The Rating Game

Anyone who would have a peak into my book cupboard, would definitely understand pretty quickly by the amount of cookbooks that I love to spend quite some time in the kitchen, cooking, baking or just testing out new recipes.

With a hubby that grew up on a farm in Norway, getting served husmannskost - traditional Norwegian dishes consisting predominantly of potatoes, vegetables and some sort of meat of fish - for dinner nearly every day; while I grew up in The Netherlands with it multicultural kitchen influenced by the dishes and spices brought over from the different colonies across the globe - it is easy to understand that our palates are used to very different tastes. I therefore try to cook both traditional Norwegian dishes to challenge my palate and expand my culinary repertoire, and more spicy dishes from across the globe to challenge my hubby's palate and expand his culinary experiences.

I can honestly say that not every dish I serve or new recipe that I test out, is met with a lot of praise. To make sure that I wouldn't serve too many non-favourites on a row, my hubby and I have started The Rating Game. Every new dish served in our home gets rated by my hubby and me. Since the common rating system here in Norway normally is a terningkast - or a dice roll - the dishes I serve get rated from one to six, with six being the best.

The Rating Game sharpens my culinary skills and efforts, always chasing another 6 from my hubby, but it has also only been once that a dish received a 6. That was home made cheese ham croissants, being served lukewarm straight out of the oven when my hubby came home from a long day of work. On the other hand, my culinary try outs haven't received below terningkast 3 yet, so I am quite pleased.