Hjemmekos

All good things begin with onions and garlic in olive oil. On Friday night Anette and I made a humble but hearty spaghetti Bolognese; comfort food for the sudden cold in the air that has signaled the onset of autumn. I was so pleased by the sight of all our colorful veggies commingling happily in the skillet that I decided to take a photograph, which I hereby post as a testament to this most nostalgic of seasons.

Making and eating warm food when it’s cold outside is certainly one of life’s great pleasures. In the northern reaches of the globe (London, at 51° N, is farther north than the entire US of A except Alaska) it’s also one of the best ways to spend dreary days.

As we prepared our meal, the steam from the sauce and the boiling water fogged up the big bay window in our small living room-kitchen, cocooning us from the wind and rain outside. Add to this the alluring glow of the television, opiate of the masses, and you have the perfect recipe for what Norwegians call hjemmekos, or being cozy at home.

Many of our friends make fun of us because we rarely go out; how can we explain to them that hjemmekos is the highest aspiration of Norwegian society? Maybe we appreciate it even more now having lived without Western food and television for two years in Tanzania, but under the right circumstances, we become couch potatoes and can stay inside together for an entire weekend!

Fortunately, another Norwegian aspiration is to get outside and enjoy nature. So, after a leisurely Saturday morning watching ‘Reindeer Luck,’ a fascinating eight-part documentary that follows the lives of a Sami family in the north of Norway, we took a long walk through our neighborhood and around Finsbury Park in the soft rain.

I’ve posted two photos from our walk – a beautiful sumac that began to catch autumnal fire about a week ago, and a perfect sunflower still holding out against the cold. Maybe it’s just me, but the colors on the sumac seem remarkably like the happy hues in our saucepan. Then again, maybe hjemmekos just means looking at the world through vegetable-colored glasses.