Miriam just looks like a painfully nice person.


And she is.

About as nice as a person could be before offering to give you one of their kidneys. This kid sister of Sissi (I have recently been informed that Sissi's name has no 'y' in it) grew up, married a Dutchman, eventually moved to the south of Spain and became what has to be the first flamenco instructor in the history of Scandinavia.

Flamenco? Norway? Is anyone else staring into the Crawford Boxes to look out for anything else that may come out of left field?

And to think that Miriam has been coming to this island her entire life -- she grew up in Moss, near Oslo, but this was her father's birthplace and childhood home.


One word to describe this swimming hole James, Sissi, Lambiek and Miriam brought me to: REFRESHING.

And another word, this one to describe Sissi and Miriam's father's old-school boat: PIMP.
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In the distance is the boat house I took so many siestas in, read so much of my book, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945 in on those lazy Norwegian days, and ate so many amazing meals in.

But the rock that today serves as a glorified hot dog grill? The future site of Miriam and Lambiek's own summer home ... as well as the site of a place for the Kleppe brother, JanPeder.


Basically, I wish I never had to leave this place.

But that's not just because of how alive the water was, or the baaaaaahh'ing sheep, or the incredibly nice and welcoming people.

It was the food, too.

A rule of thumb: It's never a bad thing to fall in with an aspiring nutritionist who is NOT a vegetarian.


Why?

Because you get to eat nothing but dank meals; dank meals that are actually good, too. Not to say that all vegetarian meals are bad, but it's definitely the difference between Triple-A and The Show. This coming from the guy who would be 18 years away from being a real life 40-Year-Old Virgin had he never dated a vegetarian.

Sissi, who recently went back to university to get her master's in nutrition, has combined her maternal nagging skills with her newfound knowledge base to perpetually irritate the two kids who I got to meet, Didrik and Christiana.

"Do you get annoyed with your mom constantly telling you what is okay to eat and what is bad for you?"

"YES."

One day, they'll be glad they had some guidance -- until I met Sissi, I honestly ate fruit with the idea that I could ascribe one "fruit point" to every apple, banana, peach, etc. that I consumed. And the more fruit points I amassed, the healthier I would be. All fruits carried the same amount of points per kg. Seemed to be a pretty good system, until Sissi sent it crashing down.

"You can't eat an APPLE right before a meal!!" she exclaimed in shock when she caught me, red-handed, in the kitchen right before dinner one night. "How are the nutrients going to be properly dispersed into your system? You are only supposed to eat fruit x hours before a meal, or x hours afterward."

Gosh, Bayless. No doiiiiiiiiiiii.

(Sissi, for Christmas, can you please send me a nutritional day-by-day plan of what I should be eating? Thanks, I miss you.)