I have noticed it coming for weeks but thought I was over reacting or being dramatic. I thought it might happen but secretly never thought it could...but it has...

Norway is out of butter!

When I wrote that blog about not panicking on Thanksgiving and rolling with that fact that unforeseen things may happen on Thanksgiving and to laugh about it I really didn't know that this would be one of those years for me!

culturedbutter.com/2011/
11/18/butter-shortage-frus
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I saw the salted butter on the shelves of my local small grocery store slowly disappear. I don't use that much so it didn't bother me but finally I bought a kilo of unsalted butter which I like better anyway but is very expensive. I assumed it had something to do with the chain of grocery stores not the butter when I later saw butter at another grocery store but I noticed that my grocery store was now out of even unsalted butter. I assumed that when I went to the big grocery store two stops down from me I would be able to pick up some butter for our Thanksgiving dinner that we will be having tomorrow. Nope! They are all out now too! The whole country is affected and I am told that cream is the next to go.

Norway has only have one major supplier for butter and one small competitor both are here in this country since we don't import butter. It could be an interesting holiday season!

Sooooo, I am heeding my own advice and going through all of my Thanksgiving recipes and making substitutions or elimination. I do have on hand a small amount of butter but I did something I have never done before. I bought margarine! I come from a good Midwest dairy family (my grandfather was a Guernsey man and would walk out of any restaurant or diner that did not serve real butter) ...using margarine is kind of like a sin! I will go get a really good olive oil and some other various dairy products to sub for butter today as well in my baking and cooking. We are having a our friends for dinner. She is Swedish and he is from here. We can just tell them..."Oh yes...everyone in America uses cream cheese on their bread at Thanksgiving!"

I will also not be making corn bread ...that is less about the butter and more about the fact that I cannot find polenta (the only kind of corn meal I have ever found here). I did splurge and pay about the equivalent of 9 USD on a frozen container of tyttebær so we could have something that resembles cranberry relish. These should go well with the tiny turkey that we found (and paid the equivalent of 40 USD for!) I think it will go well with our traditional walnut pie...no pecans! This would not go well with pumpkin pie so we won't be having that of course. (or it could be that there are no pumpkins or canned pumpkins...and please don't ask me about other varietals of winter squash...I might just cry remembering how wonderful winter squash is.) I did find some mushy old persimmons in the "exotic" fruit section next to the mangos and Asian pears and they are perfect for making our family recipe persimmon pudding...so YAY for that!!! We also found some terrific wild mushrooms from Candida and will be able to make our stuffing. I joked about cobbling together our Thanksgiving this year and it really is true. Patrick had picked up some wonderful stinky cheese for me to bring home the other day so we have something for before dinner...I did feel kind of sorry for the people sitting near my on the train that day though...wondering where that smell was coming from!

So now I will get up off the couch and start my pre Thankgiving baking and cooking as well as that traditional one last stop at the grocery store and I better have it right because grocery stores are not open here on Sundays so there can be not be that traditional one LAST crazed stop 15 minutes before the guests arrive at the grocery store tomorrow!

OK...here we go...this one will go down as one of THOSE years for sure! "The year Norway ran out of butter." Sounds like of like a children's holiday special doesn't it? :-D