Posted By: Anna
One
more Christmas post for me - and then we'll move on to...2013! A little
background on this one...my family is Norwegian, and very proud Norwegians at
that. (I can tell some mean Ole and Lena jokes!) We eat lutefisk
every Christmas Eve and have krumkake, rosettes and pizelles as cookies for
after dinner. But my favorite tradition of all is making lefse
with my grandma and cousins on Christmas Eve morning. I have been making
lefse since I was in elementary school I think. Grandma did almost all of
the work that first year and we just got flour all over the kitchen.
However, times have changed a bit and now we are in charge, and Grandma
can relax a but while we roll out and grill lefse for about 3 hours Christmas
Eve morning.
For
those of you that don't know what lefse is - according to Wikepedia (the always
trusting source) - "Lefse is a traditional soft, Norweigian flatbread.
Lefse is made out of potato, milk or cream and flour, and cooked on a
griddle" It looks a lot like a
very think large pancake or tortilla when it is all rolled out.
Sadly, I forgot to take pictures
on Christmas Eve morning (still blaming this on beginning blogging!) so some of
the pictures below are actually of another lefse making event this year at the
Northfield Retirement Center. My grandma organizes a group, both family
and friends from her church, to come and make lefse and krumkake for the
residents of the retirement center. We all whip out the lefse and serve
it to them nice and hot with coffee.
First you have to roll out the
dough - the thinner the better!
Then grill the flatbread -
Then comes the best part - the
toppings. I personally like butter with either brown sugar or cinnamon
sugar. Others like jelly or white sugar. Its all up to you.
Finally you roll it up and eat - yum!!
Truth be told, eating the lefse
isn't even my favorite part of the process, its more about the tradition of
spending time with some of my favorite people. But isn't that what makes
most traditions great?!
Talk soon!
Anna