Various sea birds are elegant, but there’s nothing more elegant than a gliding Pelican!
In every Viking horde there is always one person whose sole job it is to cook and wash up after every meal. The method employed in selecting the appropriate candidate is not only long and arduous, but also very specific. For instance, in the horde we are following, Midget Ulrich is the man tasked with planning and executing the meals.
Vikings, when they are at home in their forts only require to be fed twice a day. However, when they are on the war path which is most of the time, especially when they are low on funds and have bills to pay, they require to be fed 6 times a day. The worst week for them is the second week of every month when bills such as their mortgages on their huts come due, and the leader of the pack has on his castle. Some have found that the banks who hold their mortgage notes, don’t particularly like to be strung out and even though they charge a great deal of extra interest whenever they are late, they can be pretty vicious by foreclosing on their huts. Even the fiercest Viking is dead scared of their mortgage banker.
So, when the rare occasion arises where someone’s hut has been foreclosed on, the first and only person they take their anger out on is their chief cook and bottlewasher, which in our case is Midget Ulrich.
Before I continue though, a little about our protagonist. I bet when you first began reading this story and you came across his name, your first inclination was to believe that he was probably all of four feet tall. This is absolutely incorrect. He was named Midget by a hospital nurse when he was born.
“Congratulations!” the doctor at the Viking Hospital in Helsinki said, “your son has been born and he only weighs about 2 Kopeks,” (1 Kopek equals approximately I pound) “at least that’s what the stork told us.”
“2 Kopeks!” Mr and Mrs Ulrich sounded the alarm, “oh my goodness he’s small. Smaller than Margorie or Arthur,” (yes, the same Arthur just in case you’re wondering), “what should we call him?”
“How about Midget?” suggested Nurse Rachett, and no not her, but an ancestor of hers. Everyone in turn looked at each other and agreed.
“What a brilliant name!” replied Mrs Ulrich, “Midget Ulrich. You should ask the doctor for a raise.”
The only problem was that as Midget got older, he grew taller and he now stands at 6 feet 11 inches. That stunned everyone because nobody in their family is over 5 feet 8. At first, this led to Mr Ulrich to wonder if he was the father or if Mrs Ulrich had an affair with the man who milked the camels at the farm which provided them milk. Mr Bonaventure, the camel milkman, stands at about 6 feet 9 inches.
But once Midget was older, everyone and I mean everyone, including the doctor and the nurse who never got her raise, marvelled at how Midget looked just like his dad. That was enough to allay any of Mr Ulrich fears, except “just like his dad,” was never expanded upon. When Midget reached the age of majority which in Viking land is 13, and after he had undergone the Viking edition of a Jewish bar mitzvah which they learned about on one of their conquests, this time in the Greek islands where they witnessed such a ceremony and adapted it to their ways, Midget had to decide what he was going to do for a living.
“No, you cannot be a warrior,” King Olaf the Terrible told him. “You would never last very long. You would be taller than anyone on the battlefield and everyone would throw axes and spears at you and that would be it.”
At first Midget was disheartened. Then one day as he was walking beside his cart, he was too big to be carried on it, he came across a billboard on the side of the road. ‘Become the chef of your dreams,’ were the headlines. ‘Instead of going to a restaurant when you want gourmet food you can make it at home.’ And there was a picture of a man with a wonderful smile bringing a large dish of elk stew to the table while his family sat around with wonderfully beautiful smiles. And that’s how it began.
Midget attended the Viking School of Cookery in St Petersburg and by the end of the 2 year associate degree programme, he finished at the top of the class. His parents and siblings attended his graduation ceremony so incredibly proud of him. But there was only one problem. Midget just couldn’t stay home and cook, there was no way he could earn a living like that. No one had ever thought of that.
One day his father was down in the village square watching the Viking horde return from a new adventure just in time to pay their mortgages, when he noticed that their cook Mildred Bhanhoff wasn’t with them. “What happened to Mildred?” he enquired.
“Oh,” he was told, “she ran off with an Italian count. Can you believe that and now we have to find another cook. She was excellent. Her lasagne was the best.”
“Well,” replied Mr Ulrich, “how about Midget? He just got his associates degree from cooking school.” The lieutenant he was talking to, Odin McCaffery, thought it was a great idea and that’s how Midget got his job. He has now been with them about 5 years and he gradually moved up in rank each time they returned from an expedition. He began as someone in charge of prepping the meals, even though he did the cooking as well, but now he was the executive chef, even though he still did the prepping and cooking. But he is addressed as chef.
Every time the horde returned, he had picked up a new dish and on the last one, this time to South America, Costa Rica to be exact, he learnt how to make their national dish, pelican stew. Once everyone in the horde tried and loved the dish, he then told them it was made using pelican. At first there was a groan with some objecting to him using pelicans because they were an endangered species. But finally, King Olaf the Terrible stood up, banged the table with his closest warrior’s head and announced he loved the dish but added a warning. “Please don’t make this too much. We love watching pelicans fly overhead. I know various sea birds are elegant, but there’s nothing more elegant than a gliding Pelican!” The rest agreed and then it was decreed by the King that the dish would become part of the Viking culture but would only be made on High Holy Days.