No lutefisk for you friendo!

Washington DC is undoubtedly one of the most international cities you can find.

This has of course resulted in a myriad of international restaurants and eateries. Greek, Ethiopian, Jamaican, Peruvian, Mexican (the southerners claim there are no good Mexican restaurants in this area, but that’s a different story), Italian, French, Vietnamese…you name it!

However, when I did a Yelp search for Norwegian food I came up completely empty handed. Widening my search for Scandinavian food I got two hits.

One was IKEA (oh yeah, meatballs and lingonberry sauce served up in a furniture store apparently counts as a restaurant).

The other one was a Polish Scandinavian hybrid, serving a random mix of Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Swedish meatballs and Norwegian pancakes…

In other words, if you feel like opening up a Scandinavian restaurant in DC you have approximately zero competition. On the other hand it can be question whether there really is a great market for lutefisk and smalahove (sheep’s head)…

The famous Norwegian dish lutefisk. Does it make your mouth water?

Doesn't smalahove - sheep's head - look like a delicious choice for Sunday dinner?

The crib – a story of compromise and meatballs

Moving in with the Texan, whose selection of furniture was fitting for a bachelor pad – no dining table, no dresser and a good selection of totes with random content scattered around the guest bedroom – there was only one quick fix.

IKEA.

Now, shopping at IKEA can be heaven or hell. For the visit to be the former two things are required.

One is making a pit stop at the cafeteria for a serving of Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes and lingonberry sauce. The meatballs are the bait I always (and successfully) use in order to lure the Texan to go to IKEA with me.

The other – agreeing on what to buy – is the great challenge. All women know that it is an unwritten rule that the female in the relationship gets to make all decisions when it comes to the interior of the home (guys can take care of the yard and outside repairs). Unfortunately for me, the Texan seemed oblivious to this rule and demanded to be a part of the decision making (single people – stay single if you do not want anyone challenging your taste).

Luckily there is such thing as compromise, also known as well functioning household diplomacy. The result of this was that we walked out without a sofa cover, only one chair (found in the 50% off section) and no dresser, but with an impressive selection of other stuff (this is why IKEA is bad for you. It is impossible to resist all the little things they have placed in strategic places, and suddenly you find you have shopped for 200 dollars more than what your budget was, and this is after you dropped the sofa cover that was part of the budget).

Now the apartment is finally beginning to look less like a bachelor pad. Of course, the guest bedroom still looks like it suffered a tornado and my underwear still resides in a green bag since we didn’t get a dresser yet, but there is major improvement, and I will now give you a sneak peak at the results of the well functioning household diplomacy/compromise:

The dining section, complete with IKEA furniture.

The flowers were the idea of the Texan. After being hesitant at first, I must admit I find them pretty cute.

The sofa with the same old cover. The coffee table is only a day away from Craigslist. The Texan has promised to make me a new coffee table 🙂

More pictures to follow later.