I am happy to report that I went to meditation last night and I saw no shoes that were of major concern. Sometimes I will go there and I will see outside the door a pair of brown leather Doc Martins lying slightly askew next to a pair of tossed-off large white running shoes and I will say “no no no. How can I experience an absence of suffering with this going on. I suggest you people “look deeply” at your shoes and then get back to me.” Of course, I am slipping off gigantic black New Balance USA 992s but that is because I am a compulsive runner and am part lesbian and therefore am exempted from the standards to which I hold others. But *these* people. Coming to the Lower East Side to meditate? Let’s clean it up and come dressed appropriately. Last night there was a black pair of Uggs, which I’m fine with, as well as some Velcro black canvas jobbies that looked “very cool gay man.”
At one point the leader pulled out his fancy microphone/recorder so that he could record it for his podcast*, and then everyone started making what I felt were very ostentatious “I want to hear myself on the podcast noises.” A guy loudly flipping through his notebook of Buddhist notes (!), a woman clearing her throat then slightly moaning. They were all wanting their moment in the spotlight. I had no craving for this, what with my television show The Kara Buller Show and my other media outlets.
The leader made a reference to his iphone and an app that he particularly loves, called “Things” which helps you organize your to-do lists. I felt buoyed. Perhaps if I study meditation enough, I too will have clear skin and an Iphone. Right now, all I have is the itouch, which is fine, but if walking the way of the Buddha can lead to more, then I’m on board.
click http://www.theidproject.com/podcast.htm for the podcasts. Boy, I tell you the 31 year old kid who runs this thing is on fire. He talks like the supersmart friend you got high with in high school before he left for Harvard, looks like the supercute gay friend we all want to have or be and is committed to prison reform like that gray-haired lesbian who looked at me like I’m a slut yesterday probably is! Goooo Ethan Nichtern!
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The Lefse Story
In August of 2008 I went to Norway with my mother for a mother-daughter “lets connect with the ancestors” tour. We were both obsessed with our Scandinavian ancestry in a way that was so prideful that—I might as well say it—it bordered on racist. It was no secret that in our house to be Scandinavian was to be superior or, more accurately, simply more pleasing to God. I remember once complaining to my mother about a boyfriend who was alcoholic, unloving, and Finnish. My mother: “Oh you didn’t tell me he was Finnish.” I too fell into this “blinded by the Scandi” syndrome. To be tall and blonde, out on fjord near naked, in hiking boots, eating berries, as I had honest to God seen depicted in a tourist brochure, was in my mind the pinnacle of human existence. I was aware I was traveling with my seventy year old mother, and the chances of encountering these nude, berry-eating types was next to nil, I felt it was still worth a shot. Just to see them from the distance or to be able to offer them my seat on the ferry boat, would be worth the trip.
While I was hoping for Bjorn and Leta nude on the fjord, my mother was pursuing something less erotically charged. She was looking for lefse, the flatbread that we eat each Christmas. It looks like a tortilla, flat, round and soft, with little brown spots from where the lefse pan lightly burns the dough. Lefse is made from mashed potatoes, sugar, butter and lots and lots of flour and has a mild flavor of Protestant restraint.
On the wall of my mother’s kitchen hangs her lefse turner, which she takes down once a year when she makes her Christmas batch. My mother rolls out the lefse dough, which has been chilling in the refrigerator for the past twenty-four hours, while my father mans the lefse grill: a flat, circular piece of metal that sits on a platform, which plugs into the wall. He flips as she passes more and more lefse rounds his way. It’s a delight to see my parents, who have done nothing but plague us with their incessant petty bickering (“Bill, I don’t think you should leave your coffee cup on the table like that. Don’t you like to use a coaster?” His response: IF I WANTED TO USE A GODDAMNED COASTER I WOULD HAVE USED A COASTER!” Hell.) Once the lefse is heated and put on a blue and white (my mother wouldn’t have it any other way) plate, we spread butter and grape jelly on it and roll it up. The lefse is the linchpin of Christmas at the Bullers—without it we might all come unhinged. We would know that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Lefse is the pale, flavorless heart of Norwegian-American cooking. At Lutheran churches across the Midwest, a polite but serious competition exists amongst the ladies of the church. Who has the best lefse recipe? Who made the best lefse at the Norwegian Independence Celebration? Not too sweet, not too dry. Was it Peggy Lutherman? Or Nora Olufsson?
And so, with each ticket agent, train conductor, or shop attendant we encountered, my mother would ask, “Do you know where I could find lefse?” They would tilt their head to the side, look off into the distance and ask, “lef..lefse..wha?” “You know, lefse.” And my mother would get nervous and start buttering an imaginary piece of lefse in her hand, as if that would unlock a specific memory in the Norwegian’s mind. “No, no…I do not know,” the kind but pretty much unemotional Norwegian would say. In Stockholm and Storlien and Trondheim, my mother asked about lefse.
