My parents recently returned from a trip to Estonia where they traveled for a wedding.  They saw many wonderful things in Estonia, Finland, and St. Petersburg (Russia), but to us, one of the best parts of their trip was one of the things they brought back for us.  Always appreciative of great gifts, the tube of mustard they brought for Marty was met with enthusiasm.  I started seeing the tube on our table at practically every meal, and while I was glad to see how much he was enjoying it, I began to wonder what we would do once it was gone.

"The Mustard is gone," he said, "But it's okay, there's a web address, we'll just order more."  He told my dad about his plan who asked that he order some extra for them as well.  "Maybe a case" I suggested.

As I typed in the web address, some thoughts poked up in the back of my mind.  Would this site be in English? I wonder how expensive a tube of this mustard is?  More than that, I wonder what the International shipping rates will be for a case of mustard tubes?  This doesn't really go along with the "buy locally when available" approach I've been using all summer, assuming that you don't count The Gap, I mean, isn't there a comparable mustard here?

As I imagined, the site was not in English and I didn't see any "click here for English" button.  Apparently, Estonian isn't the kind of language where words might look familiar, either.  On the entire site, there was only one word I recognized.  So I clicked on it.


Here's a close up:


Not knowing what to expect, but not especially hoping for anything related to the common kid-usage of the word, I was interested to see that Tooted appears to relate to pickles of some sort.  Maybe, I can't totally tell.


Interesting, but still not mustard.  I searched around the site to try to find the mustard using a technique called Clicking Around.  Having no luck there, I decided to expand my search.  Through some research, I found that this company is owned by another company who is owned by another company, the primary parent company being located in Norway.  Feeling some kinship with the Norwegians, I decided that I would send them an email asking if I could order online or if they happened to have any in the States.

I explained that my parents brought us a tube of this mustard upon their return from Estonia and told them how much we've enjoyed it.  I wrote that the people traveling in their party purchased many tubes of the mustard, one person buying TWENTY-THREE tubes, every tube the store had in stock.  I haven't heard back yet, but I sort of imagine that my email could end up being passed around their office for awhile.  "Hey, Ole, look at this one!  These Americans love that Estonian mustard, can you imagine?"  Part of me expects that I will be the butt of a Norwegian joke.  The other part of me hopes that they don't contact us to become their North American distribution because I can very easily imagine Marty loading the camper up with cases of mustard and hitting the road.  He does have previous experience in selling meat out of the back of a van.  REALLY.