A Bun, a Slice of Cheese, and Your Whole Week

Copenhagen has very firm opinions about how you hold a cheese bun.

I know. Of all the hills to die on. But stay with me, because this little bun has been rattling around my head all week, and I think it has something to say about your Tuesday.

Most days, homeschooling can feel like a relay race where someone keeps moving the finish line. Math wraps up and we sprint to spelling. Spelling bleeds into the read-aloud, the read-aloud into lunch, lunch into the car, the car into co-op, co-op into practice, practice into “Where is your OTHER shoe?” and a dinner that may or may not be cereal (no judgment here). And somewhere in all that racing, you catch yourself wondering if you’re missing the very thing you started homeschooling for.

Peace.

Stillness.

Quiet.

Ease.

Simplicity.

And to avoid things like that little ache when you realize you rushed through the chapter your kid begged you to keep reading. When the field trip you planned for weeks becomes a blur of snacks, head counts and parking. You ever wish you could press pause on the hustle just long enough to taste the good part?

The rush and the richness aren’t enemies, though. They’ve been sharing a plate all along. And the Danes figured it out with a bun.

I lived in Copenhagen for 4 years, and I remember the first few weeks of meals I had with my Danish family. I'd think, "Do alllll of them last this long?! We've been at the table for hours!"

And in University, I'd head to the cafe and think, "Do alllll Danes eat this well from a cafeteria?! These sandwiches are AMAZING!"

So when my mom forwarded a New York Times piece about the bolle med ost (as she does with most articles written about Danish life, knowing how much I loved living in that culture and how much I want to bring it here), I immediately clicked it open and read.

A bolle med ost (bun with cheese, or BMO to the cool kids, an abbreviation that officially made it into the biggest Danish dictionary this year) is exactly what it sounds like: a crusty bun, good butter, and a slice of hard cheese. That’s it. In a city famous for fermented, foraged, tweezered-to-perfection fine dining, the hottest food in town is bread and cheese.

And Copenhagen’s best bakeries are in a full-blown friendly war over it. They fuss over flour and fermentation. They test dozens of cheeses. They debate salted butter versus browned versus whipped (salted forever gets my vote). Demand for one aged cheese, Gammel Knas, got so wild that Danish papers reported an honest-to-goodness cheese crisis. (A cheese crisis! My Danish roots have never felt more seen. 🧀)

Danes grab them everywhere: after run club, before a date, between meetings. It’s food for a busy day. But here’s what got me.

Even though you could wolf one down with one hand, locals don’t.

They hold it open-faced and savor it. The reporter, a New Yorker, stacked hers into a sandwich and ate it two-fisted, burger-style, until her Danish friends gently set her straight. Eat it like a burger, they said, and everyone knows you’re not from here.

Hustle and hygge, balanced on one little bun.

I read that and thought: that’s my homeschool.

Because we do rush. We rush from one curriculum to the next, from math to language arts and on to whatever’s taking its turn in the loop that day. But tucked inside the hurry are the parts I’d never trade. The warm weight of a read-aloud, legs tangled under one blanket. The squeak and tap of chalk as I write an equation on the chalkboard, dust on my fingertips. (Is it weird that chalk dust is one of my love languages? Don’t answer that.)

We rush to co-op, coffee sloshing in the cup holder, then experience the field trips, the life moments, and the learning alongside friends.

Last week, we went to Biosphere 2, where I toured this incredible scientific facility with my kids and friends before we all had lunch together and watched the kids play freeze tag on the lawn. In a few weeks, we go read to the dogs at a local shelter. It's the BEST life!

We also rush to extracurriculars, to wrestling mats and archery ranges, and then... we get to sleep in the next morning. No bus. No bell (unless I'm feeling a little spicy, in which case I pull up a bell on Spotify to make my point). Which makes every tournament and every trip taste that much sweeter.

The rush isn’t the problem. Eating it like a burger is.

When I stack my whole day into one giant two-handed sandwich and choke it down, I miss the cheese. When I hold it open-faced, even on the go, even in the car, even with someone melting down over long division, I taste it.

The creative director of one of Copenhagen’s big bakery chains said something in the article I can’t stop thinking about. She imagined every small part of your day being just “five percent nicer,” and called that a beautiful way to live.

Five percent.

Not a whole new curriculum.

Not a Pinterest-perfect morning basket.

Five percent.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed and rushed today, think of your homeschool as a bolle med ost, or BMO.

Simple.

Enjoyable, even on the go.

A little treat for the soul.

It doesn’t need to be fine dining. It doesn’t need foraged moss and tweezers. It needs a good bun, real butter, and someone willing to hold it open and look at it for a second before taking the bite.

You don’t have to choose between the hustle and the hygge. You just have to stop eating it like a burger.

XO, Kimberly Crossland