Thursday, 8:00 AM. 9 degrees, wind WNW, light. The sky is clearing although snow and fog cover the channel. The barometer predicts sunny weather. Two inches of new snow fell last night.
Last night was the annual “Forever Ed’s Lutefisk Dinner” at Maggies Restaurant (also owned by Mary Rice). It is an annual community affair, free to all willing to brave the elements and eat at least a forkful of lutefisk. Doors opened at 5:00 PM, first come first served. It is always crowded. Joan and I ate at the bar. Ed Erickson was a much loved native of Bayfield who died a few years back, a businessman and onetime Mayor, who is hereby forever honored.
Lutefisk is dried cod, resurrected by soaking in lye, boiled, and traditionally served at Christmas. It is best described as a quivering mass of white jelly, almost palatable if drowned in sour cream, salt and butter. I guess you have to be Scandinavian (Joan and I are of German extraction but drive a Saab, and that seems to help). The dinner is also a celebration of many very good Scandinavian things, like lefse (an unleavened bread sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and rolled up like a tortilla), Swedish meatballs, boiled buttered potatoes, caviar (from Lake Superior trout) and pickled herring, and wonderful bread pudding, all washed down with aquavit, a liquid fire handy for thawing out bodies found frozen in the snowdrifts. The following is the first stanza of “O Lutefisk,” sung to “O Tannenbaum,” I will spare you the rest.
O Lutefisk...O Lutefisk...how fragrant your aroma
O Lutefisk…O Lutefisk...you put me in a coma
You smell so strong...you look like glue
You taste yust like an overshoe
But Lutefisk...come Saturday
I tink I’ll eat you anyvay
It takes two shots of Aquavit to sing “O Lutefisk” if you are Norwegian, three if you are not. “Yumpin’ Yimminee...Yingle, Yingle.”
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