Crustaceans and More Crustaceans

As we were touring around on Sunday morning with Sissel and Terje, Sissel got a text message from Kari saying that we were going to have prawns for dinner that evening. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach until Sissel continued with the message saying that Kari would help me. I knew I would be fine with these cousins to guide me. When we sat down for the meal later that evening, there were indeed two very large bowls of prawns on the table (complete with their eyes and everything). As promised, we were shown how to peel these shellfish and get the meat out. We then put it on bread with some mayonnaise and dill - a most delicious thing to eat. Kari had also put cheese on the table as an alternate, but that wasn’t needed. (Sissel is most efficient with the prawns and quickly gave Dennis & I each a sandwich to start us off.)

The very nice thing about a prawn supper is that it becomes a lengthy affair. It’s pretty labour-intensive so you also have lots of time to visit while you’re working on your meal. As Anne-Berit’s husband, Knut Erik, commented, you don’t just sit down at the table for 10 minutes and then go off to do other things. This becomes a real occasion.

The second occasion was at Per’s house the next evening. As Dennis mentioned, Per had prepared a lovely four-course meal for us and the last thing to be served was a huge wooden boat filled with what they call Kreps. These were about the same size as the prawns we had at Kari’s but quite different in appearance. They were dark red and had claws similar to a lobster. Except for the color, these reminded me more of what I had tried to eat in Scotland. Once again I needed a lesson, I knew sort of what to do with the main body but wasn’t sure about those claws. Per told me he didn’t bother with the claws because you couldn’t get much out of them, although I did notice other people tackling them as well. So again, these were peeled (making sure you got rid of a part of the spine that was apparently poisonous) and put on bread with mayonnaise. Kreps live in rivers and later on when I looked them up in a Norwegian/English dictionary, it called them crayfish. Whether you call them Kreps or crayfish, they are still a very tasty dish.