Lefse, Lefse, We Love Lefse!

Lefse is very much a part of my family's tradition. We usually had lefse for Christmas, and if we were lucky and Grandma was visiting, we would have it at other times. My mother loved lefse, as did us kids. Although Mom was a good cook, she rarely made lefse. She would ask her mother , Grandma Berg, to make it and send it via Greyhound Bus to our home. That still puzzles me! When Mom would pick up the lefse at the bus station, which was NOT close to home, she would give each of us girls 1 piece and then save the rest for herself. ???? I think that still bothers me a bit and I am not sure why. You can tell I love lefse. I HATE mashed potatoes, actually, pretty much all potato dishes, but I LOVE lefse. Lefse , pronounced lef-sa, is the Norwegian tortilla, kind of. Lefse is a family food, one my 1st generation Norwegian- American grandmother taught me to make. You need very little to make lefse. Shown above is the lefse rolling pin, with special ridges in it, the long flat stick for turning lefse on the griddle and lifting it, and the ingredients. Potatoes, flour, and a dab of shortening with a dash or two of salt. That is all.

The recipe: 2 cups riced potatoes, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 Tablespoon shortening, 1 1/2 cups flour( more or less) Boil whole and with peels, enough potatoes to give you 2 cups riced potatoes

When I can push a fork through the potatoes easily , they are done. I take them off the heat and drain them. While the potatoes cool a little I assemble the other needed items. I get out my potato ricer. Found especially in Scandinavian stores and IKEA! I also begin to heat the griddle for the lefse and have cooling racks on the counter with clean, cotton dishcloths on them for placing the lefse after it is cooked. Peel potatoes. The peeling comes right off after boiling. Rice the required amount of potato into a large bowl. ( above ) Add the shortening, salt, and half the flour, using your hands to do the mixing. This allows you to feel the dough and gauge the necessary flour and knead in the rest as needed while rolling the dough out. Note that too much flour will give you a hard and unpalatable lefse, the kind Norwegian jokes are told about! This ( above ) is what the dough looks like when it is ready for the lefse rolling pin. Shown above is the lefse stick, used for turning the dough during rolling out and also for lifting the lefse onto and out of the griddle. The griddle, pan, skillet, should be heating while you're rolling out the lefse. The size of my lefse is determined by the size of my cooking surface. I would love a large lefse griddle, but am willing to use my electric pancake griddle for the sake of saving a LOT of money. Shown below is the rolling out process. Flour the rolling pin and the rolling surface using ONLY as much as needed, turning frequently. When the dough is rolled out evenly I flip it onto the griddle with the lefse stick. I can cook 2 medium lefse circles on my hot and ungreased griddle and while they are cooking I roll out other pieces. Cook til the lefse is lightly browning and bubbling, then turn and do the same on the other side. When the lefse is cooked through I turn it onto the towels on the cooling racks. The coffee is brewing as the lefse is frying, the soft butter is near by as is the cinnamon and sugar mixture my Hubby requires. We have a few pieces while I cook up the rest of the lefse. When I was in high school my Grandma Berg visited us and taught me how to make lefse. I make lefse often enough and although it is a family tradition to have lefse as our Christmas morning breakfast , I also make it a few times throughout the year. I have taught my daughter and daughters-in-law how to make it and several other women in our community. Lefse is a very integral part of my childhood and growing up years, and I think my Grandma taking the time to teach me something so wonderful also adds to the family tradition and memory. We butter the lefse and you can put meat and cheese inside or cinnamon and sugar. Then it is rolled up and eaten!A Norwegian tortilla, but oh so much better to me. Hubby's family , also of Norwegian American descent, put butter and cinnamon and sugar on their lefse. My family put butter and cheese or meat on the lefse. I still prefer meat and cheese, he still prefers cinnamon and sugar, but he is the one in the family with a sweet tooth. Lefse can be a dessert or a main dish. Potatoes, flour, shortening ...very, very economical and basic. "Like lutefisk, lefse now serves as a badge of Norwegian ethnicity..." ,"Lefse was not available in stores during the 1940's and 1950's , when the custom of making it at home , handed down by oral tradition since pioneer days , began dying out.Suddenly Norwegian Americans were desperate to get it for the holidays, and , to respond to the demand, every town had at least one woman who became the local lefse maker. Like the itinerant bakers in Norway's preindustrial peasant society who traveled twice annually from farm to farm, the American lefse lady would cover three to five miles or maybe two different towns as she prepared the soft bread for the Thanksgiving and Christmas season." 'Keeping Christmas', by Kathleen Stokker ""When.....asked why lefse is important, a woman in Story City, Iowa, told him that lefse makes her remember former times in Norway "when things weren't always so good": Lefse is unique to our roots and more and more people are interested in their heritage. Lefse is a tradition, a thread running through our family." 'Keeping Christmas' Lefse is indeed a thread running through my family. I taught my daughter and my youngest son's wife how to make lefse, after I bought them a lefse rolling pin, lefse stick and potato ricer, and my son's wife makes lefse for him quite frequently. I plan on teaching my grandchildren how to make lefse and while so doing will tell them about their great-grandma Berg who taught me. And of course there is this, I LOVE to eat LEFSE! Blessings: family traditions, lefse, having a grandma like Grandma Berg

Spot on Family Recipe, Berry Butternuts!

