Our first full day in Denmark

We're drawing to a close on the first full day of our trip to Denmark. Yesterday we both arrived safely and had a delicious home-cooked dinner of chicken stuffed with parsley, boiled new potatoes with gravy, pickled cucumber salad, and rød grød med fløde (red soup with milk) for dessert made from rhubarb and strawberries. This is a traditional spring dinner and it was a delicious welcome to our spring visit to Denmark.


This morning we woke up having both slept many hours in order to battle jetlag and took the train into Copenhagen, after a traditional light breakfast of rugbrød (rye bread) with oste (cheese). We met up with Lykke, a wonderful employee of the National Museum, or Nationalmuseet (and apparently often shortened to nat mus which means black mouse in Danish). She took us to lunch at the employee's dining area where we had buffet options of pork and potatoes with gravy, crepes with jam, many cold salads, bread and cheese, and of course herring! I had curried herring which is the only way of preparation that I personally eat herring - until today when I also tried a new type which is fried, then put into brine and served cold. Very tasty! After talking extensively with Lykke about Danish cuisine and various trends, we walked around an exhibit with her that focused on Denmark from 1600-2000. We saw some interesting historical cooking tools such as a wooden beer ladle shaped like a duck from the 1700s.


After our full day at the museum we took the train back home and had another traditional home-cooked dinner, this time of frikadeller, a meatball made from pork, onion, salt, pepper, and thyme, served with pointy cabbage in a cream sauce and boiled new potatoes. For dessert we had a butter milk concoction poured in bowl over small crunchy cookies (called kaernemaelkskoldskål).


After dinner we took a walk in the woods with the dogs (three very well-trained black labs) and came across a very sad sight on the path, a deceased baby deer. It did not appear to have been injured so we're not sure how it died. At the end of the walk one of the dogs was not with us (they're off leash in that area of the woods). Since they've very well trained, this was odd. Our friend went back to see if perhaps it had gone back to the deer and as it turns out it had; but while we were expecting to see a bloody mouth upon return, it turns out the dog had been sitting there, keeping watch over the little guy.


So as not to close this out on a low note, here are some photos from the trip so far, taken only with my phone - the good ones from the fancy cameras will be reserved for the book!

A fruit drink in the 7-11 with a pretty good marketing slogan!

The many different kinds of pølser (hot dogs) that you can get at a pølservogn (hot dog cart)