lutfisk

[Guest guest]

This was posted on another list I'm on (the list has nothing to do with

nutrition or food; don't ask how this discussion got started!), and it

sounded like something that would interest this list:

I've just been reading a kids book called Flaxen Braids (by Annette

Turngren) about a

family who move from Southern Sweden to Northern Sweden, through an

accident and

poverty, to the wood mills, early in the 1900's and the author put in a

description of lutfisk.

Book was written in 1937, but my copy was printed in 1963.

Using salted, dried cod. Water run through wood-ash is lye- and very

" corrosive. "

" Fru Lund set the lutfisk to soak in a wooden tub. Over each layer

of fish she sprinkled

lime and wood-ashes. This was to make the fish soft and flaky. A few

days before

Christmas she drew out the lime by soaking the fish in clear water.

knew how

good it would taste on Christmas Eve, served in its thick creamy sauce.

She had eaten it

every Christmas Eve since she could remember. One could scarcely

imagine what

Christmas Eve would be like without lutfisk. "

~ Carma ~

To be perpetually talking sense runs out the mind, as perpetually

ploughing and taking crops runs out the land. The mind must be manured,

and nonsense is very good for the purpose. ~ Boswell

Carma's Corner: http://www.users.qwest.net/~carmapaden/