Cooking in Norway: An experience in functional illiteracy

As I have been cooking in Norway, I have come to realize that I consistently need to build a couple extra steps into the process.

The first step is taking the time to type what look like the key instructions on packages into Google Translate in order to decode my next steps. For example, I bought a packaged pancake mix and thought I'd whip up some hotcakes one morning. The package I bought was boldly labeled, "Pannekaker", but once I ran the instructions through the translation program and I took a closer look at what I thought were pancakes in the picture on the package, I realized that I have a mix for something that is closer to crepes. On my next trip to the store, I picked up a package of "Lapper Sveler" and I am happy to report I had a big ol' stack of pancakes for breakfast yesterday. Of course, I needed to run the instructions through translation. After all, I wasn't sure if I needed to add anything (eggs? milk?) to the mix. Turns out I only needed to add 2.5 dl of water to the mix and I was good to go. The only thing is... I have no idea what unit of measurement a dl is. Decaliter?? So, I dug through the box of cooking supplies that they provided us with our dorm rooms and, sure enough, I found a measuring cup with marks for "dl" running down the side. I still don't know what a dl is, but I sure know how to measure 2.5 of them.

The second added step is a conversion phase. Last week, I went to the equivalent of a hypermarket, called Coop Obs! to buy a few things to augment my cooking kit. One item I picked up was a big ol' casserole dish. A quick thanks to my friend Keely for sending me the recipe. Yesterday, I followed her recipe whipped up a tasty tuna and rice casserole big enough to feed a crew. Once I dove into this project, however, I realized I needed to pause and do some conversions. It turns out that the celsius oven needed not to be set at the 350 degrees in the recipe (the oven dial doesn't go that high), but once converted to celsius (or is it centigrade??) I saw that I needed to set the oven to 176.6667 degrees. Next, I realized I needed to measure things in cups. I'm still not sure what the cup to dl conversion ratio is and I was stumped by how to convert cups of dry materials. So, I found a Norwegian coffee cup, decided that it was, by definition, a cup and pressed on. One of the lessons I take from this is when dealing with recipes from the U.S., is to stick to casseroles. That is a very forgiving class of recipes when it comes to guesstimating quantities of ingredients.

Going to the grocery is always an interesting experience as well. I am making my shopping selections, in part, based on the pictures on the packages and whether the cooking instructions come with pictures accompanying each step. And even then, I make mistakes—like getting a crepe mix instead of a pancake mix because when I sounded out the big word on the package it sounded like something else in my head. Another student here, bought sticks of butter that turned out to be sticks of something like Crisco. Whoops. :) I recently bought a box of Uncle Ben's boil-in-a-bag wild rice. It has instructional pictures and everything!! I boiled the water, put the bag in the water (just like in the diagram), and then I realized I didn't know if I was supposed to leave the water boiling or turn down the heat? Ummm.... Uh oh. So, I quickly fired up Google Translate and... nothing happened. It turns out, the instructions weren't in Norwegian. Crap!! So, I started clicking on language buttons. German, Danish, Swedish... Ah-ha! The instructions were in Swedish! I then realized I was supposed to turn down the heat, quickly did, and the rice turned out just fine.

So, not to go all ABC After-School Special on you, but every time I go to the grocery store in Norway and when I am dealing with the instructions on packages, I think I am getting a very small slice of what it must be like to be functionally illiterate. And that's a tough existence. I looked up functional illiteracy rates and statistics for the U.S. this morning. I won't go into the bulleted details of what I found here, but it was an interesting moment of raised awareness.

And now, I'm off to heat up a plate of tuna casserole!

T--