~The little vignette above is displayed in my father-in-laws' home. His home is Christmas Town, pretty much all year round. He missed his true calling as Santa Claus, but I think my Hubby is following that jolly siren song. Anyway, my father-in-law really just goes nuts at Christmas. He bakes special desserts, and I mean DESSERTS! Hubby's family believes dessert to be the main course and everything else except the gravy and butter are just filler you have to get out of the way before dessert. My father-in-law used to be a baker, and never quit baking. When Hubby and I were first married I did not have to compete with his Mother's cooking, but the line " Well, my Father makes it better, or my Father makes the best..." and although Hubby learned very, very soon NOT to say those lines, he was right. His father is a great baker and cook. (Hubby is too but don't tell him I said so). ~Hubby's father (above) is into his 8th decade of life and doing quite well. He still makes great peanut brittle and Berry Butternuts. Hubby is carrying on the tradition of baking the cookies, and he writes, "This is a recipe my father conceived in 1949 while working at Federal Bakery in Tacoma, Washington. He took Scottish shortbread and jazzed it up a bit. He entered the recipe once in Better Homes and Gardens and received Honorable Mention. Our father made these cookies every Christmas and they are one of our favorite Christmas cookies."

~Berry Butternut Cookies~

1 pound unsalted, room temperature butter 1 cup sugar 3/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 large egg 4 to 5 cups flour raspberry or lingonberry jam finely chopped walnuts, about 2 cups ~~~Cream together butter, sugar and salt.Mix in egg and vanilla. Add 4 cups flour, mixing in 1 cup at a time, then as much of the 5th cup until the dough can rolled into a ball without sticking.

~Take a fist size ball of dough and roll it into a 1 inch thick log and then roll that into the walnuts, coating the dough; it should be about 3/4 inch thick now. Cut the dough into 3/4 inch pieces and place onto a baking sheet. ~Using the unsharpened end of a pencil, make an indentation in the center of the cookie, about 1/2 inch deep and fill with jam.

~Here Hubby is using a gadget that makes the filling easy.~

~Bake the cookies in a 325 degree pre-heated oven for 12 to 15 minutes.~

~These are some of the very best cookies. There are never any left over cookies and we know it is Christmas when the Berry Butternuts are being baked. These cookies are best if stored in a sealed container(we use glass gallon mayonnaise jars ) for a day or two before eating. But hey, who waits. You have to have at least a half dozen with a good cup of coffee before you put the jar of cookies away . ~These cookies are a family tradition. My husband and his brother and 4 sisters grew up with these as a Christmas memory they continue to this day. My father-in-law is still baking them and delivering them too! See Knock, Knock! the 12/16/2008 post on our daughter's blog to read more about this tradition.

Spot on Christmas Village, or "Ve Yust Go Nuts At Christmas"

~The Christmas village, our Christmas village. ~~This is the sun room (below) we decided to turn into our little Christmas village. Our collection of miniature houses , barns, establishments and all the little things needed in a picturesque village , well, our collection has begun to get a bit out of control. We have positioned the little properties on the buffet, end tables, shelves, table, the floor under the Christmas tree. But really...one needs a place to put a town or small city, doesn't one ? ~Seems like this should have been simple, right ? But you do not see the bush sized geraniums and tree sized Dracena and big Aloe Vera plants I had to re-locate to other parts of our home to accommodate the village that has grown into a town and threatens to become a city and if left unchecked could possibly become a Metropolis!

~I would NOT re-locate Belle though, she whistles "Jingle Bells" and "Thy Loving Kindness" randomly throughout the day. If per chance you call our home you are likely to hear her in the background. She waits just for us to answer the phone to launch into her ear piercing renditions of "Jingle Bells". But I digress. So here is my almost empty sun room waiting to be turned into a winter wonderland. ~Hubby decided our little growing town needed some city planning and he built a shelf to go on top of the antique presently in the sun room. This holds practical kitchen items and we will need access to it throughout the holidays. Here below is Hubby's shelf, painted white, and it is sitting on top of the board that will be placed directly on top of the antique , with the shelf on top of it. ~Here on our dining room table is but half of the village pieces waiting to be opened for another Christmas season. We keep the little houses and village pieces in their original boxes. ~I think this is working out fine. Hubby attached small blue lights under the shelf, and in the evening they cast a faint blue star like kind of light down on the village. I later put batting and figurines all around the village, but I will show pictures of that later. I think our little village is shaping up, but boy oh boy, this is an all day activity that I like too much to turn into a chore. So I put on music I love and make myself a treat to eat and take my time. I remember I love all the things we do every year for the Christmas season. And that this village takes so much time to put up and then take down and put away that it will be up and enjoyed til mid January. ~Hubby really loves the little village. His father too loves little villages. Hubby is the real collector in our family and as we both come from a Scandinavian American background...don't even begin to suggest that maybe, just maybe "ve yust go a little nuts at Christmas". Hubby wants even more little houses and establishments. I think next year we might get another level for the village and have a train running around it..and then we can build the shelves ALL around the sun room and we could have..... ~....well, we could have that metropolis! But then where will the plants go? Maybe Hubby will build that green house we have talked about! That is a topic for another post, preferably the post that documents the building of the green house we had planned to build 2 years ago but circumstances prevented. Anyway, for the rest of this month I will be posting family traditions, decorations and recipes and what Christmas means to us. ~And you purists out there, we know Jesus was probably not born December 25. We know many of the Christmas traditions did originate from pagan festivities. But we do NOT celebrate them as such.We take comfort and joy in carrying on traditions our family's did. There is a lot to be said for the continuation of family traditions and passing them onto the next generation with love. And also to be able to tell our children and grandchildren and friends the story of Jesus, His birth, death and resurrection......and start the true story with the Nativity, with looking at and reflecting on the Nativity scene or creche under your Christmas tree or on your mantle. ~So for this month please forgive us as "ve yust go nuts at Christmas"!