One grows through challenges

In addition to the 'everyday' dog training, life here holds some surprising tasks. And the past few days have been all about meat! When Regina came back from town with a fully loaded pickup truck, we already suspected that there was a lot of work waiting for us. Because in addition to the normal groceries, there were about a dozen plastic bags containing initially unidentifiable animal parts. Upon closer inspection, we realized - it's almost a complete moose, without a head, and 3 1/2 pigs, with heads. Alright, let's get started! While the men began to butcher the moose meat for various uses, Corinna and I started the rough but somehow fun task of chopping the moose bones into dog-sized pieces with an axe. We felt quite martial, but also very Norwegian! :D After feeding the dogs and enjoying a hearty dinner of fresh meat, we helped with the processing of the remaining parts. And when Björn casually puts a moose neck in front of you and says 'here, make a stew out of it!'... well, you look a little panicked at first :D Today, it was time for the pigs! I skipped the training and helped Björn process the 7 halves of the pigs from morning till evening. Stew, ground meat, sausage meat, breakfast meat, neck steaks, grill ribs, regular ribs, roast with crackling, roast without crackling, pure crackling for gribenes... in the background, a huge pot with the heads and feet simmered all day for stock and jelly... phew, it really gets into your head, and even after multiple soapy washings, it doesn't leave your nose... I know what I'll dream about tonight!
I have to say... there may be some interesting pictures... we're just more or less doing it professionally! :D Björn is also not a trained butcher, and works diligently according to instructions. A butcher friend filmed for him in Germany how to butcher pigs and how to process each part for different uses, i.e. among all the bloody work, there's a laptop with someone giving instructions in the deepest Hamburg dialect through videos - Haha, yes, it was somehow surreal. In case the question arises - 'What the hell are they doing with meat from 3 1/2 pigs and a moose with five people?!' (Oh, by the way, the mentioned reindeer is still hanging in the sled room) - short explanation: as mentioned, from mid-December, the tour season starts, during which the guide and 5 - 8 tourists spend several days traveling through the Norwegian wilderness with sleds. And Björn and Regina attach great importance to not only provide the tourists with energy bars and various powdered drinks, but they also want to cook really good and tasty food for them during this time. For this purpose, Regina prepares over a hundred dishes in advance and freezes them in individual portions (yes, we have damn many cold storage rooms here). I hope this makes the local dimensions a bit more understandable :) So, tomorrow we'll make sausage, and then hopefully there will be a little meat break over the weekend. However, the whole thing also had a positive side effect: after my hands felt like sandpaper for the past few days, hmmmm, they're baby soft today! :D