lamb (if cooked right) is good. Really good. 

Weird food #2: Fish?

I put the question mark there because fish come in lots of different forms here in Iceland, and who knows what is actually fish. 

Form #1: fish in a jar. It's green and chunky and you put it on rye bread (which is really dense and brown). Sounds yummy right? It actually wasn't that bad, I ate a whole piece of bread with it. 

Form #2: dried fish. They eat it like we eat potato chips. Salty, stacked with protein, suuuper chewy and really does look like dried fish. But also not bad! I ate an entire piece after our hike the other day. 

Form #3: in soup. I've had this twice since I've been here. The first was in a very creamy, very fishy soup from a restaurant in the oldest building in Iceland. That one was not great. The second was at Christian's parent's farm, made by his dad. That one was really really good, even though immediately after dinner we went to the fish tank and saw the brothers and sisters of the rainbow trout we just consumed. 

Weird food #3: Banani pitsu

Banana pizza! Here in Iceland, they put bananas on their pizza because they HATE spicy stuff. They can't handle it. So to balance out the spicy pepperoni, they add some sweet bananas. And surprisingly it's pretty good. Even better when it's cold the next day.

I think that covers most of the unusual food I've eaten so far, but I'll make sure to update you if I come across anything else weird. My host parents are 10/10 chefs, and I have more of a problem eating too much than not eating enough. Gotta hike up some more mountains and burn off all the meat and potatoes I've been eating....


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