Hei! Og velkommen til Lillehammer!

In 1994, athletes from all over the globe gathered in the Norwegian municipality of Lillehammer for the Winter Olympics. These athletic elites competed in a variety of snowy contests from Cross-Country Skiing and Bobsledding to Ski Jumping and Luge. In the opening ceremony, ski jumper Stein Gruben carried the Olympic Flame down the ski jump ramp and through the air before the cauldron was ultimately lit by Crown Prince Haakon Magnus. By the end of the event, Russia won the most gold medals (11) while with 10 gold, 11 silver and five bronze, Norway won the most medals overall.

Needless to say, the 1994 Winter Olympics are for what Lillehammer is most well known. However, there’s so much more to this scenic Norwegian city! For starters, it’s an official UNESCO City of Literature and is home to both the 13-century Garmo Stave Church (Garmo Stavkirke) and Maihaugen open-air museum. The Lillehammer Art Museum is one of Norway’s biggest and the food culture is rich, being the home of Norwegian Brunost (brown cheese).

I maybe didn’t ski, luge or bobsled into town, but I can officially say I have reached Lillehammer via my running project, Oppdrag: Norge. I am officially halfway through my half-marathon training and the miles quickly added up in the last few weeks. In fact, I hit 100% of the first leg, not after my Saturday long run this week but after my Thursday conditioning run! This means we celebrate with another authentic Norwegian dinner. Let’s nosh!

Menu:

Cocktail: The Oslo

This is where I must be honest with you, readers. While I did plot out this trip, calculated the mileage and picked out cocktail, entree and dessert recipes for every stop along the way, I neglected to take it a step further and go full-theme based on the location. If it seems weird that we had a cocktail called The Oslo in Lillehammer – especially since we were just in Oslo – that’s because it is. Whatever. Just trying to have some fun here so to trip up on that detail is missing the point.

ANYWAY, The Oslo is more-or-less a Manhattan but instead of using rye whiskey, we use Akvavit. Many of you may remember from the last dinner update that Akvavit is a potato-based, Scandinavian spirit that many describe as what happens between vodka and gin. The particular brand that I have is Swedish (hence Akvavit instead of Aquavit) label Stockholms Branneri and is infused with dill, juniper and elderflower. For this particular libation, I used 2.5oz Akvavit, 0.75oz sweet vermouth (I used Martini & Rossi), a dash of aromatic bitters (I used Woodford Reserve) and a dash of orange bitters (I used Angostura). When I texted both my mom and MIL to brag about the dinner, I made sure to point out the orange twist garnish – I was extremely proud of this detail.

We don’t have proper cocktail coupes for this particular recipe and we apparently are down to only one martini glass so I served these in the tasting glasses we got from Hops in the Hills last year. A snob might say we lost the aromatic essence of descriptive fabrication but I don’t think so. This cocktail was delicious and very pretty!

Hovedrrett (Main Course): Kjøttkaker med Brunost (Norwegian Brown Cheese Meatballs), Raspeballer (Potato Dumplings) and Vegetables

So while I didn’t line up The Oslo with our time in Oslo, I did accidentally get this one right. Brunost (brown cheese) is a type of goat cheese (ghetost) made with caramelized whey. It is, indeed, brown, has a distinctly sweet flavor and originated in the Lillehammer area. Knowing I needed to track down some of this specialty cheese, I started with our local cheese shop Euphoric and they hooked me up with two packs of Ski Queen Gjetost (pictured above).

This cheese, randomly, would be grated and go inside our main dish: Jkøttkaker (meatballs) in a delightful brown sauce. Other unexpected ingredients in these meatballs were milk, potato starch and nutmeg. And while the recipe called for minced beef, I decided to go a little leaner and tip the flavor profile a tad by using minced bison.

