For breakfast most Norwegians eat open sandwiches with butter and jam, cheese or some  kind of meat in slices on top. We  most often drink milk for breakfast. Our milk comes from cows, and it is very healthy. But we do not only eat bread, we eat cereals, too. It is not usual to eat a hot meal for breakfast in Norway.

Students eat lunch at school around noon. We bring open sandwiches from home and buy cold, fresh milk to drink. We do not receive any hot meals at school as you might do. We are responsible for our own food. If we forget to bring our lunch, we buy some food at the nearest grocery store in town.

We usually eat dinner around five o'clock. What we eat is different from season to season, from family to family. Most families eat fish twice a week or more. We do not eat it raw as you do, we either boil it or fry it.

Even though meat here in Norway is very expensive, we eat a lot of it. In the cities it is more usual to eat meat than fish. We make many different  meat dishes, e.g. meat balls, steaks and so on. And we do not eat just pure Norwegian meals, a lot of foregin types of food have entered into the Norwegian menues, such as Mexican tacos and Italian pasta or pizza. Pizza is often used as  "quick meal", fast and easy to cook. We just buy a frozen pizza in the store. (Further down this page you will find a recipe of a traditional way of preparing meat: Meatballs.)

If you are hungry later in the evening , you take a slice of bread and make yourself an open sandwich or something like that. Some families have the supper as a regular meal, some do not. Some eat bread, some eat a hot meal. That is different form place to place, from family to family.

A typical Norwegian meal

MEAT BALLS   (for 4 persons)
500 gram minced beef
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon potato flour
2 1/2 decilitre water
1 egg
butter for browning

Work the spice and potato flour well into the dough. Thin with water, little by little. Stir in the  whipped egg. Shape plain balls in the frying pan, and fry on both sides. Put the meat balls in the gravy to steep  for 5-10 minutes before serving with gravy and boiled potatoes.

GRAVY

2 1/2 tablespoon butter
2 1/2 tablespoon flour
5 dl stock

Brown butter and flour in an iron cassarole on low heat. Stir all the time. Boil the stock. Pour the boiled liquid little by little into the iron cassarole, and stir the sauce smooth. Boil about 10 min. Add spices according to taste. A little cream added can also be good.

BOILED POTATOES (for  4 persons)
1 litre water
5-6 potatoes
1/2 teaspoon  salt

Fill a casserole with water and put 1/2 teaspoon salt in the water. Let the water boil while you wash the potatoes. Put the potatoes in. The  potatoes are ready when you stick a fork in them and nothing sticks to the fork. When they are ready you take them out of the water and eat them. But peel them first.

You find more about Norwegian food on the following pages:
Information about food from the Norwegian Embassy in Washington D.C.
Norwegian Food Culture