Aslaug Strom likes to have a cookie or two with her afternoon tea.
Who doesn’t?
At nearly 106 years old, though, what sets this New Westminster resident apart is that she still likes to bake the cookies herself.
When I arrive at her Victoria Hill assisted living apartment, she already has most of the ingredients for her latest batch – crisp coconut cookies – set out on a low table.
She moves around the kitchen in a wheelchair to gather the rest.
“I haven’t got much coconut,” she says. “Sunday is when I’m going shopping.”
She holds the mixing bowl in her lap because a broken arm a few years ago has limited her arm movement.
She reads her recipe book with a large magnifying glass, sometimes getting me to check she’s read the measurements right.
As she mixes and measures, she talks about plans for her 106th birthday on April 12.
Family and friends are coming in from Seattle, Everett and possibly Prince George, she says.
Strom was born “way up north” in Norway in 1910 – months before her countryman, Roald Amundsen set out to reach the South Pole; two years before the sinking of the Titanic.
“It wasn’t like it is today,” she says of times past.
She came to Canada in 1929 to work on a cousin’s large farm in Irma, Alta.
“The first year it was terrible,” she says. “They didn’t have the milking machine.”
Despite a difficult beginning, Strom eventually put down roots here, but her ties to her native land have always stayed strong.
Her husband, Ted, whom she married in 1947, was from her hometown in Norway.
She returned to her homeland 15 times.
And then there’s the baking.
“In the olden days, we made seven kinds of cookies for Christmas,” Strom says, referring to an old Norwegian Christmas tradition.
Fatigmann or “poor man’s cookies” were a deep-fried treat that was always up first, she says.
“My mother was a good baker,” Strom says, “but that was all old fashioned in those days. I still can, but I’m not able to do it here.”
She settles for simpler recipes at her New West apartment.
“Do you like baking?” she asks while shaping her latest batch on a cookie sheet with a fork.
I have to admit I’m not much good at it.
We slide the sheet into the oven, and I offer to help with the dishes.
We talk for a little longer while my back is turned.
When I turn around, she is asleep.
Left to my own devices, I take the cookies out when they look the right colour, turn off the oven and tip-toe out of the apartment.
During a phone call later, she’s ready to tease me for my lack of an experienced baker’s eye.
“You burnt the cookies,” she says.