From there, the side dish of Raspeballer came out GREAT even though I was convinced I’d messed them up. The recipe calls for one part cooked-and-peeled potatoes (grated) to two parts raw potatoes (also grated) with the addition of barley flour, AP flour and salt. That part was easy enough, but the instructions say to make sure your water is simmering because coming to a full boil would cause your dumplings to fall apart. I did great, but at one point I had vegetables on one eye, brown sauce on another, these dumplings on a third and my meatballs going on the end. I was in the weeds and before I knew it, my dumplings were boiling. Thankfully I caught it and remedied the situation before I ended up with potato water soup.

Finally, this meal was rounded out with an incredibly vibrant and flavorful vegetable side dish made from sauteed leeks, ribbons of zucchini and peas. This was a great side and was impossibly simple, having only added a little butter, salt and the juice from half a lemon. It added a great amount of color to the dish as well.

All together, this meal brought the house down. The meatballs were meaty and juicy while that brown cheese gave them a very rich, almost velvety element. The brown sauce, which was ultimately just an elementary brown gravy, was extremely flavorful – especially after it soaked up the bits of bison fat that had seeped out of the meatballs while they seared. The potato dumplings were super soft on the outside but dense and a little chewy inside – exactly what you’d expect from a dumpling – and they also paired very well with the brown sauce. As for the vegetables … I found myself thinking “Man, I can’t wait to get a second serving of those vegetables.” Who says that?

Dessert: Kvæfjordkake

We wrapped things up with Kvæfjordkake, otherwise known as Verdens Beste: The World’s Best. The recipe involves spreading a sponge cake batter along the bottom of a pan and topping it with a simple meringue and slivered almonds, then baking at a low temperature. Meanwhile, you whip up both a homemade whipped cream and a vanilla custard. Once cooled, those final two elements are combined to create an airy custard combo that will serve as the filling of the layer cake.

After the cake has finished baking and cooled, it gets cut in half and one side is inverted meringue-side-down where it’s then topped with the whipped custard, then the cake-side-down other half of the cake. I did all of this on Friday night so it could chill in the refrigerator overnight. Since both sides of the custard was cake, I wanted to give it a chance to soak up the goodness of that custard.

And boy did it not disappoint! Before serving, The recipe shows the cake topped with fresh strawberries but I really wanted to use cloudberries, which we unfortunately don’t get in this part of the world. Wanting to do something a little different, I went with raspberries and I’m very glad I did. Not only did they look great for the presentation but the tartness went with the flavors of the cake perfectly. As expected, the custard had seeped into the sponge cake, creating an impossibly moist cake that came with the soft crunch of meringue and the firm texture of the almond slivers.

It wasn’t as good as our wedding cake, but otherwise, I’m okay with calling this Verdens Beste.

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And with this, we begin the next leg of our tour of Norway. The distance from Lillehammer to Roros is 164.042 miles. I’m maintaining the four-mile mid-week runs and will begin a taper about two weeks out from race day. I’ve also decided to put in an extra mile on Fridays during my post-workout walk, which isn’t much but those miles add up! I’ve estimated I’ll reach my next destination the same week as the race, which is very cool.

I’m also going to carry over the extra mileage from this leg (10.428 miles) into the next leg, which I’ll call out on the tracker in the next update. For now, here’s how I finished getting into Lillehammer:

Road Trip Tracker
Road Trip Mileage	Total Mileage	Percentage Complete
1,284.37	124.76	10.53%
Miles to Lillehammer	Leg Mileage	Percentage Complete
114.332	114.332+	100%+
Date	Type	Distance (Miles)
1/27/2025	Strength Day Walk	1
1/28/2025	Training Run	4
1/29/2025	Strength Day Walk	1
1/30/2025	Training Run	4
1/31/2025	Strength Day Walk	1
2/1/2025	Weekend Long Run	7
2/3/2025	Strength Day Walk	1
2/4/2025	Training Run	4
2/5/2025	Strength Day Walk	1
2/6/2025	Training Run	4
2/7/2025	Strength Day Walk	2
2/8/2025	Weekend Long Run	8

56 days until race day!

Alltid Videre!

-JTF