“Mom, why do you want to try their lefse so much? You know what your lefse is like? Why would you want store-bought lefse?”
“Oh, just to find out. You can’t go all the way to Norway and not try lefse!”
In Ostersund, Sweden, we got close, when the lady at the train station information desk (“Aah yes! I have been to America. I love Elvis. So I have been to Memphis.”) directed us to a pastry counter in town, but alas all we found were plump breads and bagels.
It wasn’t until we got to Norway’s lousy-with-foreigners capital, Oslo, the town my mother dreaded, because of all the “Pakistanians,” that we found lefse. We were standing in a 7-11, trying to buy drinking water, when I spotted a lit-from-the-back sign above the store-owner’s head. There was a hot dog, plump and sweaty, nestling in a piece of lefse.
“Is that lefse?!” I asked the Pakistani store-owner.
“Is flatbread, so yes, lefse.” The man wore his shirt unbuttoned down to his sternum and you could see his ample black chest hair crawling forth.
“You have heard of lefse?!” My mother practically jumped across the counter.
“Yes, yes. You can find it at the grocery stores in town.”
“Which one?” My mother and I asked at the same time. Apparently I had gotten pulled into the Great Lefse Hunt without my realizing it.
“Oh any of them. Just ask for lefse.”
“Thank you very much. We have been looking all over Norway for this.” I paid for the water (probably $5 US dollars), offered more gushing gratitude and unnecessary explanations, possibly even going into the annual Buller Christmas dinner, and wished him a good night.
My mother and I walked into the wild Oslo night reinvigorated. Lefse was in this very city! Now it was just a matter of time. We walked and walked, until we stumbled upon a grocery store, which was right next to a club featuring stand-up comedy, which I do unprofessionally, as I like to say. It was as if God was smiling down on the Buller women. Stand-up comedy and lefse in the same block! While my mom went to the grocery store, I went to check out the comedy. I walked into the bar, and followed the signs up the stairs to a packed room, where a comedy show was in full swing.
“Ick vul drod jammerskold ja tik nul!” The crowd exploded into laughter.
I asked if the show was free, and they said it was, but it was all in Swedish.
I went back down to find my mother in the grocery store.
I found her in aisle two, amidst a pile of lefse. She had several draping from one arm, while others were resting on the bread slicing machine (!).
“Look at the varieties they have!” She showed me oval lefse, gluten-free lefse, whole wheat lefse… “They are ten dollars each though!”
“No, mom, that’s Norwegian Kroner. So that’s two US dollars each.”
“Oh, that’s right, what am I thinking?” My mother had been making this mistake the whole trip, never having been to a foreign country before—and apparently, now at the age of seventy, incapable of taking in new information.
“Well, then we really have to stock up!”
We bought lefse for co-workers and church members and friends and family. Some for the flight home and some for the train ride back to Sweden. We left with about ten packs of lefse. On the front, the packages said “Lumpe brod: A Taste of the Old Norway.”
Back at the youth hostel we tried to entice our fellow boarders with lefse.
“How bout a taste of the real Norway?” my mother asked the very attractive Frenchmen she would be sleeping across from that night.
“Ahhhh, no thank you.”
On our train ride back to Stockholm, my mother and I enjoyed our lefse, even though it added an extra twenty pounds to our luggage. We agreed it was quite good. It tasted just like hers, it was just missing that flawed homemade look.
It was the absence of the weight of the lefse that I noticed as we lugged our bags up the ramp to the ferry to leave the retreat. “The lefse!” I cried out. But with a plane the next morning and a ferry schedule to stick to, my mother and I did not turn back.
The Swedes on the ferry asked why my mother and I were so down. “Our lefse,” we pouted. “Your what?” Only the Norwegian Americans would understand.
While I was hoping for Bjorn and Leta nude on the fjord, my mother was pursuing something less erotically charged. She was looking for lefse, the flatbread that we eat each Christmas. It looks like a tortilla, flat, round and soft, with little brown spots from where the lefse pan lightly burns the dough. Lefse is made from mashed potatoes, sugar, butter and lots and lots of flour and has a mild flavor of Protestant restraint.
On the wall of my mother’s kitchen hangs her lefse turner, which she takes down once a year when she makes her Christmas batch. My mother rolls out the lefse dough, which has been chilling in the refrigerator for the past twenty-four hours, while my father mans the lefse grill: a flat, circular piece of metal that sits on a platform, which plugs into the wall. He flips as she passes more and more lefse rounds his way. It’s a delight to see my parents, who have done nothing but plague us with their incessant petty bickering (“Bill, I don’t think you should leave your coffee cup on the table like that. Don’t you like to use a coaster?” His response: IF I WANTED TO USE A GODDAMNED COASTER I WOULD HAVE USED A COASTER!” Hell.) Once the lefse is heated and put on a blue and white (my mother wouldn’t have it any other way) plate, we spread butter and grape jelly on it and roll it up. The lefse is the linchpin of Christmas at the Bullers—without it we might all come unhinged. We would know that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Lefse is the pale, flavorless heart of Norwegian-American cooking. At Lutheran churches across the Midwest, a polite but serious competition exists amongst the ladies of the church. Who has the best lefse recipe? Who made the best lefse at the Norwegian Independence Celebration? Not too sweet, not too dry. Was it Peggy Lutherman? Or Nora Olufsson?
