Photos
The photo collection: 27 in as of July 28, 2026. Click any photo to see it full size.
The concept, chapter ideas, and recipes in progress.
The cookbook is about recipes and family culture, but also about ritual, memory, repair, and the language people can still speak when ordinary conversation fails. The cooking is not symbolic, it’s functional: people who cannot safely discuss the past can still chop onions together, talk about ingredients, praise Grammie’s sweet breads, stand shoulder-to-shoulder without eye contact, feed each other.
Each recipe is from a special moment: a restaurant in Norway from a trip taken together, grandma’s famous poppy seed bread, and San Francisco, our home city, infused with an appreciation of our local neighborhood, skills Han learned from the restaurants she worked in, and the spots visited over the years for special occasions both fancy and hole in the walls. The recipes are a map of shared memories, a record of place, an archive of love expressed through meals. Part memoir, part travelogue, part family archive, part reconciliation. And a creative expression and now tradition we both love. Full Stop.
On the name: “Tusen Tak” draws from the Scandinavian phrase “tusen takk” (“a thousand thanks”). Of which we feel eternally grateful, for this chapter and every chapter.
Exploring ways to organize the book. Maybe use both.
The book moves between recipes, fragments of text messages, memories, silence, annotations in margins, “failed” recipes and setbacks, moments of reconnection, and practical acts of care.
Balance the attention to detail and presentation, which we both love: an elegant Norwegian fish dish next to grandma’s banana bread; a refined restaurant memory next to a badly photocopied handwritten recipe card from Grammie’s cookbooks.
Direction words for the design.
“Layers and texture like the recipes and relationships themselves, but sparse in its own way. Smart. Thoughtful.”
The design studies each take a different run at this: Fjord, Sunday Table, and Søndag, a blend of the two.
Every recipe and where it stands. “Some borrowed, some translated, some cobbled together.”
| Recipe | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Heather & Hannah’s Fiskesuppe | On the site | Based on three recipes, Heather’s adjustments, and Hannah’s fine sense of knowing exactly what it still needs. |
| Adapted Yunnies Kitchen–Style Kongbul | On the site | Sugar amount in the sauce and bacon-vs-pork wording still to confirm. |
| Kålstuing | On the site | Norwegian creamed cabbage with Oatly. |
| Black Beans with Rice & Plantains | On the site | Posted as written. |
| Hibiscus Non-Alcoholic Negroni | On the site | Via @grossypelosi / NYT Cooking. |
| Born This Way Mocktail | Still cooking | Caipiroski with dragon fruit and muddled lime, featuring Aplos “Arise” adaptogen spirit. Muddling method saved; amounts to pin down before it gets a page. |
| Dark Magic Gingerbread | Still cooking | Full instructions saved (cake + butterscotch sauce). Needs the ingredient list with amounts. |
| Wood ear mushroom | Still cooking | Highland Noodles–style sauce sketch: about 2 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp black vinegar, 1 tsp sesame oil, 1 tsp sugar, minced garlic, to taste. |
| Smörgåstårta | Idea | “I love the idea of smörgåstårta.” Recipe to come. |
| Grammie’s sweet breads | Incoming | Pulled from her archive; on the way. |
| Her mother’s chocolate frosting | Incoming | Pulled from her archive; on the way. |
The photo collection: 27 in as of July 28, 2026. Click any photo to see it full size.
On the way.