At the beginning of this week Iceland had a hurricane. It was said to be the worst storm in 25 years, but they always say that, and afterwards I always believe them. The storm changed school schedules, closed all roads and almost every store (aside from the trusty hot dog stand – I’m not kidding) near us. After reading the warnings online we bundled up and rushed to the grocery store to buy food to last for three days inside the house. This happens more than you’d think (or maybe exactly as much as you think, considering it’s Iceland) and meal planning here, it’s tricky. For the next several paragraphs I will be writing all about what it’s like to stay inside and cook in a studio the size of my childhood bedroom with ingredients limited to foods that have the endurance to survive Icelandic conditions (which is to say, not a lot of food.) Being cooped up inside gives me a lot of time to think about who I am, why I'm here and what I'm having for dinner.
Donuts. We are having donuts for dinner.
Before you mention the obvious, we’ve thought about it. There is no room for a toaster oven or crock pot. Need I remind you, our refrigerator is the size of the mini fridge you had in your last Marriott hotel. Unless you were in a nice suite, that one is bigger than ours. Our fridge is our bedside table is our kitchen counter is our shoe closet, and it can’t even fit a box of a dozen eggs inside. I suppose we could have counter space if we considered putting the toaster in the sink. But something in the back of my mind says that water and electricity don’t tend to mix. I’ll look it up. So I swear, the hotplate is our only hope.
For the last few months that we’ve lived here it’s been genuinely fun trying to come up with different meals to make. Different, in that they have different names, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves because they all involve canned diced tomatoes and cumin. Every. Single. Time. Over the last seven days I have made 6 meals using Cumin. It would have been seven, but I found the cinnamon I needed for my stuffed French toast (pro tip, cinnamon and cumin look the same so your husband will just think the cumin has gone bad if you add it to the french toast-fortunately, it didn’t come to that.) Why all the cumin, you ask? Because I don’t speak Icelandic.
When I first moved here a friend taught me that when saying hello, "Gódan Daginn" it sounds like you are saying, "I'm Dying." And I am, because I'm starving while trying to translate what foods are in Icelandic. In Icelandic, Cumin is spelled “Kúmín.” This is the same language that spells “Herbs” “Villikrydd.” So no, I do not buy spices. I’ll look for the ones that seem almost like something I could sound out, and I buy those. They are also expensive, so Christian and I have taken to calling any spice that sound exciting to mean “Italian Seasoning.” We use that for everything that is not Cumin. Remember pepper? I don’t.
It’s been an interesting challenge buying food with a budget. In Iceland, everything is imported (we’ve talked about this before) so for every half an hour on Pinterest filtering through the “stovetop” recipes that are actually always “crockpot” recipes I spend an additional hour finding “cheap” meals that could also be cheap in Iceland. None of the meals are cheap in Iceland. Chickens are not feeling the vibe. Produce isn’t really into the whole desolate subarctic tundra thing. And it’s the middle of December with not a chocolate orange in sight. The bananas are never ripe and like magic, they consistently go brown the very day they are edible (this is a real thing, ask anyone), and I can’t remember the last time I saw an avocado without mold (although you can buy a frozen bag of avocado chunks for $15.) It’s different. What these setbacks have done though, is make me really really appreciate how good a simple meal can be. Recently I saw a persimmon at the grocery store, bought it, ate it, and cried I was so excited.
I can remember just about every meal we’ve made now and the list is this (can you guess how much free time I have when I am able to write down every meal we’ve made in the last 5 months?) Chili, Pesto Pasta, Lemon Cod, Mashed Potatoes, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Garlic Boiled Potatoes, Garlic Burgers (I forgot to mention all the garlic we have and come up with some charming vampire quip), Blue Cheese Burgers, Blue Cheese Cranberry Salad, Blue Cheese Omelets, Macaroni and Cheese, Enchiladas, Stir fry, Meatballs and jelly (because we’re Nordic so we can DO that now), Burritos, Shakshuka (because I needed to jazz up my life and make something I couldn’t pronounce, it had tomatoes and cumin), Mexican Quinoa Dinner, Fruity Quinoa Breakfast, Skyr Breakfast, Skyr Dessert, Fried Fish, French Toast, Cannoli French Toast (plain old French food wasn’t good enough for us, we needed a little help from the Italians), Fajitas, Rice Pudding, Brussels Sprouts, Gumbo (there were a LOT of things that did not go in our gumbo that were supposed to be in our gumbo), Ratatouille, Creamed Corn, Skillet Lasagna, Pancakes, Egg Variations, and also a whole lot of dyeing wool. (Christian decided to dye wool to entertain himself during the hurricane. This had mixed reviews in our small home because the smell was overwhelming and if we opened a window for fresh air the hurricane would, you know, hurricane the window off its hinges and shoot icicles into the house. So we smelled like vinegar for 48 straight hours.)
I really only ever post food things on snapchat because it will go away before you realize how simple the food actually was. But I had a picture of the Shakshuka, so here it is! (I am most certain it does not look like it is supposed to look.)
The meals have been good and they’ve been fun! Who knew how fantastic Skyr (Icelandic yogurt) with heavy cream could be? Everyone. Because mixing dairy with dairy is always the best. (Also it was that dessert that finally tipped me off to my lactose intolerance and forced me to be a grown up and go to the Pharmacy for pills—worth it!) And Shakshuka was a delight to make. Rarely have my husband and I felt the camaraderie and pride that came from successfully poaching those eggs. And the Cannoli French Toast is the field of dreams of food.
Overall, being cooped up at home is pretty cozy when the hot plate is clicking and something is heating up. Sure, we’ve cursed a few times as searing oil has scalded our sides, not having enough room to back away from bacon grease, and slapped the hot plate over it’s face when we assumed it was on but it wasn’t because the only setting on the contraption are “off” and “burning your food.” It’s okay that there is no such thing as “simmering” on our hot plate because my arms have gotten really strong from all the lifting and setting down of the pots on the plate to keep them from burning.
We’ve had fun getting creative with storing leftovers. Our kitchen came equipped with two bowls, one cup (which is okay because we aren’t all freaked out about sharing saliva on account of the whole marriage thing), two forks, five spoons, one temperamental bent pan, a large pot, six shot glasses, and 18 espresso cups. We’ve made it work. We turned an ice cream tub into a container (the tub of ice-cream only fit in our freezer if we put a spring underneath it to lift it up at an angle) and Christian recently ate 800 cookies so that we had containers we could use to take to our Friendsgiving dinner. It all works!
We like to think our Vitamin D and Omega 3 add a little spice to a simple dinner.
Moving here has been out of our comfort zone. But the kitchen was never our comfort zone. Being in a studio that forces us to be in the kitchen at all times has been good for us. Cooking every day, and looking forward to the challenge, is a treat. The hours on Pinterest are also a great way to kill time in a blizzard. Bon appetite!
(Also please send me more ideas for stove top food thxxx.)
