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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (June 16, 2016)
JUNE 16, 2016 // 31 BOOK SHELF // GLIMPSE // WILDLIFE // POP CULTURE // WORDS // Q&A // FOOD // FUN RECIPE Norwegian krumkake cookies By MATT LOVE Buoy Beer Co. Not too long ago, I sat on a stool at the back bar in the Buoy Beer Co. in Astoria, nursing a pilsner, staring at the Columbia River. In short order, I found myself completely becalmed and thankful for my eternal role in the water cycle. This always happens when I visit Buoy and watch the river. A few minutes later, my mind drifted to a local man who regularly sends poisonous emails ripping my columns and insulting me personally. He seems utterly bilious as a human being. A rational person would simply stop reading my work. Simple — aggravation over. Move on. But no, many people pre- fer to revel in anger and hate. Sitting inside Buoy that afternoon, I decided I would write something to cheer up the man. Cheering up angry people is fun! It’s wonderful imagining a smile cracking a bitter face. Thus, I present a little lark of a tale called “Whales and Bumblebees” that I whipped out at the bar. Here it is, for you, my vitriolic critic: At a historic summit that went unreported in the press, the whales and bumblebees decided by unanimous acclaim — we’ve had enough of humans. They take. They destroy every- thing. They’ve got to go. It was quite the party at the summit. Many attendees cut a dashing, revolutionary igure. Whales drank krill from champagne lutes, and bumblebees smoked hand- rolled nectar cigarettes. Raspberry berets were worn. Speeches were iery. The dancing got dirty. The whales and bumble- bees issued a manifesto at the summit. It was written in a big fat weird cursive script that humans couldn’t read on their tiny phones. It said, in part: “We only want to bumble among pretty lowers and swim unfettered through the seven seas. We shall not go extinct. We shall bumble in the meadows and prowl the silent depths forever.” The whales knew a little something about humans. Call it inside information. They once lived on land like Matt Love is the author/editor of 14 books, including “A Nice Piece of Astoria.” His books are available at coastal bookstores or through his website, nestuccaspitpress.com Ingredients 2 cups sugar 2 cups butter 6 eggs 1 can of milk 2 teaspoons vanilla 3 cups lour SUBMITTED PHOTO Corleen Mathews, a second generation Norwegian, pre- pares 3,500 krumkake cook- ies every year for the Scandi- navian Midsummer Festival. Directions: Beat the eggs well, then add the sugar and mix. Blend in the lour, then add the rest of the ingredients. Bake in a krumkake iron and roll. SUBMITTED PHOTO Krumkake cookies are baked in a special lat iron and rolled when warm around a wooden form to resemble an old-fash- ioned ice cream cone. IO R A G LIMPSE I NSIDE humans, but they had the good sense to return to the oceans. That was their se- cret weapon — this ancient knowledge that humans were too dumb to grasp because they believed they stood atop every- thing. Bumblebees knew something about humans, too. They knew humans raised children who were so depraved that they enjoyed killing bumblebees for sport on warm summer days. The summit didn’t ofer any military strategy to defeat humans. The whales and bumblebees didn’t need one. They didn’t have to do anything but wait. Humans were withering, clocking out. Many were very angry; it was in all the papers. In order to survive, humans needed only to pay better attention to the whales and bumble- bees. The answers were staring them in their blank faces. That was not going to happen. The whales and bumblebees merely had to hang on a little while longer, and they knew how to do that. KRUMKAKE JU N PHOTO BY MATT LOVE Watching the river from the bar at Buoy Beer is calming. Corleen Mathews is a second-generation Norwe- gian and well-known in the local Scandinavian commu- nity. Her husband, Loran, is president of the Astoria Scandinavian Heritage Asso- ciation and past chair of the Astoria Scandinavian Mid- summer Festival. Corleen and her friend Kathy Helm- ersen have a booth at the festival that sells only two things: Norwegian krumka- ke and Finnish prune tarts — and coffee, of course. Krumkake are delicate Norwegian crumb cook- ies baked in a special lat iron and rolled when warm around a wooden form to resemble an old-fashioned ice cream cone. Modernists are tempted to ill them with ice cream or whipped cream and lingonberry jam, but traditionalists eat them plain with a cup of coffee. Each spring, Corleen pre- pares 3,500 of these cookies in her home kitchen to sell at the festival and always hopes she’s made enough to last the full three days. As a vendor, Corleen adds to the authenticity of the experience by wearing a bunad — a Norwegian folk costume — that her mother made and embroi- dered for her 33 years ago. Corleen’s daughter, Tara, and granddaughters Helen and Abbie have all repre- sented the Sons of Norway Lodge in past years as Miss Norway at the festival, and they wear their own bun- dads that Corleen helped embroider. Here, Corleen shares her recipe for krumkake and hopes that local families will continue to share ethnic traditions with future gener- ations. S H A N G H A I E D IN ASTORIA 2016 La st W eeken d! JUN E 17-19 Frid a y a t 7p m D oors open in g a t 6:30 S a tu rd a y & S u n d a y a t 2p m D oors open in g a t 1:30 Directed by Bill Ca r a n d perfo rm ed by o u r yo u th thea tre tro u p Tickets $10 Ad u lts | $5 K id s (n o o ther d isco u n tin g ) ASOC Playhouse FRIDAY PERFO RM AN C ES O N LY $5 129 Bond St., Astoria | 503-325-6104 P urch a se on lin e a t w w w .a storstreetoprycom pa n y.com or ca ll 503-325-6104 | P urch a se tickets a t th e door 1 h our before sh ow tim e, but reserva tion s recom m en ded Spo n so red by W a u n a Fed era l Cred it Un io n
