An Adventure in Herring Salad

Cubed a granny smith apple.

Added a hard-boiled egg.

Added some canned sliced white potatoes.

So far so good.  I've eaten all those things separately, so combined they shouldn't be a problem.

Next come the beets.  I'm not a big fan of beets, but I've had them before.  I bought a jar of sliced beets and stirred in a few.  Everything turned pink.  

Then it was time for herring.  I opened the tin and got my first look at the herring.  Uhh....  Not particularly appealing. 

I tried to scrape off all the black part (skin?), then broke the herring into chunks, added it to the salad with a bit of mayo and a bit of sour cream.  

After 24 hours in the fridge, hidden in the veggie crisper behind some carrots, I scooped some out onto some rye bread I bought just for this occasion at the local organic food store.

It wasn't bad.  Seeing as how I had 80% things I didn't really mind eating, and 20% herring, it wasn't as hard to eat as it could have been if I'd loaded up on the herring.  But I was trying to do it like they would have in Hjalmar's house, so I made the "stretch" version of the recipe, with more filling than herring.   (Okay, maybe it's because I didn't really want a herring-heavy salad, but I can always say that it was part of my quest to be Ibsen-authentic.)

I ate the sandwich, washed it down with a Diet Pepsi, and then took the rest of it over to my neighbor, a gourmand from Minnesota who was delighted with the surprise, since she hadn't had it since she was a kid, more than 40 years ago.