And so, with each ticket agent, train conductor, or shop attendant we encountered, my mother would ask, “Do you know where I could find lefse?” They would tilt their head to the side, look off into the distance and ask, “lef..lefse..wha?” “You know, lefse.” And my mother would get nervous and start buttering an imaginary piece of lefse in her hand, as if that would unlock a specific memory in the Norwegian’s mind. “No, no…I do not know,” the kind but pretty much unemotional Norwegian would say. In Stockholm and Storlien and Trondheim, my mother asked about lefse.
“Mom, why do you want to try their lefse so much? You know what your lefse is like? Why would you want store-bought lefse?”
“Oh, just to find out. You can’t go all the way to Norway and not try lefse!”
In Ostersund, Sweden, we got close, when the lady at the train station information desk (“Aah yes! I have been to America. I love Elvis. So I have been to Memphis.”) directed us to a pastry counter in town, but alas all we found were plump breads and bagels.
It wasn’t until we got to Norway’s lousy-with-foreigners capital, Oslo, the town my mother dreaded, because of all the “Pakistanians,” that we found lefse. We were standing in a 7-11, trying to buy drinking water, when I spotted a lit-from-the-back sign above the store-owner’s head. There was a hot dog, plump and sweaty, nestling in a piece of lefse.
“Is that lefse?!” I asked the Pakistani store-owner.
“Is flatbread, so yes, lefse.” The man wore his shirt unbuttoned down to his sternum and you could see his ample black chest hair crawling forth.
“You have heard of lefse?!” My mother practically jumped across the counter.
“Yes, yes. You can find it at the grocery stores in town.”
“Which one?” My mother and I asked at the same time. Apparently I had gotten pulled into the Great Lefse Hunt without my realizing it.
“Oh any of them. Just ask for lefse.”
“Thank you very much. We have been looking all over Norway for this.” I paid for the water (probably $5 US dollars), offered more gushing gratitude and unnecessary explanations, possibly even going into the annual Buller Christmas dinner, and wished him a good night.
My mother and I walked into the wild Oslo night reinvigorated. Lefse was in this very city! Now it was just a matter of time. We walked and walked, until we stumbled upon a grocery store, which was right next to a club featuring stand-up comedy, which I do unprofessionally, as I like to say. It was as if God was smiling down on the Buller women. Stand-up comedy and lefse in the same block! While my mom went to the grocery store, I went to check out the comedy. I walked into the bar, and followed the signs up the stairs to a packed room, where a comedy show was in full swing.
“Ick vul drod jammerskold ja tik nul!” The crowd exploded into laughter.
I asked if the show was free, and they said it was, but it was all in Swedish.
I went back down to find my mother in the grocery store.
I found her in aisle two, amidst a pile of lefse. She had several draping from one arm, while others were resting on the bread slicing machine (!).
“Look at the varieties they have!” She showed me oval lefse, gluten-free lefse, whole wheat lefse… “They are ten dollars each though!”
“No, mom, that’s Norwegian Kroner. So that’s two US dollars each.”
“Oh, that’s right, what am I thinking?” My mother had been making this mistake the whole trip, never having been to a foreign country before—and apparently, now at the age of seventy, incapable of taking in new information.
“Well, then we really have to stock up!”
We bought lefse for co-workers and church members and friends and family. Some for the flight home and some for the train ride back to Sweden. We left with about ten packs of lefse. On the front, the packages said “Lumpe brod: A Taste of the Old Norway.”
Back at the youth hostel we tried to entice our fellow boarders with lefse.
“How bout a taste of the real Norway?” my mother asked the very attractive Frenchmen she would be sleeping across from that night.
“Ahhhh, no thank you.”
On our train ride back to Stockholm, my mother and I enjoyed our lefse, even though it added an extra twenty pounds to our luggage. We agreed it was quite good. It tasted just like hers, it was just missing that flawed homemade look.
It was the absence of the weight of the lefse that I noticed as we lugged our bags up the ramp to the ferry to leave the retreat. “The lefse!” I cried out. But with a plane the next morning and a ferry schedule to stick to, my mother and I did not turn back.
The Swedes on the ferry asked why my mother and I were so down. “Our lefse,” we pouted. “Your what?” Only the Norwegian Americans would understand.
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