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I think a lot of America will argue with this.
The bread in America is garbage compared to Europe.
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> 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.
Small pieces of wax paper, precut for packing sandwiches together? Wonderful! I would love for my own culture to adopt such a convenience! So much better than cling film or foil.
I grew up with matpakke and the 1/4 of milk every day and I hated it. It was depressing. Only good side was you got more time to play outside at school since you just wolfed down the food to get it over with. My kids go to a school in Spain and they get a 3 course meal every day for about 5 EUR a day. As a parent its great because you know they've had a full complete meal every day and you can just make a small eveni…
I also grew up with a madpakke (I'm in Denmark) and also hated it. Was pretty jealous of Swedish kids since I knew they got a hot school lunch and didn't have to eat boring, open-faced sandwiches and room temperature milk. I guess Norwegians have it just as bad as Danish kids.
For starters, Norwegians do not employ rye bread.
Furthermore, Norwegian open-faced sandwiches have not evolved into full-blown smørrebrød - where stacking multiple ingredients is such essential part, that you cannot eat the common smørrebrød without cutlery.
Case in point: https://www.valdemarsro.dk/luksus-stjerneskud/
At my university, we would lunch in groups, building such works of art during lunch-time from shared packs of ingredients.
It may be that Danish school children get a "boring" lunch, similar to the Norwegian one. However, as Danes grow up, their lunches evolve in tastes and complexity. It seems less so in Norway, and that's OK, but a tiny bit boring :-P
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.
It is amazing how similar the comments on today's article, are from a HN thread about matpakke 9 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830186
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> as they were not a wealthy country for hundreds of years before striking oil in the 60s. I was surprised by that statement and had to look it up and it was, of course, false. Norway was a wealthy country back to the 1800s: sources: https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/no-norway-was-not-a-poor-count... and https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economic-history-of-norway/
The second paragraph of the first link specifically makes it clear it is a question of point of view and concedes Norway was poor relative to today. Meanwhile the distribution of wealth was a bigger issue. Even in my lifetime - I'm 44 - the growth in wealth in Norway has been astounding. Ironically, for example, whale meat is something I remember from my childhood as a cheap meat substitute (but that is now an expens…
Every rich country was once very poor relative to its current status though. This doesn't change the fact that Norway was not poor relative to other European countries at the time.
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Yeah, I don't see how this is a boring lunch at all, that sandwich looks great to me. Does it mean though that your supper is usually "heavier"?
It’s really 2-3 open face sandwiches, each being one slice of bread, butter, and exactly one topping of meat or cheese. No condiments. Rarely any veg or any extra flavor. And that’s it. If this isn’t a boring lunch, I have no idea what is.
The qualification seems unnecessary to me. It's lunch (well, to me, it's breakfast). It's no wonder people are depressed eating it when everybody keeps calling it boring. It's bread with a topping. It's fine. It tastes good. Does every meal need to be akin to a sushi buffet?
By the definition in this article, Italian cooking would be the most boring thing you could possibly eat.
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> 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.
But taking a break with decent food is exactly one of the things I want to do