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How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

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Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#121

Post by thaumasiotes »

GuiA wrote: post #55
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but honestly your lunch sounds depressing as hell. I never understood this nordic lifestyle I saw in Scandinavia, Benelux and Northern Germany where people refuse to take a proper lunch break and just eat some random cold food in front of their computer for the sake of productivity for their employer. It's just depressing to see and unhealthy in the long term. In southern Europe(Austria) having a walk to…

It’s kind of sad to see the meal culture eroding in other parts of the world. The “quickly ingest some food at your desk so you can keep working” mentality has taken hold. I’m French, and at my first office job - almost 15 years ago - the entire office was empty from noon till 2p. People would go get their kids at school, have lunch with them at home, and bring them back before returning to work. Or child free people…

> It’s kind of sad to see the meal culture eroding in other parts of the world. The “quickly ingest some food at your desk so you can keep working” mentality has taken hold.

I really preferred eating at my desk while clocked in to eating a slow, luxurious lunch while clocked out. The slow lunch just means less time for the things you actually want to do.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#122

Post by eitland »

vadym909 wrote: post #105
Smithalicious wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is kind of offensive to me, as if we're all corporate slaves who skip """proper""" lunch for "productivity". Most of us eat that way even during weekends and holidays, so it's clearly not true. I wouldn't eat elaborate meals at lunchtime even if I never had to work at all. The last thing we need is people in other countries who have nothing to do with us telling us our food culture isn't "proper".

Many folks eat just 2 meals a day- a big heavy breakfast and a day's end dinner and it works fine for them. Lunch is just a silly ritual- if you get it - take it by all means but don't assume those who don't take it are suffering!

Related to both you and OP:

A couple of years ago or so I started skipping breakfast and eating my first meal at lunchtime.

This works extremely well for me and allows me to keep focus through the day - even if I eat a warm lunch instead of just Norwegian "matpakke".

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#123

Post by Smithalicious »

vadym909 wrote: post #105
Smithalicious wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is kind of offensive to me, as if we're all corporate slaves who skip """proper""" lunch for "productivity". Most of us eat that way even during weekends and holidays, so it's clearly not true. I wouldn't eat elaborate meals at lunchtime even if I never had to work at all. The last thing we need is people in other countries who have nothing to do with us telling us our food culture isn't "proper".

Many folks eat just 2 meals a day- a big heavy breakfast and a day's end dinner and it works fine for them. Lunch is just a silly ritual- if you get it - take it by all means but don't assume those who don't take it are suffering!

Yeah. Another thing people don't realize is that in Northern Europe people tend to have a large dinner at 6pm, so lunch is less relevant.

I personally eat full meals at 10AM and 7PM and light meals at 3PM and 9PM. Not the most conventional times but that's when I'm hungry. Everyone has different times that work for them.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#124

Post by l0b0 »

davidweir wrote: post #115
kristofferR wrote: post #14

I feel like this article somewhat undersells brødskriver. They can be delicious. Most important is good bread, which is super common here, despite it being totally unavailable in most other countries. All ordinary grocery stores get freshly baked bread every day, whole in paper bags of course. For example - with a thick slice of butter, then some oven-baked liver paste and two slices of gherkin on top and boom - you…

> Most important is good bread Having lived in Norway for two years, and resorted to deep frozen baguettes from Meny (an upscale supermarket chain) because the fresh bread was so bad, I'm... not sure about this. Glad to be back in Finland where the bread is good (seriously!) and the lunches are substantial, healthy, warm and filling.

IMO you can't get good bread in grocery stores in any Western country, Norway included. Good bread has about 2-3 times the density of store bread, for one thing, which would make it 2-3 times more expensive to make (2-3 times more raw ingredients + more time & energy in the oven). That takes the price into ridiculous territory, so it's just not reasonable for supermarkets to stock them.

My recommendation: get a decent bread baking machine. What's decent? One where the bread, container and rotor all come out of the machine after baking, so they can be easily washed. It takes about 2 minutes to mix in everything, and the quality is honestly pretty indistinguishable from hand made (as long as I remember to put the rotor back in after cleaning it :).

Dwarf bread refined over decades: 400g wheat flour (coarse if you can get a hold of it), 300ml water, 1ts salt, 50ml olive oil and ½ts dry yeast, which goes in a separate compartment in the machine to be dropped in when ready. To this you can add up to 200g or so of goodies - pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, walnuts or grated carrot.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#125

Post by j7ake »

mogadsheu wrote: post #6

Former Norway resident here, 3yrs. Their lunch traditions are definitely basic, as they were not a wealthy country for hundreds of years before striking oil in the 60s. The point to remember is that while the fare is basic, the quality is typically very good. Their cheese is extra creamy and nutritious, as is the bread. The same goes for the milk. Many Europeans won’t drink the milk here in the States because the qua…

There are other countries that have not been wealthy but still would consider such basic lunches unpalatable (e.g., Korea, China, Singapore).

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#126

Post by j7ake »

wingerlang wrote: post #111
adventured wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No offense, but honestly your lunch sounds depressing as hell. I don't know about the preferences of the parent you're replying to, however the description in this article - and what others here have said - sounds depressing as hell. You're being strongly downvoted because you're not allowed to say anything negative about Scandinavian culture. If this food story were about the US, it would be held up as an example…

What it is is subjective. People love their sandwiches and if you don’t - pack what you like.. no one is forcing you to eat like this.

It's subjective but the bias is that you're allowed to criticize the American lifestyle but not the lifestyle of Scandinavians without being severely downvoted.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#128

Post by unixhero »

opdahl wrote: post #16

I'm a Norwegian, and where I work I have the option of eating a big warm lunch, but I very rarely do. I've noticed that eating a big lunch makes the following hour extremely unproductive, so for the last year I have made a matpakke with 3 slices of bread. Normal _pålegg_ is liver paste, cheese or peanut butter. I can easily go through my lunch in just few minutes, and even while working at the same time. My thought p…

You were right about the matpakke, except for the peanut butter.

And also it is not customary to eat the lunch in front of the computer. Even in the blandest of work environments, there is a welld defined lunch room and time, and expectation, where people have their lunches.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#129

Post by i_don_t_know »

diehunde wrote: post #2

In Chile, eating this kind of sandwich is also very common. Not so much for lunch but for dinner. Sometimes even just bread and butter. I feel in the US people are obsessed with eating "nice and flavorful" stuff instead of eating something because you actually need to eat.

Same in Germany. We have (at least) two words for dinner: Abendbrot (evening bread) and Abendessen (evening meal). They are used interchangeably regardless of what you actually eat.

Traditionally, breakfast is also just slices of bread or bread roll? (Brötchen, Semmel, etc) topped with butter and a slice of cheese or meat, or jam or honey.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#130

Post by j7ake »

diehunde wrote: post #2

In Chile, eating this kind of sandwich is also very common. Not so much for lunch but for dinner. Sometimes even just bread and butter. I feel in the US people are obsessed with eating "nice and flavorful" stuff instead of eating something because you actually need to eat.

Preferring flavorful food is definitely not a US thing, it's probably a human thing. Humans in general prefer more flavorful food to less flavorful food.

If the economics were such that a slice of bread with cheese cost the exact same as a quick Michelin-star meal at a restaurant, I think you would see a shift of people changing their bread and cheese diet.

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