For The Love Of Cod

A journey to find Norway’s supposed bliss makes for a comic travelogue that asks, seriously, what makes Norwegians so damn happy—and does it translate? Norway is usually near or at the top of the World Happiness Report. But is it really one of the happiest countries on Earth? Eric Dregni had his doubts. Years ago he and his wife had lived in this country his great-great-grandfather once fled. When their son Eilif was born there, the Norwegian government paid for the birth, gave them $5,000, and deposited $150 into their bank account every month, but surely happiness was more than a generous health care system. What about all those grim months without sun? When Eilif turned fifteen, father and son decided to go back together and investigate. For the Love of Cod is their droll report on the state of purported Norwegian bliss. Arriving in May, a month of festivals and eternal sun, the Dregnis are thrust into Norway at its merriest—and into the reality of the astronomical cost of living, which forces them to find lodging with friends and relatives. But this gives them an inside look at the secrets to a better life. It’s not the massive amounts of money flowing from the North Sea oil fields but how these funds are distributed that fuels the Norwegian version of democratic socialism—resulting in miniscule differences between rich and poor. Locals introduce them to the principles underlying their avowed contentment, from an active environmentalism that translates into flyskam (flight shame), which keeps Norwegians in the family cabin for the long vacations prescribed by law and charges a 150 percent tax on gas guzzlers (which, Eilif observes, means more Teslas seen in one hour than in a year in Minnesota!). From a passion for dugnad or community volunteerism and sakte or “slow,” a rejection of the mad pace of modernity, to the commodification of Viking history and the dark side of Black Metal music that turns the idea of quaint, traditional Norway upside down, this idiosyncratic father and son tour lets readers, free of flyskam, see how, or whether, Norwegian happiness translates.

Eric Dregni’s great-grandfather Ellef fled Norway in 1893 when it was the poorest country in Europe. More than one hundred years later, his great-grandson traveled back to find that—mostly due to oil and natural gas discoveries—it is now the richest. The circumstances of his return were serendipitous, as the notice that Dregni won a Fulbright Fellowship to go there arrived the same week as the knowledge that his wife Katy was pregnant. Braving a birth abroad and benefiting from a remarkably generous health care system, the Dregnis’ family came full circle when their son Eilif was born in Norway. In this cross-cultural memoir, Dregni tells the hair-raising, hilarious, and sometimes poignant stories of his family’s yearlong Norwegian experiment. Among the exploits he details are staying warm in a remote grass-roofed hytte (hut), surviving a dinner of rakfisk (fermented fish) thanks to 80-proof aquavit, and identifying his great-grandfather’s house in the Lusterfjord only to find out it had been crushed by a boulder and then swept away by a river. To subsist on a student stipend, he rides the meat bus to Sweden for cheap salami with a busload of knitting pensioners. A week later, he and his wife travel to the Lofoten Islands and gnaw on klippefisk (dried cod) while cats follow them through the streets. Dregni’s Scandinavian roots do little to prepare him and his family for the year in Trondheim eating herring cakes, obeying the conformist Janteloven (Jante’s law), and enduring the mørketid (dark time). In Cod We Trust is one Minnesota family’s spirited excursion into Scandinavian life. The land of the midnight sun is far stranger than they previously thought, and their encounters show that there is much we can learn from its unique and surprising culture.

What is Canadian cuisine? In Speaking in Cod Tongues, Lenore Newman takes us on a journey through Canada's rich and evolving culinary landscape.

Following the success of For The Love of the Land, this second cook book compiled by Jenny Jefferies and produced by Meze Publishing showcases the incredible British fish and seafood community. With 40 delicious recipes and fascinating stories from the contributors, For The Love of the Sea champions sustainability and celebrates great produce.

Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets have been based on it, economies have depended on it, and the settlement of North America was driven by it. Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could. What did the Vikings eat in icy Greenland and on the five expeditions to America recorded in the Icelandic sagas? Cod -- frozen and dried in the frosty air, then broken into pieces and eaten like hardtack. What was the staple of the medieval diet? Cod again, sold salted by the Basques, an enigmatic people with a mysterious, unlimited supply of cod. Cod is a charming tour of history with all its economic forces laid bare and a fish story embellished with great gastronomic detail. It is also a tragic tale of environmental failure, of depleted fishing stocks where once the cod's numbers were legendary. In this deceptively whimsical biography of a fish, Mark Kurlansky brings a thousand years of human civilization into captivating focus.

Easy and delicious recipes for busy families from the TODAY show’s West Coast anchor and host of NBC’s Access. As the beloved and longtime news anchor and co-host of the TODAY show, current West Coast anchor of the TODAY show, host of Access, and co-host of Access Live, as well as the mother of two young boys, Natalie Morales knows how hard it can be night after night to get a healthful dinner on the table that the whole family will enjoy. Morales was born in Taiwan to a Brazilian mother and Puerto Rican father, and she lived around the world as a child—Panama, Spain, and Brazil. That multicultural experience fed her love for good food, but it’s her experience as a working mom that taught her how to cook on the run and keep her recipes healthful. The result is a personal collection of 125 recipes Morales makes at home for her family, including Chicken in Garlic Sauce, Grilled Chimichurri Soy Steak, Sweet and Spicy Slow Roasted Pork, and Pesto Shrimp with Lemon Pepper Fettuccine. “For years I’ve enjoyed Natalie Morales in the mornings. With this book, I can enjoy her three meals a day.”—Giada De Laurentiis “Natalie’s vibrancy for life, food, and her culture make this cookbook one that everyone should own!”—Jenna Bush Hager, contributing correspondent for NBC News and editor-at-large for Southern Living “I’ve sat around Natalie’s cozy kitchen table many times, and this book is a bog ol’ dose of heart and home.”—Kit Hoover, cohost on Access Hollywood Live

When people think of dock-side dining in Massachusetts they imagine buttery toasted lobster rolls, steaming bowls of creamy fish chowder, and alabaster-white slabs of baked cod piled with bread crumbs, but its rich and varied cuisine reflects all who have come to call these seaports home. Cultures––including, Sicilian, Portuguese, Finnish, and Irish––that fished and worked the granite quarries there a century ago were so tightly bound that generations have stayed and continue to leave their culinary mark on coastline. In Cod We Trust features over 175 recipes that celebrate the area’s unique place in the culinary world, and is a photographic journey for both people who love the area and those who hope to visit one day.

It's 1992 in Newfoundland and Labrador and the cod moratorium has put some thirty thousand fishers out of work. Journalist Jenn Thornhill Verma blends memoir and research in this gripping account of the enduring legacy of the largest mass layoff in Canadian history. Tracing the early history of the fishery to the present, Verma considers what lies ahead and what was lost along the way.