Danish cooking: it's messy.

First you go to the local butcher and ask for a pound of ground pork, the leanest possible, run through the grinder four times. No more, no less. Four times.

Then you get a pound of veal, run through the grinder twice.

Run home, put that in the fridge, and run out again for the following:

1. White bread with which to make breadcrumbs

2. Sour cream, heavy cream, dill, and selzer

3. Cloves, pepper, and salt

4. Frozen red currants (you have NO IDEA how hard it is to find frozen red currants) and raspberries

5. Unsalted Danish butter, Lurpak brand.

When you get home with all that glory, you'll do the following:

Mix half a cup of flour, two eggs, half a cup of heavy cream, half a cup of selzer, and about a cup of breadcrumbs with the meats. Add a smidgen of salt, a buttload of pepper, and a couple of pinches of cloves. Knead it all together and stick it in the fridge.

Put your currants (two packages) and raspberries (ditto) into a nice, heavy stockpot with enough water to keep them from burning. Simmer until everything's soft. Blend the mess in your blender (being careful not to let it explode out of the top), and then strain it through a strainer lined with cheesecloth. Twice.

Return it to the rinsed stockpot with a quarter-cup of cornstarch mixed with water, and simmer until the mixture begins to look gelled. Then pour it into an appropriate container and refrigerate.

Look around your kitchen and marvel at the red splotches everywhere.

Now it's time for meatballs. Grab a golfball-sized hunk of meat mixture out of the bowl and shape it into something like a flattened egg. Repeat eleven times, then fry the meatballs in a third of the butter you bought. Repeat twice more. While you're doing that, you can plan out mincing up the dill and mixing it into the sour cream to make a dill sauce.

While those frikadeller are frying, why not try to clean up some of the fruit splash from your counter, backsplash, stove, table, and person? Well, why not? Because it'll never work. Just learn to live with red splashes every-damn-where.

Remember dimly how your Danish host mother managed to do both frikadeller and fresh ham and rodgrod med flode without making the kitchen a horrible mess, and without spilling stuff on herself. Gaze around your own kitchen and marvel at the number of sieves and pots you've used at this point, only halfway through. Load the dishwasher. Pour yourself some aquavit.

Consider pickling your own beets to go with the frikadeller and roasted potatoes, then dismiss the idea.

Consider repainting the kitchen walls in a glorious, vibrant shade of pink. Consider it twice.

Eat a hot dog, drink a beer, go to bed.