One last Great National Retirement Tour Stop – the Norske Nook in Osseo, Wisconsin. I passed it by when I was returning from South Beloit. I loaded Trudie, Jean-N, and Mary in the car (which necessitated cleaning it out) and drove the 2 hours to Osseo. Signage was sparse, but we did make it to the Norske Nook. We made a coffee and donut stop in Baldwin at Trudie’s suggestion. Excellent suggestion!
Norske Nook is so popular in this small town that it has a restaurant on one side of the street and a gift shop on the other side of the street. We went to the restaurant first. I had Norwegian pancakes (more like crepes) with lingonberries and Swedish meatballs. Jean had a meatball diner which comes with lefse as the bread. Trudie had the beef commercial, and Mary had a turkey club sandwich. We all had pie for dessert. They have a huge collection of wonderful pies.
Jean and I each bought rounds of lefse on the way out. The next morning I ate half of one round some with butter and cheese from our trip and some with peanut butter. Their lefse is the best I have had since Grandma died.
We all walked across the street to the gift shop. I bought a krumkake wood form for rolling it, and a coloring book of Norwegian culture. They didn’t have a good cheese shovel.
Then we headed back toward Saint Paul with a planned stop at Cady Cheese first. Cady is a cheese maker near Wilson, Wisconsin – really out in the country! Everyone found something to like there. I found Butterkässe – as did Trudie. All of us found squeaky cheese curds – made fresh that day. I found a cheese shovel that worked fairly well.
It was raining the whole time we were at Cady Cheese and rained the whole way home. It was surprisingly kind of a pleasant rain experience. And I can’t think of anything I would rant have done on a gray, rainy day.
